Where was Carol Brown or any other Federal Labor MP when this funding was ripped from women …

Image L-R: Labor Senators Lin Thorp, Carol Brown, Catryna Bilyk, Anne Urquhart

Dear Editor,

I would like to submit the following article and photo as a single mother that felt a great sense of anger after recently reading a letter to the editor in the Mercury newspaper from Senator Carol Brown. I am sick and tired of two-faced politicians point scoring while the population suffers.

“Labor Senator Carol Brown recently made comment in the Mercury Newspaper (Letters 28 May) in which she attacks the Federal Abbott Government for its “brutal Budget” which “…creates an underclass in Australia and disproportionately attacks the poor and vulnerable including pensioners, women, families and students.”

I agree that the Abbott Government has got its priorities wrong and deserves a great deal of criticism but I feel that I have to challenge Senator Brown on her “genuine” interest for battlers.

I don’t recall hearing a peep from Senator Carol Brown when Federal Labor removed $100.00 a fortnight from single parents (mainly women) and their families in 2013.

This action caused more devastation to the most disadvantaged than anything I can recall in recent times and no one from Labor responded to the outcry. Not a word from the large contingent of Labor women representing Tasmania in Federal Parliament – Catryna Bilyk, Carol Brown, Julie Collins, Helen Polley, Lin Thorp, Anne Urquhart. Lisa Singh may be the only exception to this exceptionally poor contingent from Labor but that remains to be seen.

It is devastatingly hypocritical for Senator Brown put forward her mock indignation when I can assure her that large numbers of families were “shocked and angry” when they could not afford their rent, power, food or to adequately care for their children as a result of action taken by her Government .

Where was Carol Brown or any of the other Federal Labor MP when this funding was ripped from women and children? Why did none of them speak out about raising Newstart payments to a level above the poverty line?

One could be forgiven for labeling Senator Brown’s recent comments as nothing more than those of a political opportunist who has been in politics so long that she feels no embarrassment or shame for her own breathtaking hypocrisy.

Senator Brown and her colleagues showed no courage or commitment to those already in poverty while in Government – in fact they did nothing when our lives were made drastically worse.

The Liberal Party don’t care about battlers and the sad fact is that neither does the Labor Party. They put their party positions ahead of the people the are paid to represent and just pretend to care when it suits them. Little wonder that so many people cannot believe anything put forward by any of our political representatives.”

Yours sincerely

Mrs D.Young
Midway Point