July 23, 2024
Meet Jason Miles – who describes himself as “a Christian Conservative” – who will be taking on local MP Deb Frecklington at the Queensland State election in October.
Jason stood unsuccessfully for the Senate at the last Federal election, representing Rod Culleton’s “Great Australian Party”, but is no longer a member of this group.
This time, he will be running as an Independent.
“I am running as an Independent because I am sick and tired of seeing Australia and the State going backwards – we have the most debt that we’ve ever had in our nation, State and Federal,” he said.
Jason has spent most of working life in Victoria, but does claim some strong South Burnett connections.
These days he lives in South Nanango and his late mother and step-father formerly owned the Cosy Dell Café in Wondai.
He lived in Wondai for a few years in the 1980s, and as a teenager played cricket with the local team.
In 2020, Jason started to become interested in what was happening in global affairs.
The pandemic “perked his interest” in how the Federal and State governments operated.
“I wanted to know what was going on with my country,” he said.
“I wanted to know why politicians made the decisions they made.”
He admitted that until this point he had been apathetic about politics but suddenly became interested, like a lot of other people.
However some people, he says, “went extreme” at this time.
“There are people in this perceived ‘freedom movement’, for me, that are extreme and I do not go near them,” he said.
“So what I wanted to do was balance all this out, to say what is real and what’s not real.
“And the only way I am even going to do that is if I do my own research and validate it through independent sources … I don’t always get it right, I must say, but 99 per cent of the time I do.”
Jason said he was initially happy with the government locking down for two weeks to “flatten the curve” but he believes the response went off track later in 2020 because the pandemic “was not as bad as first anticipated”.
“What they should have done was pivot and protect the vulnerable … we did not need to lock down healthy human beings,” Jason said.
He said healthy people “were not impacted by and large” and he knows people “who died from the COVID vaccine” but vaccination should be a personal choice.
However, Jason emphasised that despite his interest in global affairs, he was running on eight local issues in his Nanango campaign.
1. Pausing Renewables
“The people I have spoken with … do not want renewables in the region,” he said. “I support what the South Burnett Council has said.”
“Let’s pause renewables until we get a solid baseload to replace it. Is it coal? Is it nuclear? I don’t know.
“The people will decide what they want.
“I would say 90 per cent of the people I have spoken to, say we should have (nuclear).”
2. Fixing the roads – eg. widening Kingaroy-Barkers Creek Road
3. Getting doctors to the region – by incentives
4. Fixing the water – eg. Nanango town water
5. Homelessness – getting people off the streets into temporary accommodation, including tiny houses, containers or “pods” on big blocks
6. Crime – hire more police, prosecute DV offenders immediately, provide counselling for victims
7. Keeping cash alive
8. Funding the tick line
And how to pay for this? He believes governments should trim waste and perhaps “stop funding the Ukraine war” or “giving $100 million to the World Health Organisation” and start putting Australians first.
Is this a joke? He wants to cut federal spending on Ukraine so it can be spent in the South Burnett?
My vote will never be for someone who supports nuclear with its everlasting waste or is against renewable energy. And I have serious doubts about the quote that a majority of people would welcome nuclear. Maybe only those with short memories not remembering Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Bill McIntyre, he did not say to cut all this overseas funding and spend it ALL in the South Burnett, he said to spend it on all Australians who you may not have noticed are doing it really tough under this government.
Well said, Upset, I also am dead against nuclear power, not on political grounds but the forever possibility of a nuclear accident.
As a medical doctor in a past life, I am only too aware what can happen to humans and animals as a result, not to mention the long-term and genetic effects, eg. in Ukraine, 6000 babies are born each year with congenital heart disease (as though they have not got enough to put up with) most due to the effects of radiation from Chernobyl.
I am 83 so it will not affect me, but it could my great-grandchildren in the long-term future.
Please nuclear supporters, don’t tell me it would never happen.
I keep reading the district is overwhelming in favour. No one has asked me!!
Anyone that believes renewables are the answer to powering Australia needs to renew their brain. The installation damage. Visual damage. Ecological damage. On going cost of maintenance. And total inefficiency, make them a non starter. Keep quoting Chernobyl is a joke. Russians cutting corners in the 80’s. Times have moved on. Most developed countries have nuclear. Many more are building nuclear. And others scab off of countries with nuclear. If you get rid of coal and gas you need a base load. The sun doesn’t always shine. The wind may not blow. Pumped hydro needs power to pump. BESS batteries are giant toxic bombs, that are burning all over the world, and need power to charge. All good being against everything. But offer a working alternative.
Toxic bombs? Yes, there have been fires, and because of the lithium, difficult to extinguish (coal fires are hard to put out, too). BESS units don’t explode. That’s scaremongering.
Check out the worldwide data about all incidents not just fires: https://storagewiki.epri.com/index.php/BESS_Failure_Incident_Database
This shows that the number of incidents is small, particularly when you compare it with the increasing number of BESS units being built.
Yes, the sun doesn’t always shine (it’s called night) and wind doesn’t always blow but when it’s not blowing in one area, it could well be blowing somewhere else. That’s why “a grid” linking all renewable sources is so important, and why pumped hydro and battery units need to be part of the equation, to kick in when necessary. This is the “working alternative”. Pumped hydro supplies its own power, and then gravity creates power.