Ahead of the Saturday 2 July Federal Election, Journal reporter CASEY NEILL is catching up with the key candidates for the three seats where Greater Dandenong residents will cast their votes.
Here’s what Labor Hotham incumbent Clare O’Neil, Liberal candidate George Hua and Greens Party hopeful James Bennett had to say.
Clare O’Neil kept Hotham in ALP hands following party stalwart Simon Crean’s retirement at the 2013 election.
There was a 6.7 per cent swing to the Liberal Party after preferences were distributed, but Ms O’Neil still holds a 7.3 per cent margin in the ‘safe Labor’ seat.
“I don’t even think about that,” she said.
“The primary thing is not to win the election. It’s to give people really good quality representation.”
Hotham includes Springvale South and parts of Keysborough, Noble Park and Springvale and has had an ALP representative since 1980.
“Because Labor’s been in opposition, inevitably my achievements are preventing bad things from happening rather than making good things happen,” Ms O’Neil said.
“I stood up against cuts to pensions, health costs that would have risen, cuts to family payments that would have hurt 8000 families around Hotham … ”
She said a voter survey identified health as the number one issue for the electorate.
“People are talking about the rising costs of looking after their health in basic ways – GP, medicines, pathology testing,” she said.
She said the subsidy the government gave to doctors to keep them bulk billing had been “frozen for some time” and that some were saying they’d have to charge up to $14 per GP visit.
“Labor would unfreeze the rebate,” she said.
Education is also a hot topic, Ms O’Neil said.
“Labor wants to implement the Gonski reforms, which will see every school in that pocket of the electorate (Greater Dandenong) get a lot more funding,” she said.
“Those communities have large migrant populations.
“Education is the absolute key to getting their kids a great start in life.”
Ms O’Neil represented that patch for three years as a Greater Dandenong councillor, including a mayoral term.
“After I’d finished on council – I was studying law at the same time – I decided that I wanted to live a life before going into politics,” she said.
She went to the US and completed a masters at Harvard University before returning and working in business.
“I really believe that business is a really important capability to have in the parliament,” she said.
“It’s an experience that millions of Australians have but not a lot of members of parliament have.”
She spent a year living in north-east Arnhem Land to “understand more about the situation for Aboriginal Australians” before being elected in 2013.
“I absolutely love talking to people and going to events and hearing about the concerns of people, and then advocating for their concerns,” she said.
“It was a bit stressful last time because I had a newborn baby.
“That’s something all working parents grapple with.
“Being in politics is a bit of a family business. You can’t do that without a lot of family support.”
Liberal candidate George Hua said he came to Australia seeking education and a better life.
He arrived from Shanghai, China, in 2007 to study computer science at Monash University.
He now calls Clayton home and is senior software engineer with a leading electronic trading brokerage.
Mr Hua said he understood first-hand the need to build relationships and co-operation with other countries and strongly supported the free trade agreements with China, Japan and Korea.
Greens candidate James Bennett, 39, helps students with disabilities to engage with their studies as an education access worker in the university and TAFE sector.
He’s an active member of his community through his local Baptist church.
“I want to see a society that treats asylum seekers with compassion,” he said.
“It is not illegal to seek asylum in Australia and we need to treat them with dignity and respect.
“Manus Island and Nauru need to be closed down.”
Mr Bennett said Australia’s foreign aid spending had this year fallen to 22 cents in every 100 dollars.
“A wealthy nation such as Australia can and must do better by the world’s poor,” he said.
“Foreign aid spending should be at 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income or 70 cents in every 100 dollars.”
Like Ms O’Neil, he spoke about the impact of the “Medicare co-payment by stealth” through the index freeze, and said he wanted Australia to move away from burning coal.
“Transitioning to clean energy will create local jobs in Hotham and a future we can look forward to with hope and optimism,” he said.
Mr Bennett said reducing growing inequality in society was a key election issue.
“Corporate tax avoidance by large multinational corporations is rife in Australia, and it needs to be addressed to enable the government to provide the services people need and deserve,” he said.
“The Greens will phase out negative gearing. It clearly benefits the wealthy and means that many ordinary Australians … are locked out of the property market.”
