Wannon’s five candidates put forward their final pitches at The Standard’s second forum during the campaign’s last days.
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Bernardine Atkinson (independent)
You can trust me to have integrity. You can trust that everything you've heard me say today will be the sort of attitudes and values I take to Parliament.
You can trust me to be a genuine leader because I've proved that. I have a track record, particularly in ecological issues, pioneering the idea of climate change, developing the world's first ecological reporting course for journalists, creating the best land care strategy in Victoria and being responsible for planting hundreds of thousands of trees.
You can trust me in being sincere in wanting to solve these problems intelligently and to reposition Australia with a spirit of joy and a can-do attitude that we're going to make this nation great.
We've done it once before – we were the envy of the world in the 1960s.
We can reposition ourselves and indeed we must in this region where we have hungry neighbours. We've got to be strong and very productive.
Michael Barling (Labor Party)
There's no question that you have to be fearless if you're going to vote for the Labor Party.
Whenever we win government we change things.
We change things for the better – universal health care, access to education, floating the dollar, financial deregulation, native title, the apology to the stolen generation and the NDIS are all legacy points that Labor governments have put in place to make this country better.
But it doesn't just happen. People need to take a chance. They need to be fearless in saying ‘we want this country to be better’.
We've played scared for 60 years in this electorate. We've played scared and as a result we've played small.
The biggest thing I've learnt from kids over the last 20 years is that you've got to play big and you've got to play fearless. Fearful or fearless? That's the choice that we are going to make on Saturday.
Thomas Campbell (Greens)
I was on the campaign trail yesterday when I got a phone call from a dairy farmer who lives in Camperdown. We spent about half an hour chatting about what's happening in the dairy industry, what's happening with politics more in general.
He let me know that he used to be a Democrats voter. He was very fond of the line ‘keep the bastards honest’. My reply was quite simply if you think you can keep these guys honest, best of luck to you, I don't think it's possible.
That's why the Greens have stood forward. We have candidates running in every electorate across this country because we're not here to keep the bastards honest, we're here to replace them.
We've put together a fully-costed platform covering every single government portfolio. We're not just an environmental party anymore, we've put forward our strong economic credentials. We've started the senate inquiry into multinational tax avoidance.
There are any numbers of policies the Greens have which are beneficial and vital to the future of our electorate, and once again they're all on greens.org.au
Michael McCluskey (independent)
I tend to take a non-traditional approach.
I don't want to tell people who to vote for. Whether they think it’s Bernardine, Michael, Thomas, me, or even Dan, I want people to not look at the people or the party, but to look at the policies, to vote for the long term and for the here and now.
Think about your children and your grandchildren and vote for whoever you think will do this bigger picture intergenerational thinking that they so desperately need and deserve.
Dan Tehan (Liberal Party)
The reason why I'd like people to vote for the Coalition here in Wannon is because we have a plan here in Wannon to deliver more funding for our roads, to deliver better rail, to deliver jobs – jobs for small business, jobs for our farmers.
We're going to do that through tax cuts for our small businesses, tax cuts for our farmers and also making sure they can capitalise on the opportunities which come from our free trade agreements which will enable us to export more.
There's also a plan to deliver more funding for the Warrnambool campus here so we've got higher education across the south-west.
There is also a plan to make sure that our CFA volunteers won’t be unionised by the UFU.
It's also a national plan led by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull which will deliver the security and growth this nation needs at this moment given the economic uncertainty that is happening around us globally.