scone.com.auSome Candidates in Tomorrow’s Election
FOUR candidates in tomorrow’s election contact scone.com.au and since they have made it a priority to reach you, we’ve decided to just run a few lines from each so that you know who they are when you go to the ballot box tomorrow.
Two are for the lower house (the small green ballot):
Adam Blakester, Independent, Arimdale
We need a parliament that works as a parliament instead of a parliament that works like a war room between big egos and the major parties and it doesn’t serve us and I think people are jack of it.
Adam Blakester, Independent.
In a nutshell standing as an independent for the New England and taking the priorities of this electorate to Canberra and what that means in practical terms is that we’ve spent five moths researching and taking input from thousands of people across the electorate to work out what are the priorities across this very diverse electorate. It’s not about me, it’s about we and a lot of people are disbelieving of that because they’ve become so disenchanted with politicians and I agree with them. It’s become so dominated with party agendas, big money and big business and this is a very different political platform we call ‘doing democracy, not politics’. The platform we’ve got is about 14 pages with several hundred priorities and policies and that’s detailed on our website spanning economic diversification, essential services and infrastructure, taxation, the future of farming and the natural environment and political governance: Policies. Issues like water security are absolutely top dead critical, both the immediate dealing with the drought and getting through the drought that is still worsening and how we transition back out of that and get to a point of water security. We have a lot of policies on water, which at the moment is very clearly broken, buy backs, vested interests, allocating decisions about water and working within a water budget, so that is a critical issue….We need a parliament that works as a parliament instead of a parliament that works like a war room between big egos and the major parties and it doesn’t serve us and I think people are jack of it.
Rob Taber, Independent, Armidale
We’ve got to focus back on farmers and my father always said, ‘we are a primary producing nation and we’ve got to keep remembering that’.
Rob Taber, Independent.
I’m standing for environmental issues, which is obviously climate change. Secondly, it’s agriculture and being involved with the land all my life and still involved it’s something I think if we don’t get sorted we’re going to have some major problems. Particularly with this drought now and water it’s just absolutely devastating to see what’s going on in the western areas. I think the NDIS is a common problem across all communities, we’re seeing it is really affecting a lot of people particularly in remote and smaller areas where they are not getting the service intended and it’s very distressing. We’re hearing stories of people waiting for two years for a wheelchair and that’s not the way the NDIS was supposed to have been rolled out. Water has been a major issue, particularly in Murrurundi and I’ve been advocating that we need to look at enlarging our smaller dams in smaller communities, which is something nobody is talking about. We are always waiting and playing catch up until something goes terribly wrong like now with this drought. We’ve got to focus back on farmers and my father always said we are a primary producing nation and we’ve got to keep remembering that.
Two are for the senate (the large white ballot):
Brett Cooke, Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, Bathurst
I’ve got a strong interest in support for the bush and I’m standing because there has been a neglect by the government for infrastructure and services for people in the bush.
Brett Cooke, Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party.
I’m a family man I’m a father of two married to registered nurse, a 19 year old daughter whose a university student and a son who is in high school. I’m country born and bred from Bathurst have been with the party for three years working for Phil Donato when he was first elected to Parliament for Orange, before that a police officer for most of my working life among other careers including a commercial helicopter pilot and a wool-classer. I’ve got a strong interest in support for the bush and I’m standing because there has been a neglect by the government for infrastructure and services for people in the bush. Unfortunately politicians turn towards where the voting population is and that’s in the cities so that’s where the funding goes and I want to see the bush get it’s fair share and what it needs and deserves. I want to see the issue of water addressed. We have communities that don’t have clean drinking water, mismanagement of the Murray Darling Basin plan and I want to see that investigated and people held to account and their plan adjusted so that it is sustainable long into the future for our children and our children’s children. I also want to see implementation of legislation to protect farmers from the recent spate of activism which is growing. I’d like to see a tightening of foreign investment and support for farmers to remain on the land and implementation of a system similar to a first home owners grant for farmers to keep the young people on farms.
Peter Mailer, Australian Democrats, Boggabilla,
It’s really about providing a calm and well-informed perspective around regional issues.
Peter Mailer, Australian Democrats.
The bottom line is there is a massive gap in understanding the importance of regional Australia to the broader economy, agricultural, tourism, mining all of those things. The key thing for me is there are lots of people having lots of conversations about what should happen in the regional landscape without actually understanding it at all. In the broader context of that issues around climate, energy and political accountability in providing some kind of a context for regional issues. The opportunities for regional Australia in renewables is absolutely profound and the conversation about climate and how fundamentally important it is for stability in the landscape all of those things flow through. But it’s really about providing a calm and well-informed perspective around regional issues. There is a view in the broader community about what regional Australians are and it’s epitomised by the Barnaby Joyce type conversation and that is a really poor image for us if we want to influence or have influence over policies which affect us. Because politics is about the masses there’s a large urban community that don’t understand us that well, they’ve got a distorted view of what we are, putting some people in the senate that make sense and are not what people expect is really important in us regaining influence over the policies that are going to affect us in the future.
Related stories:
- Voting 101 – You Can’t Vote for the Prime Minister! – May 17, 2019.
- Where to Vote – May 17, 2019.
- Federal Candidates Announced – April 24, 2019.