In this episode we meet a local character who’s got some strong ideas about how we should build back better after COVID-19.
Drew Pavlou is a 22 year old who lives in Brisbane and unexpectedly found himself a target of Chinese Nationalists when he became involved in student politics at the University of Queensland. Drew is passionate about the human rights of Uyghurs, Taiwanese and Hong Kongers and organised a protest during the 2019/2020 Hong Kong protests. A professor at the university encouraged a counter protest with Chinese Nationalists at the university, during which Drew was physically assaulted.
Following the protest, Drew was suspended from the University and his family received death threats from the Chinese Communist Party. Drew then went on to gain and then lose his UQ senate seat, before standing up for himself against UQ and having his suspension overturned.
Drew is now running for an Australian Federal Senate seat (2022) after forming his own political party; Drew Pavlou Democratic Alliance.
In this episode he discusses his political platform.
Drew Pavlou says he puts human rights at the centre of federal policy and his platform includes;
- Standing up to China and protection of Human Rights
- Strengthening Australia’s democracy to fight corruption
- Making Australia a Renewables Superpower
- Economic Nation Building
- No Australian left behind, tackle poverty and homelessness
- Boycott China’s genocide
- Ripping up the Free Trade Agreement with China until the atrocities in China are stopped
Drew Pavlou believes that “inequality, the Climate Crisis and the Chinese Government’s atrocities and making politics work for people – it’s all connected”.
Drew’s 3 Big Ideas:
- Sovereign supply chains, bring back Australian manufacturing
- Rebuild our working class communities
- Making politics work for the people, give democracy back to the people
Beyond the Rona Podcast is recorded in Logan, Queensland on Yuggera country. We acknowledge the traditional owners past, present and emerging.
If you’re interested in coming on the show, please contact us, we would love to hear from you!
Episode Transcript
Andrea Wildin 0:00
We’re recording today on the lands of the Jagera people. And we acknowledge that the traditional owners here
Andrea Wildin 0:13
Today, Drew Pavlou is going to tell us what he thinks is the way forward for us as we move beyond COVID-19 and rebuild our communities. Thanks for coming to talk to us today Drew.
Drew Pavlou 0:25
Thank you so much, Andrea, for having me. Thank you so much, Tim, as well. No, I’m very, very excited to speak on the podcast.
Andrea Wildin 0:32
You’ve been really busy. I’m gonna do a quick overview of your story. Yes. So you live in Brisbane? You went to Villanova? You’re Greek? Okay, after high school, you went to University of Queensland to study a Bachelor of Arts majoring in philosophy?
Drew Pavlou 0:49
Yes, Philosophy, history and English literature.
Andrea Wildin 0:53
Okay. And in 2019, you organised a protest at the university. Yeah. Okay. During this time, you had a seat on the UQ. Union Senate.
Drew Pavlou 1:03
No. So I so at that time, when I’ve organised that first protest, I was I had no position I was just, I didn’t. Yeah,
Andrea Wildin 1:11
okay. Yeah. But this was at the time of the 2019 2020 Hong Kong protests, okay. So if we go back to the day that you had this, you had this protest, right, you’re passionate kid at uni. And then you were suspended for six months. And this was because this, this professor, he kind of got involved with what the student was doing and got, he encouraged these counter, counter protests against you and you got assaulted, but you got suspended for 6 months
Drew Pavlou 1:43
such a crazy story. So I went and there was only 15 People with me, and it was a one hour sit in. And we’re actually like 10 minutes away from leaving, there had been no problems at all. And, you know, it was actually like, it was like a protest that was actually organised with like, leftists like, I had actually asked Socialists Alternative on campus to attend and support it, because, yeah, I had actually, like, I had always had kind of a fractious relationship with UQ Socialist Alternative, but I had actually spoken alongside them at at the protests against the Ramsey Institute at UQ. So like, I actually had come to it from a sort of left thing and like, I had actually asked UQ Socialist Alternative, their leader Ula, who’s this young Muslim woman, I asked her to speak on because it was an issue also real involving Uyghurs. Um, and so they were speaking like it was a small protest, it was actually like trying, we’re trying to organise it with like your left groups on campus, although some conservative students did come as well. But yeah, like 10 minutes before it was about to end. I guess I was sitting down and I was trying to think up chants because I had no idea like what to do? Yeah, I just was chatting like “Xi Jinping’s Gotta go, hey, hey, whoa, whoa, Xi Jinping’s Gotta Go”.
