Why you should vote for Labor in the 2004 Election

WHY I WILL BE VOTING LABOR IN THE 2004 ELECTION, AND WHY YOU SHOULD TOO


Its well under a week until the Federal Election and statistics show that almost a quarter of voters don’t make up their minds until the last few days, and at least 10% don’t decide until Election Day. There are also a substantial number of apathetic voters, many of them first time voters, who don’t really have much of an opinion and may not have taken the time to inform themselves about the issues pertaining to this election. Therefore this article is aimed directly at such people, but is definitely worth a read for anyone else.
Politics matters, this election matters – more so than for a long time – and its vital you are informed about whom you are voting for so you can make the right choice. Just because you might not care about politics is no excuse for throwing away your vote without thinking about it, its time to start caring, because the future of this country is at stake. Its time to stand up and be counted and make your vote count, because you can make a difference even if you think you can’t.

The choice of who to vote for is quite clear. The Liberal Party under the leadership of Prime Minister John Howard has been in power for the last 8 years since Labor’s Paul Keating was defeated in 1996, and has driven Australia into the ground to the point where we are today. Australia is now almost no longer a country worth being proud of, as demonstrated in Bill Condie’s “Why I’ve fallen out of love with Australia”, and our cultural independence and identity are under threat. We have been misled, we have been deceived, and we may well have been flat out lied to. We are moving towards a less tolerant and divided nation, and a nation that is not even entirely our own anymore, but more like another state of the United States of America. We endorse gross violations of human rights with immigration policies that are against the core values of Australian values. We are moving backwards not forwards, we are regressing, not progressing, and its time it stopped.

For the sake of the future of this country, its vital that each and every one of you vote Labor at the coming election on the 9th of October, and I’m going to tell you why.



PART ONE: Why NOT to vote for John Howard and the Liberal Party.


The Sale of Telstra
The government currently owns the holding share of 51% in Telstra, Australia’s most popular telecommunications company and the one that owns all the telephone lines in the country, giving it a virtual monopoly in line-renting costs to other companies. Before the Howard government Telstra was 100% government owned and regulated. Since the 49% sale prices have risen and service has declined to an unacceptable level, I’m sure many people reading this will have had unpleasant experiences with Telstra customer service. Over 450 IT jobs will also be lost to call centers in India. Howard plans to sell the rest of Telstra, its only going to get worse if he does this.
Labor has vowed not to sell Telstra.

Howard’s abandonment of Australian tertiary education
Some may argue that the fault is with the Hawke government that introduced university fees when previously they had been taxpayer-funded. However with Australia’s booming population, many in the form of immigrants who come to Australia for, among other things, a better education, the government simply cannot afford to pay for everyone’s university education. Before the Howard government, came into power the fees were of a perfectly affordable level under the HECS scheme, but he has just raised all fees by up to 33% The Howard government clearly does not care about the future of this country if he is prepared to raise university fees by that much, making them unaffordable to many low-income Australians. Some courses will have fees of over $100,000, something Howard promised would not occur. Instead a flood of advertisements that attempt to persuade young Australians to take up a trade or go to TAFE have been released. Australian universities are now grossly under funded and have had their funding cut. How are we to compete on the world stage academically with a second-rate tertiary education system?
Labor has promised to repeal the fee rises and increase funding.

Corruption and Misconduct
Assistant Treasurer Helen Coonan used her ministerial letterhead in an attempt to resolve a private insurance dispute. When the facts came out, Howard said it was “not a hanging offence”. This was exactly the same thing said about Regional Services Minister Wilson Tuckey when he did the same thing to get the SA government to revoke a traffic offence against his son. Former Communications Minister Richard Alston is also heavily involved in a family trust with Telstra shares. Phillip Ruddock has no problem condemning thousands of refugees to deportation, but when Dante Tan, wanted for fraud in the Philippines, donates $100000 to the Liberal Party, he is given a Visa right away. The AFP are also investigating whether he also received $220000 from Mr. Tan. And these are just the instances we know about. Do you want people like this running your country?

Those guys in Cuba
David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib are two Australian terrorist suspects currently in YSA custody. They are awaiting trial by a US military tribunal, hardly a fair trial. Yet the goventment completely ignored their plight until it became an election issue. The agreement that was finally reached is vague at best and really offers no gaurentee that they will receive a fair trial. Fair enough if they are guilty they get what they deserve, but we have to make sure they are, right? Come on Howard, don’t ignore them just because it might create an issue with President Bush (and we can’t have that can we?).

