THE HOME STRAIGHT

Hello Everybody

It certainly has been a long time since we last spoke and as we enter the final week, I thought I’d give you an update.

I’ve spent every spare moment of the past week and a half letter-boxing the electorate and preparing posters to adorn the streets of Grayndler. If you were drawn here because of me leaflet, welcome aboard. I hope you like what you see.

Today I attended a media event hosted by the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby. This peak organisation recently surveyed all parties to assess their policies on same sex rights and the Democrats were a clear winner. The Australian Democrats have been recognised by the peak gay rights lobby group as being the best party when it comes to same sex rights.

Another area where the Democrats scored best was privacy. The Australian Privacy Foundation judged the Australian Democrats to be the best party when it comes with policies to protect our privacy. My own individual response to the survey is also up on their website. It’s quite an honour.

We score well on a lot of things. The Australian Democrats’ environmental policies scored 90 out of 100 by the Australian Conservation Foundation – nearly on par with the Greens and substantially ahead of Labor and Liberal. We are the best all round party.

The Australian Christian Lobby organised a survey of the candidates as well. The poll was not wide ranging and the advertisement displaying the results of the poll was even narrower. Unfortunately the advertisement was skewed towards issues of “morality” and did not necessarily reflect all Christian values.

The ad made the Democrats look bad because it mainly concentrated on issues such as same sex rights and censorship. I know many Christians (and am one myself) who look to broader issues that reflect Christian values. Little was asked about treatment of the poor. For example, there are more important issues when addressing poverty than the availability of RU486. Little was mentioned in the advertisement about treatment of refugees or indigenous Australians.

The Edmund Rice Centre is a body named after the founder of the Christian Brothers, an founder. This is an organisation with a strong Catholic tradition, recognising the community service aspect of Christ’s message. They are located in Croydon, a suburb on the boundary of Lowe and Grayndler. They conduct a lot of research and advocacy work relating to indigenous affairs, poverty, housing and refugees. I know for a fact that they are great admirers of Australian Democrats work, particularly of Andrew Bartlett. Unfortunately, this sort of good news does not get published by the Australian Christian Lobby.

Any reading of the New Testament would see the volume of missionary work performed by Jesus Christ and his disciples. The Australian Democrats reflect Christian values in the sense that we are a group of people that profess compassion and justice.

That’s all for now. I’m going back out there to letter-box again. There are 25,000 leaflets out there with my photo on them. They don’t mail themselves.

Ciao!