Drew Pavlou 2:53
And then, um, and then a Chinese Nationalists – And this guy was in his 30s. And he was a big hulking guy, and he had a backpack and it was in a big jacket and black sunglasses came in from the side and he reached down and grabbed my megaphone. I was trying to hold on to it. He like snatched down, my hands smashed on the ground. And my initial response was like, I knew everyone, I’d never been in a fight before my entire life, like, never thrown a punch in anger. If anything, like in school, I’d probably like, got picked on a little bit. Sometimes, like, I got punched in the arm a lot and like, like, never really fight back, but I just knew like, and I just
Drew Pavlou 3:29
I knew I was kinda like, just knew I’d been. I looked up and like I’d been and I realised that we’d been surrounded and “oh shit”. There were actually a lot of Chinese Nationalists about that surrounded us and all sides. And I knew people were filming and someone was like, oh, even though I’ve never thrown a punch before and I’m gay, even though I’ve never fought in my life. Like, I’ve got like, you know, just stand up for myself. Like, I can’t be seen to just like, you know, have this guy snatch the megaphone from me smash it on the ground, do nothing. So I got up. I tried to push him back, because like it was self defence. You know, this guy had actually, like, just out of nowhere, basically assaulted me. He’d grabbed my property smashed on the ground.
Drew Pavlou 4:04
I got up and I tried to push him back. And then a guy from the side had actually come. And if you look at the footage, they’d actually like been coordinating like he had looked over to the side with his mate. And this was another guy in a big jacket, sunglasses. He was in his 30s. And he actually had an earpiece in and, and he had come from a different direction. If you look at the footage, they looked over to each other before they attacked me. So when I went up to push him, this guy had come in from the side punched me in the ribs, and throw me to the ground, and….
Drew Pavlou 4:33
And again, I just, I guess it was just adrenaline and I wasn’t really thinking I was like, I just have to stand up for myself. I’ve got back up, I tried to push it again. And then that’s when they got me in the mouth. And I like I got punched in the jaw and I was thrown to the ground, and then I got up and then at that point I realised yeah we’d been surrounded completely. I think the police estimate at that point in time of the day was there 300 Chinese Nationalists. So yeah, our protests of 15 people have been surrounded by 300 Chinese Nationalists on all sides.
Drew Pavlou 5:01
The leader, this if you look at the footage, the second I got punched the Chinese national anthem got started playing. So it actually was something they did that. Yeah, the leader held up a huge boombox and he was playing the Chinese national anthem, and that’s trying to drown us out. And yeah, and a lot of them were holding up signs saying like, “Hong Kong is China” and, and like “Hong Kong is the dogs” and like, just insults, and they’re screaming out abuse and hurling abuse.
Drew Pavlou 5:25
And then I was like, Oh, my God, what do we do and I got up and I tried to organise our resistance, I suppose, which was 10-15 people, but we were surrounded on all sides. And at that point, a guy in a – is a guy, a Chinese nationalist guy in a skeleton teeth mask, he came up behind me, punched me in the back of the head wall, my back was turned, it was coward punch. And those are dangerous, people can die from those. If I was on concrete, if he had knocked me out in my head head, hit the concrete, you know, people go to hospital for that. He coward punched me from behind. And then when I fell to the ground, he grabbed my posters and ripped it up. And then we were, we were just trying to work out what to do. And I was trying to yell to my friends, you know, yell out the chant – “What do we do when fascists attack? Stand up, fight back”.
Drew Pavlou 6:11
And we’re trying to chant but we’re getting, you know, drowned out by the huge boom speaker. And then yeah, that point, um, the security guards tried to step in and UQ’s investigation, they had a photo of this. This same guy bit the security guards hand, and there’s a huge bite mark on the security guards hand in the photo that the UQ.. that UQ had in the investigation,
Andrea Wildin 6:32
and you got a seat on the UQ Senate at some stage, but then you lost it. Because of all of this.