The Health Crisis
We have Medicare for a reason, it means that when you get sick or injured you can afford to go to a doctor or hospital without spending a fortune – without it many low-income earners may not be able to afford decent health care. Bulk billing is central to Medicare and as a result of John Howard’s policies it has been decimated. Bulk billing has to do with how much you pay to see your GP and how much you get back from Medicare, click here for a good explanation of how it works and what the government has done to it. Since Howard took office in 1996 bulk billing rates have dropped from 80.6% to 68.5%, a mammoth drop as a result of government policy as more and more GPs can no longer afford to do it as they are no longer being adequately reimbursed by the government. 77% of voters would prefer higher taxes if more was spent on health. But Health Minister Tony Abbot says we don’t need health reform. Howard also promised that Medicare premiums would be reduced under his government, they actually rose a staggering 21%. Do you want to be paying this much for health care? Do you want to be unable to find a bulk-billing doctor? I don’t think so.

No really, we don’t care about the Ozone Layer
In possibly the biggest environmental blunder of the last few decades, John Howard has pulled Australia out of the Kyoto Protocol. The protocol is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and allow the ozone layer to recover, reduce the greenhouse effect and prevent global warming; I think we all agree these are vital pursuits in the name of a better global environmental condition, so why has John Howard pulled us out? Hes worried about investment jobs. Somehow I think the future of the planet is a bit more important. If you don’t believe me, read here, its written by Bob Carr of all people.
Labor has promised to fix this grave mistake if elected. "Australia under a Labor government will ratify and we'll set up the carbon trading system as quickly as possible"

Foreign Debt

“[Australia’s] Foreign debt was $361 billion at the end of September 2003, an
increase of 90 per cent on the September 1995 level. The current account deficit
was $11.9 billion at the end of September 2003, an increase of 112.5 per cent on
the September 1995 level.”

That’s from the ABS. ‘Nuff said.

Fridge Magnet Warriors
Just over 3 years ago a couple of planes crashed into a couple of towers in America and lots of people died. It was done by Muslim extremists targeting Western interests, and everyone’s been freaking out about terrorism ever since. Now to be fair it’s a very serious issue and the defense of our nation is very, very important, but the Liberal Party is playing politics and using our fear to keep them in power. September 11 was one of the two reasons Howard won the 2001 election (that and a boat and some kids which we will discuss later). Then there was the Bali Bombings (the media can’t resist alliteration can it?) just over a year later, in which 88 Australians died. It has been revealed that Australia had intelligence reports that a terrorist attack was likely in the area, yet it did not warn the Australian public until it was too late. Howard has blatantly been playing on the people’s fears in order to keep him in power, and he’s trying it on us in the campaign, implying that we would be at a greater risk if a Labor government was elected, when really our involvement in the war in Iraq and our support of USA imperialism as a result of government policy is the biggest cause, this is even admitted by Deputy PM John Anderson. His anti-terror campaigns are diving Australia; everyone is suspicious of each other, especially minorities. This is a war, and we are all combatants – our government has armed us with a fridge magnet. You cant even leave bag unattended at a train station anymore, it can be destroyed if you do. It breeds paranoia, here a classic example. This blatant fear mongering has got to stop.

Howard the “arse licker”
Throughout history we have always been hooked up with someone, being the small country we are and so isolated from the west of the western world. It used to be Britain but after WW2 we became closer to America. Australia has enjoyed over 40 years of relative independence and allowed itself to make decisions on behalf of itself for itself. This all changed after 2001. Since then John Howard has been sucking up to USA President George W Bush (a man who’s undesirability as a partner in… anything needs no introduction), there’s no other way to put it. Firstly we followed him into a war in Afghanistan – fair enough this was warranted – then we passed police state-like anti-terror laws (ah la Patriot Act), followed by a virtual clone of W’s gay marriage laws, which will be discussed in a moment, and of course the war on Iraq and the FTA. Iraq we went in blindly following the USA even though they receive absolutely no backing from the UN and that Iraq was completely irrelevant to Australia and the troops we sent could have been much better put to use in the region. It also raised our terrorism profile and cost billions of dollars. Now I support the war, even though no WMDs were found, which was the original reason we went in, because I believe that Saddam needed to go in any case. But for the reasons we went in, to disarm, we did not gather adequate proof that there was indeed anything to disarm. Now you really cant do that, especially when an intelligence inquiry described the intelligence the government used to justify war as “vague” and a letter from Bob Mathews, a 35-year veteran of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation and WMD expert was sent to Howard three days before he comitted Australia to war, warning him that there really was no evidence that Iraq had WMD. 56 of Australia’s top doctors sent an open letter to the government regarding Iraq.
America even went so far as to try to interfere with Australian politics, basically saying it would be terrible if Latham was elected.

