By Mikayla van Loon
With less than a week until the majority of Australians cast their vote in the federal election, Casey’s candidates are doing their final rounds of engagement and campaigning.
Heading to Lilydale’s CriBB Cafe on Saturday 26 April four of the eight candidates took part in a meet and greet and Q&A session run by Build a Ballot volunteer Jol Scobie.
While all candidates were invited, Labor’s Naomi Oakley, the Animal Justice Party’s Chloe Bond, The Greens’ Merran Blair and Independent Claire Ferres Miles attended.
As four of the five female candidates running in this election, there were cheers and applause at one point during the event congratulating the women on their intention to make change and be a voice for their community.
First given an opportunity to introduce themselves, it then opened up into questions from attendees, ranging from housing, cost of living, climate change, tax reform, ministers’ salaries to the incel movement online and gambling.
Speaking with Star Mail prior to the event, Jol said this event was about informing voters of all demographics but was particularly trying to target young people.
For one young Casey resident, Bella, 23, housing and the cost of living were at the forefront of her mind when attending the event.
“I wanted to ask people who were representing, particularly the Labor Party, and who want us to vote for the government that’s currently in Parliament again, why exactly I should vote for them,” she said.
“Considering a historic cost of living crisis, considering the fact that I will probably never be able to afford a house in my lifetime as a young renter, and considering the fact that I think that they’ve done absolutely nothing to stand up for human rights in Palestine.”
Studying at university, Bella said the engagement from her peers in politics is extremely broad.
“The spectrum of people who are involved, it’s very mixed. Some people really care about politics, some people don’t at all.
“I think it’s important to do your bit, do what you can to try and talk to your classmates. Do grassroots volunteering on campus, and try and actually politicise people because everyone actually has issues with the way this society is being run at the moment.
“But I think it’s just about drawing the connections to say that things are more powerful when you’re involved.”
Warburton resident Jeff, who just happened to be at the cafe at the time, said it was an important part of the election process, to hear from the candidates themselves on their opinions and policies so people could make an informed decision at the ballot box.
Ms Ferres Miles was asked directly why she ran as an independent and not as part of The Greens considering her policies and stance aligned.
“I’m not part of a party system. So yes, we’ve got some policies that are very similar to The Greens and some policies that are very similar to Chloe (AJP) and the Labor Party, but all of the policies on our website have been co-written with the community,” she said.
In a broad question from the audience, why is everything so expensive and what will you do about it, there were varying answers.
“One in three corporations in Australia is not paying tax. There’s 150 billionaires in Australia who, over the last five years, during Covid, doubled their wealth,” Dr Blair said.
“We are not good at taxing the wealthy. If we were to tax corporations and billionaires adequately, we could raise $540 billion in the next 10 years. With that we could properly fund our Medicare system, our public health system, our public education system and our public housing system.”
Ms Bond said “AJP has the same stance as The Greens on this one, we’re taxing the wrong people”.
For Ms Oakley she drew on the war in Ukraine as contributing to the post-Covid cost of living situation but used the opportunity to point to Labor’s policies that were aiming to address costs, like “reducing HECS by 20 per cent”, “we removed three per cent of inflation. We’ve got secure jobs” and “interest rates are going down”.
Challenged on the idea of tax reforms, Ms Oakley said in her personal opinion “we need to do better”.
Further questions from the crowd asked whether Labor backed this sentiment to which Ms Oakley responded “I’m not going to know until I get in, but what I will say to you is, if I’m in, I’m more likely to get things done with the Labour government”.
Ms Ferres Miles also said tax reform needed to be a top priority for fixing cost of living, as well as focusing on insurance premiums.
“The Federal Government received more money from its beer tax than it did from the petroleum resource rent tax. The fossil fuel companies basically donate to the two major parties. The supermarkets donate to the two major parties. Sportsbet and Tab Co donate to the two major parties. We’re not getting the right decisions,” she said.
“The other big thing I’ve heard in this community is we’re getting hammered by insurance premiums. The cost of living crisis cannot be unlinked from the climate crisis.”
On housing, Bella asked about the knocking down of public housing towers in Victoria and what each candidate would do to support younger people in getting a fairer deal.
“Things like rebuilding Medicare…and having nine out of 10 bulk billing clinics is a big deal because people can actually afford to go to the doctors. Will afford to go to the doctors instead of putting it off and putting their health at risk,” Ms Oakley said.
“Things like the rental subsidy. So there’s been a 30 per cent increase for rental support, things like supporting people to own their first home.”
Dr Blair said in the 1980s the government spent an approximate $100 billion on public housing which has subsequently been reduced over time to about $3 billion. The Greens would focus on this aspect to build more housing at a cheaper cost.
“One of our key policies is a publicly owned housing developer, where, rather than relying on private developers, who are land banking and waiting for when it’s most profitable to build. We’re in a housing crisis. We need houses built now,” she said.
“Establishing a publicly owned housing developer, as we used to have with the Housing Commission, that will build high quality houses and sell them at five per cent above cost, so that the system can regenerate itself and keep moving. And also build houses that are rentals and rent them out to people at 25 per cent of their income or the median rental in the area, whichever is cheaper.”
Ms Bond said AJP would look at “changing the laws surrounding alternative dwellings” so tiny homes and caravans could be considered as long term housing.
“We think it should be federally legislated, so you are able to live in a tiny house or a caravan for as long as possible,” she said.
On minister salaries and whether the candidates would vote to reduce these salaries, there was mixed response.
Ms Ferres Miles said she would need to engage with the community on what their expectations were before making a decision, Dr Blair said she would not vote to make a cut but instead hold the current rate to allow other wages time to catch up, Ms Bond said she would absolutely vote to see salaries reduced below $200,000, while Ms Oakley said she would like to see a percentage of minister salaries donated to charity or community organisations.
When it comes to gambling ad bans, there was universal agreement from each candidate that they were opposed or that more needed to be done to tackle gambling advertisements.
Feedback from the community members in attendance asked each of the candidates not necessarily to act but to just be aware of the incel movement and the targeting of young children via video games.
