these are the reasons i'll be voting for the greens.......



1. The Greens stand up for what’s right, not just what’s easy. Whether it’s protecting the environment, introducing universal dental care, opposing the war in Iraq or advocating for refugees to be treated humanely, the Greens are driven by values, not polls.



2. It’s the Party everyone’s heading to. The Greens are the third largest political party in Australia, with five national Senators, 21 State MPs and more than 100 local Greens councillors already playing a positive and constructive role across Australia. More than a million Australians voted Green in 2007, the fastest-growing party in the country.



3. Break the deadlock in the Senate between the Government and the Opposition. Last time the Government of the day also got control of the Senate, and we got WorkChoices. This weekend, the Opposition could easily win control of the Senate, which would deliver Australians nothing but three years of deadlock. We deserve a Senate that will work for us and deliver strong, sensible action – not just spin.



4. Provide future generations with clean air, clean water and clean soil. The Greens will tackle climate change by putting a price on carbon for big polluters in the next term of government. It’s time we created new clean energy jobs and started investing in the economy of the future.



5. Make legislation better. When the Coalition tried to block the stimulus package that kept Australia out of recession, the Greens passed it with added environmental and small business benefits. The Greens will do the same thing to improve the mining super profits tax – to ensure Australians get a fair share of our resources.



6. The Greens have vision. When Bob Brown first spoke to the Senate about climate change 14 years ago, his Labor and Liberal colleagues actually laughed at him, and now that they finally understand the magnitude of the issue, we’re laughing at their attempts to address it. The Greens are also the only party working to end all forms of legal discrimination against Australians based on sexuality. The Greens focus on what’s right for the next generation, not just the next election cycle.



7. Not Steve Fielding. The power to scuttle legislation currently rests with Steve Fielding, who refuses to accept the science of climate change and have views out of touch with most Australians.



8. An environmental party - and much, much more. The Greens stand for much more than just cutting carbon pollution, securing our water supplies and protecting our environment. Think better public schools, more funding for hospitals and fixing our broken mental health system. The Greens also drive great new ideas, like building high-speed rail between Australia’s major cities, which is now gaining momentum but would never have gotten up otherwise.



9. For a more powerful vote. Another Labor or Liberal candidate will just vote the way they’re told. With the Greens, every vote is a conscience vote. If you’re disappointed with Labor but don’t want Tony Abbott, you can send a powerful message to Julia Gillard. And if your Greens candidate doesn’t win, your vote will simply go to the next candidate of your choice at full value.



10. Bob Brown. A genuinely decent politician and the most experienced party leader in Parliament.

To All Seniors who don't want the greens getting their carbon tax up and then having to try to find the money to pay a power bill that will be even higher - and compensation never ever actually compensates for the lot of the raise now does it - here is the alternative for Senate ticket - give Steve fielding your No 1 or Family First and stop the Greens getting their silly ideas across as they have the agreement to share power with Labor and even if you vote Labor - you don't want higher power bills - separate issue.



Subject: You get two votes this Saturday .... pass it on!



That’s right ... all voters get two votes (a Senate vote and a House of Representatives vote) and your Senate vote does not determine whether Labor or Liberal win or lose government.



So, given your Senate vote does not stop or hinder your preferred major party from winning government - you can freely vote for Family First in the Senate with peace of mind that you are not stopping or hindering your preferred major party from winning government.



I encourage you to forward this email to all your friends and colleagues – especially given the fact unless Family First get enough 1st votes in the Senate, the Greens will gain the balance of power.



In case you haven’t caught up with Family First’s campaign, some of the major announcements have been on the following:









Housing affordability:



*Give first home buyers access to their super so they can afford to put down a deposit on a home



Reducing crime:



*Setup a National Alcohol Commission to reduce the alcohol toll much like the TAC has done with the road toll



*Create a $200m Get Communities Safer fund for local councils so they can install things like CCTV to reduce crime



Education and helping our kids:



*Establish a free online university as part of any National Broadband Network



*A $10,000 Caring for Children Payment to help with expenses like childcare



*A Better Access to Childcare Fund to increase the number of childcare places in local communities



[b]Fair go for seniors and veterans:



*Increase the pension for couples and singles



*Fairer indexation for veterans



*Guarantee the number of aged care beds per head of population in each locality



So when you head to your local polling booth this Saturday Vote 1 for Family First.[/b]



Thank you.



Steve F.