Drew Pavlou 6:36
Yeah, sorry, So basically, at that point, I’m still in young labour, but I wouldn’t I hadn’t been involved really at all in anything with it. It was just a member on paper. And yeah, and in the aftermath of those protests, and when I was attacked, and everything, and I had the death threats. I was like, I’m going to run for the UQ Senate. And so, for the UQ Senate, and then the the Young Labor had a big candidate, who was the UQ union president at the time, and they were all so so angry when I nominated against her. Because they were like, Oh, you’re betraying the party, blah, blah. And I was like, Well, I’ve never even really gone to an event or anything, like, I’m just myself. And they all went so so feral that me and they were attacking me. And um, and another Labor candidate, she wrote, she ran a pro China campaign on WeChat, which was like, which was like attacking me and saying, like, “if you want to stop the Hong Kong troublemaker, Drew Pavlou, vote for Gabi Star to stop him for the UQ Senate”.
Drew Pavlou 6:38
So this UQ Senate campaign became really vicious. And I was receiving death threats again. I actually somehow won because I was just campaigning so hard. When I get something in my head. I’m so so determined. So had no party behind me had no money behind me. It was just me and truth, true friends. And we were just sending out links. It was an online election. So we just sent out links to every single person we knew at UQ. And I was campaigning, six, seven hours a day for nothing.
Drew Pavlou 7:52
Just I was so so… I was so determined. And I said, when I get in, I’m going to donate the $25,000 a year salary to the Uyghurs. And I actually did do that. When I yeah, when I got in, I donated think I turned $17,000 before they kicked me off the Senate. So I got $17,000 for my time on the Senate, it was supposed to be 100,000 – No – it was supposed to be $50,000 over two years. I got $17,000 before they kicked me off. And I’ve donated every single cent to Uyghurs.
Andrea Wildin 8:19
Yeah. But then when you lost that seat, another guy and this was a really interesting story. Another guy changed his name to Drew Pavlou. Yeah, what happened to that guy as he changed his name back again?
Drew Pavlou 8:31
No he’s still Drew Pavlou legally . See – There’s so much here ! I want to write a book I actually have been
Andrea Wildin 8:38
yeah, you’ve got a manifesto coming haven’t you?
Drew Pavlou 8:41
I’ve actually been writing a book and I’m trying to find a publisher because, look, I think it’s a crazy story. Like, there’s just so much because I mean, I started off like just, you know, son of a fruit shop manager, and then sudden – and then suddenly, I was like, enemy number one in Australia for the Chinese government. And, and basically, the reason I got expelled was because the Chinese government then began after I got elected to the Senate, which was a position they couldn’t ignore me on. Then the Chinese government started putting out newspaper articles in the Chinese Nationalist Press saying that I was racist, and that I should be expelled.
Drew Pavlou 9:10
And so the university then brought in three law firms. They ended up admitting to Parliament, they spent half a million dollars trying to expel me. And and then they eventually… they were seeking permanent expulsion, so that even so it’d be lifetime exposure. So I had six months left on my courses. Yeah, but the way it would have worked, if they were successful, they wanted to make it so that even at seventy years old, I wouldn’t even be able to go to UQ or whatever. And, and obviously, as part of that, I would lose my Senate seat, which I was democratically elected to.
Andrea Wildin 9:39
And are you still suing the UQ for 3 .5million.
Unknown Speaker 9:43
Yes. So I was very, very lucky that I’m one of Australia’s best barristers, Tony Morris QC, he represented, he offered to represent me for free, I was so lucky I was so lucky. And UQ brought in Minter Ellison and they had a partner at Minter Ellison one of the most expensive law firms in Australia – come in and…The process was so so rigged and unfair, like they had a kangaroo court where it was like UQ employees. And then they brought in, they brought in the partner at Minter Ellison to represent the university’s position and telling their own employees, the universities position is that we want you to expel Drew Pavlou for life. Yeah.
Drew Pavlou 10:17
And the process was so unfair, originally, they didn’t even want to let me have a lawyer. They were saying you’re only allowed one support person. And the whole thing has to be confidential. They were trying to say that I can’t even speak about it. And I was like, No, I’m going to be speaking about it. And my support person is going to be Tony Morris QC. And they were really upset, and but we actually
Drew Pavlou 10:36
thanks to Tony’s work, and we built so much public pressure. We got it down to two years initially. And then there was still so much public pressure. And I think the actual I think this is actually this was reported the press the Education Minister at the time Dan Tehan actually rung up the chancellor Peter Varghese and said, This is unacceptable. The government doesn’t accept this. You have. Yeah. And then Peter – …
Andrea Wildin 10:56
Yeah, I think that Professor guy should have lost his job.
