July 17, 2002
Issue
- Make Tasmania a refugee safe haven. End mandatory detention.
- Jobs not profits. A shorter working week with no loss in pay. Nationalise under workers' and community control companies that threaten mass sackings. Abolish youth wages.
- A massive boost in funding for health and education budgets. Reduce hospital and nursing home waiting lists. Expand the public housing stock.
- Stop clearfelling in old-growth forests. Stop the Southwood woodchip mill. Guaranteed jobs for timber workers. End subsidies to the woodchip industry.
- Pay justice and safe staffing levels for nurses. Increase nurses' salaries.
- Increase tax on business. Reduce politicians' salaries and superannuation to that of an average worker.
- Reverse corporatisation of the Hydro. Reschedule electricity prices so ordinary households pay less and business pays more. Stop Basslink.
- Publicly funded, free abortion service in the north and south of the state. Remove abortion from the crimes act.
- A massive expansion of public transport. Increase urban bus routes, introduce urban trams. Re-establish a passenger train service between Hobart, Launceston, Devonport & Burnie.
- Expand sexual assault support services, refuges and childcare services. Make childcare free.
- Nationalise the insurance industry to solve the insurance crisis. Government insurance for midwives. Increase workers' compensation benefits and restore workers' common law rights.
- Public ownership not corporate subsidies.
- Return Aboriginal land. Negotiate a treaty with the Aboriginal community.
- End nuclear and non-nuclear warship visits. No support for the misnamed "war on terrorism".
- Tackle the causes of crime and violence. Seek alternatives to prison for offenders.
- Decriminalise personal drug use, legalise marijuana.
From Green Left Weekly, July 17, 2002.
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