June 8, 2016
by Dafyd Martindale
Rural and regional Queenslanders are fed up with the major political parties and want diversity in the Senate to ensure that Medicare, health and education are protected from cuts.
They also want more quality jobs for children growing up in rural and regional Australia; more investment in aged care; an end to CSG mining; more investment in agriculture; an end to multi-national tax avoidance; and a lot more attention paid to fixing problems outside Australia’s capital cities.
That was the message former rugby league greats Glenn Lazarus and Kerrod Walters brought to Kingaroy on Wednesday night.
Senator Lazarus and his running mate form two-thirds of the Glenn Lazarus Team, one of Australia’s newest political parties.
Their third team member Annette Lourigan, the State Coordinator for the National Council of Women of Queensland, is currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer and was unable to make the trip.
Lazarus and Walters paid a visit to Kingaroy RSL to talk with interested members of the public about their views, and drew a big roll-up of people keen to meet them.
And for such a famous and accomplished pair of visitors, they were surprisingly humble, likeable and … well, just a decent couple of blokes you’d be happy to invite along to a barbecue.
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Glenn Lazarus was elected to the Senate in 2013 as the lead candidate for the Palmer United Party after a stellar career as a rugby league player, coach and broadcaster where he was known as “The Brick With Eyes”.
He quit PUP in March 2015 to sit as an independent after falling out with PUP founder Clive Palmer, then formed his own party four months later.
On July 2 he’ll be recontesting his Senate seat alongside long-time friend Kerrod Walters and Annette Lourigan to “give voters a choice” and try to ensure diversity in Australia’s upper house.
Glenn and Kerrod have recently completed a 7500km road trip through rural and regional Queensland in their “Brickmobile” to meet voters face to face, hear their concerns and explain their own positions first hand.
They say what they’ve heard backs up their own thoughts about the wrong direction the nation has been taking.
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Glenn said the feeling he’d gotten throughout rural Queensland was that voters are deeply disenchanted with both the ALP and LNP, and are looking for a change from the “empty rhetoric” the major parties have been serving up.
“Look, the current Government has been in power for three years and they’ve done almost nothing for rural Queensland in that time,” Glenn said.
“First we were supposed to have a financial crisis, then we were told that things were tight, and now they’re throwing money around. But what’s really changed in places like Mackay or Maryborough? Nothing.”
Glenn believes Australia is rapidly losing its manufacturing base and missing big opportunities in agriculture, and neither of these is good for the nation’s long-term future.
“Look at Downer Rail in Maryborough,” he said.
“The Government decided that rather than build our own railway rolling stock, they’d buy it in from China. So now a factory that used to employ 1000 people employs 250, and most of the work they do is fixing up the defects on the Chinese rolling stock.
“When you take jobs into consideration, how do decisions like that really benefit Australia?”
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Kerrod Walters said he’d joined the Glenn Lazarus Team partly because Glenn was an old friend and they held the same views about most issues, and partly because he wanted to serve the country and saw the Senate as the best place to do it.
“If you’d like to think of Federal politics this way, it’s like a court room,” Kerrod told southburnett.com.au.
“The Government of the day is the prosecution, the Opposition is the defence, and the Senate is the jury. And like any real jury, you only get good and fair decisions if you have diversity.”
Kerrod said he believes a Senate controlled by either of the big parties is unhealthy.
And recent moves to amend how Senators are elected which are deliberately designed to make it more difficult for minor parties and independents to get a seat are not good for Australia’s democracy.
“I don’t know how it will go (in the election),” Kerrod said, “but I hope that if people think for themselves they’ll opt for diversity. That’s the way our Senate is supposed to be.”
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Queenslanders will elect 12 senators to represent them on July 2.
At present, six of the State’s Senate seats are held by the LNP, four by the ALP, one by the Greens and one by Glenn Lazarus.
But if the Glenn Lazarus Team has its way, those numbers will change soon. And if all three get elected, they think it will be a change for the better.
Neither foresee any problem working with the major parties.
“If a piece of legislation is good for Queenslanders, we’ll support it no matter which party puts it up,” Glenn said.
“But if it’s not good for Queenslanders, we won’t support it because Senators are there to represent ordinary, everyday people – not the big end of town.
“So our message to people is vote for whoever you like in the House of Representatives. But when it comes to the Senate, vote for the minor parties and independents to ensure your voice really gets heard where it really matters most.”
- Glenn Lazarus and Kerrod Walters will be in Kingaroy for one more day to meet the public for a chat. On Thursday night, June 9 they’ll be holding a “meet and greet” at Kingaroy’s Carollee Hotel between 6:30pm and 8:30pm, and anyone who’d like to come along is very welcome.
