THE Nationals’ candidate for Mildura Jade Benham says she is under no illusion of the challenges ahead as she campaigns to unseat Member for Mildura Ali Cupper at the November state election.
Robinvale-based Ms Benham last month stepped aside as Swan Hill mayor and has taken leave of absence from council duties, kicking off her formal campaign at last week’s Speed Field Days.
Joined by The Nationals’ deputy leader Emma Kealy, Ms Benham said the field days were an opportunity to hear first-hand some of the issues that were impacting residents in the north-west.
The two days at the field days is the kind of stuff I love – getting out talking to people, listening to people and finding out what the issues are on the ground and trying to help them,” Ms Benham said.
“I do have my issues that we need to fight for and I’m not one to sit back and whinge about things and complain if I’m not going to do anything about it, so here I am trying to do something about it in the best way that I can.
“I’ve got the capacity to do it and I’ve got the support to do it, so the biggest challenge at the moment is trying to juggle everything.
“Things are really starting to get a lot busier now – my calendar is getting full, we’re getting a team together and things are looking exciting.
“I never say no to an opportunity and I realised there were some things that I couldn’t fix from a council perspective and that I needed to go higher.”
Ms Benham said that having spent the two days with producers, foot and mouth disease was an immediate issue that was “really scaring the pants off everyone”.
“Everybody in our part of the world understands the gravity of the situation if it does kick off here,” she said.
“Especially with our feral goat population, in particular … if it gets into that feral population then it actually would be catastrophic.”
But she also said health care in rural and regional communities was also at a “critical point” and “a huge issue for people”, while fixing rail freight network to support the region’s $1.7 billion agriculture industry was also high on the agenda.
However, Ms Benham said the overarching issue facing rural and regional Victoria was getting an equitable share of government funding.
The Nationals have been pushing for 25 per cent of State Government funding to go to the regions based on that proportion of the population living in country Victoria.
“We’re just not getting equitable funding out in the regions – regional Victoria, as we all know from all those press conferences that we’ve had over the past two years every day, they talk about the regions as being Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong, well, what about us up here in the far north-west?” Ms Benham said.
“It’s one of our biggest bugbears – as long as we get 25 per cent of funding into the regions I’ll be fighting to get our fair share up here because this is a big electorate.”
Ms Benham said she had long associated with The Nationals and was looking ahead to the challenges over the coming four months.
“I have always identified with The Nats because it’s grassroots, they listen to their members and that’s where the policies come from,” she said.
“If I was ever going to run (for politics) it would be with The Nats and nobody else – I just believe you’re stronger within a strong team.”
