GREENS Mallee candidate Helen Healy is running for the safest seat in Australia to raise issues such as climate change and internet access.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
“I literally stand in the election as a community service, because I want to make the Mallee marginal,” she said.
“I want people to start thinking which party stands for things that matter, like integrity in government, like taxation rules, like the vested interests controlling our government.
“Liberal and Labor are so close now, there is little difference on things like climate change and refugees.”
Ms Healy has also stood to help the party’s urban members appreciate issues facing rural Australia.
“Certainly one of the reasons I stand for The Greens is that sometimes we are perceived as an urban-based party,” she said.
“I brought Greens leader Richard Di Natale out here is to see what regional Australia is facing, what issues people have here.”
“I’m as interested in informing the Greens about what issues are here as I am increasing the vote here in Mallee,”
Ms Healy said Mallee needed to change from being a safe seat to get a larger share of federal money.
“There has been $1.75 billion promised in the swinging seats by the two lead parties’ leaders,” she said.
Ms Healy believed Wimmera droughts over the past 15 years have opened up more people’s minds to climate change.
“The harvest times and the temperature extremes are different,” she said.
“We need strong policies addressing global warming and sensible policies around water and land management.”
Ms Healy said the Greens would send more proposed foreign purchases of farmland to the Foreign Investment Review Board.
“The Greens have a strong policy: any transaction over $5 million needs to have some pretty serious checks and balances around it,” she said.
The current board review threshold is more than $1 billion for private buyers from Chile, New Zealand and the United States.
Private farm buyers from Singapore and Thailand face a $50 million threshold and $15 million applies to all others.
Ms Healy also wanted more renewable energy sources to be created in Mallee.
“Mallee is so well placed, we are the sunniest and windiest place, to be at the forefront of solar energies and wind energies,” she said.
“We need to look at getting away from fossil fuels and digging up the earth.”
Ms Healy suggested that the Wimmera’s diesel-dependent farmers could look at different ways of doing business.
“One way to reduce the amount of fuel they are using is to look at sustainable farming like no-till,” she said.
Nationals Member for Mallee Andrew Broad has previously said that the National Broadband Network’s fibre-to-the-node option was sufficient for Horsham.
Ms Healy said Horsham needed a party with a serious approach to digital services.
“The Coalition’s idea of the NBN is to have a phone box in each street with bits of wire to each house and it slows right down,” she said.
“What really annoys me is that Andrew Broad said people would be able to download movies.
“Don’t patronise us. We want to do business with the world. We want medical diagnostic services in our homes or clinics so we don’t have to travel long distances for expert advice.”
Ms Healy claimed that the Wimmera was losing out of education and business opportunities because its internet was slow and unreliable.