Bennelong/Federal Election 2025
To give everyone an idea of what the two Federal Traffic Light Voting Guides will look like, scroll down below to mock-ups from the 2022 Federal Election for the Bradfield House of Representatives seat and the Victorian Senate vacancies .
Both your local, and state or territory senate 2025 Traffic Light Voting Guides will be not be published on each electorate page until after the ballot draw in late April. In the meantime you can learn about how to effectively use Traffic Light Voting Guides for the upcoming Federal election by watching our video and familiarising yourself with its instructions.
Scroll further down this page to learn more about the Green Light candidates in Bennelong.
Green Light Candidates
John August (Fusion)
John qualifies as an Outstanding Green Light Candidate
Hi I’m John August. I’ve long been concerned about the injustices and problems around us. I’ve
stood for the Secular Party and Pirate Party in times past, and now stand for the Pirate branch
of Fusion for the seat of Bennelong. I’m concerned about many things, and need to focus on just a few here.
The Cost of Living and Housing Affordability
Our economy is out of balance because of how housing is treated as an investment. Rather than
increasing supply, the price is ratcheted up. Reforming our tax system will not just improve
housing affordability, but will also help our economy focus on genuine wealth building rather
than distractions.
Our cities become less and less liveable as we play infrastructure catch up. Rather than
building first and then putting in infrastructure later, we need to get ahead of the curve.
Climate change is a reality which increases our insurance premiums, meaning additional cost of
living pressures. We need to do our bit, and not just because it is the right thing to do.
Foreign Policy and Whistleblowing
While the major parties try to sell us on “mateship” and the “fair go”, that wasn’t how we
treated Timor Leste, along with Witness K and Bernard Collaery. We’ve treated other whistleblowers
badly too. It’s not just a matter of justice – we can only imagine the economic boost we’d have
if we made a serious go at reducing corruption – and supporting whistleblowers is an important
part of that, with recent supposed advances falling flat.
We need to make our foreign policy more principled and independent of the US, and forge our own
path. This was always the case, but is now even more relevant with the US going off the
rails. We need to pull out of AUKUS and find our own path.
Julian Assange was left to wither on the vine till he was ultimately released, without
any recognition of the good he has done. Our Governments’ approach was in contrast to how we
deal with Australians in trouble overseas, when standing up doesn’t inconvenience a nation
we’re fawning up to.
Rather than training our own people, we’re drawing on skilled migrants from less well of
countries. We’re parasitising, and we should really subtract this cost from our foreign
aid budget to get a real understanding of whether we’re actually helping the rest of the
world.
Surveillance Capitalism, Government Surveillance and corporate abuse
When social media knows enough about us, they can predict our behaviour better than we can,
and rather than “advertising” they have “markets in behavioural futures”, packaging and
selling our future actions. Such orchestration also undermines our democracy and what it
means to be a human being. Government surveillance also increases step by step as well.
This is something we need to challenge, to reclaim our own identities.
Along with junk mail and spam, corporations recruit our desires to change the world in a
positive way, as so we as candidates receive orchestrated spam from sites like dogooder.com .
We need to all engage in genuine activism, rather than have our goodwill harnessed for
other’s profits.
And so I say this to you: I’ll try to answer any genuine questions, but only if you choose
to engage directly with me, but not through such third party sites. I cherish my genuine
engagement with the world, and hope you will appreciate something similar yourself.
There’s also my website, https://johnaugust.com.au
But, further, let me say, I do my best and cannot be all things to all people.
Regardless of who you vote for, I hope you will find someone you feel comfortable voting for.