Double dissolution

Australian Greens' powerful response to Abbott's Budget.

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• published: 16 May 2014
• views: 723

In the elections last year I voted Labor for the House of Reps, and Greens for the house of review, the Australian Senate. I was doubtful of my choice for the Senate, but given this AMAZING and brave response from Christine Milne, I am so glad that I did. Now that the extremism of the Abbott government is completely revealed in the budget, a blocking of supply in the Senate by the Greens, Independents and Labor is our only hope for justice for the majority of the Australian people - hopefully in association with double dissolution and an election. I run out of superlatives in describing Christine Milne's analysis: succinct, clear, concise, germane, supported by fact and science - - - though it was delivered to an almost empty Parliamentary Chamber, where most of BOTH of the major parties did not even bother to attend! Is this responsible Parliamentary procedure, when elected representatives are paid upwards of $185K per year by their constituents to be informed on political issues, or is the plain truth too much for both of the major parties to handle? I am in NOW in the position of becoming a retiree, comfortably well-off, but right through my teens I had to bear the burden of a father (whom I loved very deeply) dying of cancer, so that my mother had to go to work at the same age at which I'm now retiring, to allow our family to survive. At one stage (1972-74), only the revisions to medical benefits for low income earners made by the Whitlam (Labor) government stopped my family from having to sell up and live in extremely reduced conditions. As it was, the penury and tensions (financial and my dad's medical issues) of that period interrupted my education sufficiently that, after a period of confusion, indirection and self-assessment, I had to work my way up through contract jobs, casual journalistic appointments and consultancies over several decades to get by, mostly self-employed. It was not an easy road to hoe without the luxury of a university degree, and I think it's to my credit that I survived so well -- and continue to do so. I have NEVER forgotten the lessons to be learned from poverty. I therefore abhor those who support a return to those conditions of health care pre-1974 in response to an utterly fictional "economic crisis" concocted by the extremist right-wing Abbott government, aided by a blatantly and increasingly biased Murdoch press. Please, you owe it to yourself, and your children, to listen to this outstanding analysis - too close to the truth for the other parties to bear, and FAR too damning for the Murdoch press to report, and too hot for the ABC or SBS, now cowering from the threat of Abbott's budgetary cuts, to broadcast..