do you cope with bureaucracy?

Well, bureaucracy, you know, I hate bureaucracy.

And, you know, of course, you get a lot of that in the council and also in government and so forth.

But, for example, one of the things I used to do when I was in the public service and I was in a rent relief scheme to provide people with support with their rent when they were waiting on the housing waiting list for public housing.

And, you know, sometimes people would ring up very upset because maybe, you know, decisions hadn't gone their way or they were in desperate circumstances.

And I used to always say to my co-workers, don't feel you need to defend the government.

You know, OK, you have to implement whatever the policy is, but you don't need to feel you have to defend the government.

think they learned it the hard way.

Why do you think Pauline Hanson's message is gaining a hearing among, among some people who are experiencing genuine economic insecurity, and what are some of the things you've learned from talking directly with people in the community about racism and One Nation?

Well, firstly, I think the promotion of Hanson and One Nation is going across all parts of the community.

It's not just the old Aussie Anglo racists who are being drawn to One Nation.

It includes actually significant, uh, numbers of people in different migrant communities, and there can be lateral racism.

And I think part of the way in which One Nation has been able to attract support is because a lot of people are so frustrated.

They don't necessarily know how to address the issues that are affecting them around cost of living.

They do feel abandoned by major parties that do just as little as possible, and, you know, we'd agree [chuckles] that the major parties are the problem.

And I guess, uh, yeah, you sort of answered this in your response, but you know, what are some of the things that you would wanna say to people in Broadmeadows and surrounding areas who are angry about the cost of living, housing and unemployment, who are being told that migrants are, or refugees are responsible for those problems?

And, yeah, I suppose what is the current state of the tram stops on Sydney Road and why can't this be an alternative at the moment?

Well, we want to see these accessible tram stops built before they shut down the train line for level crossing removal.

And at the moment, there are only two tram stops that are accessible on Sydney Road.

One at the intersection of Brunswick Road and Sydney Road and one at the tram terminus, which is several kilometres away.

And then there's another one closer to the city outside Royal Melbourne and Peter McCallum Cancer Institute, although that's only more recently been added.

And so you can have situations already where maybe someone has got on a tram in the city where there are accessible tram stops and then they might, especially if it's someone's a tourist or just visiting from a different part of the city, And they might get to Sydney Road and they can't get off.

And there was a situation I'm aware of where someone was trying to get off at Brunswick Road where there is an accessible tram stop.

So why is it important for us to take action on this now?

And, you know, want to kind of hear your comments as well about how the major parties have actually enabled this.

Well, I think the major parties have enabled this by saying that the only reason there's housing crisis is because there's a lack of housing supply and we're not building enough housing and they don't want to look at the marketisation of housing.

And that's really the central thing.

So a lot of people don't understand why the housing crisis exists.

And so it does look sensible to people to think that, oh, more people are coming to Australia, therefore there's not enough houses for them all.

It does look like that when there's nothing like that at all.

And this is an argument which has been used more in the past around jobs and migration.

But I was just really curious about your perspective on how you think we can fight back against a right-wing shift in politics and how can we resist One Nation?