By Rich Bowden:

Greens’ candidate for the seat of Macquarie Carmel McCallum talks to theangle’s Rich Bowden about her chances of victory in the western Sydney/Blue Mountains seat, the issues that most concern voters and her opinion of the strength of the asylum seeker issue.

Rich Bowden: What have you found to be the main issues affecting Macquarie voters?

Carmel McCallum: In Macquarie, the main issues are:

(i) Highways and trucks vs freight on rail; ‘upgrading’ the Great Western Highway and/or Bell’s Line of Road to carry large B-double trucks while most residents don’t want that – they want most freight, including coal and liquid fuels, to go over the mountains by rail. The Greens support freight on rail and highway upgrades for safety only.

ii) Climate Change: targets to reduce carbon emissions by a mere 5% of year 2000 levels by 2020, when a minimum target of 40% of 1990 levels by 2020 is essential make the Labor and Coalition plans worse than useless and ludicrous. The people want effective targets and effective action – NOW!

iii) Health: Generally, improvement in funding and access to GP and specialist services, greater access to mental health services and a ‘Denticare’ program.

iv) Homelessness and Affordable Housing: Much greater availability of housing for the homeless and disadvantaged plus more public housing.

v) Education: Re-distribute federal funding to bring disadvantaged schools up to an acceptable level of amenities; re-introduce free tertiary education courses, including TAFE; provide better tenure arrangements for TAFE teachers;

RB: How will your party respond to this issues?

CM: For more comprehensive details of our policies, go to our Australian Greens website: http://greens.org.au/policies

In brief:

Transport: Develop and implement a National Transport Plan (we are the only OECD nation without one!) and fund upgrading of the rail systems so they can provide efficient freight and passenger transport; train services that are competitive with road transport – reliable, safe, fast and inexpensive.

Climate Change: Establish binding national emission targets for 2012, 2020 and 2050 supported by a detailed strategy to reduce emissions from the energy, transport, industry, waste and land management sectors. Set a price on carbon emissions, alter subsidy arrangements to make ‘green energy’ production more affordable than coal-generated power, encourage development and production of home-grown ‘green energy’ systems along with measures to greatly improve energy efficiency, including the establishment of a national system of energy efficiency targets.

Health: Develop a National Health Care Strategy, with a focus on primary health care; support Medicare as a universal health insurance scheme funded from progressive taxation; abolish the private health insurance rebate and redirect funds to the public health system, including public hospitals; increase incentives for GPs and medical specialists to bulk bill; increase the number of salaried GPs in order to increase access to GP services; increase the number of well funded multipurpose community health care centres and services in regional, rural, and remote areas; protect and extend the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme; fund preventive health programs; ensure funding for health services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that will raise their health status to a level comparable to other Australians; introduce and fully fund a Commonwealth Dental Health Program for low income earners and their families; increase access to primary dental services through Medicare; increase funding to mental health services in collaboration with states and territories, particularly to prevention models, and hospital and community-based support, assessment and suicide prevention services; establish properly resourced, strategically located 24 hour community mental health services, staffed by the full range of mental health professionals.

Homelessness and Affordable Housing: Develop a national housing plan and significantly increase funding to public and community housing; provide increased financial assistance to people unable to provide for their own housing; urgently fund sufficient public and community housing, to minimise waiting lists; ensure public housing is accessible, affordable, secure, habitable and in locations that provide reasonable access to employment, health-care, public transport, schools and other social facilities; significantly increase funding to address the housing needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; ensure subsidies and concessions for the provision of private rental accommodation are targeted at affordable housing for low-income households; means test the first home owners grant; develop national planning guidelines for new housing developments that require a social mix of public and private housing with a target of 20% low cost and public housing, and housing that caters for diverse social needs.

Education: Fund the construction of new public preschool facilities; ensure the viability and diversity of existing public schools is not endangered by the development of new private schools; phase out the public funding of privately provided VET where TAFE can provide the same educational and training outcomes; abolish all fees and charges for educational services at TAFE institutions; address the over-casualisation of TAFE teaching; increase the availability of apprenticeships, especially in rural and regional Australia; provide an adequate means-tested living allowance for full time students; abolish fees for educational services at public universities for Australian students and forgive HECS debts and FEE-HELP debt incurred at public universities; repeal voluntary student union legislation and support the role of student unions by the universal collection of student fees for amenities and services, by an elected student body.

RB: Much talk has been about the concern of voters over the asylum seeker issue in western Sydney, has your research found this to be the case in the seat of Macquarie?

CM: No. This ‘issue’ is a beat-up by the older parties. In the mountains community there is much compassion and sympathy for the plight of genuine refugees and outrage at the treatment given and proposed. This ‘issue’ has not been raised to me by people in the Hawkesbury, so it can’t be that significant a problem for them either.

RB: How important will Greens preferences be in this seat?

CM: This electorate is showing good signs of going Green, so the preferences of the other candidates could be just as important to me as to them! I don’t see a clear winner emerging, so the winner will need preferences from the losing major party candidate. It is very interesting to note that the Liberal party ticket has me preferenced ahead of the Labor candidate.

RB: How much effect on the result in this electorate will be the perceived poor performance of the State Labor Government ?

CM: Very hard to say. Voters in this electorate are smart enough to know the difference between state and federal issues, but the lack of state-provided infrastructure is more likely to have a back-lash effect in the Hawkesbury than in the mountains.

RB: Have you noted any feedback from voters over the recent ALP leadership change?

CM: Some, but not much. Most comment is negative towards both the older parties for their pettiness, lack of policies and avoidance of the real issues.

Tags: asylum seekers sydney, carmel mccallum, election 2010, greens macquarie, mccallum interview