Wannon election candidate Bernadine Atkinson - April 24, 2025 - The Standard - video Dailymotion

The Standard

Wannon election candidate Bernadine Atkinson outlines her vision for the electorate.

Transcript

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.

Wannon election candidate Bernadine Atkinson - April 24, 2025 - The Standard

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