Senator Steve Fielding

Leader of Family First



255 Blackburn Road

Mount Waverley, VIC 3149

P: 03 9802 1922

F: 03 9802 8236



It was Steve Fielding who stood up to the lot of them on Climate change and paid his own fare to try to get some idea of what was happening and was the science correct.

Oh dear who said that one had to be an expert on things one spoke about - yeah of course Julia on Tony Abbott not knowing in her words enough about high speed broadband - when of course Kerry O'Brien tried and managed to catch him out just Tony didn't have Kerry's notes on the subject in front of him so could be made to look dumb.



Moral of the story is never crow too early or it will catch you out - now we all know that - or should do - but as they say cant put an old head on younger shoulders and the WW from W lost this one.



PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has twice failed to put a number on how many homes will be connected to the NBN during the next three years.



Ms Gillard was campaigning in Townsville, north Queensland, on Tuesday, where she marked the start of the $43 billion national broadband network's construction on mainland Australia.



Construction in Townsville will take about 12 weeks and the city will be one of five sites around Australia to get first access to the network.



Ms Gillard boasted the superfast network would be capable of speeds 1000 times faster than many people experience today.



But she twice referred reporters to the NBN Co website when asked how many homes would be connected to the network in the next three years.



"My simple point is, I mean, look today, it's happening today,'' she said.





The prime minister also could not say how much it would cost the average family to hook up to the network.



"It depends what you want,'' Ms Gillard said, adding the beauty of network was that it "super fast''.



Different service providers, spruiking their products, would compete on price.



"Obviously you will pick what you want in your home based on those price comparisons,'' Ms Gillard said.





http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/gillard-defers-nbn-questions-as-townsville-starts-construction/story-fn59niix-1225906319161



Oh dear super fast eh - well so is my ADSL2 24MB and cheap at the price compared with what some have quoted for NBN when it arrives and it has arrived in Tassie - 70 houses are connected - problem is no one know how much it is costing these 70 - and I live here and quite happy with my ADSL2 and speed because we have a big business nearby and therefore Telstra rolled out the fast BB for them and we profited by having a different cheaper provider which is competition as it should be paid for by the ISP's not the taxpayer.

[b]Here you are Fwed an article written by a Labor man so NO bias.[/b]



All about the NBN Rudd promised us in 2007 and in 2010 Labor has managed to roll it out to 4000 homes of which 70 have taken it up and connected.





Labor is short-changing true believers



* Kevin Morgan

* From: The Australian

* August 19, 2010 12:00AM







IT'S no surprise the left-leaning Electrical Trades Union is donating $250,000 to the Greens.



With labour laws little different from Work Choices, similar policies on asylum-seekers, climate change ignored and neglect of public education, many on the left may be wondering what differentiates the ALP from the Coalition.



Little, it seems, other than high-speed broadband. Julia Gillard stresses the $43 billion National Broadband Network will transform the delivery of health care and education and boost productivity. Labor's ads tell us it is vital in competing with Singapore and South Korea.



Investing huge sums of taxpayers' money in "nation building" has echoes of old Labor, but in reality the NBN stands as a perfect metaphor for modern Labor. The NBN has been perfectly spun and promises much, but the reality will short-change the true believers.





[b]Three years ago the ALP went to an election promising higher-speed broadband through a $4.7bn taxpayer subsidy. That policy was predicated on Telstra's agreement, but the initial tender collapsed, morphing into a fibre-to-the-home policy with 10 times the price tag. The policy failure became Telstra's fault.



Three years and $650 million later, what has been achieved? Seventy households in Tasmania have been connected to the embryonic high-speed network. But one shouldn't be too critical; nation building takes time. It took nearly a century to build the copper network.



The copper network was largely built by Telstra's predecessor, Telecom, which the Whitlam government created to get telecommunications services off budget and on to a self-funding basis. Essentially, it is the junking of that network and the return to taxpayer funding that calls the NBN into question.



The government tells us the copper network is outdated and only fibre will do, while Telstra's monopoly has held back competition. Yet the Germans are maintaining their faith in copper to deliver high-speed broadband, with Deutsche Telekom investing in its existing network. So is former giant AT&T;, which serves 40 per cent of the US market. They are upgrading copper networks with "fibre to the node" technology, where fibre optic runs to the street corner, where it reconnects to the existing copper.



Telstra had similar plans, using $10bn of shareholders' money, before it was booted out of the initial broadband tender.



