Time for a Change
By J. Di Matteo
4th February, 2023
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When running through the background of our Australian politicians, one thing tends to stand out like a giraffe wearing sunglasses, trying to get into a hippopotamus only party, and that is the abundance of the two skills these people have:
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1. Law
2. Business
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Now correct me if I am wrong, but I always believed that WE the people should be represented in society?
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In the entirety of the Australian representatives, at local, state and federal, where are the rest of the politics that represent us, the people?
You could line them all up from all three factions of government and they would all be the same, like a broken record:
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Law, Business, Politics (Arts) -
Law, Business, Politics (Arts) -
Law, Business, Politics (Arts) -
Law, Business, Politics (Arts) -
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Where are the engineers and the scientists? Or anyone from the STEM fields?
Where are the blue collar workers? The dry cleaners, bar tenders, postal workers? Are we saying that there are no people from these industry that have the capacity to run for a representative role?
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Perhaps WE the people are to blame. We see someone with "postal worker" as a background and we dismiss them as a serious candidate for representation for us.
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We tend to only want to vote for red or blue in this country.
Let's take a look at the reds and blues:
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They have been in charge of this country for more than 100 years and look at the mess we are in. Look at the cost of inflation. Look at where our money has been spent.
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NSW is a classic example:
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The Sydney Light Rail, with an estimated cost initially of just over $1billion, and in 2020 it ended up cost over double that, resulting in an overall cost of around $2.9billion.
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And who was the company that our good old NSW State government appoints for this project? Not an Australian companies with Australian residential workers, no, we decided to go with Acciona, a Spanish based company.
But its ok because we will at least be employing Australian workers right? Wrong again!
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Our amazing State government approved European employees from Acciona to be flown to Sydney, accommodated in Sydney, and paid above regular salary rate, all on our dime!
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And to top it all off, we closed down George Street for about ten years, effecting businesses across the city, all whilst work had been underhanded, overspent, and way over deadlines.
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We take down the monorail, which really had no major issues apart from people not using them. But that would have changed if we just expanded it right?
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Lower the cost, and make it more accessible. And it would have given Sydney a great look and vibe to the rest of the world. We already had it built and we could have expanded it and not have to limit vehicle access through the Sydney CBD.
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Imagine catching the sky train across the city to your destination! No we prefer the over-priced, super slow, ugly and boring trams, which they renamed "The Light Rail System", just to be different.
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This is what you get when you place career politicians into positions of power. They have absolutely ZERO experience in the private sector, and if they do then it would not have been a blue collar position, but more a CEO or CFO position. You know, those roles that require you sit on your backside all day and delegate work.
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This is why all politicians sound the same when you talk to them. They all have the same filters, they all have the same answers to questions, and they all tend to somehow (a skill that does have to be mastered, I must say) manage to take a swipe at their opposition party.
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Have you ever noticed this? Many of their answers to difficult questions end with either "its policy" or "the opposition party didn't do what we have done".
They sit in position of power and they don't want to leave their seat when it comes time to pass the to the next generation who may just have better ideas and are more vibrant, energetic and less boring.
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But until we the people become more vigilant, we will only have Coke and Pepsi to choose from.
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Let's get some more flavours in our lives shall we? Or as Sweeney Todd says: "Maybe it's time for shave!"
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