Federal election 2020: Zaneta Mascarenhas’ controversial views resurface
A Labor candidate once claimed the government at the time wanted to use defence spending as cash to “kill innocents.”
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A Labor candidate’s student protest days have come back to haunt her after revelations she called for the abolition of private school funding and raged against defence spending as cash to “kill innocents.”
Labor’s candidate for Swan, Zaneta Mascarenhas has also previously said that health insurance should be “scrapped”.
“A measly $6 billion and 6000 students did not get a university place in Western Australia this year. They don’t want to put more money into education. They want to spend money on killing innocent human beings,” she said.
She was a speaking at a student protest in Perth in 2003. Ms Mascarenhas addressed the crowd where banners on display included: “Are we a democracy or a tyranny?”, “War kills children” and “Precision Bombs and Surgical Strikes = Innocent Deaths”.
In a 2003 submission as NUS President to a Parliamentary Committee, Zaneta Mascarenhas said private school funding and private health insurance should be scrapped.
“Thirdly, there are other areas such as private health insurance and private schooling, which receive benefits from the Government vastly disproportionate to the number of people who benefit from them,” she said.
“If the $2.3 billion annual cost of the private health insurance rebate, which benefits around 30% of the population were scrapped, the government would have more than 50% of the additional funding required to implement the latter funding option.
“If this were combined with a much-needed restructuring of the payment system for non-government schools (attended by about 30% of the population), which is currently biased scandalously to favour the most elite schools, the shortfall could easily be met.”
According to Private Healthcare Australia this would affect more than 120,000 people covered by Private Health Insurance in the electorate of Swan.
Liberal Senator for Western Australia, Matt O’Sullivan said the comments needed to be clarified.
“Mr Albanese can’t have a bet each way on these scandalous comments by his candidate for Swan,” he said.
“If Zaneta Mascarenhas wants to take those choices away from patients and parents, Mr Albanese needs to front up and explain whether he stands by his candidate.”
News.com.au has contacted Ms Mascarenhas for comment.
Meanwhile, SBS board member and former Liberal candidate Warren Mundine has backed Katherine Deves claim that the US President Joe Biden is “clearly showing signs of dementia”.
Mr Mundine, who has previously apologised for calling someone “a c**t” on social media said the remarks were “right”.
“Even the Americans have been worried about Biden’s senility for years,” he said.
Last year, Labor called on the government to consider removing Warren Mundine from the SBS board after he called the journalist Ben Eltham a “c**t” on Twitter.
The SBS board asked Mundine to delete the tweet, which was posted in response to Mr Eltham tweeting what he claimed was the mobile phone number of the MP Craig Kelly.
Mr Mundine is paid $44,000 a year to attend six meetings a year as a non-executive director on the SBS board and was appointed to a five-year term in 2020.
Since joining the SBS board, Mr Mundine has also called the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, “a complete asshole”, a “fool” and a “complete f**kwit”
Originally published as Federal election 2020: Zaneta Mascarenhas’ controversial views resurface
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