Drew Pavlou 11:00
He should have and he still- he got a five year- That’s the problem. He got a five year new contract. And then Peter Hoy, he already was planning to leave UQ in August, but he went to the University of Adelaide got a new million dollar salary. So no one was- , yeah, it was like, they were actually rewarded.
Andrea Wildin 11:14
And didn’t you actually have a petition to stop free trade in China? How many people signed that petition.
Drew Pavlou 11:23
I think the biggest petition we ever had was the petition against my expulsion, we actually had 50,000 signatures basically,
Andrea Wildin 11:27
yeah, but if we were going to have like, no war with China, like it was, if we were going to have say, no war with China. You know, I know that you are pretty vocal about our, our tensions, you know, or the tension between China and Taiwan. Like, you know, how many people did you get to sign that petition of stopping free trade with China?
Drew Pavlou 11:55
Look, basically, we have a free trade agreement with China. It was signed by Tony Abbott in like 2014. I think it’s completely unfair, because in China, trade unions are banned. So any worker who tries to organise their workspace to have a trade union, they get killed, basically, like there have been, yeah, disappearances. So my position is until the Chinese people are allowed to have independent trade unions. And, and also until these atrocities stopped, we shouldn’t have a free trade agreement with China. And they basically breached it anyway by launching economic sanctions against us. So I was saying just rip it up. It’s already effectively ripped up. We saw thousands of people sign up to that petition. And is it is….And it is a… it is a position we have for our independent Senate campaign. However,
Andrea Wildin 12:37
because you’re running this now, at 22, you’re running this Drew Pavlou Democratic Alliance yes, Drew 22. For the underdog.
Andrea Wildin 12:47
you’ve taken all of these experiences, and you’ve put it into you like- it forms the basis of your policies, which you you feel are -like your policies for your Senate. You know, your Senate campaign are based on human rights and putting human rights at the centre of federal policy. Yes. And I’ve just had a look at your website. And your your policies are sort of loosely based on standing up to China and protection of human rights. Yeah. And obviously China is like, you know, it’s a big subject at the moment for a lot of Aussie’s. Strengthening Aussie democracy to fight corruption. Yes. And renewables –
Drew Pavlou 13:32
again, that’s something that came out of my own experiences because I saw just how dirty politics was up close. I saw how like, major like people with a lot of power in, in Australia, like these university executives, they had millions of dollars that go off to me, they brought in even PR firms to smear me,
Andrea Wildin 13:48
So it’s busting open that
Drew Pavlou 13:50
I was attacked by the Australian Financial Review really viciously, I was attacked really viciously in the Adelaide media when Peter Hoy returned, like, like, there was some really vicious stuff, like and I saw. Yeah. And I was trying to, like, I was trying to ask MPs to support me and really, like, there were like, sadly, the only Greens the only Green who helped me was Jono Sri. And I really liked Jono. But even Jono, every time he helped me, he had to preface it by going all look, I don’t always agree with what Drew says and stuff like that. So it just felt like a lot of people in the left like, just didn’t want to touch me.
Drew Pavlou 14:23
And I wrote to Penny Wong and I was like, Look, Penny, the, you know, I’m actually I was in labor, I want to, I’m coming from to this from a human rights perspective. I know you’ve actually support Hong Kong democracy and stuff. I’m really hoping that Labor can help me here. I don’t want it to just be a liberal thing. Because at that time, the only people who supported me was Sky News & News Corp. I was I actually wrote, saying I really want some support from people in labor and she actually ignored it. And then two months later, her chief of staff wrote back, and this was after I’d already been expelled and I was like, oh, sorry, we don’t get involved in internal disciplinary things at universities. And..and so the only people who really supported me though, like two or three liberal people like, like James Patterson, who’s now the Intelligence Committee chair. And then Bob Katter.
