If I lived in Canning

By Vanessa Kairies

Western Australia is a beautiful state.

I have been to little pockets and it is on my bucket list to explore in the future. I have been fortunate enough to have met some wonderful friends that live there.

If you don’t know by now, I have a strong interest in art, music, politics and social issues. They are my passions.

I was asked to write about issues facing First Nations people by the The Australian Independent Media Network. I was honoured, after all, I am an artist first and foremost.

I took up the challenge and have found it to be a very cathartic endeavour.

My focus with this article is on the upcoming Canning bi-election in WA.

If this seat is lost, we can all kiss Tony Abbott’s backside goodbye. How fantastic that would be.

If I lived in Canning I would be asking myself: “What has the Liberal Party done that has been of benefit not only to my part of the world but for Australia as a whole?”

I couldn’t come up with anything.

I can tell you what they have done that has negatively impacted on my world and my ability to create art.

Without peace of mind, the creativity will not flow.

The Barnett Government in Western Australia and the Abbott Government have aided every Australian and foreign owned company to destroy the land and ancestral homes of people in every state of Australia without so much a blink of the eye.

This has forced many people to become homeless.

The WA Government has tried to move homeless people from sleeping on the street by hosing them down during winter to move them on.

A callous and cruel act, one that I can not forget.

WA Premier Colin Barnett has colluded with Tony Abbott to set up the Recognise campaign. This project is sponsored by mining companies. Its aim is to stamp the approval for four new uranium mines, two new coal mines, 40,000 gas fracking wells and development of oil refineries in WA.

Many more are underway, completed and proposed all over Australia.

The Labor Party are in on it too: they support Nuclear energy. Uranium is needed to do this.

The SA Labor premier Jay Weatherill wants to turn South Australia into a nuclear waste dump. I wouldn’t vote for them either, (now I know why the Greens were locked out of the referendum into the development of the Recognise campaign).

These plans to continue destroying our earth and Australia have to stop. We have the generations of our children and our grandchildren in our hands.

It is our responsibility to choose wisely, when we vote.

The Liberal Party has taken no action on climate change.Tony Abbott openly denied it existed. His ministers have insulted First Nations people and our International neighbours recently regarding this. I find this disgusting.

Both the Liberal and Labor parties are committed to the offshore processing of asylum seekers.

These are places where women and children are raped, people are bashed to death and die of preventable infections.

They are denied swift medical treatment, are tortured, humiliated and denied their basic human rights.

For the first time ever in our history we are on the UN’s watch list for the treatment of First Nations people and asylum seekers.

It is only a matter of time before international criminal proceedings begin and our current government are held accountable.

This sounds familiar, the political parties have treated First Nations people this way since the dawn of time. The behaviour is not new. It is time that changed.

Australia’s civil liberties have been stripped since this government came to power, with meta-data retention laws passed and the right to protest now under threat of being locked up by police.

They introduced new citizenship laws and introduced the Border Force Act.

They have tried to change that many acts in parliament, I have lost count, all designed to oppress the nation.

They have encouraged racism to flourish, with one of their ministers attending far-right winged rallies.

They then invented the war on terror.

All to promote fear among communities, with the intention of sending Australia to war.

It has worked.

They have increased our deficit, the economy is suffering. I read an article that we have a one in three chance of having a recession. It was from a reliable source. That scares me more than the chances of a terrorist attack on our soil.

Our unemployment rate and homeless rate is rising fast. With the introduction of 457 working visas and the China Free Trade agreement on the table, this will only get worse.

The ‘healthy’ welfare card has been rolled out in a few places with the plan to have it all over Australia.

This is a gross invasion of privacy.

Whenever you use it, people will be able to know your personal situation.

I am sick of seeing the unemployed treated like second-class citizens.This helps others to label people as dole bludgers.

The people that come up with these ideas and policies just don’t live in the real world.

They are determined to have the TPP passed through parliament without transparency. There are reports from the  United States that the TPP will increase the cost of our medicines, and it will only benefit the large pharmaceutical companies.

They have tried to pull apart Medicare and eradicate bulk-billing. The only people this will affect is the poor.

The plan to de-regulate universities, once again, not affecting the wealthy.

It is a collective responsibility of the nation as a whole to look after the vulnerable people in our country.

They have done nothing about taxation reform, with the lower income stream arguably having higher tax rates than the billionaires.

They have cut funding to the support for the elderly, mental health services, domestic violence organisations and First Nations support services to name a few, yet increased the budget for defence.

Apparently, the bad guys are really after us. Imagine how much more they will be, now that we have delared war on them? Why wave a red flag in front of a bull? I have written about that one too (see Tony’s war on terror).

The discrimination shown towards same sex-marriage, I mean, really? Are we living in the dark ages? How many other countries have now legalised this beautiful, joyful celebration? I can not support a party that plays politics with peoples’ lives.

Tony Abbott’s broken promises have now become the laughing stock of the nation. I mean how can you believe a word that he or anyone else in his party says?

They have failed to pass just about everything in parliament and they have all failed at their jobs. As the host of Big Brother would say: “It is time to go . . . the Liberal Party”.

Canning, it is up to you. But if I lived in Canning, I wouldn’t be voting for the Liberal Party candidate.

This article was first published on vanessakairies.wordpress.com.