Just in: The ALP has confirmed it won’t be running a candidate in the seat of South West Coast on Oct 31 – but Roy Reekie, who ran for Labor against Denis Napthine last time, will run as an Independent. This by-election just got more interesting! Do you think Roy running as an Independent (albeit as still a member of the ALP) will boost his chances of a victory? Read his open letter to voters below:
Tuesday 1 September, 2015
Letter to editor – An open letter to South West Coast electors
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] A [/dropcap]t the coming by-election for South West Coast, I will offer myself as an independent candidate to be your representative in State Parliament.
It’s fair to ask: if I’m not with a major party, what do you get?
Those who know me or who have observed what I’ve done in the community and in my career over the past thirty years will know that I won’t be propped up by photo-ops; I won’t speak through media release; I won’t be someone’s mouthpiece.
I don’t look like a normal politician. I don’t sound like a normal politician. I would not be a normal politician.
If I’m elected, I will consult with, listen to and speak on behalf of the community, with strength and without fear.
Having run in four previous elections (1999, 2002, 2006 and 2014), I recognise that this is my last chance to be elected as a parliamentary representative for a part of the world I love. My future – our region’s future – is in your hands.
This by-election provides the south west with a golden opportunity to control its own destiny; to break the mould by electing someone who can truly represent the entire region without fear or favour.
Whether that is me is not the point. The point is that, in this first ever by-election for South West Coast, our region might find its voice and, like the north east of Victoria, make itself contestable and relevant to both major parties.
Roy Reekie
Ferguson Street Warrnambool.
(PO Box 882 Warrnambool 3280
Facebook: Roy Reekie, Independent candidate for South West Coast |)
Ed Mahony joins the race for WCC election
Law graduate Ed Mahony has decided to throw his hat into the ring for the 2016 Warrnambool City Council elections.
Words and photos by Carol Altmann
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] I [/dropcap]f next year’s Warrnambool City Council election wasn’t already shaping up as intriguing battle, it has got a whole lot more fascinating with law graduate Ed Mahony stepping into local politics.
He joins Warrnambool businesswoman Raelene Ponting as two fresh faces who have declared they will be among the 2016 candidates, giving Warrnambool ratepayers plenty of time to find out who they are, what they are about and what ideas they might bring to the table. (Former councillor Jennifer Lowe has also confirmed she will run again.)
Ed, 25, has already established himself as what media commentators call “someone to watch” with his political savviness and dynamic approach to getting things done, rather than just talking about it.
A case in point was his setting up a popular pop-up Laneway Bar in Liebig Street over the 2013-14 summer.
It was, unofficially, the first of the laneway events that rolled out in 2014 and created a buzz around what might be possible with Warrnambool’s untapped alleyways.
“A lot of people said to me at the time, ‘this is what you see in Europe’, but I said, ‘it’s also what you see in Melbourne’, so why can’t we do it here?,” Ed said.
Ed was also integral to setting up a Young Professionals Network in Warrnambool – he couldn’t believe there wasn’t already one in place – to encourage young people to stay in the area as they built their careers.
“There is this whole untapped market of young professionals who move to Warrnambool but don’t stay, or who commute back to Melbourne for their social life because they feel isolated here,” Ed explains.
“We started YPN (the other founders are Jayson Ward and Angie Paspaliaris) to address this, to offer a social network for newcomers so that they could get a sense of community here.”
Geelong Mayor Darryn Lyons is one of several mentors that Ed has had in recent years as he has shaped his political and business acumen. Image: City of Greater Geelong.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] E [/dropcap]d was involved in both Young Professionals Warrnambool and the pop-up Laneway Bar while still living and studying law in Melbourne.
He grew up on dairy farm in Allansford, but moved away as a teenager to boarding school and has only returned home permanently last December after being offered a job at Dwyer Robinson law firm.
“It was the job that brought me back, but I love Warrnambool. It is a great place to live, an easy place to live and I see so much potential in this city,” Ed said.
Talking to Ed, his energy levels – even at the end of a working day – spark out of him: fingers tapping, eyes bright and a nimbleness in conversation that comes from travelling widely and, along the way, being mentored by some of the best in the business.
He explains how his winning a young entrepreneurs scholarship included the chance to work with two mentors and he already had his two in mind: Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle and Geelong Mayor Darryn Lyons.
These two men, together with National’s MLC (Western Victoria) David O’Brien, have been a guiding force as Ed works out how to best utilise business and politics to build a better community.
One of the many under-utilised laneways in the Warrnambool CBD. Ed’s pop-up bar in 2013-14 was the start of a renewed focus by council to make more use of the alleyways.
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] L [/dropcap]ike Doyle and Lyons, Ed is a member of the Liberal Party but more of the ‘wet’ Malcolm Turnbull variety – whom he often quotes – than the ‘dry’ Tony Abbott variety.
“I see myself as someone who likes to questions people’s beliefs,” he said.
“But within that you need to be open to talking, to having an informed discussion and finding the middle ground.”
