PROVIDING REPRESENTATION FOR ALL DICKSON VOTERS ON BILLS & LEGISLATION IN THE AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENT

Personal Policy Positions

If elected as the Federal Member for Dickson I have pledged to vote as directed by what the informed majority of voters want. However, as a candidate I have been asked where I personally stand on various policy issues. Below is a selection of those questions and my answers to them. If you wish to know where I stand on other polices not covered on this page then Contact me and I will add them here.
Please remember that these are my personal positions and not how I would vote on Bills if I was the Member for Dickson.

Commonwealth Integrity Commission

As long as Australia is not a properly functioning democracy then there will need to be a properly functioning Commonwealth Integrity Commission. If we were a properly functioning democracy then there would be no need for a federal ICAC as corporate’s & mate’s donations would dry up as they would buy no influence. And as there would be on average 100,000 voters in each electorate deciding on how their rep would vote in parliament it would be practically impossible to bribe enough of them to have an influence. And the decision making process at the electorate level would be transparent again making it extremely difficult for individuals or other actors to corrupt the decisions being made by the electorate on Bills and other votes in parliament. I support the Independent for Indi, Helen Haine’s ICAC bill.

Climate Change

Climate change is happening. Ronald Reagan & Margaret Thatcher both believed it was a major threat to the world. However, the same marketing firm that was used by the tobacco industry to dismiss the evidence that smoking caused cancer was engaged by the fossil fuel industry to spread doubt about the science of climate change. Countries without a significant fossil fuel industry are taking action. Example being where Boris Johnson ‘advised’ Scott Morrison to take stronger action on targets. But because Australia has a big fossil fuel industry that spends millions of $$$ on donations to the political parties we are not taking the action that we could. The power companies and other fossil fuel users are already transitioning away from fossil fuels despite the govts best efforts to slow them down. And to make matters worse Australia is in a fantastic position to capitalise on a renewable energy boom and to become a major global player but the ‘fossils’ in the major parties are blocking efforts to do this wherever they can.

Abortion

If an abortion is to happen I see it as the absolute last resort. Having been personally involed in an abortion before I did all I could to talk my partner out of it. However, as she had been in abusive relationships in the past and had only know me a short while it was all too much for her. I don't support late term abortions unless it is completely clear that the mother will die if the abortion does not occur. I support abortion where it is from rape or incest. To those people who want to outlaw abortion altogether I saw that women will still seek abortions from unsafe providers. And, I would like to seem the same amount of passion being directed to the needs of children after they have been born.

What is the main thing you will do to improve our democracy

After due consideration & analysis I say that the reason our democracy is not working for the people is because there is no legal requirement for our elected representatives to do what the voters want. In the Constitution there is a separation of powers between the Executive ( The Government ) The Legislature ( Parliament ) and the Judiciary ( Courts & Police ). This has been done to prevent the government becoming a dictatorship. However, when the Constitution was written the political parties where not the threat to democracy that they are now. I believe that if our ancestors who wrote the Constitution had known how political parties would corrupt democracy they would have put a similar separation of powers between the voters whose right it is to form policy and the elected representatives who sole job it is to argue for what the voters want and when it comes time to vote that way in parliament.

In a democracy it's each voter's right & responsibility to inform their elected representative of their Will. The Dickson Representatives now provides a mechanism for Representation of All Dickson Voters On Bills & Legislation In The Australian Parliament

Government vaccine mandates, corporations mandating vaccines and the lockdowns we've seen over the past 2 years

I think that we should have had in place whatever health measures were needed to give us time to vax everybody who wanted to be vaxxed. Once that had happened then the only mandates to be vaxxed should have been where there were people who were at serious risk from Covid such as the immune compromised or other people with known health issues that put them at risk. And if somebody didn't want to deal with someone who was unvaxxed then it should be their right not to do so. If we were a properly functioning democracy then we would have, in my opinion, have handled this pandemic differently to how the federal & state govts did.

Immigration

My personal stance is that the way immigration is being handled needs a serious change. There needs to be more focus on what is of benefit to the majority and less on what helps the corporations who donate to the political parties get cheap compliant labor. There also needs to be a much greater focus by the whole world on addressing the reasons people are fleeing their countries in the first place as that is the only long term solution to refugees. And the people who live in the communities where new comers are going to live should be part of the selection process of deciding who comes to their communities.

However, if I was the member for Dickson I'd have to go through the process of determining what the majority in Dickson want before voting in parliament.

