DOWN UNDER CENTRAL

Hey folks!

Do you like museums? Do you like it when a museum staff member is there at the museum to tell you about the objects and galleries? Do you like tour guides who are passionate about what they talk about?

Then please sign this petition!

The Visitor Engagement Team at the Melbourne Museum and Museums Victoria is being gutted and replaced by customer service roles and security guards! The Visitor Engagement team offers world-class, unique experiences to all the Museums' visitors, sharing their knowledge and passion for the sciences, history, and natural history with anyone and everyone!

Museums Victoria is a public service and therefore your voice counts! Whether you're a Melbournian, Australian, or even from elsewhere in the world, this museum was made for your experience. So speak up and tell the Museum Board that this change is not what you want!

Not only will visitor experience be severely impacted by these changes, but about half of the Visitor Engagement team will be losing their jobs or having their hours halved. You may have heard that the Victorian Public Sector is cutting jobs but these changes are not a part of that! Certain parts of upper management are just firing their lowest paid workers during a cost of living crisis!

It’s pretty sinister and deceitful what the Liberals have done regarding your taxes.

So they’re giving people a one off cost of living bonus of $250 for those on government payments, and $420 for low and middle income earners. 1) Oh yay worst negative wage growth and growing inflation in 50 years and we get a one off bribe just before the election that’ll go straight into the pockets of landlords. Neat. 2) This is a trick to make your tax return look way better than it is before the Liberals raises taxes.

See the one-off payment is being delivered for the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset, which was a temporary measure that gives between $255 and $1080 to those earning less than $126,000 a year. This is it’s last financial year - and it was planned to end just after the election. Meaning that some people are going to get $1500 more than they would otherwise from their tax returns, but then because Morrison and the Coalition are so awful 1) they’ll be voted out and Labor will be in power and 2) next year low/middle income earners will be taxed between $255 and $1080 more, and they’re going to think “oh no, I was warned about LABOR’S TAXES” and think that this is a tax raise, instead of the Liberals deliberately removing an offset just in time for Labor to get the blame.

It’s sneaky. It’s insidious. It’s Liberals fault your taxes are going up. And then people will think they’re up to $1080 worse off under Labor, when really the average worker has actually been $16,000 worse off under Liberals because they’ve promoted penalty rate cuts, low wages, wage freezes for the public sector, and deliberately made people POORER while inflation gets HIGHER AND HIGHER. It’s a deliberate policy decision of the Liberal/National Coalition to keep wages low - even in the face of rising cost of living pressures.

On top of this: they’ve temporarily cut the fuel excise by 50% (22.1 cents) for 6 months - so end of September, Labor’s settled in as government, Parliament has resumed, and BAM! 22.1 CENTS MORE EXPENSIVE PER LITRE ON THE PRICE OF PETROL BECAUSE THAT TOO WAS A TICKING TIME BOMB CREATED BY THE LIBERALS TO SABOTAGE THE START OF LABOR’S FIRST TIME IN 8 YEARS.

The Liberals are conniving rats. They’re insincere. They’ve put in structures in place to make you poorer, then when it’s reached crisis point and you’re finally sick of them they light a fuse so the house will burn down once Labor has moved in.

I have gone back to check the Liberal policy page several times to double check details - though typing it in automatically suggests the full url, I have repeatedly just googled it anyway.

They haven’t bothered to advertise to me on Youtube - but I can still find a way to cost them as much money as possible.

Labor wants to build 30,000 public houses over 5. Greens want to build 250,000 HOMES OVER 5 YEARS by taxing billionaires.

Labor.

Labor will tackle cost of living, increase housing affordability with multiple policies from regional home buyers, to low income home buyers, $10 billion into public housing which will create jobs, they'll put nurses into aged care, drive down electricity prices by 26% and create over 600,000 jobs (mostly in regional areas) by promoting local manufacturing of renewable technology and upgrading the electricity grid, reduce emissions by 43%, and establish a federal ICAC to stop the constant corruption and rorts under the Liberal governments.