Drew Pavlou 15:03
And then that’s how I became friends with Bob Katter. Because like, I actually, then I was…. Then I was talking with Bob and people think of him as very, very right wing and he isn’t he is on… He’s very conservative on social matters. However, like we were talking, and he was like, Drew you know, in America, I’d probably vote for Bernie Sanders, the only thing I disagreed with him on was abortion. And I was like, Oh, my God, like, because at the end of the day, he’s actually like, he actually was going like, basically my policies. Like he’s basically an agrarian socialist. He’s like, he’s kind of got quite left wing policies, like he’s actually stood up in Parliament and called for a Royal Commission into the free market and stuff like that. And it’s gonna be attacking free, free market rubbish and stuff like that. So we actually kind of talked a lot about that and how our views overlapped. And yeah, I was thinking like, my thinking at the time was because he was the only MP would back to me and I loved like, the kind of funny stuff that I love this funny crocodile stuff. I love this funny like, personally. Yeah. Obviously. Obviously, very on the on the conservative like, stuff that…..right,
Andrea Wildin 16:02
You’ve also got renewable superpower economic nation building. Now, if we’re, if we’re talking about, you know, China and all that stuff within that, you know, are you looking at, you know, net zero emissions by 30? That sort of stuff?
Drew Pavlou 16:18
Look, look, this is the thing, right? Like, I think all these issues intersect, because it actually I actually see this ultimately, as even like the Chinese government and its atrocity, I actually see it almost as a crisis of global capitalism as well. Because a lot of sometimes a mistake a lot of people on the left make are not not mainstream people, we call them more tankies. These are the people who support like authoritarian communist regimes and stuff. They think they seem to think that the Chinese government is communist, just simply because it has communist in the name. But in fact, like China is now one of the key drivers of the global capitalist economy. And it has such deplorable incredible rates of poverty and inequality. It’s even more unequal than America. So side by side with, you know, having the most billionaires in the entire world side by side with having people worth $100 billion.
Drew Pavlou 17:04
In the Chinese countryside, there’s, there’s a really good book called Invisible China. And it reveals that up to 1/3 of, of children in the Chinese countryside and keep in mind that the majority of kids are still born in the Chinese countryside. Up to 1/3, will face permanent developmental stunting due to due to intestinal worms, malnutrition, things that could really easily be rectified. This is one of the this is now one of the most wealthy governments on Earth. The Chinese ruling class is extraordinarily wealthy, and yet that is that is existing side by side with malnutrition.
Drew Pavlou 17:36
So the way I often see this is, I think what happened was, there was almost this sort of symbiosis between the Western capital elite and the Chinese capital elite. It was almost like this pact written in blood because- after Tiananmen Square people knew how brutal the Chinese government was. And yet, Western governments and Western business leaders still decided to really, really heavily invest in China. And I think it’s because the the pact that was written was almost like this. To bypass trade unions in the West bypassed an organised working class in the West that was demanding higher wages, etc. They had to basically offshore production and how would they do that?
Drew Pavlou 18:17
They could go to China, where trade unions are banned where the Chinese government in many ways, the in many ways the pact that Deng Xiaoping wrote with the Chinese people in the aftermath of Tiananmen, what Tiananmen represented? People often don’t realise this, but it was also a really heavily… a many of the hundreds of people. So we don’t know how many people were murdered in Tiananmen. A lot of people think a lot of people think that the main massacres occurred in Tiananmen Square itself. In reality, it seems that most of the massacres that occurred with Tiananmen Square, actually were in the suburbs of Beijing. And in working class neighbourhoods where trade unions were were like fighting really strongly against the government, and they’re demanding better protections for the workplaces, etc. And that was actually the main site of the military crackdown where 1000s of people killed.
