1.  When and why did you decide to become a politician?

I have always loved politics but never thought of myself as a politician. I’ve always been interested in social change and I guess that is why I originally became a social worker. I soon came to realise that developing good social policy was the best way to help change people’s circumstances.

This is my first time as a candidate and I guess the time was right and I have the support that I need from family and friends, and I have found a new party that is committed to social policy issues. So I decided it was the right election and the right time. 

2.  What do you think are the issues that matter to young people?

• Climate change – Like me when I was young, I think that young people want to know that there will be a world for them to inherit.
• HECS – I was the beneficiary of free tertiary education. I find it really hard to understand how young people can cope with such a debt after tertiary study.
• WorkChoices – What a laugh. How can young people have the choice and the power to negotiate a fair wage when just starting out?

3.  How do you plan to address these issues?

• We need to sign Kyoto. We must reduce our energy consumption. We must look seriously at, and invest in, alternative renewable energy sources.
• Abolish full fee places and bring merit based selection back to tertiary education with Commonwealth scholarships that provide a place at uni for all talented young people.
• Abolish WorkChoices and allow workers to engage in collective bargaining.

4.  How do you engage with young people to find out what issues matter to them?
I have two teenage kids and do a lot of listening to them and their friends. I also work with young people and we talk a lot of politics and social issues stuff at work. As an ex uni lecturer, I have always spent time with young people. 

5.  What did you care about when you were a young voter?
Foreign policy and the threat of nuclear war. Social policy, I loved the Whitlam government and what it did for women and average working Australians in terms of Medicare, family law and equal pay. 

6.  What is your opinion of young people in Australia?
Love 'em but it is so hard for them. It is so much harder for young people to achieve economic independence now. I enjoy the current humour and maturity of young people. They’re so much more aware than in my day. 

7.  How do you think our political system can better engage with younger voters?
Listen to them. But middle aged politicians have always found that hard. I don’t think that a lot of the current political debate is relevant to young people and Howard in particular seems to illustrate all of his policies with nuclear family, middle class imagery. 

8.  What are the key long-term challenges facing Australia?

• Climate change – we are an island!
• Jobs – We have lost our manufacturing industry so we must work smarter and use technology to create new world jobs and markets. 

9.  If you could change one thing about Australia what would it be?
Our treatment of refugees, it is appalling. We have become a very selfish society. 

10.  Describe a time when your political opinion was challenged or changed.
I used to be a strong ALP supporter until they introduced HECS. I just thought they had lost the plot. Free education is the way for young people to make generational change, and they threw it away. 

11.  What’s your favourite thing about your electorate?
It’s my home, I have been here for 20 years and I love it. I like the green colours and the fact that I can walk down the street and meet people that I know. I like the fact that it is not Melbourne! 

12. What do you do to relax?
Play bridge, go to the races, go to the movies, relax with Don and kids, watch footy and/or cricket. 

Email – gippsland@whatwomenwant.org.au