Election 2022: Opportunity of a lifetime

This federal election is a chance to bring Aussie ships back to the coast and get rid of bad labour laws

The upcoming federal election is one of generational significance. Not only do we have an opportunity to act on many pressing issues on which the Liberals and Nationals have failed us – Australian shipping, climate change and fuel security, among others. The election is also the union movement’s best chance to ensure the bad legislation enacted over the past nine years is abolished and that we can restore fairness and balance in our industrial relations system.

The pendulum must swing back in favour of the workers who have carried us through the past few years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers throughout our society must be respected and treated as they deserve to be treated. They deserve a pay rise; they deserve job security and their families deserve to know they will come home safely at the end of their shift.

We need a government that takes seriously the challenges that arose during COVID and acts to ensure we aren’t left in such a precarious position again. Our nation must become self-sufficient once again. We must begin building and making things here again. We must restore our domestic shipping capacity to provide fuel and food security for all Australians and to protect us against the massive distortions and manipulations of the global supply chain by foreign shipping companies.

Labor’s pathway to forming a majority government therefore requires victory in 7 unheld seats while retaining all held seats.

Over the past year, you would have been bombarded with advertising from the United Australia Party, once more trying to buy an election for the Liberals using the political equivalent of a bait-and-switch. The SMS spam and billboard advertising they have invested in has cost millions upon millions of dollars, and the people funding it will expect a return on their investment. Most of all, what these people want is for voters who are dissatisfied with Scott Morrison and the Liberals to waste their first preference on a non-Labor candidate who won’t get elected, effectively helping the LNP candidate get re-elected in those seats where it’s a close result.

“We cannot afford another LNP term in government. We cannot wake up the day after the election wishing we had done more to help.”

MICH-ELLE MYERS

It is imperative to understand that since their emergence in 2013, members of the UAP have never once crossed the floor of Parliament to vote against the LNP’s legislation. In fact, they have routinely voted for : cuts to penalty rates; the establishment of the cashless welfare card; changes to maritime security cards to make it harder for maritime workers to get a security clearance; increased workplace surveillance laws in critical infrastructure such as ports; and expanded powers for the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), whose sole purpose is to prosecute union officials who are trying to keep workers safe. They even voted for increased powers for the ROC ( the Registered Organisations Commission) to attack unions and entangle their officials in legal disputes to prevent them from getting out and helping workers.

Meanwhile, a new “Voices For” category of so-called independents has hit the scene and is targeting voters around Australia. Like the UAP, they claim to be on the side of ordinary Australians, but you have to ask yourself who they’re there for. It takes a lot of money to run for election. Ask yourself who is funding them, and you will quickly realise where their allegiances are. They are not independent and at some point, they will pick a side. Unless you’re the one bankrolling them, you can never be sure they will pick your side.

The MUA is affiliated to the Australian Labor Party, the only political party founded by the union movement. On the ALP’s national executive are officials from unions around the country, including me as the party’s national vice president.

The policy platform is good. Not only does it include a new strategic fleet of Australian flagged and crewed ships, it also commits the Labor Party to the removal of the ABCC and ROC, a better deal for families with cheaper childcare, protections for Medicare and a promise to abolish the cashless welfare card.

The ALP will also act on the Uluru Statement from the Heart and will put to a referendum the proposal for a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Australian constitution.

The state of the house

The Morrison Government is currently being supported by between 3 and 4 conservative independents (Katter/Haines/ Sharkie/Steggall).

We have an opportunity at this election like no other time in our lives to be a part of a campaign that will make our country better, so I am asking all members of our union to get involved in any way you can. Scan the QR code on this page and volunteer for your local Labor candidate. You can doorknock, make phone calls, put a sign up in your yard and hand out at pre-poll and on election day.

We cannot afford another LNP term in government. We cannot wake up the day after the election wishing we had done more to help.

Please help us get rid of this conservative government, one that wanted to call in the military when wharfies were taking protected industrial action. Please help us get rid of the same government that destroyed our shipping industry and chased our manufacturing industry out of the country.

Before the last United States election, now Vice President Kamala Harris told volunteers working to elect Joe Biden, “Years from now, when your kids and your grandkids ask you, ‘Where were you when the stakes were so high?’ you can tell them what you did.”

Likewise, I hope you can proudly tell your children that you helped get an Albanese Labor Government elected!

In unity always,

Mich-Elle Myers MUA Member 5019582 Vice President Australian Labor Party