WE ASK THE CAN­DI­DATES: WHAT ARE YOU OF­FER­ING THE PARKES ELEC­TORATE?

WE ASK THE CAN­DI­DATES

Dubbo Photo News - - Front page - – Com­piled by Yvette Aubusson-fo­ley

Six can­di­dates will con­test the seat of Parkes on Satur­day, May 18, in­clud­ing the sit­ting mem­ber, Mark Coul­ton. Dubbo Photo News asked each can­di­date to ex­plain what they of­fer the peo­ple of the Parkes Elec­torate. They ap­pear here in the same or­der they are listed on the bal­lot pa­per. Daniel Jones, Lib­eral Democrats

I of­fer my net­work­ing skills. (As a taxi driver) I have been sell­ing Dubbo for a long time to tourists and vis­i­tors from around our na­tion and the world – telling them that Dubbo is a great place to live, raise a fam­ily and start a busi­ness.

Re­cently, I met a gen­tle­man in the taxi from the Premier’s Depart­ment. His role was to find fund­ing for re­gional and re­mote ar­eas. (This type of role should be trans­lated to the whole elec­torate at a fed­eral level. I can achieve this with) my com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lis­ten­ing and feed­back skills.

I un­der­stand that the Parkes elec­torate is very ori­en­tated around pri­mary pro­duc­ers and the farming com­mu­nity. If it was not for our farm­ers, we would all be farm­ers or liv­ing a hunter-gather life­style.

Ul­ti­mately, it would be bet­ter if we could en­cour­age peo­ple, es­pe­cially young peo­ple, to gain the nec­es­sary skills and pro­vide sup­port for them to start a busi­ness. How­ever, jug­gling the de­mands of life adds many de­mands – from pay­ing for a home whilst the goal­posts are mov­ing due to house prices, to rais­ing a fam­ily and ed­u­cat­ing chil­dren.

Small busi­ness can re­ceive grants like the farming com­mu­nity. Although they are not hard­ship grants, moreso grants that are taxed. Small busi­nesses can take ad­van­tage of grants from busi­ness.gov.au and check with the Aus­tralian Tax­a­tion Of­fice which cur­rently pro­vides Small Busi­ness Tax Con­ces­sions for busi­nesses with a turnover of less than $10 mil­lion, and the Small Busi­ness In­come Tax Off­set with a $5 mil­lion turnover thresh­old. Cap­i­tal gains con­ces­sions have also been in­creased to $10 mil­lion.

•••

Mark Coul­ton, The Nationals

I’ve de­liv­ered on my prom­ises for the past 11 years as Mem­ber for Parkes, and I have a vi­sion for a strong and se­cure fu­ture for this elec­torate.

It has been a great priv­i­lege to be your lo­cal MP, and as I travel through­out West­ern NSW, it is heart­en­ing to see the pos­i­tive impacts we have made to peo­ple’s lives. There is al­ways more to do, and given the op­por­tu­nity, I will work tire­lessly on the is­sues that mat­ter most to you.

I think vot­ers know that come May 18, they have a very im­por­tant choice to make be­tween me and the al­ter­na­tive, which would have a dev­as­tat­ing im­pact on ru­ral and re­gional com­mu­ni­ties – we sim­ply can’t af­ford to take such a risk. Projects like the In­land Rail are game-chang­ing for this re­gion, and I in­tend to be here to see th­ese trans­for­ma­tive projects through.

This re­gion is full of op­por­tu­nity for those who are will­ing to have a go, and those peo­ple will be re­warded by a Coali­tion Gov­ern­ment. We’ll con­tinue to make this a won­der­ful place to live by in­vest­ing in crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and ser­vices such as the West­ern Cancer Cen­tre. I fought hard to se­cure a $25 mil­lion Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment com­mit­ment to make this dream a re­al­ity.

I have also been work­ing to drive down un­em­ploy­ment, max­imise ru­ral and re­gional con­nec­tiv­ity through im­proved mo­bile cov­er­age, and en­sure our farming com­mu­ni­ties have the sup­port they need to pros­per. I am as ex­cited and op­ti­mistic as ever about what lies ahead for West­ern NSW. •••

David Paull, The Greens

My mes­sage to vot­ers is that it is time now for a change in the ac­count­abil­ity of our po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives. They are our ser­vants. We have to take the agenda back to the cit­i­zen and not the multi-na­tional com­pa­nies. We have to take bet­ter care of our peo­ple, land and wa­ter be­cause fu­ture gen­er­a­tions de­serve no less.

I am run­ning to show the elec­torate that the Greens have a pos­i­tive vi­sion for the fu­ture and will be work­ing in the next par­lia­ment to ad­dress the most press­ing is­sues fac­ing the elec­torate, which are wa­ter se­cu­rity, de­clin­ing land qual­ity, ser­vices for towns, wel­fare, gas and min­ing, re­new­able tran­si­tion, and sovereignt­y for Indige­nous peo­ple.

A just tran­si­tion to a job-se­cure, 100 per cent re­new­able energy fu­ture. No more coal and gas ap­provals as they not only dam­age our cli­mate fu­ture, but dam­age our wa­ter se­cu­rity, agri­cul­tural vi­a­bil­ity and land val­ues.

The Murray Dar­ling Basin Au­thor­ity and Plan needs to be re­vised.

The Aus­tralian Greens will cre­ate a Cen­tre for Sus­tain­able Agri­cul­ture and de­velop a cli­mate smart plan for our agri­cul­tural sec­tor.

The Uluru State­ment was shame­fully ig­nored last year by the LNP. Sovereignt­y of First Na­tion Peo­ple needs to be ac­knowl­edged so Australia can move for­ward as a healed na­tion.

