Here's my latest letter to our dear Prime Minister. I've broadened the ask to take in three things that are uppermost in my heart at the moment. After all, you're allowed to ask for more than one thing for Christmas aren't you?
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Dear Prime Minister
I trust you have an excellent Christmas and New Year, and return
to work ready to face the considerable demands that 2021 will bring.
I have many wishes for 2021, some of which have nothing to do with
you. However, one of my wishes is for
better government in 2021, from you and your colleagues. This wish could be summed up in one main
theme – end the divisive, partisan slanging match that politics has become, and
get on with making the difficult decisions that we all need.
The silver lining in the cloud of 2020’s pandemic is that for a
short time, our governments (State/Territory and Commonwealth) worked together
irrespective of political colour via the National Cabinet. However, it didn’t take long to return to
‘politics as usual’ with slanging between Coalition and Labour States and with
members of your Government acting as attack dogs towards Labor premiers. It was a very unedifying spectacle and one
that made me despair of our major parties.
My hope and prayer for 2021 is that we will return to a
responsible, adult approach to governance in which our leaders work together to
solve serious problems. Here are three
problems I believe are readily solvable with goodwill and creativity.
1.
Climate change
Zali Steggall’s proposed Climate Act provides a perfect
opportunity to build a climate response which can withstand changes in
government and set us on course for net zero.
I would suggest that instead of simply using your numbers to dismiss it,
as you so easily could, your government work with Ms Steggall and others across
the Parliament to pass it in a form that everyone can work with. Everyone in Australia knows that the days of
fossil fuels are numbered and that we need to get on with the job of transformation. You have a chance to be the Prime Minister
who made it happen.
2.
Homelessness
One of the things we have learned in 2020 is that it is actually
much easier to house homeless people than we have been pretending it is. During the pandemic, State Governments and
community agencies moved quickly to provide temporary accommodation to
thousands of people who would otherwise have been sleeping on the streets, in
their cars or in other situations that put them at risk. Some were housed in vacant hotels or student
accommodation, others in existing crisis accommodation. On the Sunshine Coast some colleagues of mine
took over a community sports facility that couldn’t be used during the lockdown
and used that as a hub and temporary accommodation.
Our challenge in 2021 will be ensuring that we don’t just slip
back into accepting homelessness as normal.
The key vehicle for this is the National Housing and Homelessness
Agreement under which Commonwealth and States jointly provide funding for the
homelessness and social housing systems.
A substantial boost to funding under this agreement can construct the
extra housing we need to provide permanent homes for those we have accommodated
temporarily, and as a side benefit can also stimulate the construction industry
to boost the post-COVID recovery.
3.
Resolving the asylum
seeker impasse
My final wish for 2021 is that this will be the year we finally
resolve the impasse over asylum seekers.
As you know from your own time as Minister for Immigration, it was in
2013 that Kevin Rudd decreed that no asylum seeker arriving by boat would be settled
in Australia. Subsequently, over 3,000
asylum seekers were detained on Manus and Nauru and various Australian
detention centres before the patrols in our northern waters eventually stopped
them.
The logical next step would have been to set up an effective
system to resettle these people in other countries, but this has never
happened. As a result, eight years later
we still have about 1,500 of these people in detention, about 90% of whom have
been determined to be genuine refugees, with no solution in sight.
Over the past couple of months I have been taking part in
fortnightly multi-faith vigils outside the Mantra Hotel in Kangaroo Point, a
couple of kilometres from my home. This
hotel has been converted into a place of immigration detention for 120
men. As a result of COVID these men were
prevented from receiving visitors – even family members – and although we have
not had community transmission in Queensland for months, visits have not been
resumed. When I first started attending
some of the men would come out onto the verandahs to watch and wave to us, but
in recent weeks they have been prevented from even doing this and we sing, pray
and speak to blank walls with the occasional face appearing in the window. We hear that the mental health of many is
deteriorating badly as a result of their prolonged isolation.
It is time for this cruelty to stop. Whatever these men may have done back in
2013, it doesn’t justify their continued detention in 2020. 2021 needs to be the year that the remaining
1,500 people are resettled – if not in the US, or in New Zealand, then here in
Australia. Enough is enough.
All of these three issues can be resolved using resources and
knowledge we already have. Our community
will be better off, and better, with progress made on these things. But they will require your government to get
out of the trenches and focus on governing and solving problems. I know you can do it, and I trust that you
will
Have a blessed Christmas celebrating the amazing gift of the
Christ-Child, and a blessed and peaceful New Year.
Yours sincerely
Jon
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