The Biocide Conspiracy: Germ Warfare is in the hands of barbarians

The Biocide Conspiracy: Germ Warfare is in the hands of barbarians: In the poem ‘Five Ways to Kill a Man’ one of the ways described by which man can be efficiently killed is via gas warfare. In the third sta...

Australia's two tier economy is destroying too many families

Mr Speaker, in making my maiden speech I wish to acknowledge that I am not the candidate preferred by most of the voters. I am here today as a result of the state’s preferential voting system by which I won the seat of Perth- East with only 0.14% of the primary vote; an unlikely result, which produced a hung parliament and allowed me to choose the party which would form the ruling government. 

As such, I entered into an arrangement with the Labor Party in which the now, Premier of Western Australia first of all, promised to support the passage of legislation to undo laws designed to criminalize impoverished people for no other reason than they are homeless and, subsequently to introduce a property tax to fund accommodation for those who are unable to secure housing through their own means.

We observe today not the failure of the democracy and the abuse of power, but an opportunity to recommit ourselves to the egalitarian society for which the Anzacs fought and a return to the fair and generous society in which all citizens have access to the basic necessities of life. For, in the words of the member for Fremantle and Australia’s war time prime minister: men and women - not brick, mortar and wealth – have the highest value.

My interest in this issue has been strongly influenced by my experience running a hostel for homeless men in Perth.  Prior to inheriting the refuge I thought the homeless were no hopers who preferred to bludge on the state rather than work for a living.  I didn’t realize that homelessness in itself is a barrier to finding employment as most employers will not considered homeless job applicants or, that more than half of the homeless population is currently employed. This might lead you to ask: why people are homeless if they have jobs?

Today in Western Australia there are people working hard, sometimes at several jobs, often long past retirement age, making little money who can no longer afford even the most basic housing.

People with minimal education and abilities have always been part of the economic landscape filling jobs that require minimal skills. The difference is that previously even on the minimum wage they were able to feed, clothe and put a roof over their heads.  

This is no longer true in Western Australia where we now have two separate and distinct societies living side by side. One on hand there is the wealthy: well rewarded professionals - doctors, lawyers, accountants, business operators and mining workers who don’t have to worry about the rising cost of living and exorbitant house prices. On the other side of the great economic divide, thousands of Western Australians working at minimum wage jobs don’t earn enough to pay for basic living expenses; many do not have a place to call home while others are teetering on the precipice of foreclosure and eviction.

The economic boom in mining and natural resources has come at a great cost to the most vulnerable people in society for whom home ownership and private rental is no longer an option. Bi-products are a feature of the industrial process, often unintended, invariably unwelcome. In the case of Western Australia, the bi-product – soaring house prices – has produced a group of people who have no alternative than to live on the streets of Perth.

Currently sixty thousand Western Australian families are waiting for public housing; some have been on the waiting list for as long as fifteen years. In an earlier and fairer Australia couch surfing, a cheap form of lodging was used mainly by backpackers where they slept on relatives and acquaintances couches rather than shell out for a hotel. In the technologically advanced twenty-first century, along with living in the car it has become a way of life for the fastest growing and most vulnerable segment of the homeless community, women and children.

The previous government’s answer to the homeless problem was to pass and enforce vagrancy laws targeting our state’s homeless. These laws and ordinances are designed to criminalize and sweep vagrants from our city’s streets and imprison them for no reason other than they detract from the image of Perth as a dynamic and progressive city.

The Vagrancy Laws that prohibit sleeping in public are being enforced at a time when emergency housing shelters are consistently full and no housing or camping alternatives are available. Eating, defecating and sleeping, all essential life supporting acts are common to all people. The homeless have no alternative than to carry out these actions in public.

Moreover, single homeless men, twenty five per cent of whom are mentally ill are routinely terrorized by the police.  For instance Lot, a homeless man who suffered from schizophrenia was beaten and tasered twenty-three times just for fun. His death in custody was swept under the carpet with the coroner finding he had died of a heart attack, with the shorter life expectancy of homeless people due to nutrition, alcohol and drug abuse, cited as the contributing factor.
 

No person should be made a target of hate crimes because he’s an easy target. No person’s death should be treated as of no account due to his homeless status. Outrage at the brutality of the police force towards an obviously sick man was a trigger that led me to contest the seat of Perth-East. Outrage at the indifference of the authorities to his death was validation for using the power that was handed to me to repeal laws targeting poor and homeless people.

