NATIONAL Party faithful gathered at Member for Mallee Anne Webster’s campaign launch on Monday in Mildura.
The crowd of more than 100 people listened to speeches from the incumbent MP, as well as Nationals leader David Littleproud, Member for Mildura Jade Benham, and president of the Mallee FEDC of the Nationals Anthony Dal Farra.
Dr Webster is seeking to enter her seventh year in politics, and said the opportunity to represent Mallee again was a thrill and an honour.
“One of the sayings that we constantly truck out is nobody needs another three years of Labor, but honestly everywhere I go people are hurting,” she told the crowd.
“We lost 30,000 small businesses in three years, I think that is a record .. they’ve been given no help and they’ve had to suffer with IR laws, red tape, green tape going through the roof, all the environmental rubbish that has gone on.
“We will proudly be exiting the EDO (Environmental Defenders Office), that may take a last bow and depart if we get into government, and that will see the development of greater productivity as we go forward.”
She also spoke of her recent years as the Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health.
“If you try to get a doctor lately, wherever you live across Mallee it is a huge challenge to get the help that you need,” she said.
“In this last two and a half years I have been working hard on policies to do with regional health, and am looking forward to being able to bring those forward post this election as the government of Australia.”
Mr Littleproud then spoke about some of the Nationals’ election policies.
That included halving the fuel excise for 12 months, providing a one-off tax cut for low to middle income earners, increasing gas supply into the energy grid by creating an east coast gas reserve in an effort to reduce electricity bills, investing $100 million to boost regional health training, building childcare centres in regions lacking facilities, and allocating half a billion dollars into council roads and infrastructure across Australia.
He urged the crowd to continue supporting the party, and said despite what the polls were indicating, the potential outcome of the election was “very, very lumpy”.
“This is a pivotal sliding doors moment for our nation, one that we don’t take for granted here in Mallee,” he told the crowd.
“We have to have this in our column because if we don’t – politics is a brutal game of arithmetic, if we don’t have Mallee in our column then you do get that fairy dust with Adam Bandt and Anthony Albanese running the show.
“This is an important election and I can tell you if we don’t change this government, there will be a huge cost to this country but particularly to you.”
Ms Benham then took to the stage and commended Dr Webster’s commitment to her electorate.
“She works her tail off,” Ms Benham told the crowd.
“She’s there with farmers through floods, through droughts, through reckless renewable transmission line rollouts, she shows up for regional health.
“She shows up for her community because she’s your community representative.
“If we’re honest … it doesn’t look like there’s huge amount of competition, but we can’t get complacent, we cannot get complacent because that’s when trouble happens.”
