This post kicks off regular #malleevotes blogs between now and the federal election.
The seat of Mallee is a huge 81,962 square kilometres, or put another way if you jump in a car in Mildura at one end of the electorate and drive to Maryborough at the other, you won’t have much change out of five hours.
The electorate name is completely inaccurate in that it takes in the Mallee, Wimmera and parts of the Loddon area and Central Victoria.
Since its inception 70 years ago, the seat has always been held by the National Party. In those 70 years they have been government for well over half the time.
Mallee remains one of the poorest electorates in Australia.
It’s also one of the safest National Party seats, held with a two-party-preferred vote of 73 per cent.
The seat is unexpectedly up for grabs due to the resignation of Andrew Broad after the “sugar daddy” affair.
Our challenge as the committee supporting Ray Kingston’s (@MalleeRay) independent campaign is to take this opportunity to defeat the National Party and elect someone who will finally be free to truly represent the voters of Mallee.
That is a massive challenge but we are not here to make up the numbers nor to heroically finish second. We are in it to win.
Voter betrayal
Why is it important that we win?
It’s simple. We owe it to ourselves and especially our children to first and foremost propose and support policies that will address climate change, which is already affecting the livelihood and lifestyles of people in our area.
The National’s ‘policy’ on climate change is, frankly, a betrayal of the voters they claim to support.
There are a host of other issues which I’ll get to in later posts, around access to services and basic infrastructure needs that are not being met and which are inhibiting growth in our region.
But for now what is the plan?
Team building
It’s also pretty simple. We know we have a great candidate in Ray Kingston, his track record proves that. Find his profile and why he is running here.
We are working our backsides off to get Ray’s message out there and to keep building the team we need to win.
Every day we work to make that happen.