Taxing companies growing rich on Western Australia’s resources is so patently fair that it needs no further justification. Suffice to say it is not my aim to kill off the golden goose but rather to compensate the casualties; those who have not benefitted from the mining boom and who, like the poor of impoverished countries, may be soon have no alternative than to live and forage for food on rubbish dumps.

Taxing those living in comparative ease will not be popular. I am guessing that the main complaint will be that those in poorly paid jobs should upgrade their qualifications. What I am about to say will offend many people for while they accept that talent varies across the population and that entertainers that audition to appear on ‘Australia’s Got Talent’ are selected on the basis of their ability it is politically incorrect to say that there are differences in intellectual ability.

However re-training low-skilled workers to do more complex and rewarding jobs has rarely been successful. The trouble is no matter the quality of the trainers and the programs, high order thinking - quickness of mind, problem solving and the ability to deal with and adapt to new situations is beyond very many people.

Therefore I am calling on people of conscience, people with a social responsibility, people whose kids sleep under a roof, not in car to turn things around.  I believe that there is still time to change things if we remember that rich or poor, educated or uneducated, employed or jobless ultimately we are all human beings, none of us should be characterized as non-citizens and treated as a sub species.

I am concerned that we are turning into greedy, selfish and hard-hearted people and no one has the courage to say or do anything about it. And I am not pointing the finger at my electorate of Perth-East and the State of Western Australia.  Everything I say is relevant to the nation of Australia.

Well as an Independent I do not have to toe the party line, I will speak my mind and not only will I say my piece I will follow through on my promise to put the welfare of people before profits. It is my intention to launch APPs, Jane Patterson’s Anti- Poverty Party and to field candidates at the next Federal election with the express intention of securing a share of the nation’s prosperity for the bottom dwellers; those who unlike the sea creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean cannot alas, survive on mud.

Extract from:  Salvation Jane by Ann Massey (draft)

Caught up in a political ploy to demonize the homeless an ordinary young woman takes her fight for justice to the state government. Standing as an Independant the candidate-least-likely wins her seat. A thorn in the side of both political parties, she soon discovers that politics is a dirty, dirty game.

Industry enquiries: thewhiteamah@live.com.au

Aggressive & disruptive school children - low self esteem may be the issue

Monday morning and Michael (16) doesn’t want to be in school. Today the first day back after the long summer vacation, he acted up and played the fool with the result he gained nothing from the lesson . Unfortunately neither did the other 31 members of the class.

Like many teenagers Michael suffers from low self esteem as I concluded after taking the time to talk with him at the end of the lesson. Failure at school is undoubtedly one of the contributing factors for the way he feels about himself but a five minute conversation revealed that he wasn’t getting on with his family and didn’t have any real friends.


Michael is no orphan; approximately 20% of all teenagers have low-self esteem issues. It is easy to say so what? I mean haven’t we all at some time in our lives thought we were ugly, too fat, too skinny, too short, too tall and just not smart enough? But low self-esteem is not a trivial problem that will, inevitably given time, resolve itself.


Low self- esteem is one of the most harmful issues facing teens today. Not only does it affect learning it can lead to delinquency, eating disorders, self-harm, drugs and suicide.


When I was a child parents didn’t expect so much of their children. In fact, in my family ambition was frowned on. I can remember telling my mother that I’d like to be a lawyer when I grew up and being told that jobs like that weren’t for ‘the likes of us’.   

How times have changed!  We live in a success orientated culture and today teens are bombarded with high expectations in almost every aspect of their lives. But when suicide is the leading cause of death in youths 10 -19, as parents, teachers and friends, we have to ask ourselves, have we set the bar at unrealistic ,and, for many teenagers, unattainable levels?


My message to any parent of a teenager:  even though he or she is reluctant to confide and mistakes concern for interferance don't give up trying.  In my latest book, The Biocide Conspiracy both my teenage characters have low self-esteem and the adults in their lives don't help them feel better about themselves which may be why they end  up in so much trouble

Book News: news about Ann Massey's upcoming book

Oh dear, guilt, guilt, guilt, I'm so ashamed I meant to have a new thriller out in time for Christmas but I have to confess that I'm only up to Chapter 25. Falling down the steps at school and breaking my foot really messed up my schedule. Being housebound you'd think I'd have more time for writing but with my husband Cole in a wheelchair and me in his old one- things were crazy round here for awhile. Still I'm blessed with a great family and wonderful friends and neighbours who were all absolutely brilliant - my husband has been embarrassing me by boasting that he's never eaten as well in his life.