FTA Mate?
The USA wants a Free Trade Agreement with us, and of course John Howard’s going to give it to them. This would have disastrous effects, starting with the immediate and utter devastation to Australian Intellectual Property Law, lower prices to exports for major industries such as meat and wool, price rises in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, and the adoption of US-style copyright laws. Here’s a list of other countries with FTAs with the USA: Canada, Mexico, Jordan, Chile, Singapore, Israel, Morocco, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala. Booming economic powerhouses arent they. If you examine the deal in detail you will see we are definitely getting the wrong end of the stick. Here’s an article that explains why Latham should oppose the FTA with every fiber of his being much better than I could. He ended up caving in which was a real disappointment, but if we want any chance of having some changes to the agreement, Latham and Labor are the only ones who will do it.

Gay Marriage
Howard, again taking after his master George W Bush, passed the Marriage Amendment Act, which basically bans any form of homosexual marriage in Australia, and refuses to acknowledge the existing marriage of anyone who comes to Australia. It reaffirms that marriage is "a union between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others". This is nothing other than discrimination. Australian Democrats sexuality spokesman Brian Greig said:

"Imagine if I were to stand in this chamber and boldly announced that Jewish
people were shameful, vile and moral terrorists. I don't believe those things, I
would not say them, I know them to be untrue and I would condemn anybody who
said such appalling and shocking things. However, last Wednesday, here in the
Great Hall of Parliament House I witnessed a huge gathering of mostly
fundamentalist Christians and other assorted far right-wing and anti-gay groups
make those exact claims against gay and lesbian people and their children."

He’s entirely right, what’s the difference? Just like the Liberal government’s refugee policy, this one only promotes bigotry and segregation. Howard appears hell bent on bringing Australia back to 1950’s values and this is just another step. If we don’t stop treating minorities like second-class citizens, how are we ever to move forward into a more tolerant and unified society? 55% of people under 30 support gay marriage and 60% of people over 60 are against it. Suprised?
Labor decided not to oppose the legislation, but this was mostly a political move and they plan to recognize homosexual de facto relationships and will most likely move slowly and gently towards full gay rights, whereas with the Liberal Party, you are likely to see more oppression and more bigotry. Here’s a Labor Party media release on their policy and some discussion on it.

“For Those Who’ve Come Across the Sea”
“We’ve boundless plains to share”. Two lines from the second verse of our national anthem. Giving a fair go to those in need is a core value of the Australian culture, as is sharing. But they are not being upheld by the current government. Our boundless plains are small, inhospitable, prison-like detention centers where refugees are thrown and treated in appalling conditions that breach international human rights standards laid down by the UN. Take a look around and you will find harrowing tales of life inside detention camps, many even sewed their lips together as a hunger strike to protest against the conditions. These poor people sell everything they have and cram into dodgy boats to cross pirate-infested South-East Asian waters and they get here and are told “sorry we don’t want you, turn around and go back”. Give them a fair go, we don’t even fulfill our quota. If we decide that you aren’t a proper refugee by a system that no one completely understands, then you are deported back to wherever you came from. One Chinese mother was pregnant with her second child and when she was deported back to China, her baby was aborted at eight over months because of China’s One Child Policy. Eight months, no one can say that’s not murder. Event if found to be “real refugees” they are only given Temporary Protection Visas and sent back to their original country when we decide it is safe again.
This is not multiculturalism, this is a disgrace.

The Vote Boat
Weeks before the election in 2001, the election was stolen from Kim Beazley by a rickety old boat and a bunch of kids. A ship packed with refugees, mostly from the Middle East, approached the Australian coast. The Navy saw them and demanded they turn around. It was claimed by Howard that in order to be taken to shore, the refugees through their children overboard to force the Navy to act. This was touted all over the media and no one asked any questions until much later when the truth started to sink through – no children had been thrown overboard at any time. All you need to know about the incident is at Truth Overboard. It may appear to be biased, but all the information is factual in black and white, including the senate report.

