Ben Raue is the Greens candidate in the by-election for the federal electorate of Werriwa, called for March 19 following ALP leader Mark Latham's resignation from parliament earlier this year. A 19-year-old student of economics and social science at Sydney University, Raue was the Greens candidate in Werriwa in the federal election in October last year. He was interviewed for Green Left weekly by Graham Matthews.
Werriwa has been a safe seat for Labor since its inception. What do the Greens hope to achieve in this by-election?
The status of Werriwa doesn't count as much for this by-election. Everything is very confused and up in the air as far as working out how each party will do. Labor is a bit on the nose in the area at the moment. Thirty-five per cent of people voted Liberal in the last election, and their votes will go somewhere and we don't know where.
The Greens are hoping to do pretty well. We think there's a small outside chance that we could win. But more importantly, it's a chance to get our message out there and hopefully post a very strong vote.
You've highlighted the riots in Macquarie Fields as a very important issue. What do you see as the causes of these riots?
The direct cause is related to this car-crash here. But it's also related to distrust for the police and also a growing divide in the socio-economic relations in our society. Macquarie Fields hasn't benefited from the growth in our economy over the last few years. This has led to a situation where people in the area who are disadvantaged and have no access to services are more inclined to have a distrust of authority and not be willing to cooperate with authority.
There's also a problem in that the police in the area have definitely acted in a way that I believe was overreacting to the situation. It was probably not necessary for them to go into the area on the second night after the crash and if they hadn't gone in on the second night or the third or the fourth night there wouldn't have been any riots. The riots would have finished on the first night.
It very much appeared that they were almost on a war footing. It's very inappropriate in a community in Sydney for the police to be going in as if they were going to war.
Have the Carr Labor government's social policies made the situation for young people in Werriwa worse? What is the Green's alternative?
The Carr Labor government's social policy is more an absence of policies than any clear policy. They've acted in a way that has degraded services in this area. Public housing has become stigmatised and they haven't succeeded in causing public housing to be seen as a genuine alternative, and for people living in public housing to be seen as no different from the rest of us.
There's also a feeling in the area, that they haven't provided the services, and they have treated public housing as a problem that needs to be eradicated, rather than a generally good system that needs to be fixed.
The Greens want more emphasis on public housing. Obviously some public housing needs to be replaced. Some of the public houses are quite old and probably do need to be knocked-down and replaced. The big problem has been in the past that the Carr Labor government has used this as an excuse to replace public with private housing. There's no security for the people who live there knowing that they can return.
The Greens want to provide people with that security and also to ensure that we don't end up with less public housing than we have at the moment, because we already have such a shortage.
A massive social program is needed to turn around the social situation for the poor and disadvantaged in Werriwa. Were the Greens to hold power, how would you pay for such a program?
There are a variety of different funding programs. We've looked at a small increase in corporate tax rates, an increase in income taxes and also the introduction of other taxes, but generally the actual details of the social policies should be put in place by a state government rather than a federal government.
The Howard government will take control of the Senate in July, and will implement a massive attack against working people and their unions. How will the Greens combat these attacks?
In the past there has been an opportunity to stop them within the parliament because of the government's lack of a majority in the Senate. When they take control of the Senate that opportunity will disappear. The more important thing is providing a public voice to protest about these things, and to build a public consensus that what the Howard government is doing is wrong, out on the streets and in the community.
From Green Left Weekly, March 16, 2005.
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