Liberals have the worst economic performance in the past 50 years, the worst inflation in 50 years, wages consistently going down, have BLOCKED debate about anti-corruption legislation (and then blame Labor for not voting for their ideas??? Their ideas they literally didn't even introduce into the House???).

There are obvious reasons to vote Greens - like a 75% emissions reduction target, transition away from coal, increase in welfare above the poverty line, taxing billionaires, dental into medicare, justice for refugees, etc. Like they have so many good goals and some of them are like Labor's - like public housing. Labor wants to build 30,000 public housing in 5 years, Greens want 50,000 in the next 5 years - to aim for 1 million in 20 years. That'll create a lot of jobs, and provide housing for SO MANY PEOPLE. So sometimes the difference between Labor and Greens is Labor just doesn't care (like boat turnbacks for refugees) and sometimes the difference is just how high to aim for the same goal (like Labor is going to definitely do WAY MORE on climate change than Liberals, but Greens want to phase out coal quickly in line with scientific requirements).

So pick your battles and if you can't get them to vote Greens - get them to vote Labor.

Sure, its not enough and its only 10,000 spots, but the chance I could actually afford a house? And a bunch of my mortgage going into social housing (I think)? Gives me something to concretely point to with my family on why I'd choose Labor

Yeah I actually really like it. The Liberal policy will cost low income earners hundreds of thousands more in interest repayments - while Labor's policy genuinely reduces costs. Sure, it's only 10,000 homes a year - but once established and demonstrated it could be expanded.

This is also ON TOP of Labor's plan to invest $10 billion in public housing to create 30,000 new social and affordable homes in the next 5 years (including 4000 dedicated to women fleeing domestic violence and at risk of homelessness). They have a regional home buyers program too that aims to help 10,000 people a year buy their first home in regional areas.

This is definitely one of those areas where you can point to it and go "LOOK. Labor government will definitively be better for you, specifically, instead of a Liberal government" to cynics who think the two parties are indistinguishable.

Greens also have a housing policy that focuses on public housing, and also a government shared ownership to reduce costs (like Labor's new plan). Greens want to tackle the tax incentives that benefit investors and build considerably more public housing than Labor - but it's good to see that there is at least a shared support for similar goals. It's not like if Greens don't get the balance of power in the Senate then the idea of housing affordability and public housing will be thrown in the bin (but I'm sure we can entice Labor to increase that 30,000 public houses to a bigger number if we get more Greens in Parliament).

Thanks, Will!

It's up to you.

If you vote above the line you put preferences on 6 (or more) parties - and if you vote below the line it's 12 (or more) preferences on individual candidates, that are listed in a vertical line below those parties.

Voting above the line means your preferences go in order from top to bottom for the candidates. Any excess votes if a candidate gets a quota get distributed down to the 2nd person, etc. Excess votes are transferred at a reduced rate, so by the time you get to the 3rd/4th person down the line it's hard to get elected.

It used to be you only put 1 above the line and then the party chose the preferences so even though below the line was really long, you absolutely should have done that instead of above. Now it doesn't matter nearly as much.

If you vote below the line you can order candidates in any way you want. This can be advantageous to you in many ways if you have enough of an opinion to care about individual candidates. So say a party puts forward 5 candidates, but you only like 4 and know the 5th one is a little bit of a dick, you can just exclude them. If you don't like a party generally, but know one of their members is pretty alright, you can include just them in your 12 preferences.

Also, because parties can put forward potentially 6 candidates, that means it's hypothetically possible to put forward 12 preferences below the line and only distribute your preferences to just 2 parties. Far more likely though you'll have to preference 3 parties (average 4 candidates each).

YOU HAVE 3 DAYS TO REGISTER YOUR VOTE! Registration shuts on Monday 17th of April 2022! So far, 37,000 have registered to vote, and this is great but we need more! Go to: aec.gov.au/enrol to make sure you’re ready to vote!