Who sits behind the throne?
The Liberal Party is under heavy influence from the Lyons Forum. Just read the link and think to yourself if that’s really a good idea.

John Howard: The Invisible Man
You may have noticed a trend. Whenever there is a bungle in the government and whenever it looks like John Howard has just told us all something slightly dodgy, its never his fault? Tampa for example. According to Howard, he never knew that they hadn’t actually thrown their kids in the water. He also never knew there was next to no backing for the WMD claims in Iraq and he never knew about the intelligence reports on Bali before the October 12 attacks, and that’s just the start. If he is the top of the chain and who makes all the decisions, why is he not being told vital information? If its true he didn’t know, then that shows major failings in his administration, and you simply cant have a government run like that. If he did know, then he’s not just been misleading and deceiving us, he’s been flat out lying. Do you want a government run like this trying to run the country? I think not.

The Interest Rate Scam
The Liberal Party are clutching at straws by claiming, and still continuing to claim, that interest rates will rise if a Labor government is elected, even though this has been disproved multiple times. The perpetuation of the myth is an attempt to scare the Australian public into re-electing them. More on this in Part 2.

The Ando Zone
The Deputy PM John Anderson has developed a habit of putting his foot in his mouth by saying some really stupid, untrue and downright embarrassing things. Here’s a few examples:
October 2nd he claimed a Labor government would result in 500 road crashes a year.
September 30th he said "I am singularly unimpressed by what I see as an act of cowardice." in response to Tony Windsor going to the police about someone bribing him with a diplomat position if he didn’t stand for election. He then dug a bigger hole for himself by saying "Who in the National Party, apart from me in consultation with the PM and foreign minister, could have offered somebody a diplomatic posting? It could only have been me."
September 23rd he said its possible that the Virgin Airline bomb scare was done by trade unions.
Need I go on? Do we really want this guy as our Deputy PM?

Abbot and Costello
Just like their namesakes they are a pair of clowns, and guess what, they could be running the country if the Liberals are re-elected. None one voted for them, but if John Howard retires like he may well do sometime before the 2007 election, Costello becomes PM and Abbot is his right hand man, or the other way around. Its been proven that Abbot lies and misleads at least as much as Howard does, and that Costello is an uncharismatic, leadership deficient, right-wing religious whacko. Neither of these guys are fit to be ministers, let alone running the country. We are all going to get a nasty surprise if the Liberals get re-elected. John Howard refuses to guarantee to the Australian people that he will stick out the full term.

Dirty Politics
Here’s a big one. Its been astonishing how much negative, dirty, dodgy, underhanded and questionably legal political strategies coming from both parties, but by far the majority is with the Liberal Party, and their offences are the worst. There’s so much of it I will just cover the ones that I consider to be worst.
Take a look at The Liberal Party Website and count the number of anti-labor and anti-Latham material there is, an entire section is devoted to “Labor watch” including a gigantic pdf of anti-labor propaganda. ALP costings watch on the left and one of those ridiculous and unproven “L plate Latham” adds in reference to his economic management skills from his time at Liverpool City Council, and the costings deadline flashing animation, not to mention the anti-Latham popup! So many negative waves man. By stark contrast the ALP website just has a list of 35 of Howard’s lies.
John Howard gets his son, Tim Howard, to spam Liberal Party propaganda emails, a big, questionably legal, nono.
This anti-greens propaganda that has absolutely no basis in truth whatsoever.

The thing is, this doesn’t have the Liberal Party’s name on it, so people were confused, some even thought it was a Greens flyer. Not cricket.
Day or two after the Labor tax package is released, a caller claiming to be on $35000pa with 3 children (the so called gap in the tax plan) called the Member for Stirling who promptly put her foot in her mouth, resulting in this article. The caller was of course later found to be a Liberal Party stooge.
Beat-up against Ivan Molloy over pre-historic photos showing him with an armed gunman in the Philippines.
Smear campaign again Latham bringing up all sorts of buried things from his past, exaggerating them and spreading them like high school rumors. Latham made a tearful plea for his family to be left out of it.
Claims about Mark Latham’s time as Mayor of Liverpool City Council involving him overspending and gross economic mismanagement, all proved to have very flimsy backing, yet the Liberal Party continues to treat them as fact when they simply are not. Under his leadership, Liverpool was named the most successful reforming council in the state in 1995, according to findings by a Wollongong University study.