Drew Pavlou 19:07
And so part of Tiananmen Square and the Tiananmen crackdown was like Deng Xiaoping saying, there will be limited economic freedom in the sense that we will allow like capitalism to exist in China, we will kind of allow free markets to exist in China, but there will be no political freedoms, there will be no trade unions, etc. And the Western elites saw that, and I think they didn’t care. They actually thought that was good, because they could bypass strong Western. They could spike past strong working class, trade union organisation in the west by just simply offshoring the China where the whether the social, whether the social contract written in the aftermath of the brutal Tiananmen massacre was we’re going to not allow any trade unions. We’re not going to allow any civil society to form at all. We’re going to…
Drew Pavlou 19:51
and so what happened was the Chinese leadership and the Chinese elite they benefited massively because the West basically poured trillions in capital investment in. And those trillions that were poured in. I mean, they were distributed very unequally in China, obviously, there has been a huge growth in China, and a lot of people have been lifted out of poverty. But a lot of a lot of the time the Chinese government goes, “you know, we lifted 800 million people out of poverty”. Or if you look at the statistics, a lot of the time, that is like, really poverty in name only, because it’s like, if you’re just defining it as $2 a day, and then you’re lifting people to $4 a day, in a country where they’re billionaires like it’s really…. So.
Andrea Wildin 20:29
So I’m glad that you’ve got another section on there saying “no Aussie left behind tackle poverty and homelessness”, because, like, a lot of what you talk about, though, has seemingly has to do with China. And so you know, I have to say that a lot of people are going to be saying, you know, Can we can we not think globally, but like act locally, you know,
Drew Pavlou 20:50
that’s actually how I’m trying to. That’s how I’m trying to think, though, because, like the so there was that pact, I think, between the Western elites and the Chinese elites, and it didn’t really help the Chinese people. Because the massive investment that went in it went into the the well connected party leaders, it went in, and a lot was taken in the form of corruption, a lot of it was taken in the form of kickbacks. And the people who really, really benefited were the people who were connected with the Chinese Communist Party. So yeah, so it’s benefited the Chinese elite, and it also benefited the Western elite, because then then all of a sudden, the Western elite could basically just offshore manufacturing. And so a lot of the traditional industries that the working class relied upon died. And one of the main ways that people were able to earn a stable income without a university education was basically ripped away from them. And yeah, as a result, we’ve had this kind of shift towards overtime over decades, it’s now shift towards like, the gig economy where people are on short term contracts where people have no power where or atomized the working class union, the working class trade unions, they’ve actually been broken. So basically, this shift to China, it coincided with the breaking of the trade union movement in Australia in the West as well, that sort of huge spikes in inequality. So what we want to do is we actually want like firstly, on just-
Andrea Wildin 22:03
if you are going to work if you are going to say three big things. Yeah, that our local community needs to rebuild now that we’ve had Coronavirus what, what are three big things that you reckon we need
Drew Pavlou 22:13
so so we need sovereign supply chains. So what Coronavirus what the Coronavirus, has shown us and also what the Chinese government’s trade war has shown us is this system where we’re just offshoring everything, and a lot of it is offshored onto to a country where the dictatorship is very brutal. Like that does not work. So we want sovereign supply chains, we want to bring back Australian manufacturing, the really good thing is that can coincide with the Green Revolution. So there are now trillions of dollars going into renewable energy, Australia’s so well positioned for that for meeting this revolution, because we’ve got all the rare earth minerals that you need to make things like batteries to make solar panels to make electric vehicles. So things like cobalt, things like lithium, we’ve got that right here in Australia. Okay.
Drew Pavlou 22:58
So my thinking is, it’s all linked together, right? Like, we can lift up people in the regions who’ve been left behind, because they were some of the biggest losers in this huge like, kind of like, shift to the global, global capitalist economy. They were like left behind, we can rebuild working class communities. We don’t have to base like a lot of the time people try and present. Sadly, people try and present the shift, or the transition to renewables as something that will inevitably have losers. I don’t think that has to be the case. And in fact, it should not be the case. So the just transition is so important to us.