(Other pri­or­i­ties in­clude) in­vest­ment in young peo­ple and their ca­reers, work­ing to in­crease TAFE fund­ing, in­creas­ing lev­els of wel­fare pay­ments by 50 per cent, in­vest­ment in ca­reers in re­new­able energy and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, in­vest­ment in uni­ver­sal child­care, and to in­crease fund­ing for pub­lic schools.

•••

Jack Ay­oub, La­bor

I want to see the re­gions get their fair share. Whether it is an ex­tra $34 mil­lion for the schools across the elec­torate or re­build­ing TAFE and end­ing the abuse of 457 visas. Pro­tect­ing our wa­ter re­sources from min­ing and mis­man­age­ment. To­gether we can achieve so much for our com­mu­ni­ties.

My pri­or­ity is the bet­ter­ment of the lives of those who live in the Parkes elec­torate. Pol­i­tics is the means by which we achieve change, not the goal within it­self. Your hope will be my hope, your fears my fears. To­gether we can achieve so much.

The most com­mon is­sues and com­ments heard from lo­cals across the elec­torate is ab­so­lutely the pro­tec­tion of the Murray Dar­ling tied in with cli­mate change.

I want to see that we make sure the MDBP works for com­mu­ni­ties, the en­vi­ron­ment and in­dus­try, and that we pro­tect the Menindee Lakes.

How galling is it that the Nationals have an­nounced the con­struc­tion of a fish hatch­ery in Menindee, the sight of the most im­por­tant nat­u­ral fish hatch­ery in the coun­try, the lakes, which they de­stroyed.

I am firmly of the view that we need a Royal Com­mis­sion into the MDBP. There ex­ist se­ri­ous le­gal and eth­i­cal ques­tions about the con­duct of those in the Na­tional and Lib­eral party when it comes to the man­age­ment of the plan. If elected I will mar­shal all my power to see that we get to the bot­tom of this and safe­guard the river sys­tem for the fu­ture.

My vi­sion is to do all we can to en­sure that our re­gions are main­tained and grow. This means en­sur­ing we have top qual­ity schools and hos­pi­tals and that we pro­tect and prop­erly man­age our wa­ter re­sources to keep agri­cul­ture alive.

•••

Will Lan­ders, In­de­pen­dent

Our cur­rent mem­ber won’t face up to the tough is­sues. For years, vot­ers of the Parkes elec­torate haven’t been lis­tened to and have been treated with con­tempt.

The on­go­ing in­ac­tion, ig­no­rance and ar­ro­gance of the Na­tional Party is now threat­en­ing the busi­nesses and liveli­hoods of our com­mu­ni­ties.

The Nationals’ loss of state elec­torates shows how strongly vot­ers feel about want­ing a change. The con­cept of a ‘protest vote’ is real and pow­er­ful.

Vot­ers want an­other op­tion. I’m stand­ing to pro­vide that al­ter­na­tive.

I want the Nats to know that they can­not con­tinue to ig­nore the sen­ti­ment of the elec­torate with­out be­ing chal­lenged.

The Lib­eral/nationals’ as­sump­tion that re­gional peo­ple are ei­ther not in­ter­ested or not un­der­stand­ing of na­tional is­sues that im­pact them is clear from the rep­re­sen­ta­tion we’ve seen for years. It’s time to de­mand proper rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Our Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties need proper rep­re­sen­ta­tion at a Fed­eral level. The chal­lenges our Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties face aren’t go­ing to im­prove un­less ef­forts are led by th­ese com­mu­ni­ties them­selves.

I want to make the seat of Parkes as mar­ginal as pos­si­ble so that politi­cians can see that they need to work harder for us.

Trans­parency in de­ci­sion-mak­ing is a long-stand­ing is­sue. Nats and gov­ern­ment gen­er­ally aren’t an­swer­ing rea­son­able ques­tions and pro­vid­ing ex­pla­na­tions into de­ci­sions that are im­pact­ing us.

We need some­one with the courage and sen­si­bil­ity to stand up for what’s go­ing to look af­ter us and our fam­i­lies for the long term. Our towns could grow if de­ci­sions aren’t made on an elec­tion cy­cle time­frame.

•••

Petrus Van Der Steen, United Australia Party

My key prom­ise is that I will look at com­mon sense so­lu­tions, im­ple­men­ta­tion of those so­lu­tions and to put the in­ter­ests of all Aus­tralians first.

That means that I will fight tooth and nail for our lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties and make sure that any de­ci­sion or idea will be looked at, to de­ter­mine how it ben­e­fits our peo­ple first. Noth­ing’s off the ta­ble.

As none of the cur­rent par­ties seem to care, I got fed up and put up my hand up to bring back true rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

I’m not an ide­al­ist, but a re­al­ist with a com­mon sense ap­proach, some­thing the other par­ties have lost a long time ago. I do not fol­low an ide­ol­ogy but want what’s good for ALL Aus­tralians, not just the se­lect few.

When I travel around the elec­torate, all th­ese is­sues are be­ing high­lighted by our con­stituents with the com­ment that they’re not be­ing heard by our gov­ern­ment, which has added des­per­a­tion and frustratio­n with them.

The United Australia Party is just as fed up and de­mands ac­tion in­stead of end­less gas bag­ging.

My mes­sage to our vot­ers is sim­ple: With­out your vote we can­not achieve what we pro­pose.

The only way to achieve all of this is to vote mas­sively for the United Australia Party, so we can give th­ese mugs a thong slap and send them on their way!

We put Australia first in every­thing we do! A land­slide will do. I would like to bring back true rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the peo­ple of Parkes, some­thing that has been AWOL for years. The for­got­ten peo­ple are no more for­got­ten and will be heard! „

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