I also recommend you read the following articles and webpages:
35 Lies and Counting
Vote the Bastards Out – LJ post and a large amout of discussion
The Case against John Howard
Letter to a Liberal MP from a disaffected Liberal farmer


PART 2: Why you should vote for the Labor Party: A policy comparison

Quite a few people have been saying that there is no real difference between the two major parties – so whichever one we go with we still get screwed over, leading to slogans such as “whoever wins we lose” and “whoever we vote for, we still get a politician”. It may appear this way on the surface, but if you look at policies in detail there are many differences. Grahame Armstrong article “A hit-and-myth choice” in the Sunday Times dispelled 10 myths regarding this election, number one being the myth that both sides are as bad as each other – he points our there are clear, significant differences in all the major policy areas.

Latham the “Unknown”
Myth number 3 on Armstrong’s list was that Mark Latham, at 43, is too young and inexperienced. Well, John F. Kennedy was also 43, Tony Blair was 44 and Bill Clinton was 47, Latham’s age is not a factor. Then there’s John Curtin, arguably Australia’s best PM, who had not much more experience in major government roles when he took on the top job. Just because you only know Latham as that guy who used to say fairly crude things from the back bench, does not mean he’s a bad choice. You may not know about Latham very much, but we all know Howard, and we know how he misleads and deceives the public, and we know what he’s done. We are safer with Latham.

Interest Rates
OK so this one isn’t really a policy but it’s closely related so it’s getting put in this section. In late August the Liberals first claimed that under a Labor government interest rates would rise, citing that interest rates were significantly higher in the Whittlam, Hawke and Keating governments and because “they follow policies that push up interest rates”. Yay for circular logic. A few days later this article was out essentially saying what a ridiculous idea this was, and it went from there. Probably the best article that thoroughly proved Howard’s claim to be wrong is this one by Matt Day on September 5th. It took a further 20 days for anything further to appear, in the form of a fairly decisive Reuters survey, which had 14 top financial institutious agreeing that intrests rates would have no significant rise whoever was in government, Robet Corr went into a bit more detail. Howard of course refused to believe them and continues to perpetuate the myth in the face of logic.
Bottom line: Intrest rates are not going to be dependant on government policy, therefore it shouldn’t be an election issue and should be out of your minds when you go to the polls.

National Security
There are some definite differences between the two parties and between the two leaders in Howard and Latham, the first being the focus of Australia’s involvement in homeland counter-terrorism and the War on Terror in general. John Howard has pledged to essentially do whatever is necessary in Iraq with our troops for as long as it takes, while Latham wants to bring all the troops home by Christmas and replace them with a number of non-combat personnel, as a result Howard is accusing him of “cutting and running”. This was the main national security issue in the debate. Latham’s focus is more on the region “We don't believe our permanent interests lie on the other side of the world. They lie on our side of the world and we'll always dedicate ourselves to that purpose” he said. He also thinks our primary focus should have been to spend our money and resources to “break up al-Qaeda, to smash JI, to find bin Laden” instead of on Iraq. One of Latham’s key policies is to set up maritime and air patrols, in cooperation with Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, to stop the flow of terrorists to and from southern Philippines. John Howard instead wants to spend $100million to set up counter-terrorism teams that could be based in other South-East Asian countries, Malaysia and NZ bluntly rejected this idea.
The other bone of contention is pre-emptive strikes in the region – Howard seems to think that it would be fine for Australia to launch them against any neighbouring country if a terrorist threat emerged to Australia, we could have our own little Iraq! Latham is more down with diplomacy and only attacking if it’s the only option left. Howard eventually worked out it was a bad idea and backflipped, saying he “would not attack another country without its cooperation”.
Labor is also boosting the defense budget by $373million, including many new bases and accommodation for troops and entitlement of reunion travel for non-custodial parents in the defence forces who are posted away from their children. The Coalition’s planned defense budget is harder to come by.
Labor clearly has a more practical policy that better reflects Australia’s national interests, and hasn’t been dismissed by a couple of key nations and is less likely to inflame the region.

