There are those among us who appear to consider themselves more Australian than the rest. They feel that they are able to declare certain of their fellow citizens un-Australian because they have a different point of view to their own.
Such appears to be the case with Graeme Carroll in his diatribe on Andrew Wilkie in his letter published 6 July. But there’s more! Not only is Andrew Wilkie un-Australian, but he does not appear to have been elected in a way that suits Mr Carroll, who does not appear to be aware that we have an optional preferential voting system in this country. Very many members of the House of Representatives are elected by many of their constituents who might have had them as second, third or even fourth choice on their ballot paper. It is a very fair system where the “most preferred” person is elected.
So the fact that he came from Australia’s smallest state with only a “virtual handful of votes” (13,788 primary votes – Mr Carroll obviously has big hands) does not diminish in any way his right to represent his electorate as the most preferred candidate. Nor does it preclude him from fulfilling his representative duties in a way that he believes to be the most effective for his constituents and the nation at large.
Now Mr Wilkie is a very interesting Australian, having attended Duntroon before becoming an officer in the Australian Army. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was assigned to the Office of National Assessments as an intelligence analyst where he resigned in 2003, after 20 years’ army service, over his concern that intelligence was being misrepresented by the Howard government trying to justify its case for Australia to join with the US in invading Iraq. He contested the seat of Bennelong in the 2004 federal election and forced John Howard to rely on preferences for his re-election.
So here we have Graeme Carroll accusing Andrew Wilkie of being un-Australian, a 20-year Army Officer and a man of obvious courage and conviction who has now confronted two prime ministers on moral issues, whilst Mr Carroll manages a decent sized registered club which, according to the recent Productivity Commission Report, obtains 40 per cent of its poker machine revenue from just 15 per cent of problem gamblers. The Report further stated that, in some cases, gamblers were losing more than $65,000 a month playing poker machines.
The Servies is a decent sized club but not so big that its CEO would not know who its best pokie customers were. What have you done, Mr Carroll, to alleviate the suffering of the families of those problem pokie machine gamblers that use your club?
We know what Andrew Wilkie is trying to do about it and more power to him.
Ray Blackburn
