There are plenty of important issues being ignored in the election campaign now underway in Queensland. The Labor and Liberal-National Coalition parties, competing on basically the same platform, dominate the media, but the hype cannot conceal the need for a REAL opposition in Queensland politics.
In the second week of this election campaign, a 12-year-old Aboriginal boy hung himself in a cupboard at the Kowanyama community on Cape York. This act of total despair reflects the massive neglect of Indigenous issues. While Labor Premier Peter Beattie chose to call the election after patching up the scandal over foster care, this boy's death won't be met with a similar wad of policy initiatives.
The silence on the government’s failure to repeal Queensland’s anti-abortion laws too - which the ALP has been promising to do for decades - is deafening.
And the public housing crisis doesn’t seem to exist for the politicians, despite thousands of low-income workers and welfare recipients spending most of their income on accommodation or simply going homeless.
Frustrated with Labor's piffling compensation offer for unpaid wages for some 16,000 Aboriginal people, two candidates are standing in this election around the issue of the stolen wages. They, and the Socialist Alliance candidates, will be making sure that this issue, and many others that are important to ordinary people in Queensland, are not ignored during this campaign.
Socialist Alliance, as the youngest political party running, is not yet registered under the state's draconian electoral act, but will be contesting three seats:
LYNDA HANSEN
|
|
ADRIAN SKERRITT
|
|
CORAL WYNTER
|
|