Tax
Labor was first to announce their tax package, which predictably came under fire from the Liberals. The plan is to do a number of things, firstly give tax breaks to those who John Howard “forgot on budget day” – those under $52k pa – especially for families, who could be getting an extra $70-$80 per week. “We're actually identifying the savings, we're fully funding all of our commitments and ensuring that we keep the budget in surplus.” Labor also wants to resolve the family debt crisis (average of $1000 debt per family) by introducing two tax-free thresholds so there’s no tax for single-income families up to $12000 and with income splitting (finally). Now I’m not an economist and I’m no good at number crunching, but if you want to explore this further the full policy is on the ALP Website. Latham also wants to get rip of the $600 one of payment because its being wasted by many families and because it gets eaten up in family debt, he instead wants to make it on a more regular basis when the bills come in. Howard thinks this is an insult. The bottom line according to Latham is that “Nine out of 10 families better off on a weekly basis and when you look at the annual figures, seven out of 10 better off” That’s better of than under Howard’s plan. There was some speculation that families under $35000pa were going to be worse off but when calculated this was not the case.
Costello decided to challenge the policy’s adding up, saying it was wrong by $700m. Note in this article “The Treasurer claimed Labor's tax policy is underfunded by $2.7 billion, even though he has not seen all the documentation behind its calculations.” The whole thing has kinda blown over now, I think Costello has realised hes probably wrong and has backed off. Howard is giving out a $200 self-funded retiree bonus, but they will be better off with Labor’s tax reform anyway, Robert Corr goes into detail about that.

Education
So we already know that Howard doesn’t actually care about universities in that he’s raising HECS fees by at least 25% and there are now 16 university degrees costing over $100k. Latham’s plan for that is fairly simple, repeal it and give more funding to tertiary education. Howard is still stacking on the trades front and wants to give an $800 payment to every apprentice to buy tools - read this article well, it outlines pretty much what the governments philosophy is and why its screwing over universities. This of course is a quick fix and does nothing to help the skills shortages, ergo the ACTU hates it. As far as high school funding, that’s become one of the core issues of the campaign. Howard wants to maintain the status quo while Latham is gunning for a needs based system, meaning he’s going to cut funding to 67 (list) of the most wealthy schools (Kings, etc. ones that only lack a helipad), a total of $520mil, and redistribute it on a needs basis to needy private independent schools and to public schools. “I mean, the choice that I want for Australian parents is to know that whether they send their children to a government or non-government school, it's gonna be a good school” Latham said at the debate. Howard is clutching at straws saying the 67-school hit list is only going to get bigger. In the meantime Howards plans to spend $289m making Australian Technical Colleges. These will have a total of 7000 in 24 colleges, it seems like an excuse to not fund anything, and ACTU boss Sharan Burrow agrees "He's too desperate, too dishonest to admit that a skills crisis has been created on his watch, so his answer is 24 technical schools, 7,000 students and performance contracts for principals. It's a joke.” Here, here.
Overall I think Latham’s plan is much better than anything we have seen for a very long time – but that’s only if he can indeed pull it off. Seems to me the Libs hate it so much mostly out of ideology.

Health
This is the big one. There are a few points with this and they all revolve around Medicare. Firstly there’s bulk billing that has dropped from 80.6% to 68.5% under the Howard regime. Latham wants to get it back up to 80% ASAP. “Investing in bulk-billing, providing incentives for doctors who do the bulk-billing. Putting in the Medicare teams, the salaried doctors and nurses that actually provide the service direct.“ Howard got stuck into Latham at the debate about the Labor Party wanting abolish the safety net, to which Latham replied “You only need a safety net if you have turned Medicare into a high-wire act and the families are at risk of falling off”. This makes sense because the safety net is too much like a stopgap measure to avoid the government tackling the problem of the decline in bulk billing. But it’s a fine line, again its going to rely on what Latham thinks will work to actually work. If it does, then we will once again have a world-class health system. If not, who knows. Also the shambles that is the public health system was a topic of conversation, reducing hospital waiting times being the number one order of business, firstly by increasing bulk billing so patients don’t have to go to an emergency room because they can’t afford a GP visit, and by the Medicare Gold policy. Medicare Gold is basically once you are over 75, all your health costs are funded by the taxpayer. Which is great, because once you are that age, you will need it more and you just don’t have to money to spend on it. The question is can we afford it? Latham thinks so and so do many other medical associations and the ACTU and the veterans. There’s also pension adjustments and so forth, more details on the ALP site. He also added an extra plan to put $300m into nursing homes, something that is desperately needed. Also cheaper meds on the PBS and is targeting cancer spending at smoking mothers.

