Campaign Launch Speech

Thank you for attending this little campaign launch, it might appear insignificant and one might argue, why bother, you will never make a difference.

I’m reminded of the story of the little boy who is taken to the beach the morning after a great storm. The beach is littered with starfish. He starts picking them up and throwing them back into the sea. An old man also on the beach wanders up to him and says, “don’t bother there are thousands of them all up and down the beach you won’t make a difference.” The little boy responds in a flash, I might not make a difference to them all but I’ll make a difference to this one” as he throws a starfish back into the sea.

I could recite an extensive list of reasons why I shouldn’t be running for Federal Parliament, yet somehow I’m still convinced that it is the right thing to do.

My flyer has the slogan, ‘It’s insanity to keep on doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result’ – I think it was Einstein?

By and large over the last decade that is what we have been doing through the entrenched two party duopoly. As a result we keep getting more of the same – things aren’t improving – infact almost universally people are disillusioned with what should be our finest institution. A few have come and gone trying to inject fresh blood into the political landscape and good job they have for they have paved the way towards what is emerging now.

Palmer United Party has 150 candidates, that is one in EVERY electorate, Senate teams in every state and both territories, there have been 7 million hits on our website, thousands of members across the country; all since April this year.

This is nothing short of a miracle!

The Liberal Party has just 121 candidates , I don’t think, in fact, that they have ever fielded a full team on the park?

A second grade teacher was doing  an exercise with the class, one by one the children came up the front and told the class what job their Father did. All the usual occupations were mentioned until one little boy came up and when asked responded that his Dad was a drug dealer! The teacher quickly moved on but determined at a later moment to find out what was going on. She found the little chap in the playground at recess and quizzed him on his response. No my Dad is not a drug dealer, he’s a politician but I was too ashamed to say so!

This unfortunately is the state of politics in this country, Alfred Deakin and our founding fathers would I’m sure turn in their graves. 

Our constitution was framed with the thought that civic minded people would give up their time and vocations for a term or two, represent their region and lead the country, implementing ideas for the good of all. This has long been forgotten.

The BIG house in Canberra should I believe be a place for the contest of ideas, not  a contest of parties or worse, of personalities, as it has become. Great ideas, world changing ideas live in the minds of people all over this country and I believe the role of elected representatives is to locate, debate and implement these ideas that best reflect our National values and ideals.

I recently read a speech by Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor who addressed Congress as a part of the Millennium series of talks, it’s called the Peril of Indifference and I’d like to read an excerpt.

What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means ‘no difference’. A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil. What are it’s courses and inescapable consequences? Is there a philosophy of indifference conceivable? Can possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to practise it simply to keep ones sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?

Of course, indifference can be tempting – more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person’s pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbours re of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction.

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it, you denounce it. You disarm it.

Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning;it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor – never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees – not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we deny our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century’s wide ranging experiments in good and evil.

This gives me my reason for running, why I have thrown my hat in the ring. I refuse to be indifferent, I refuse to sit on the laurels of my past success, I refuse to be intimidated by my past failures, I refuse to accept that this is as good as it gets and I refuse to believe that one person cannot make a difference, regardless of what the denigrators and naysayers may suggest.

For me Palmer United Party offers the Australian people a viable third alternative with fresh ideas, from real people who are ready to govern. I could list policies here but I ask you to do one simple thing, don’t be indifferent about the future of our great nation, engage in the political process as I have done, our future depends on it!

 

Thank You!