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DANDENONG
Includes Dandenong, Doveton and Eumemmerring. Parts of Dandenong North, Dandenong South, Endeavour Hills, Noble Park and Noble Park North.
Held by Gabrielle Williams (ALP) (12.9% margin)
Name: Gabrielle Williams
Party: Labor
Age: 36
Suburb: Dandenong North
Previous occupations: Currently the Member for Dandenong, Gabrielle previously practiced as a solicitor and worked as an adviser in both state and federal governments, while also serving as a director of a not-for-profit disability sport organisation. Immediately prior to being elected in 2014, Gabrielle worked as a project manager to the Vice Chancellor at the University of Melbourne.
What’s your electorate’s best asset?
Dandenong’s greatest asset is our rich diversity and culture. We are proud to be the most multicultural area in Australia and home to so many people of different cultural traditions and faiths who get along together and live and work in harmony. It is a strength we should continue to promote and harness, but never take for granted.
What’s the most pressing law-and-order issue? How do you fix it?
Everyone has right to feel safe in their home and out in public. The key to keeping our community safe is ensuring Victoria Police have what they need to respond to and crack down on crime. That’s why we have already funded an additional 3,135 front-line police, along with new technology, state-of-the-art equipment and facilities and stronger laws to crack down on crime. We are seeing results with crime falling for the last five quarters in a row, with burglary and break and enter offences the lowest in a decade. We back Victoria Police and will continue to give them the resources they need to keep our community safe. But it’s not just about police, it’s also about addressing the causes of crime, which is why our record investment in education, health and mental health is so important, in addition to our focus on job creation.
What’s your ideal number of poker machines in Greater Dandenong?
Sadly the harms of problem gambling disproportionately effect the disadvantaged and less well off in our community. I am pleased that the Labor government has frozen the growth of gaming machines so that not a single extra gaming machine will be allowed in local Victorian communities for the next 25 years. This is in addition to the introduction of restrictions on daily cash withdrawals at pokie venues. These are important steps to continuing to limit gambling-related harm in our community and protecting the young and vulnerable from developing problems with gambling.
What’s the key to lowering local unemployment?
The key to improving local unemployment is ensuring that everything we do puts local jobs first. Under Labor, Victoria has had the strongest jobs growth in the nation. We have made mandatory requirements for local workers and materials on all major projects and are also providing Free TAFE on 30 priority TAFE courses and 20 pre-apprenticeship courses, to ensure people young or old have the skills to get a job to support themselves and their families. Labor will always put people first, which means prioritising local jobs. This means building local, making local and hiring local.
What do you think of the Kaufland Dandenong proposal?
It’s a vote of confidence in Dandenong that another major company is considering setting up operations here and creating jobs for locals. However, it is important that this proposal balances the needs of the whole community and that is why an Advisory Committee has been established to receive public submissions and hold public hearings to consider the proposal. I encourage people to have their say. It is important that residents, shoppers, workers and businesses are part of this process.
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Virosh Perera
Party: Liberal
(Didn’t answer the questionnaire but sent a generic statement).
Make our community safe again: Tougher sentencing and bail laws, visible policing and police shop fronts, mobile CCTV cameras and GPS tracking anklets for parolees of home invasion and carjacking crimes will stop violent and drug fuelled crime and gangs in our local community. Liberals will also re-establish a ‘Police in Schools’ program, fund Neighbourhood Watch and provide $2 million over four years to fund locally based crime prevention programs and more PSOs for Dandenong Station.
Cut the cost of living: Stop Labor’s ever increasing taxes and charges, take action on housing affordability, provide free text books for secondary school students, car rego discount for red P platers, households will save up to $100 a year on their water bills and electricity bill discounts for people on low incomes which could mean annual savings between $250 and $530.
Get in control of traffic congestion: Liberals will decentralise Melbourne, invest in public transport and roads, remove 55 of Melbourne’s most congested intersections including spaghetti Junction at Springvale Road and Princes Highway and Boundary/Governor Road, build the East West Link and the North East Link to improve connectivity around Melbourne, and improve our train and bus services and increase train station carparking.
Ensure access to 21st Century Services: Quality health services, kinder and childcare, improve the quality of learning and teaching and stop the compulsory radical gender theory program/safe schools which places more children at risk.
Community Infrastructure: Liberals have committed $195 million on upgrading local sporting facilities, including funds to support the growth in women’s and junior sport, $10m to community sport in the Kingston Green Wedge, $326k for the development of community facilities at the Keysborough Sikh Temple and funding of the the 2019 Sikh Games.
Respect Family and Community values: Liberals will stop the controversial Safe Schools program, stop Labor’s drug injecting rooms, put an end to Labor rorts and corruption.
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Name: Rhonda Garad
Age: 54 yrs
Suburb: Dandenong (25yrs)
Current occupation: Senior Lecturer and Research Fellow Monash University
What’s your electorate’s best asset?
Without question the best assess within Dandenong is its cultural diversity.
What’s the most pressing law-and-order issue? How do you fix it?
The most pressing law-and-order issue is house break-ins. The best way to deal with this is to ensure adequate resources are available to the police and to tackle youth disengagement and provide social supports to young people to reduce drug use and increase employment opportunities.
What’s your ideal number of poker machines in Greater Dandenong?
The ideal number of poker machines is zero. In the region of Dandenong there are 7 poker machine pubs and clubs taking $118,705 every day from people who can least afford it. The Greens are passionate about gambling reform and implementing a harm-minimisation approach to support people with social and mental health issues. See our Gambling policy.
What’s the key to lowering local unemployment?
A key to lowering local unemployment is ensuring adequate education for our youth and skill development is our newly arrived population. The Greens have a range of policies supporting these outcomes.
What do you think of the Kaufland Dandenong proposal?
It is a net benefit to the economic development & employment opportunities for Dandenong but Kaufland should have had to go through local Council planning processes just like small businesses do. Richard Wynne should not be giving Kaufland a special deal by acceding to Kaufland’s request for the Minister to handle to objection process.
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Afroz Ahmed (Transport Matters) did not respond.