There are many things a potential councillor needs to care about, but one high on Ed’s list is planning: a dry word, but one that ultimately determines the shape and feel of a city.
We talk about the urban creep of Warrnambool into the farming areas on its fringe, while the city heart beats ever more slowly and empty shops remain empty.
He has plenty of ideas on how to address this – “I am someone who always looks for opportunities rather than pessimism” – and these will no doubt form part of his election campaign.
Ironically, a few days after this conversation, Ed is in Geelong on one of the balmiest evenings in the south-west all summer. He is running a pop-up Laneway Bar (Darryn Lyons is licensee) and the place is jumping.
Portland is still waiting for its economic ship to come in. Street art on the side of the Julia St Creative Space, Portland.
OPINION
What is the long-term future for the beautiful seaside town of Portland and, moreover, does anybody care?
It appears that even when you have the Premier as your local member, it’s hard to get people to sit up and take notice that Portland – Victoria’s birthplace – is not growing, but going backwards.
The town’s population has failed to grow beyond 11,000 and, in 2001, it slipped below 10,000. It currently sits at around 10,700.
The harsh reality for this proud and robust community is that house prices are stagnant, the Year 12 attainment level is among the lowest in the state (49 per cent of students in the Glenelg area don’t complete Yr 12) and unemployment is consistently higher than for the rest of the south-west.
And while it cannot be declared to be dying, Portland’s hopes of building a strong future on the back of one bright hope – the renewable energy industry – are eroding.
Wind tower manufacturer Keppel Prince Engineering, which is the town’s second biggest employer after Alcoa, has been forced to rip 100 people from its 360-strong workforce because of changes to the federal Government policy on the Renewable Energy Target (RET).
The RET, in a nutshell, is the carrot to urge energy companies to invest in renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. Such a carrot means that companies like Keppel Prince, who make wind turbines, can attract more customers and therefore employ more workers.
But judging by what is happening in Canberra, the RET is about to be slashed, making the carrot far less carroty. As a result, Keppel Prince (as it has been warning for months) has had to lay people off.
House price growth in Portland (green line) has been on a downward trend for the past 8 years. Source: Australian Property Monitors.
One hundred job losses out of a population of 10,700 is huge, especially when there are not a lot of options to find other work in the town.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that a fair portion of these 100 – and their families – will leave Portland to find jobs elsewhere.
The good people of Portland have known for many years that, if they hope to have a strong future, they need to reinvent themselves and broaden their horizons from the “old” industries of aluminium smeltering and forestry.
Last year’s closure of Alcoa’s Port Henry aluminium smelter provided a reality check on Portland’s vulnerability if it continues to rely on Alcoa as its largest employer, no matter how good it has been for the town in the past, or how important it remains.
Renewable energy was seen as a potential goldmine for the town, with even the Committee for Portland describing it as a “big kicker”, but now the momentum is being lost.
The loss of 100 jobs just weeks out from a state election would normally leave a local member rushing to explain what he or she was going to do about it, for fear they would face an electoral backlash.
Yet despite facing an election on November 29, local member and Premier Denis Napthine has emerged from the news unscathed, apart from impassioned words from locals like Neville Dennert, a Keppel Prince worker who will lose his job and who took to Facebook to air his spleen.
Portland had been hoping for a significant role in the renewable energy industry, but the loss of 100 jobs at Keppel Prince is a major setback.
Dr Napthine holds his seat by an almost 12 per cent margin and one of the great disadvantages of living in such a safe seat is that your local MP doesn’t have to fight too hard for your vote: this applies whether the seat is held by Liberal, Labor or anybody else.
So Dr Napthine was able to manage the Keppel Prince disaster by firstly blaming others – in particular, wind energy companies – for buying their wind turbines from China, rather than shopping local. He then suggested Keppel Prince might do well out of other infrastructure projects that the Coalition has promised, such as the East-West link.
Sorry, but surely Portland deserves more certainty than that.
The state government, for example, could commit to introducing a state RET which was one of the ideas pushed at the renewable energy forum held in Portland in August. That idea was supported by none other than former federal Liberal leader Dr John Hewson, who was a guest speaker.
The Member for Wannon, Dan Tehan, has also avoided any serious backlash, despite his party being the one messing around with the RET.
Mr Tehan says he is hoping for a “middle ground outcome” where both “old” industry – such as aluminium smelting, which soaks up enormous amounts of electricity – and “new” renewable energies can both thrive.
The reality so far, however, is that renewable energy projects are collapsing before they even get off the ground because of the uncertainty around the RET. Just last week, it was reported that wind projects for Ararat and Penshurst are also under a cloud for the same reason.
Portland is being told to keep the faith, but for those 100 workers who have already been ‘let go’, it must sound like a load of hot air.