Despite both of us getting round the house on wheels we had a wonderful Christmas and managed to have some fun, turkey and Christmas pudding. Thanks again to darling Emma who dropped everything to fly to her mother's side.- an unexpected treat.

Glad to report I'm fine, walking and writing again and hope to have 'Salvation Jane' finished very soon. I know that's a bit vague and I was going to say by Easter but knowing me, I think that's a bit ambitious. However it well be before next Christmas ... promise.

All love and blessings

Ann.

Doesn't duty of care apply in prisons?

The general duty of care prinicipal  to ensure the health, safety and welfare of people in their care applies to the prison system. It is the administration's responsibility to ensure that all reasonable measures are taken to control risks against all possible injuries and to ensure people are not put at risk or in harm's way.  

This  duty of care applies to all people in prison  including convicts, visitors and employees. In the case of Carl Williams, it seems to me that the administration failed to ensure  proper supervision.

The fact that he was an evil man doesnot negate the administration's duty of care, a concept that applies in prison just as it does in the workplace, schools and hospitals.   It doesn't cease when someone is sent to prison. 

Seems to me that the only way to ensure people convicted of a crime are safe when serving a custodial sentence is to hold the custodians responsible.  All  crimes convicted in gaols must be investigated with the same thoroughness as workplace accidents.  And, if there is evidence of  neglect on the part of the custodians, then they should be prosecuted for dereliction of duty of care.

WA Premier should take a leaf out of Uzbekistan's book if he wants the streets homeless- free for CHOGM

With the CHOGM conference imminent it is imperative that Perth eradicates undesirable elements that spoil the image of Perth as a dynamic and progressive city. Might I suggest the government send representatives to Tashkent to see how their leaders successfully cleaned up the city in readiness for the 20^th anniversary of Uzbekistan’s independence?  The timing is ideal - August and September are beautiful in the former Soviet Socialist Republic and, now that the younger and stronger homeless people have been sold as slaves and the elderly and infirm taken away late at night by local interior ministry employees to an unknown location, there is no likelihood that the fact finding missionaries could l be importuned by disconcerting derelicts, always so disconcerting for visiting dignataries.  

Danger of UK -style riots in Australia if we don't act now

Anarchy, social disobediance and insurrection is the penalty society pays when the greater proportion of the population is excluded from opportunities fundamental to their future. Shocked as I am by the looting in  London, Birmingham and Manchester, it is apparent that the UK is now reaping the rewards of social inequity. 

Resentment often leads to rage. And it is a fact that many young people have strong reasons to feel aggrieved. Children from  poorer areas in the UK lag far behind students in  affluent suburbs. Constantly moving from one rental home and in many cases living rough , of course they resent  missing out on the material things that children from affluent families take for granted like trendy clothes, trips to the movies, holidays and school excursions.

By the time they are older enough to become a nuisance to society (in the case of the baby-faced thugs - nine plus), they know that the future isn't going to be any different.  All they can expect is long term poverty as they are excluded from the workforce as a result  of low educational attainment and inadequate social skills.

Here in Australia, we must take note because for decades our social policies have alienated and marginalised people and unless, we too, are prepared to reap the whirlwind, the government has to find ways to ensure that our own disaffected youth does not feel excluded from the economic and social life of the country.

For a start, we have to find ways to fund welfare programs, stop cutting services and ferociously defend attempts to erode our egalitarian heritage. The most obvious is for corporations and high income earners to pay higher taxes. It won't be popular. Especially, as  many wealthy people believe that the poor deserve to be treated the way they are.

Fine if the less privileged are prepared to suffer in silence. But as we are seeing in the UK this is no longer the case.  I certainly don't want to live in a Mad Max world and that is why the most important issue facing the government is to ensure that all our citizens get a fair go.

Ann Massey

http://www.annmasseyauthor.net/

Author of:

The White Amah, a mystery set against the backdrop of the timber logging industry in Malaysia. Sample or purchase: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456578065

The Biocide Conspiracy, a Young Adult thriller that sweeps readers into the world of biowarfare. Sample or purchase; http://www.amazon.com/dp/1456503367