I'd be lying if I said there weren't moments when it feels that the issues we face as a conglomerate of rural communities (and on a personal basis) is almost insurmountable. We need to see more progress with different types of stakeholders coming together to create change, yet do we have the right people in government currently that are indeed invested in change being the priority or do we have people whom enjoy overwhelming bureaucracy at all levels simply happy to sustain their own importance and function.
In other words are governments full of people whom like the idea of never solving problems for fear of becoming irrelevant or redundant?
"Our world...It has come down to hoarding toilet paper which is in itself is strange, but this is nowhere near the personal accumulation of wealth and property in our Aussie society, where people are homeless and living below the poverty line."
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Pro-freedom (or anti-mandate) rallies are not rooted in far right extremist ideology. I respectfully pushed back on the ill-informed and grossly over-simplified belief that the freedom rallies were overwhelmingly fascist in nature and were supported primarily by far right extremists.
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"The responsibility that comes with freedom is to support those whom seek the very same"
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"We can no longer ignore the human toll of living in a cost of living crisis"
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A Housing Strategy that focuses on different housing types that support the changing/growing community at large, ensuring that dwellings built today are appropriately located and can meet the needs of future generations.
With any strategy the people of Barwon should be able to find housing that suits their current and future needs - type, tenure, size and cost. Diverse housing - townhouses, units and apartments should be located with access to shops, services, transport and open space, an easy to walk or cycle. Housing diversity will create a more self-sufficient community.
Any Housing Strategy should ultimately seek to provide certainty to the community, community housing sector, developers, and government agencies as a result of extensive planning, research and community consultation. This means that the strategies should be locally relevant and reflect community priorities.
Any strategy should direct more intensive development into areas with easy access to existing services and transport options, and in central areas. Moderate development should be in areas with good access to activity centres and also close to strategic transport routes.
We must see a clear, long-term, large, well-funded, high priority approaches that would produce a difference for people and communities...not just words, schematics and pictures from governments which both the major parties seem to do over and over again.
Which leads me to the personal conclusion that both sides of the major parties like a tight housing market, talking about our huge homeless situation is just that...talk.
Please remember, the current housing crisis did not happen overnight, it was allowed to occur over many decades with many governments from both sides of the major parties in charge, but yet we the people keep electing representatives from these parties that they themselves have large property portfolios and these MP's are more eager to protect than providing real financial commitment to a huge now approaching an out of control disaster for many of our regional areas.
No fault evictions happen without any breach by the tenant. Renters hold back reporting problems with their rental property because they are worried about receiving a "no grounds" eviction notice.
More than two million people in NSW have their housing controlled by landlords who often focus on their interests as investor and don't focus enough on their very important role in providing housing within their communities.
63.9% of renters said the possibility of a "no grounds" eviction was a serious source of anxiety.
Landlords are increasing rent prices much higher than ever. If the tenant does not agree with the new price hike, the landlord just applies an eviction notice to the tenant.
The current rental crisis is not going to get any better unless there is security for the renter and an end to the unfair no grounds evictions are put in place.
Homelessness is often the end point to a series of life events, and the people who are homeless are not who you may think. Domestic violence is the single biggest cause of homelessness in Australia.
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People living in regional, rural and remote communities are 24 times more likely to be hospitalised as a result of family and domestic violence than people living in major cities.
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Wage theft rips more than $1 Billion off Australian workers each year.
An employee being asked to work overtime, working through breaks, or being asked to report early and/or leave late without pay is being subjected to wage theft.
Wage theft can include paying less than legal minimum wage, not paying overtime, barring workers from taking meal breaks or requiring off-the-clock work. And it affects the most vulnerable workers, those who are desperate for pay and willing to take temporary jobs, and those who may be paid by subcontractors in cash.
A loophole closed: the minimum wage for farm workers is long overdue, Australia's Fair Work Commission has struck out a legal loophole allowing employers to pay farm workers exploitative piecemeal rates.
Other large companies that have underpaid employees include Bunning's, which underpaid its staff about AUD$4 million in superannuation entitlements, and Woolworths, which underpaid employees up to AUD$300 million over ten years.
These cases - along with a string of others involving small and medium enterprises - reinforce the need for reform.
There should be the most vigorous, robust and complete set of laws around wage underpayment and all of this should be publicised, so employers know transgressions of workplace law - inadvertent or not - have consequences, including bring in criminal charges against offenders.
While a Federal issue, by in large cutting penalty rates was supposed to create jobs. It hasn't, and has just exasperated the cost of living crises for millions of workers. While CEO's and upper management swim in bonuses and huge salaries and have their weekends off, it should be again recognised that if the average worker gives up their family time that they are duly compensated.
Penalty rates are not a luxury, wages policy discussion in Australia over the past 40 years has been the belief that we have a problem with excessive wages and restrictive working conditions, cuts in minimum wages do not yield substantial employment gains, it just gives rise to more people filling the one once full time job, spreading the hours of one full time person over the many creating underemployment.
Policies of wage restraint and labour market flexibility such as cuts in penalty rates are a response to the problems of the past. Given wages currently make up the lowest ever percentage of Australia's GDP, we need a new approach. Cutting the incomes and entitlements of Australia's lowest paid workers is the wrong way to go, there needs to be more of a focus on the adverse effects of lower wages for the economy as a whole.
As stated above, penalty rates/industrial relations legislation falls within the domain of a Federal issue to sort out, but it is incumbent on this potential future leader to add pressure to bare (in any way or means that I can)...upon the Federal levels of parliament to bring back a certain level of equity to our work places.
It must be said that this candidate has run/owned many and varied small to medium enterprises, and I very much support the back bone of our economy (small-medium business)...to ensure that certain industrial relation laws are capped at 20 employees or more.
My fight is with multi-national companies, wage theft and using employee's as expendable commodities' at the expense of employee's earning a living wage and are given a chance at a reasonable standard of life, whereby this so called "GIG" economy model has seen fit to erode.
We are told privatisation will create more choice, savings, lower costs for consumers; in practice the opposite has happened.
"The sale of ports and electricity infrastructure and the opening of vocational education to private companies had caused him and the public to lose faith in privatisation and deregulation."
ACCC chairman Mr Rod Sims
Australians must turn back the privatisation onslaught to create the democratic and sustainable economy we desperately need.
Economy's that now don't produce enough profits, through decades of degradation of our public assets, the wealthy class has spent decades plundering the public sector that our nation once prospered from that was built up over the last century, only to create an outcome of expensive and worse services, and substandard jobs within them.
Both sides of major party governments have systematically attacked our government services and as a result have impacted dramatically the millions of Australians who rely on them for help and support.
This has to STOP!
The banks will fight it tooth and nail. Australia Post should become a bank, this would deliver significant competition to the country's banks through lower fees and lower-cost mortgages.
More importantly it will fill the gap of the big banks closing in huge numbers across most regional centres...it just makes good sense that all towns have the post office anyway...why not expand their services, improve profitability and reduce banking costs for people in all regional towns...the cost to benefit ratio would be more than positive.
Australia Post could exercise its sovereign guarantee and trusted position to access funding cheaply to on-lend to its customers. This lower cost of capital would force the banks to be more competitive in their lending practices.
The move is a no-brainer, if Australia Post were to move into banking with a Community Service Obligation rather than a mandate to maximise profits for shareholders, its cost of delivering banking services would be extremely competitive.
Australia Post becoming a bank, has a network of almost 7,000 offices across the country, great idea the sooner this happens the better for the people of Barwon and all remote regional area's for that matter.