Late thingy on Australian Federal Elections

Ok, this is for my friend who was very upset by the results of the Australian Federal Elections.

Posting an article/letter written by her in the immediate aftermath, the only editing done is to the paragraphing:



The Australian election

My name is Mimi Zilliacus, I am a student studying history and politics
at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Today I am very depressed. Yesterday my fellow citizens
re-elected John Howard, a man who has lied to the Australian people on numerous occasions on issues of much more importance than his sex life.

Why you might ask would the Australian people want this man back in
Parliament. Well that’s a very good question.

The reason is the money. He has claimed to be responsible for the
growth in the economy and for lower interest rates, and on top of that he has promised to bring in tax cuts for a select few.

What the general public fails to understand is that the growth in the economy and
interest rates are also dependant on what is going on in the global market place. They fail to see that a “free trade” agreement with the US is going f#$% us over, we will be the underdogs and America will be free to benefit at great costs to us, the Australian people.

I believe in human rights and that Australia should be fulfilling its
obligations under international law. I believe that war is never going to create less of a terrorist threat, it creates more. I believe that Australia should not
be stealing oil from a country which has risked so much to become
democratic and which is struggling to re-build itself. I believe that there is no justification for locking up children.

I believe that these things are more important than the state of the economy.
Prior to the election I went to a rally against the lies of the Howard
government. It was fantastic, 7,000 people marched through the streets of Sydney. There was a great atmosphere. I don’t know anyone who voted for Howard. And here in lies the point, we need to find a way to educate the masses, those people who didn’t go to the rally, and don’t go to any rallies.

The cab drivers, labourers, and ordinary Australians who are just trying to make a living and don’t really care, or don’t have the time to care, about international politics.
Those who read only main stream media and believe what they read. We need to be able to communicate to them, to say to them we are not all a bunch of tree hugging hippies and
actually what happens in international politics does affect their everyday lives. That in the broader perspective a tax cut and lower interest rates are not going to help when we no longer have free health care, the cost of medicines triples, are pharmaceutical and agricultural industries cannot compete with American, even in our own backyard, and when only the elite
can afford to go to university. That actually the cost of mandatory detention is far greater than any other alternative. Even if every one who is currently in a detention centre
were in the community and being given welfare it would still cost less than detention.

I need to do something, but at the moment I don’t know what to do, I
feel powerless, but there has to be something that I can do. Got any ideas? I am not sure who I am going to send this to, but to anyone who wants to help me all assistance would be greatly appreciated. Australia is supposed to be a democracy but democracy doesn’t work without a well informed public. With this in mind I want help to come up with a way to educate the public, and especially those people who see “left” as being a bad thing. Because I cannot live through another three years of Howard without some hope that we can change things, and because I think that this is a similar problem in many other countries.