By Franca Arena
I have been in Australia for 52 years, arriving at age 21. I joined the ALP in 1972 wanting to contribute and become involved in my new country. I was a member for more than 25 years.
There were many wonderful people in the party, full of ideals for a more equitable and just society. The 1970s was a great decade for change, including the battle to improve the position of women in society. But there were also opportunists and careerists, who have now become the dominant group in the party.
The rot started in NSW with the Olympics. Our treasurer at the time, Michael Egan, congratulated himself that the Games had been paid for, but what he did not say was that millions were slashed from transport, hospitals and schools. New projects were cancelled to find the billions needed.
The state infrastructure has gone slowly but surely downhill, year after year, ever since, with the few remaining good people pushed aside as the opportunists took control of the party. Even an elected premier such as Morris Iemma, a good man, was pushed to resignation.
I make a plea to the people of NSW to not vote for the ALP at the next election. I write this not out of spite but out of love for our state and its future. It pains me to say it, but it is really the most dysfunctional, dishonest and incompetent government we ever had in this state.
Even Kristina Keneally admitted ''we lost our way, we were focused only on ourselves''. Yes indeed, and focused also on overseas trips, on dozens and dozens of expensive consultants and spin doctors who cost taxpayers millions, not to mention the endless sex, rorting and corruption scandals. What about closing down Parliament three months before an election and refusing immunity to vital witnesses after the bungled, disgraceful sale of electricity assets? How can one forget her pious request that Sydney residents be exempt from the Queensland flood levy as the cost of living here is higher than in other states and the mortgages are bigger? Pathetic, to say the least.
Labor needs a good decade in opposition to find its roots, to think of the people it should be serving, instead of itself. After all, this is the basic tenet of our democratic system: alternative government. Power for a few years, then renewal in opposition. Labor has been in power for too long.
I do not know how the Coalition government will perform, but we have an old saying in Italian that goes ''scopa nuova, scopa bene'', which means ''a new broom sweeps well''. It will make its mistakes, but it must have learnt a lot of lessons in 16 years. I will give it a go. Nobody could be as bad as Labor, if this government was ever re-elected.
I still consider myself a Labor woman at heart but at the last state election, for the first time in my life, I voted Liberal. Time for Labor was already up, and it was disastrous that it was re-elected in 2007. My local member is Mike Baird, and I will vote for him again. He is a capable young man and a good chip off the old block. His father Bruce was one of the most respected and esteemed members of Parliament.
Forgive me for giving you my opinion. I know I will sleep better for having done so.
Franca Arena was the first Australian woman of Italian background elected to an Australian parliament. She served in the NSW upper house from 1981 to 1999.
Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU