Columnist and Labor MP Alicia Payne (CW, 27 January 2022) really needs to get her facts right before she once again shoots her mouth off criticising the federal government. In her recent column, she blamed them for the closure of a Centrelink shopfront in Canberra, when in fact it is the responsibility of the Territory government*, which co-incidently (sic) is Labor.
While she predictably blames the world-wide virus on the Liberal government and states Labor would do better, she fails to mention the state governments that treated their citizens like prisoners and kept telling us that a short, sharp lockdown was going to eliminate the virus. These states – Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia – are all Labor governed and for a party that likes to pride itself on human rights, it blatantly eliminated all of them to delay the inevitable, that is, the virus finding its way in. Preventing people from seeing their loved ones before they die because they live in a different state but the same country was disgusting and inhumane, not to mention preventing people from returning to their own homes in their own state was ridiculous.
Where was federal Labor leader Albanese when this was happening? Telling us that he was going to waste $300 of taxpayers on each person vaccinated. That is the only constructive suggestion that came out of his mouth during this virus. The rest is just whinging and what he would do in hindsight.
Payne promises a Labor government will not leave behind Australians, but it is basically the same Labor government that put this country into huge debt when it was last in power and was responsible for 1,200 illegal immigrants drowning at sea.
– I Pilsner, Weston
*Fact check: Centrelink is a division of Services Australia, an agency of the Australian Government. It was Services Australia that decided not to renew the lease for the Centrelink shopfront in Braddon ACT, which expires February 2022.
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