Drew Pavlou 23:32
We’re saying everyone who’s currently you know, a coal miner, everyone who’s working on fossil fuel industries. Let’s give them guaranteed jobs in mining, lithium, copper, cobalt, the things that you need to make electric vehicles, the things that you need to make batteries. And then we manufacture batteries. We manufacture electric vehicles right here, we bring back advanced Australian manufacturing. And this would solve all these issues, you know, because we were protecting Australia’s independence so that we’re no longer at risk of the Chinese government’s economic coercion. We’re rebuilding the Australian working class, because, yeah, back, we’re bringing back manufacturing jobs, we’re bringing back long term good paying jobs, that long term good paying jobs that don’t need to be gigified, that don’t like, if the choice because the problem is sometimes that in a lot of these regional towns, if the choice is between, you know, the coal mine, which is the only employer and just poverty, obviously going to be so resistant to the transition. We’re like, we’re saying, no, these towns, we should actually be building massive solar arrays out there. We should be building stuff out there. Let’s give them jobs. Let’s make sure no one is left behind. Guaranteed jobs. I want a job guarantee. It’s like It’s like you rebuild Australian working class, Australian working class, if you address inequality, you address the climate crisis, by
Andrea Wildin 24:47
climate crisis. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Drew Pavlou 24:49
You have big economic growth slide by shifting to renewables. And then also we’re dealing with the Chinese government’s coercion, and then also we’re making a humanitarian stance on their atrocities by saying we’re not going to be offshoring trade to China anymore, because there are these terrible atrocities, and also the Chinese working class have not benefited from this because in fact, most of the profits have been stolen by the Chinese government. And we want. And I want to put economic pressure on that….
Andrea Wildin 25:14
Excellent. And there’s a hammock for every man, woman and child.
Drew Pavlou 25:18
Of course, yeah, yeah.
Drew Pavlou 25:20
Because, um, as well as my policies, obviously, there’s a bit of I want to include a bit of humour and satire and stuff like that. And just Yeah, out of kind of establishment politics as well, because the thing is, you know, people are sick of just the kind of ordinary way politics is operating. Because I think what happens is, politicians deliberately want to make it boring, because they don’t want the public to be engaged. Yes. So like, and that’s been one of the biggest shifts over the past few decades that shift towards technocracy and trying to take so many things that used to be under the democratic control of the people, and so many, so many issues that used to be a subject of democratic debate. They’ve been, shifted, in a way. And they’ve just been sort of, like siloed off as this sort of.
Drew Pavlou 26:01
So for example, you know, the Reserve Bank of Australia. I mean, we used to have economic, we used to have political economic, like interest rates, and all that sort of stuff that isn’t inherently a political issue. And yet, that is something that they’ve tried to silo off as depoliticised as this kind of independent thing. So there’s been this shift to technocracy and democracy has actually been undermined with that shift. And we want to give democracy back to people. And absolutely. The people think politics is boring. People think, yeah, But yeah, people talk in the language of the managerial elite, that technocratic elite because they want to politicise everything. They want to take the politics out of it. But in fact, these are questions about, you know, how we will all live together as a society that is fundamentally political.
Drew Pavlou 26:45
So people are bored with politics, people hate the way it’s currently conducted. Because it’s deliberately made boring. It’s deliberately de politicised. Because the elite doesn’t want people to be engaged. And we’ll engage people and we’ll be entertaining we’ll be fun we’ll be humorous.
Andrea Wildin 26:57
We do. That’s why we’re doing this as well. Drew, we’ve run out of time.
Drew Pavlou 27:04
So long, I just get so worked up, you know.
Andrea Wildin 27:08
Yeah. But it’s been so good having you on and having a chat to you today. So thank you so much for coming in. And talking to us
Drew Pavlou 27:15
I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t just talk about China too much. Like I tried to put, like these issues. I think I’m really connected inequality, the climate crisis, the Chinese government’s brutal atrocities.
Andrea Wildin 27:26
Yeah. And making politics work for people. And yeah, really breaking it down. So that people do engage. This is yes, yeah, this is what we need. Yeah.
Drew Pavlou 27:37
Thank you so much, obviously, I know, it’s a very, very difficult like, like, it’s such a big ask, I guess, to run at 22. And we don’t have a party machine behind us. We don’t have any money. We, you know, it’s really just it’s a grassroots thing. I know it’s a big ask to get elected. But, look, firstly, at least we want to get the message out, we want to show that politics can be done differently. And then, you know, if somehow lightning strikes, you know, I do believe you know, that things work out you visualise that you just work so hard. Sometimes things just work out. You know, if that happened, I want to get in and then I’ll be an independent voice. I’ll basically go up against the both major parties. I’ll try fight for renewables, anti corruption, giving democracy back to communities, again, fighting inequality, fighting the Chinese Communist Party and its brutal atrocities. It’s a it’s a plan. That is it’s a programme that’s dedicated to giving power back to people who have been left behind.
Andrea Wildin 28:32
Okay, well, it’s, as I said, it’s been great talking to you.