By JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
THE COUNTRY Alliance could have called itself the common sense party, according to its Geelong candidates at their campaign launch this week.
Upper House candidate Garry Kerr said the party, fielding candidates in all four local seats at next month’s state election, was competing to become the third major political force in Victoria.
“Candidates will prosecute local issues in their own seats but see themselves as working as a ticket on issues such as transport, infrastructure and tourism investment,” he said.
“The major parties are far too Melbourne-centric and they forget about regions like Geelong and what people really go through here.”
Mr Kerr said the party unashamedly put fishing, hunting and camping at the top of its agenda.
“People in the city enjoy those pastimes as much as anybody and it hurts the regional and rural areas when they can’t do what they like because of government and bureaucratic lack of common sense.”
Mr Kerr said the party had yet to finalise its preferences but but the Greens would be last.
“We helped decide the outcome of the last state election when our preferences critical in determining the outcome of six seats.
“We favour neither Liberal/Nationals nor Labor and we respect and understand our environment better than most.”
The party’s other local candidates are Geelong councillor Jock Irvine in the seat of Bellarine, Tony Leen in Geelong, George Reed in Lara and Stephen Charas in South Barwon.
Other candidates to emerge this week include former mayoral candidate Doug Mann, standing as an independent for Geelong.
Mr Mann said the seat was being “short-changed” in the infrastructure debate with the major parties “falling over themselves throwing money at anything”.
“These monies should have been rationally allocated years ago, not in the last four months of a four-year term. And there should be lots more of it,” he said.
Mr Mann believed that the billion-dollar East West Link would “kill off infrastructure spending in the regions for many years to come”.
“Infrastructure spending per head of population in Victoria is outrageously skewed toward Melbourne. Each individual in regional Victoria receives a small fraction of what is spent on every person in the capital.
“It’s time for this farce to end. Regional Victoria wants its fair share.”
