The Carers Alliance - A new kid on the political block.
“Our purpose is represent, raise and monitor issues affecting unpaid family Carers through the representative participation of Carers as candidates in Federal and State parliaments. The Carers Alliance will represent the rights of unpaid Carers of people with disabilities, mental illness, chronic illness or issues of frail age who need assistance at differing times in their lives.” - from the Carer’s Alliance website.
The Carers Alliance has recently been registered as a political party and is in the process of putting together it’s national senate team for the upcoming federal election.
The Alliance states its task as follows…….
“We will be the watchdogs for the Australian people, ensuring the issues that affect families have political representation and caring families are not missed in the process”.
As I see it, the Carers Alliance is essentially an exercise in visibility. On so many fronts the needs of disabled, frail, the elderly and their carers are neglected and misrepresented by politicians and public servants.
Federal and State governments appear to dismiss the urgency and crisis that exists in so many Australian families who survive (and sometimes they don’t) without adequate or appropriate support services.
Disability is still a hidden issue in Australia even though it effects us all at some stage.
Issues of funding for disability support agencies as well as the financial security of carer’s including pension, taxation and superannuation justice, are not amongst the nation’s political debate and rarely in any debate at all, except within the families at the front-line of these issues.
Thousands of families suffer terribly in isolation but their suffering has not yet been acknowledged as a significant political issues.
News of the Carers Alliance registration as a party and its senate campaign has been widely publicised amongst disability, aged and carer’s networks around Australia. This network may well generate a significant vote for the new party.
Although the single issue of disability and carer support is amongst many important issues in the election, and it hasn’t the sex appeal or sensational profile that some other issues do, those families who suffer because of inadequate and inappropriate services will no doubt have the issues on their minds on election day, as they do every other day of their life.
Family first won a Victorian senate seat in the last federal election despite being a new minority party. The weird and wonderful process of senate preference distribution could also see the Carers Alliance fluke a seat somewhere. Unlike Family first which campaigns on vague and ideological notions of family, the Carers Alliance is campaigning on real, concrete issues that hundreds of thousands of real families experience.
In the probable event that the Carers Alliance does not win a seat, their preferences will be crucial in determining who actually does win in some states. In this sense they cannot fail in their goal of raising the profile of disability and carer’s issues.
They are now a force to be reckoned with, whoever forms a government after the election.
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Posted: by John September 25th, 2007 under Politics, Elections, Human Rights, Society, 2007 Federal Election, Australia, Democracy, Senate.
Comments: 6
Comments
Comment from The Happy Revolutionary
Time: September 25, 2007, 11:44 pm
They’re probably more deserving of support than some of the other fringe parties that enter the Senate contest. Nonetheless, it’s difficult to see any single-issue party gaining much traction with the electorate.
Australians, in my opinion, expect quite a lot from the state apparatus in a range of areas, and are often left wanting. Carers are one such group in this situation, but there are many others, and if they could ally themselves with these others, they might win a bit more support.
Comment from amphibious
Time: September 29, 2007, 7:51 pm
Current carers are mostly from a generation of fecundity. The real crunch will come about ten years from now as the self obsessed babyboomers slowly realise there aren’t enough coming up behind them to change their incontinence nappies and oil their Zimmer frames coz WE didn’t breed sufficieintly. All the superannuation in the world (assuming that it doesn’t just go pffft!) won’t help when the top heavy population pyramid topples.
Have a look at the ABS age and gender(inexplicably, pre-ultrasound) figures and be afraid, be VERY afraid, if you’re over 50 at the moment.
Comment from upstream2005
Time: September 30, 2007, 5:28 pm
Oho, Amphibious! It’s not just about breeding another generation of tax paying workforce fodder and cheap nappy changers. Nor it is just about aged care or minding our own kids.
Migration can handle a lot of the pressures you describe.
Ultrasounds and genetic testing won’t help you weed out every birth defect or case of anoxia that ever there was.
[Believe me, my pregnancies were tested so much that the ultrasounds and tests themselves have become the chief suspect in our case of a less than eugenically perfect outcome].
Moreover, it is social insurance to demand accommodation for the disabled. Any hero can become the next vulnerable and marginalised accident victim.
And what does the lucky country do about it? Spout crap about how noone should be giving us handouts. They tell us that we all have boots and boostraps to pull ourselves up by.
The next Einstein may be trapped in his aged mothers’ spare room waiting for a bit Asperger’s therapy so he can get out more.
Do we put that therapy on Medicare? Nup.
We love and need our offspring. It’s just that they are likely to need us back for much longer than expected.
How about we take better care of the less lucky and also give carers some respite. They’re the ultimate un-unionised set of conscripts you know. Unwaged slaves, we are. No agreement or choices about it. We’re imprisoned by our consciences and a lack of options, sweetheart.
Comment from John T.
Time: October 3, 2007, 6:51 pm
I reckon today’s bidding war between Rudd and Howard over autism and family support services is an indication that the Carers Alliance is allready being taken seriously, either for their preferences or the primary vote of people who may have been tempted to vote for the carers because they are affected by the issues.
Comment from The Happy Revolutionary
Time: October 3, 2007, 8:42 pm
Actually, the Carers Alliance don’t make reference to foster carers. Whilst these carers are part of the states’ jurisdiction, I’d have thought they’d be worth including in any ‘alliance’, since Governments tend to treat them with contempt.
Comment from amphibious
Time: October 6, 2007, 10:14 pm
Up2005 - my reference to “ultrasound’ was about the inexplicable gender imbalance in the ABS graphs, not eugenics.
I wouldn’t be wildly optimistic about migration keeping the taxes flowing to pay my pension or clean up my aged effluctions. Unless of an altruistic gene mix not seen since Neanderthal times, why should adult immigrants give a rat’s for the wrinklies clogging the harbourside properties & pushing up their tax rates?
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