This is, for now, as close as I’ll probably ever come to writing from my heart, or at least the spot where I have a lumpen-shaped chunk of stone where one’s “heart” usually is.
Tomorrow, we will all be voting in the 2013 federal election, or at least those who turn up will, even if they just cock and ball the ballot paper. Thinking of that makes me want to spill the beans on the only excuse I know of that works if you’re pulled up for not voting, but tomorrow’s election is so important that everyone needs to vote, so ask me later.
It is important to vote tomorrow not just because we live in a democracy and can vote for whomever we wish without fear of rigging – or much fear, it shames me to admit that my beloved Labor did once rig the result in a by-election for the Victorian state seat of Nunawading in the 80s but ho hum, it kept Jeff Kennett away from the top job for a few more years.
It is important to vote tomorrow not just because it’s something to get done and then the rest of your Saturday is free to use watching the football.
It is important to vote tomorrow and equally if not more so who you vote for.
I know that on this blog and on Twitter, and especially in my Facebook page if you know me from there, that I regularly, if not prolifically, go the thump on the Liberal Party and conservatives of all political parties in a way that really only makes me look like a 13 year-old in the body of a 23 year-old (I know, I’m like mental jailbait) but this time I’m imploring you to vote Labor and not Liberal for what is to many people I know arguably the most important topic of this election campaign, and you’re excused (this time) for not picking up on it, thanks to the mainstream media’s pathetic admiration and enabling exploitation of Tony Abbott”s daughters, who have been seen every day on the campaign trail being used by their father to get attention, patriarchal pimp that he is.
It is important to not vote Liberal or to preference them last on your ballot paper not just because of their policy of “rewarding” mothers who already earn over $100,000 a year up to $75,000 in paid-parental leave (just what we need, more North Shore brats with a sense of entitlement). Not just because of their policy to stop people-smuggling from Indonesia by buying, yes, spending our taxpaying dollars on buying the rickety and unsafe boats of the smugglers – and then what? Forget Great Western Auto City, Barloworld and Cool Banana Motorama, give Honest Tony’s Used Boats a try. Not just because of their policy on repealing anti-discrimination laws.
What we should all be worried about more than Mr Abbott’s repeated insensitive, discriminatory and offensive “gaffes” and “daggy dad moments” is what he and his party will do to workers, specifically people who rely on their penalty rates in order to live.
It could be argued that would delivered victory to Labor and allowed them to form a government after 11 years of Liberal rule was the Libs’ policy known as “Work Choices”, which was vehemently protested against by all due to it’s unfairness and bullying of workers that would be legalised and we’d have nothing to do about it. Work Choices was basically a way to undo collective and enterprise bargaining in the workplace and to get workers on individual contracts whereby the public was told that their employment contracts would be “tailor-made” to suit them – yes, if that suit was being worn on the proverbial clerk in the old saying, “Done up like a pox doctor’s clerk”.
In 2011, Mr Abbott was interviewed by Neil Mitchell on Melbourne’s 3AW (bring back Hinch!) and declared that if elected to government, Work Choices would be “dead and buried” and “cremated” under his leadership, nor would the policy be returning under any other name.
However, just last week, the Liberal candidate for the seat of Gilmore, Ann Sudmalis, was quoted as saying in a candidate’s forum that “Any workplace relations legislation is on the table after the election, not before.” Yes, AFTER and NOT BEFORE.
If you think I’m exaggerating here, cast your mind back to the “Watefront dispute” in 1998 when Patrick Stevedores, assisted by then Minister for Industrial Relations, Peter Reith to lock all of it’s workers out of their jobs at ports nationwide via bullying, assault and intimidation – security guards who were nothing more than glorified thugs patrolling the wharves wearing balaclavas and with the hounds ready to be released at a moment’s notice. For more on that dark episode in our nation’s employment history, see the docu-drama Bastard Boys.
And now Mr Abbott has refused to say outright whether or not he is supportive of some big businesses idea of ridding us of penalty rates. Instead, Mr Abbott shiftily refers to a Productivity Commission into Industrial Relations that he is promising will (doubtful I’m guessing) either cut penalty rates and thus jobs in the strange belief that the more penalty rates are gone, the more jobs can be created from this.
As ACTU President Ged Kearney has said:
“We need Tony Abbott to commit to making no changes to penalty rates if he is elected, rather than hiding behind his mysterious Productivity Commission inquiry into IR.”
“Penalty rates have been part of the Australian workplace for decades and provide much-needed income for low-paid workers who are required to work week-ends and public holidays.”
“Cutting penalty rates will hurt workers without creating jobs.”
“Money paid as penalty rates does not disappear it is returned to the economy when workers use it to buy goods and services from businesses. Reducing penalty rates will hurt these businesses.”
If you or anyone you know has a job whereby they are paid an award rate, or receive penalty pay or even providing frontline services in the community especially, then do not let them vote Liberal.
A vote for the Liberal party tomorrow will fuck this country up, and that’s putting it politely.
I’m writing this because with all the possible outcomes of a possible Abbott government, and that’s including the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, people being paid by the government to push out sprogs they can already afford to keep themselves, bullying and bigotry instead of debate on policy, not to mention all the other disasters that will happen from those in his “cabinet” (for all their intelligence it’s more like a broom-cupboard), what he will do to workers is the worst.
As somebody who has worked in a job that requires penalty rates to make the wage worthwhile, and most people I know also requiring their penalties to survive, a vote for anyone but Labor will make us all worse off and, without exaggerating, have to go begging for alms.Please don’t vote for Tony Abbott. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.yo
The Josh Holley 