Similarly, the competitive market structure the Hawke government pioneered endures in other markets that are outperforming us in broadband, yet no other government is dismantling its national telco; they prefer to let them get on with the job of upgrading networks at their own cost.



Telstra was bullied, then bribed with $11bn to shed its copper network and join the NBN. The policy takes us full circle. Telecommunication services will again be a taxpayer liability, unwinding the Whitlam government's reforms. A government monopoly is to be reformed, undoing Hawke-era changes. Yet quite how re-creating a government monopoly, injecting an additional $43bn into an industry and junking perfectly good assets can lower costs has never been explained. We are merely told consumers will benefit from lower prices because of "perfect" competition at the retail level. The NBN will be restricted to offering wholesale services; so-called structural separation.



The belief that structural separation can deliver better outcomes is proof of how far the ALP has travelled. The government is captive to competition policy to the exclusion of all else, even rational use of existing infrastructure, and has built its NBN policy on a textbook, neo-liberal construct of competition that has not been tested in any other market. Even the Bush and Thatcher governments wouldn't go near it.



Now we're told a structurally separated, pro-competitive NBN will deliver the health and education services needed by all Australians.



This puts equity at risk, undermining a core ALP value. As a recent Australian Bureau of Statistics report shows, one million low-income households don't have any form of internet access; not even a $10 a month dial-up connection, let alone broadband. Thirty per cent of these households don't have a computer, yet their access to government services will demand high-speed broadband and a computer. If they can't pay for internet access now, how will they pay for a gold-plated NBN service?



Even the comfort of that old Labor value of public ownership will be short-lived. Once it is built, with $30bn in government equity, and a future secured by government-guaranteed loans, the NBN will be privatised. It seems the business of new Labor is to create lucrative monopolies for the private sector.



Despite the ALP's spin, the NBN will not secure Australia's future. Compared with the challenges of climate change, water policy, social equity and the like, broadband is a second-order issue elevated to centre ring; a deliberate distraction in the bread and circuses election campaign the government has run. That is not to say higher-speed broadband wouldn't be a sound investment. Given international precedents it's simply one that should be left to the market.[/b]

Second part of the article above - sorry for that this is an old board.





That the Howard government bungled its dealings with Telstra over high-speed broadband was unfortunate. That the ALP didn't learn from that impasse is doubly disappointing. Had either government bitten the bullet on regulatory relief for Telstra, networks comparable to those in Germany and the US would be in the process of being rolled out without any need for vast taxpayer subsidies.



Kevin Morgan served on Kim Beazley's ministerial committee on Telecom reform on behalf of the ACTU and is an independent telecom consultant.





[url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/commentary/labor-is-short-changing-true-believers/story-e6frgd0x-1225907038763?from=public_rss]written-by-a-Labor-Man[/url]





there you go Fwed - happy now he puts the boot into Howard and so he should as they should never imo sold off the copper network we all paid for - kept it and sold wholesale to the lot of them and earned us more money for hospital beds for the elderly and pension increases seeing as it was mainly our income taxes that paid for the rollout in the early 1970's.

It is a pity that you (BigVal) are so old fashioned and out of date.

Firstly Senator Steve Fielding's time as a senator is limited. I cannot see him retaining the position.

Fielding's term as Senator will end on 30 June 2011.

In 2004 Fielding was elected with just 2519 first preference votes (0.08%) and got the position with preferences from Liberal, Labor & Democrats.

He will not get Labor or Democrats preferences this time.

Goodbye Mr Fielding.



The copper network was largely built by Telstra’s predecessor, Telecom



Huh, I thought the largest telecommunications network in Australia was originally built by the Post Master Generals dept, which later became Telecom , then Telstra.



Those who do not wish to see this country progress will vote for the "Do Nothing" Liberals who wish to return to the days of the horse and cart



Give me a break and stop pushing your biased political beliefs down our throats.

Contrary to your belief people do think and know much of what is happening and do not necessarily vote the way their fathers did.

My father voted for the DLP whom I considered a scaremongering party.

This I learned after attending a speech by Bob Santamaria who was a good speaker but was a nut case..

fwed I am glad you noticed that the DLP Bob was a nut case, the same can be said about Gillard today



It was BOB Santamaria who split the Labor Party, I wish he was around today to pull pointy nose into line





jessej

I'll make sure I don't follow any of Big Val's instructions on voting day.