[box]Note: The Labor candidate for the seat of South-West Coast, Roy Reekie, penned an open letter to Keppel Prince workers after the announcement of the 100 job cuts. You can download it here. You can also find The Greens candidate Thomas Campbell’s updates on the issue via his Facebook page here. The Australian Wind Alliancewebsite is here. [/box]
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color:#A5CECD;”] T [/dropcap]he Liberal Party will be well satisfied with its thumping victory in Wannon at the weekend as part of the national swing against Labor, but now it is time for Dan Tehan to deliver.
To date, Dan has been in the luxurious position of being able to make significant promises that have yet to be tested, but the people of Wannon will now apply a very different yardstick to that which he has enjoyed as a member of the Opposition.
For the first time as the Member for Wannon, he will be expected to not only stand by his promises, but to also defend the decisions of his entire Government: decisions which, more often than not, will be well beyond his control.
This is what Dan’s opponent in Labor’s Michael Barling faced as a mere candidate: an expectation that he, personally, should be held accountable for decisions that were being made much higher up the political chain.
[box] Given the announcements in the lead-up to the election, Wannon will be waiting expectantly to see how long it takes for Dan to come good on his word as part of Coalition Government.[/box]
First cab off the rank is the $10 million promised for the Peter’s Project cancer treatment centre. Once the new Government is installed, that should surely be signed off without delay.
Next will be a reduction in mobile phone blackspots across the electorate, plus the rollout of the Coalition’s cheaper, copper-based broadband scheme which promises, by the end of 2016, five times the speed we have now in places like Naringal and Nullawarre and Dunkeld and Maryborough.
The potholed roads around western Victoria should be a thing of the past by the next election, and the Princes Highway between Warrnambool and Melbourne will be well in the throes of transforming itself into a true national road that is a pleasure to drive with its smooth surface, multiple overtaking lanes and dual carriageways.
The Coalition promised that the scrapping of the carbon tax would mean more funds for this sort of spending and would also reduce our cost of living.
[box] This week, make a note of your electricity bill, grocery bill and mortgage repayments, because we have been assured that they will all tumble without the carbon tax and an improved economy.[/box]
And so, to the economy. We have been told it was a basket case and modern times have rarely been so grim. Dan – and the Coalition – has promised more jobs, although I doubt they will be in renewable energy, and more opportunities for young people seeking training, a higher education or employment. The national unemployment rate currently sits at around 5.7 per cent; please make a note of that too.
Come 2016, we can retrieve our notes and be in a position to see if the landslide was deserved.
For the sake of a now super-safe seat like Wannon, I hope that it is.
Why I’m voting for Barling
Opinion – Carol Altmann
[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A5CECD;”] I [/dropcap]MAGINE living in a place where an election was held every three years and, no matter how many candidates ran, the same party kept winning? Would you call this a healthy democracy? Well, we live in a place just like that and it is called the federal seat of Wannon.
For the past 58 61 years – that is 10 years longer than I have been alive – the Liberal Party has won Wannon.
In the past 58 61 years, there have been 2223 federal elections – the 23rd 24th will be held on Saturday – and, in that time, just three different Liberals have held the seat of Wannon: Malcolm Fraser, David Hawker and Dan Tehan.
It is not surprising that the Liberal Party has come to treat Wannon as a soft landing for its next generation of MPs. Dan Tehan, who seems like a nice enough guy, was parachuted into the seat of Wannon four years ago.
He had little connection to south-west Victoria, but bought a property near Hamilton to try and fast-track his status as a local. Is that all it takes for the Liberal Party to secure this seat? Judging by the 2010 election result, it appears so.
And while the Wannon electorate has fallen into line year after year, many of these same voters can be heard complaining – yes, complaining – that they are being taken for granted.
Of course this contempt for safe seats is not confined to the Liberal Party, they all do it, but this election Wannon voters have an opportunity to draw a line in the sand and demand a real contest.
With the help of the redrawn boundaries, Wannon is now defined as a ‘marginal’ seat, although it still requires an almost a 6 per cent swing to change hands.
And, for the first time in a long time, the ALP has a strong local candidate in Warrnambool secondary school teacher Michael Barling who has had time to build his profile and who has committed an enormous amount of energy toward winning the seat. He has done this despite the antics of federal Labor making it increasingly impossible for him to win: he has not given up.
I am not normally a Labor voter, but I am going to vote for Barling because he represents to me what politics should be about.
It is about presenting voters with a real choice, not a fait accompli.
It is about supporting a candidate who knows and loves the electorate because he or she has spent most of their life here, not because they have been forced to relocate in the lead up to an election.
And it’s about having a candidate with a strong moral compass who is prepared to challenge the party line on issues like asylum seekers and gay rights, rather than follow it blindly.
Above all, however, it’s about electing an MP who will continually fight hard for the seat, whether in Government or in Opposition, knowing that they will be held fully accountable at each election.
This will happen if Wannon shifts even further into marginal territory after Saturday: that’s the sort of democracy I want to see in action.
You might also enjoy…
![[Image: australiavotes.org]](http://the-terrier.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Australia-Votes-300x188.jpg)
