Wannon election candidate Bernadine Atkinson outlines her vision for the electorate.
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00:00I'm Bernadine Atkinson, Dr. Atkinson from Lake Bolak. I'm standing for the
00:14federal election because I am a long-term Australian. My family's been here for
00:20more than 200 years and I know we can do much better than we have been doing.
00:27My stance on Warnon's Roads is they need assistance, they need genuine funding whether
00:37that's through federal or state government allocations I'm not sure but
00:42they're actually in my section of the electorate the Ararat Shire is doing a
00:50pretty good job. I think where we're being let down is on the major roads and
00:55highways. There's also areas of replacement infrastructure needed like
01:02the Port Ferry Bridge over Des Moines. We can do better and there's in fact a need
01:07for seven million dollars to do that job well.
01:10I don't think we can necessarily reduce cost of living expenses I think we can
01:18make them plateau and stay stable. I think the way we resurrect the economy is to
01:24reintroduce full employment and we can do that with the introduction of national
01:29service. There's many jobs that could supplement pensions with part-time work in
01:35national service. There's also full-time opportunities for works that really are
01:41directed towards ecological sustainability but they're not funded now and that's
01:46things like control burning, weed eradication, feral pest control. There's
01:54enormous opportunities there. There's also enormous opportunities to bring
02:00decentralization into fruition, bringing people from the cities into barracks like
02:06condominium accommodation and if that were provided by local government the amount
02:14of money paid in rents could actually be a significant proportion of it given back
02:20to the participants in national service as a deposit to enter the private market.
02:26Now we've helped national service men and women in the past in Australia we've
02:30given them land grants, we've given them low interest loans, we've given them
02:33wonderful health care. Why not resurrect national service to help look after a new
02:39generation of Australians, those who are really disadvantaged by this like a
02:45snake eating its tail, diminishing economy and the impossible expectations of going
02:52into superly well-paid jobs, superly well-paid jobs, you know what I mean, that are not
03:00really realistic. There's work in the bush needs doing and it's unpleasant work, it's
03:05planting trees in the rain for the best chances of success, it's working in
03:13wool sheds, you get your hands dirty but it's clean money, dirty work but clean money, it's
03:19not encouraging drug trafficking, it's holistic living and we can do that much
03:26better in Australia.
03:30My dad didn't want to go into aged care and it was fairly onerous helping to look
03:36after him in his latter years but in fact it was my pleasure and I think when
03:43families are reinstituted as prosperous entities and not having to be broken up
03:52with dysfunctionality we will get more responsible aged care happening in homes
03:58and the move to provide assistance for home-based living is really important.
04:05Aged care facilities can be very lonely places and they can be places where people say
04:12oh I've just been put here to die. I think personally my inclination is to say those that
04:20are there need funding and staffing appropriately, they need excellent medical
04:26care provided but I do think that your parents and their well-being is actually
04:33an obligation of the children.
04:35Oh my goodness, no, that's a complete waste of money. Don't even think of it. The corrosion
04:44for a start on the infrastructure, metal blades and the cement is impractical. The fact
04:50that it produces a direct current which can't be assimilated into the existing grid means
04:56to me it's just a waste of money. It's intermittent. The lifespan of those towers will be very brief
05:03and I must say once I was standing at Thunder Point in Warrnambool and I saw out to sea a blue
05:11whale travelling with a pod of other whales. It was the most amazing experience. It was enormous.
05:16I've never seen anything so big. Only a week later that blue whale was killed because there was oil drilling
05:24in the Bass Strait and it was killed by the seismic blasts. Well, I tell you what, wildlife around the world
05:32needs our protection and building those towers, we don't know the effect but from my point of view it's a complete waste of money.
05:41It's a complete waste of money.