TV and Telecommunications
Labor wants to completely review the mobile phone industry, especially its prices because “people are being ripped off” they also want to put in a cooling off period for buying a new mobile, and bring in a do-not-call list for telemarketers.
Latham also announced more Arts funding. $50m for Australian movies. $10m for low-budget movies. $10m for Internet and digital TV. I can’t see a flaw in this, its brilliant.

For even more policies you can check the Labor and Liberal Party websites.


PART 3: How to make your vote count

Note: This section is designed for first time voters and/or for those who want to reconsider their preferences, read only the parts that apply to you.

So you have read this article so far and have decided you want to vote for the Labor party and do you bit to help Mark Latham and Labor with the election. It’s a very simple procedure to go through on polling day, but you have to understand all of it in order to truly make your vote count. Firstly you vote for the House of Representatives. You have to fill in all the boxes numbering your preferences 1-x, in the example of my home electorate of Pearce, there are 9 candidates, so 1-9. This how I would vote and the same kind of formula is what I suggest you adopt, according to your own views.

Doesn’t look too hard? Just do a bit of research on the minor parties running in your electorate.

For the senate I encourage you to vote below the line so you can select your preferences yourself, if you vote above the line you just need to put a “1” in the box of the party you want to vote for, but your preferences will be distributed by them. Voting minor parties like the Greens or Democrats is often a good idea as it preserves the balance of power, this means it’s harder for the government to pass dodgy bills, because the minors in the senate will block it. Here’s an example senate ballot.

If you are going to be away from your electorate on election day, you can just pop in to any polling place and say you are from X electorate and want to do an absentee vote. You will be directed as to what to do next.

Make sure you do not mark your ballot form in a way that obscures the printing, and don’t write your name on it, this will cause it to not be counted.


PART 4: Frequently asked questions.


Q: I don’t trust either of the major parties and don’t think they are worth my vote, so how does this article apply to me?

A: You may not want to vote your first preference for a major party, but you still have to direct your preferences to someone because in most seats its very unlikely a minor party will be elected. So ultimately you still have to decide between the two major parties, which is what this article was designed for.

Q: I’m in a very safe Liberal or National seat, what’s the point of me voting Labor?

A: Just because its safe doesn’t mean there’s no point. If enough people vote that there’s a swing away from the sitting member, it lets the party know that this electorate is not happy with the way the country is being run, and sends a clear message to the party, it may also cause the sitting member to lose status within the party. And safe seats have been lost before; it’s not an entirely lost cause.

Q: What happens if John Howard loses his seat but the Liberals still win? Or if the same happens with Latham?

A: If this were to happen then a shuffle would take place in the party to accommodate him, most of the time anyway.

Q: You’re obviously biased towards Labor, how do I know I can believe what you are saying?

A: Everything here is based on information gathered from a variety of sources and mostly unbiased news sites. If you find any inconsistencies that I may have missed, please point them out to me. I encourage you to seek out the information yourself and form your own opinion, this article is just informing you of the facts.

Q: Your religious views seem to clash with your political ones.

A: I’m a firm believer in the separation of church and state, and in not forcing your religious view on anyone else, especially a secular government legislating on behalf of a religious group – that’s simply not on. As a result my political views may be more liberal than your average Christian.

Q: Why would I vote for a party with the guy who leads it doing REALLY bad lightsaber impressions?

A: As far as I know, none of the politicians in Star Wars were proficient with a lightsaber, therefore wouldn’t it be normal for Latham to be bad at it?

Q: Labor has Peter Garret, isn’t that just a bit too much like Arnie running for governor of California?

A: If you watched a 7:30 report interview with Kerry O’Brien and him, you will see that he’s just interested in being a team player, and that unlike many other musicians he does have a clue. Midnight Oil always had a political component to their music too. And he’s going to be very, very handy in defusing environmental squabbles if he’s elected.

Q: I actually thought this article was alright. Where can I read anything else written by you?

A: You can try my LiveJournal or stay tuned to Plasma Rag for any articles written by me.


Huge thanks to Dave over at Completely Biased for all the news he posts up, the bulk of my info came from stuff he linked, and a couple of IRC randoms for an FAQ question or two.