Dear Ranjini,

here is a letter I have sent to many ALP members of parliment

Pete Whetton
ALP Member

Open letter to ALP MPs, PM Ministers and Party Organisations.

Dear ALP, PM, MP, and South Australian Secretary,

After a lifetime as a supporter and often member of the ALP I find I must in all conscience now resign my membership. I do this with real sadness. I have weathered many ups and downs in the party and yet stayed a True Believer, seen many policy decisions I have disagreed with but stayed a supporter. I realise real politic is often the art of compromise, but compromise whist generally staying true to core values.

Over the last few years I have been dismayed to see our once proud Social Democrat party veer to the right, seeing our policy now seemingly written by the Abbot Right and Industrial Power figures, seeing our core values of Social Justice dissipate, nay disappear totally. My breaking point has come like many other past members over the governments detention policy, that Australia is detaining at all, but mostly that it is detaining children is disgusting.

Cases like Ranjini held with her children in Villawood with no hope of freedom on an unpublished ASIO finding, no charge, no proof of guilt and no due process will lead to our country being held in contempt. Already we are facing criticism from the International community, for breaking our own law. That we would put adults and even more so children in little better than prisons, I was tempted to say Concentration Camps, is a disgrace, is cruel and inhumane. Remember the last organisation that had this type of unfettered power in a democracy was the FBI under Edgar Hoover, which held a nation to ransom for years with politician’s afraid to speak out.

Where has Habeas Corpus gone? Where has due process disappeared? Where has Social Democracy gone? Where, most of all has Australia’s much vaunted Fair Go gone? Since when did a spy organisation run our Nations policy? As an active Social democrat I must seek my voice elsewhere, for I cannot find it in the ALP anymore. I will still seek to defeat the Abbott Opposition, for I realise that things would be far worse with them in power, but not any longer from within the ALP. I will be active in the movement to re-establish our Freedoms, our Nations Social Democratic Ethos and to free people like Ranjini.

If ever our party finds its true self and social conscience again I will gladly renew my membership.
Peter Whetton