MJ on Sat'day: I'm not just common, I've got some sense

Vote 1 MJ: Is it that ridiculous?

WOULD you vote for me if I stood up for common sense?

Hey, it's not that ridiculous to vote for someone like me, a humble disc jockey and former fish and chip worker.

Have a look at the Senate, there's a couple like me in there. I could do as good a job as them and, most importantly, go into battle for Gladstone.

Not sure I could grow a beard like that or come up with those catchphrases. And last time I looked I wasn't of the red-head persuasion but why not?

If they can do it, I could too.

My party would be the Common Sense Party and my catchphrase would be "Making Gladstone Great Again".

See, I'm already qualified, I don't have an original catchphrase.

And it's not an original idea for me to consider running for office either - I've just had a gut-full of politicians.

I've had a gut-full of politicians who form committees to prepare reports, which are reports responding to reports that came about from another 28 reports.

Who are these people reporting to that let them get away with this sort of rubbish?

We need some common sense in politics. Some common sense that results in direct action.

Hey, it might sound naive and child-like but if you've seen question time in parliament, I'm not sure I could be any more child-like.

I'm sick and tired of Labor fighting with Liberal, fighting with Nationals and then Liberals fighting with Nationals. All the while there's a blue going on with the Greens or some other party.

I don't want fighting among themselves, I want some common sense to travel from Canberra to Gladstone.

Our education, health and jobs deserve and need this.

Common sense tells us we need more teachers in our schools and better-quality education. I'm going to provide these schools with better facilities and more teachers.

Kids are already leaving to go to boarding schools, common sense tells us they should stay here with family and friends.

When it comes to health, we need a real big dose of common sense. We need a new hospital, a complete new hospital.

We are struggling to get good doctors here for general practice because they can't do a lot of their specialised surgery here, there's just not enough room.

If we don't have the surgery facilities, we can't get the doctors here and if we can't get the doctors here, we can't get the facilities they need.

Then the biggest dose of common sense is about providing some much-needed jobs in Gladstone.

Common sense tells us that local industries should employ local people and those local people should be equipped to get on board with some of these big mines that are going to happen.

I'll bring in a scheme where the local industries get a big fat bonus if they employ a local and some cash for someone to train them.

How will I fund all this?

Well, common sense tells us there's no point allocating $5 billion to some infrastructure fund and then not give any of it away because it's only for loans.

I'll use common sense to allocate some "real" money to fund these things and then we'll get some real common sense outcomes.

Did that make any sense or did I just make a whole load of common assumptions that we can actually do something in politics?

MJ Bailey is a breakfast announcer on 4CC.

MJ on Sat'day: Telling it like it is in Gladstone. Picture: Centro Art

Originally published as MJ on Sat'day: I'm not just common, I've got some sense