Uncle Joe For Mayor? Dare to dream!

“Melbourne anarchist Joseph Toscano has also nominated for mayor. Dr Toscano, 56, has run unsuccessfully for the Senate as an independent for the past 30 years.”

Huzzah!

Joe’s team is titled ‘Shifting The Burden’, and includes one other candidate for Deputy Lord Mayor, Margaret Ely. You can meet the “Radical Mayoral Candidates who intend to turn Melbourne Upside Down” midday Wednesday, October 29, outside MELBOURNE TOWN HALL. Joe and Margaret aim to:

• Introduce a 1% trade and financial services tax on businesses in Melbourne that have a yearly turnover of over 100 million dollars.
• Introduce a turnover tax of 10% on Crown Casino.
• Double the rates paid by anyone owning more than twenty million dollars of property in Melbourne.
• Use the money raised to transform Melbourne into a green sustainable, secure city that tackles poverty and homelessness.
• Provide capital to establish worker controlled and owned co-operatives and community based collectives.
• Erect a monument to honour Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner, indigenous freedom fighters executed in Melbourne 1842.
• Give electors the power to recall representatives.
• Harvest community wisdom by holding weekly public meetings.
• Hold citizen initiated referendums.
• Make Councillors responsible for specific wards.
• Make the council bureaucracy accountable to Council, not the State government.
• Provide secure employment for council staff, increase their minimum hourly rate to 25 dollars and decrease their maximum rate to 100 dollars.

Other budding Leadership Teams for Marvellous Melbourne are:

• Fowles A Fresh Vision (Will Fowles and David Wilson) ALP
• McMullin-Wilson For Melbourne’s Future (Peter McMullin and Tim Wilson) ALP
• The Greens (Adam Bandt and Kathleen Malzahn)
• Gary Morgan and Michele Anderson
• C MELBOURNE GROW – CATHERINE NG (Catherine Ng and Terry Makings)
• Robert King Crawford and Michael Kennedy
• ACTIVATE MELBOURNE (Robert Doyle and Susan Riley) Liberals
• PASSION FOR MELBOURNE (Nick Columb and Sue Calwell)
• Gary Singer and Joanne Painter

Will Fowles is a member of the Fowles auction group and an ALP member. Mr Fowle’s Fresh Vision is being articulated by Ozan Ibrisim, a former editor of Monash University’s Lot’s Wife, and Ministerial Advisor to John Pandazopoulos (also a former student hack from Monash). “John Pandazopoulos has served as your hard working Member for Dandenong since he was first elected in 1992”; Fowles is a ‘leftist’. His running mate, David Wilson, is a current Melbourne City councillor.

Peter McMullin is a brave man, who has served Geelong well as a councillor, and, as a mark of his seriousness, owns a house in Melbourne (and plans to move there soon), while at the same time maintaining his Barwon Heads property and remaining a regular visitor to the seaside town. He’s also an ALP hack, formally aligned with the Labor Unity faction, and the heir apparent to the Spotless catering fortune. His running mate, Tim Wilson, is a gay Tory, and works for the corporate think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Funnily enough, media for the pair is being handled by Robert Larocca, chairperson of the CERES Management Committee.

Gary Morgan is a pollster, and has stated that as Lord Mayor he comes cheap: “the executive chairman of Roy Morgan Research said he would forgo the $143,000 annual allowance as well as other perks of the top job. He would also give up the city limousine and chauffeur that John So has enjoyed for the past seven years.” Presumably, Gary’s saved a few pennies over the years, and will not have to avail himself of Melbourne’s charities for food, clothes and shelter. Of course, owning a restaurant helps.

Catherine Ng and Terry Makings are hot for growth. Growth is good! Also, Councillor Ng “looks forward to working with all Melburnians, from shopkeepers to new residents, to help improve their lives, their businesses and trying hard to solve their problems.” Some of her own problems in the current race for Mayor she lays at the feet of her rivals: “LORD mayoral candidate Catherine Ng has accused her opponents of dirty politics, the first serious spat in the race to lead the City of Melbourne. Cr Ng said she took serious offence at suggestions that her run for mayor was part of a Liberal Party factional play.” Her running mate, Terry, is a former Council employee, Director of Assets and Services, sacked last year.

Robert “King” Crawford was in his teens when he borrowed £90 from his Aunt Ethel, a needlework designer in the Block Arcade, and founded “the first major all-Australian record company”. Another King daubs paint onto canvas. In a totally awesome but possibly unrelated story, this other King appears to have designed a flag: the Australian Flag of Unity. “It is no doubt that the Unity Flag has all the right components to be the flag of our great Nation” wrote some one called Alana Borchtchevskaia. “But unfortunately getting the government to agree is a hard task in deed. Mr. Crawford stated that “the flag will not prevail while John Howard is in power. The government is scared of a flag that means so much.” Since the flag gained popularity the phones at Robert Crawfords residence have been tapped and any support that the flag began to receive from politicians has been quickly extinguished. “The power of the flag, not just the look of the flag, but what it means is everything – and that is what some people fear.”

Running risks is in Nick Columb’s blood. His parents – persecuted by Nazis, then communists – smuggled him out of Romania as a baby in a hidden compartment beneath a train after World War II.

He’s been taking chances ever since.

Pugnacious, confident and intuitive, he went from law school to journalism to public relations before making his first fortune, which he parlayed into a bigger one before the recession of the early 1990s.

On the way, he became an outstanding judge of racehorses, selecting a string of young horses in the 1980s that won him two Caulfield Cups, two Golden Slippers, two Oaks and a Derby.

Columb has chosen to be a lower-key millionaire in recent years, dabbling in property development, investment, and only the occasional $200,000 galloper.

Gary Singer is Deputy Lord Mayor, a law-talking guy, and like all the other VIPs in the Mayoral race, a member of numerous boards and committees. His running mate, Joanne, works for Icon, a PR firm. Icon maintains a simply fabulous blog. “Melbourne’s hottest new PR agency – icon.pr, was officially launched last Thursday 2nd October at Fog Restaurant Bar. Among the guests was international actor Vince Colosimo, fashion designers Gwendolynne Burkin and Roger Grinstead, actor and producer Nick Giannopoulos, writer and presenter Andi Lew, and model Helen Cauchi to name a few. The launch was covered by the Herald Sun’s Confidential section, featuring guests and the event in Saturday’s social pages. Guests indulged in the most delicious canapés and sipped apple martinis that Fog’s head bartender had dreamt up especially for the event. The event was sponsored by many high-end brands including Fog Restaurant Bar, Aveda, Polaroid, Box Magazine, Griffiths Coffee and Hairy Lemon. At the end of the evening, all guests were treated to a gorgeous gift bag filled with fantastic products donated by the sponsors.”

The Greens are The Greens; the Liberals are the Tories.