Base load coal fired power stations

My personal stance on all coal fired base load power stations is that they should be phased out over their operational lifetime and replaced with renewable power sources providing baseload power with energy storages such as batteries and pumped hydro such as Snowy Hydro and the Kidston Pumped Storage Hydro Project in North Queensland. For those local economies that are impacted by the closing of power stations they need to be properly supported to transition to alternative sustainable industries. During this transition phase where there are state owned generators no more power stations should be privatised as the record shows that privatisation of any existing public utility, especially where it is a natural monopoly, has never been to the benefit of the users.

Bulk water charges. Over the last 10 years water has spiralled the same as power prices. Living in Dickson we have North Pine and Kurwongbah dams. The second was built by a private company and almost gifted to the old pine rivers council?

My personal position on the privatisation of our water supplies is that it should never happen. Water is a natural monopoly and a vital input into everybody's life. The outcome of water privatisation has only been higher prices to the end users.

How will you preference on your 'How To Vote card'?

My personal position on How To Vote cards is that every voter should decide their own preferences as it is they who send their preferences not the candidate. Every time I have stood as an Independent I have run an Open Ticket where I say Vote 1 for me and I have left all the other candidates blank. The only exception to this is that if any candidate signs the same 'stat dec' Democracy Pledge I have, legally pledging to represent what the majority want, then I will preference them. Unless a miracle happens that will rule out all the candidates who belong to a political party as when they join their party they pledge their first allegiance to the party. I do not publiclly declare who I will personally preference as it will then be taken as my How To Vote position which defeats the purpose of an open ticket. I can say I will be ordering my personal preferences by who is most likely to represent what the majority in the electorate want.

Guns

My personal position on guns is that I support the current gun laws, especially the bit about military style semi-automatics. I grew up in a town were guns were common. Our household had two 303 rifles and a shotgun which my father aquired at the start of World War 2 to fight the Japanese if they invaded. Guns & ammo were not locked up. Nobody in my home town when I was growing up was killed with a gun. To think that it is only gun laws that prevent gun violence in my opinion is too simplistic. As important as it is to have effective gun laws it is equally or even more important to have a healthy society where people have the basics they need to be part of society and don't feel marginalised. Like my father and many other Australians if we are ever invaded I will pick up a gun and fight to the death to protect my family, community & country.

Tax

My personal position on tax is that I beleive that neo-liberal economics is fundamentally flawed and only serves to benefit the Oligarchy. Not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good I beleive that Modern Monetary Theory is closer to economic reality. In MMT taxation is seen not as a prerequisite for government spending but as a means to dampen economic activity to stay within the labour & resource constraints of the real economy so damaging inflation does not occur. In fact Taxes are for redemption not for spending and that collected taxes collected as paper money has been burnt :

"So the Paper Money Acts that allowed the treasury to issue notes also imposed new taxes that would be of sufficient size and over a period long enough so that the notes would be redeemed – the recognized purpose of the taxes was to “redeem” the currency, by accepting that paper money in payment of taxes. In fact, colonial paper money could be redeemed” in two ways: payment of taxes or presentation at the treasury for payment in (British) coins. In other words, the treasury would spend the newly issued paper money into the economy and those receiving the treasury notes could use it to pay taxes, or spend it, or submit it to the Treasury in exchange for coin. What did the Treasury do with the notes it received in tax payment? Grubb reports that the “notes were removed and burned” – not spent."

Jobs

My personal position on jobs is that we should replace the welfare system ( for those people who are capable of working ) with the Australian Job Guarantee This is a tried and proven strategy developed by Professor Bill Mitchel from the Newcastle University's Centre of Full Employment & Equity . Overseas governments have taken this research and applied it in their countries but for some reason the Australian governments have refused to acknowledge the practical benefits of this strategy. I say it is madness to pay people to do nothing, or worse to make them chase their tails looking for jobs that aren't there and jump through unnecessary mutual obligation hoops. The simple fact is that if people work to create wealth there will be more to go around. And these jobs by creating more wealth help to pay for themselves. If it is good enough for the federal government to be the Lender of Last Resort to the private banks then i say it should be good enough for them to be the Employer of Last Resort. The former PM Sir Robert Menzies was a strong supporter of full employment. See the 1945 White Paper that was the foundation of this sucessful policy.

Cannabis

My personal policy position on all things cannabis ( medical & recreational ) is that it is a natural product that has been used without harm for 1000's of years and has provided vast benefit for humanity. That making it illegal was for political control of minorities and to give their corporate mates in the pharmacutical & synthetic materials industries protection from cannabis & hemp. And that keeping it illegal not only damages millions of lives but provides organised crime with rivers of gold.

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