Election times are time of heightened political awareness when we are bombarded with interviews, ads and commentary. People focus for various periods of time on the issues and offers posed by the parliamentary political parties.
This year’s election follows major catastrophes in Australia- massive widespread drought colossal bushfires on the eastern coast , then Covid-19 and unprecedented floods.
Large sections of the Australian people have taken big hits, sometimes from multiple causes.
The environment, the land, its water and the oceans and seas are taking big hits too. The causes here, are climate change and massive over exploitation and degradation.
The catastrophic events have taken a huge toll on the lives of Australians. Thousands are still homeless awaiting glacial speed support from government agencies and insurance companies. Parks, cars, city buildings and isolated bush blocks are the last chance refuge of the homeless all over urban and regional Australia. Governmental inaction with Covid-19, resulted in stressed and exhausted medical personnel as well as a lack of resources (including PPE and vaccines) that killed thousands of Australians.
And sweeping up the rear like a black cloud comes huge rises in the cost of living through rent and mortgage, power, petrol, and food. More and more people go to food banks or go without. And for indigenous Australians this situation is vastly magnified.
Yet Australia is a rich country, set to overtake Russia and Brazil in GDP to be 11th biggest in the world. That with just 26 million people to support.
If we assess who get what in Australia, it’s easy to see that vast majority of workers, small business and farmers must fend for themselves with only the most basic of services to support life. Don’t get sick in the bush because there’s no surgeons or doctors to help you as countless, needless deaths in regional hospitals and health centres attest.
Dr Norman Swan on the Health Report referenced reports that people living in the wealthy electorate of Wentworth in Sydney’s eastern suburbs had the best health in Australia while spending the most on Medicare while those in the huge electorate of Lingiari in the NT had the highest premature mortality rates in the country coupled with the lowest Medicare spending.
The billion-dollar Murray -Darling Basin Plan has served to rob farmers and the environment of water and delivered ownership to foreign markets. Indeed, billionaire Canadian investors own the lion share of the water rights
Despite educating close to 70% of Australia’s school students, public schools, the federal government funds just 8% of costs. This is where the most disadvantaged people send their kids, effectively they are abandoned. While the private schools where the billionaire class send their spawn are over funded by federal and state governments.
Over the early Covid period, the federal LNP gave out $89 billion in Job keeper payments of which $38billion went to companies who did not suffer losses to their incomes.
The same government with bipartisan support of the ALP has committed to nuclear submarines at a cost between $70-$171 billion. The same applies to the F35 fighter plane with an estimated lifetime cost of $1.3 trillion which is tremendous news for its U.S. company Lockheed -Martin.
We have Federal government subsidies to the coal gas and mining industries that cost the taxpayers 0ver $12 billion a year. This to companies who export $379 billion of gas and oil per year ( Market Forces) but 62 of whom paid no tax in 2019-20.
The billionaires lap it up while the rest suffer.
But the question for everybody should be, where is all that wealth? And as the producers where is our share?
