{"id":8856,"date":"2013-08-23T19:03:07","date_gmt":"2013-08-23T09:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=8856"},"modified":"2022-05-02T00:41:30","modified_gmt":"2022-05-01T14:41:30","slug":"jan-pukallus-stephaniedale22-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/jan-pukallus-stephaniedale22-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"Jan Pukallus on poetry, free trade and politics: @stephaniedale22 reports"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Stephanie Dale<\/a><\/p>\n

23 August 2013<\/p>\n

\"Jan

Jan Pukallus on a mission to convert the voters of Forde to the CEC<\/p><\/div>\n

For 12 years, Jan Pukallus has been running for election in Queensland – and today was a moment of celebration for the veteran campaigner: it was the first time she’d been invited for a sit-down interview by a journalist.<\/p>\n

Pukallus is the Citizen Electoral Council’s (CEC) candidate for Forde, the electorate that was catapulted into the national spotlight a fortnight ago when former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie announced he was taking a shot at the seat.<\/p>\n

At a candidates’ forum earlier in the week, I was struck by Pukallus’s grassroots poise on stage. It can’t be easy, I thought, to be a fringe candidate up against the likes of Beattie.<\/p>\n

“At first it was daunting,” she said. “In 2001 I stood for the seat of Dawson, against Deanne Kelly.<\/p>\n

“I remember being in the kitchen making sandwiches for my kids’ lunches and all of a sudden the phone rings – it was the media wanting to know whether someone should go to jail for burning the flag.<\/p>\n

“That was the wrong question – what they should have been asking is ‘why would someone want to burn the flag?’<\/p>\n

“It’s only a scrap of material – the important thing was why<\/i>.”<\/p>\n

She giggles. Pukallus has a sweet laugh that follows most of her comments, as if the world itself is funny.<\/p>\n

Then she adds: “I’ve represented Australia a few times – I know what it is to hold up the flag.”<\/p>\n

She looks shy when I smile and ask how she represented Australia.<\/p>\n

Canoeing. The 1977 world championships.<\/p>\n

I put a series of questions to Pukallus during our time together at a coffee shop in downtown Beenleigh.<\/p>\n

First, she’s fed up with the stranglehold the ‘Lib-Labs’ have on Australian politics.<\/p>\n

“It’s fascism, pure and simple,” she says. “This is a democratic society and all political candidates are entitled to equal coverage.”<\/p>\n

I said some would suggest the CEC was a fascist organisation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“A greenie said that to me last night,” she says. “That’s what happens when you take on the banks – you get labeled and slandered.”<\/p>\n

All Pukallus’s responses come back to the global economic situation – and the CEC’s demands not so much to overhaul the system, but to pretty much smash it all together.<\/p>\n

“Our enemy is the British Empire and their free trade system,” she says. “And before that it was the Venetians and before that the Romans.”<\/p>\n

In fact talking to Pukallus is a lot like a melodious, if one-eyed history lesson, her words dancing on the wind as she roams through time and space – literally. \u00a0At one point she has us out on Mars with NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Curiosity – a showcase example, she says, of co-operation between sovereign states.<\/p>\n

Her answers are without exception a kaleidoscope journey through the rise and fall of nations, empires and religions.<\/p>\n

I ask about local issues, but Pukallus cannot separate the local economy from the global economy.<\/p>\n

So I put forward a few issues high on the national political agenda:<\/p>\n

Asylum seekers<\/b> – “We should dump the divide-and-conquer policies of Britain and assimilate refugees – put them and anyone else who needs a job to work on big nation-building projects, like high-speed rail linking agricultural and mining areas.”<\/p>\n

Gay marriage<\/b> – “They’re going to die of starvation or disease just like the rest of us. Whether you’re black, white, gay or vegetarian, who cares? We all have a right to be here.”<\/p>\n

Climate change<\/b> – “The carbon tax was a fascist tax on carbon, a tax on the gas of life. The climate of the planet is always changing, and there’s a political agenda to depopulate the planet – we’re going back to the survival of the fittest.”<\/p>\n

She adds: “That’s why I ran against Kevin Rudd last election – he’s one of the Queens’ men. You watch – every prime minister and treasurer gets a free trip to London, just so the empire can push its free-trade policies.”<\/p>\n

Pukallus is not religious – she’s committed. She believes that if you’re pissed off with the political and\/or economic system, you have an obligation to do something about it.<\/p>\n

“Dropping out is not an option,” she says. “It’s riding on the back of everyone else.<\/p>\n

“That’s what most greenies do in cities, bludge off the work of previous generations.<\/p>\n

“It’s our human responsibility to come up with ideas and solve problems.”<\/p>\n

I lightheartedly put it to her that the CEC are the Mormons of politics.<\/p>\n

She doesn’t appreciate the analogy, despite the fact that she doesn’t want her photo taken pretending<\/i> to hand out leaflets, she wants to hand them out. I sit down again at our table on the footpath while she fills in a young man in a suit on how the government wants to ‘kill us all off by shutting down health care’.<\/p>\n

She sits down again, and the conversation morphs to cycles of life and mass extinctions, and the human race’s ability to meet challenges.<\/p>\n

“New life always evolves to something more complicated after mass extinctions,” she says. “Single cells to multi cells, cold blooded to warm blooded.<\/p>\n

“For example, if an asteroid was on track to wipe us out, we have the ability to turn satellites and nuclear weapons outward to deflect it.”<\/p>\n

For someone with a doomsday outlook, Pukallus is exceedingly bright and easy going.<\/p>\n

She says she ‘practises classical literature’ to ‘keep a positive outlook’.<\/p>\n

Five years ago, at the age of 50, she took up the piano – “I love it,” she says.<\/p>\n

“And I love reciting poetry. It’s education for the soul. If you just have a diet of media you’ll get incredibly negative.”<\/p>\n

Pukallus moved to Beenleigh from Mackay seven years ago, in alignment with\u00a0 her ‘political obligation’ philosophy.<\/p>\n

“We had a beautiful house on the beach just out of town,” she said. “We lived there for years and years and years, we loved it.<\/p>\n

“But what’s the use of having your own little oasis, your own Shangri-La, when everywhere else is going to pot?<\/p>\n

“I said to my husband, we have to go where we’re needed. He’s right behind me.”<\/p>\n

I ask Pukallus how she thinks she’ll go on September 7, when the people of Forde head for the polling booths.<\/p>\n

“I’ve got at least three votes,” she laughs.<\/p>\n

“It’s not about numbers – if I wanted more than .001% of votes I’d join a major party.<\/p>\n

“The point is the joy I get from pursuing a mission for the future.<\/p>\n

“Poetry gives me courage to keep going. It can be fearsome facing the media. Poetry emboldens me, reminds me it’s not just about little ol’me, that I’m part of a continuity of ideas for independence and sovereignty and republicanism.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Stephanie Dale 23 August 2013 For 12 years, Jan Pukallus has been running for election in Queensland – and today was a moment of celebration for the veteran campaigner: it was the first time she’d been invited for a sit-down interview by a journalist. Pukallus is the Citizen Electoral Council’s (CEC) candidate for Forde, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":8858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,3546,66,1117,585,1118],"tags":[2601,1243,1258,1257,168,2655,1016,1230,2604],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/pukallus-2-e1377248233950.jpg?fit=600%2C450&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-2iQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56953,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8856\/revisions\/56953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}