The federal election is approaching fast, and early voting is open. I am standing for the Greens in Page because I believe they are the only party with the seriousness, ambition and urgency required to address the many challenges our community and planet face.

We develop principled, sensible and costed policies based on evidence from both experts and people’s lived experience. As is only too evident in my work as a doctor, it is no use arguing with the science on issues like the climate crisis – avoiding painful realities with wishful thinking and listening to quacks is ultimately not helpful, and often harmful. It is only with honest and accurate information, delivered with compassion, that patients and their loved ones can make the best choices for themselves. I believe the same is true in politics.

In 2010, one of the Greens conditions for supporting the Gillard Labor government was the establishment of the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), an independent public service open to any party or independent to have their policies properly costed, giving the public transparent, reliable and accurate information. The Greens don’t treat the public like mugs - unlike the major parties, we have consistently used the PBO and release our fully costed policies well before an election to allow you to scrutinise them.

The Greens believe in universal public services – like health care, education, aged care and childcare – and that housing is a human right for all. Unlike the current member for Page, we do not indulge in a pre-election rush of pork-barreling, trying to buy off sections of our electorate with (taxpayer-funded) pet projects here and there. Unlike the old parties, we don’t offer short-term sugar hits like a temporary tax break or fuel excise cut. In contrast, our policies are aimed at making a real difference to people’s lives, including the cost of living, both immediately and in the long term, through systematic structural changes with proper funding. We take on the elephant in the room – the billionaires and big corporations who hoard this nation’s wealth and don’t pay their fair share. By taxing them properly, we can fund the things we all need. And because we don’t take donations from them, unlike the old parties, we can be trusted to enact our promises and put our community and planet first.

The Greens don’t punch down on the vulnerable, seeking to divide our community by pitting those who are struggling against each other – the oldest trick of the rich and powerful to protect their privilege and distract the rest of us from the real issues. In recent months, our current member for Page reappeared to indulge in some lazy law and order politics, whipping up hysteria about youth crime, despite the justice system actually being a state government responsibility. After this, I met up with an elderly woman from Coraki who had been a repeated victim of youth crime, and listened to her story. Because of her experience and knowing her community, she was a strong advocate for solutions that would actually work. Not simply locking kids up, only for them to come out worse and continue reoffending as the evidence consistently shows, but to deal with the root causes of their behaviour. To invest some of the nearly one million dollars a year it costs to keep a child in detention instead in the youth and family services, as well as in the basics like health, education, jobs and housing. To give kids in country towns hope and a chance at a life with meaning. This is what a federal MP should actually be advocating for. Likewise, rather than punch down on a few squatters in Lismore, or the immigrants who bring so much to this country, our federal MP should instead be helping fix the housing crisis in this region and nation at large. We need someone who takes on the wealthy Australian multi-property speculators that benefit from tax breaks over first home buyers, and a government that gets back into the business of providing housing and treating it as a human right.

When people can get past the self-interested spin of the old parties, the Murdoch media and the fear-and-outrage algorithms of the tech bros – when they actually get to hear Greens policies - they like them. To see a GP for free, and have 6 free government-run community health centres in every electorate. Finally getting dental and full mental health services into Medicare. Properly funding our public schools. Free university and TAFE. Free universal childcare. Phasing out negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts for those with more than one investment property so that first home buyers have a fair chance in the market. A government developer to build over 600,000 homes in five years, to help make housing affordable for first-home buyers and renters. Facing the reality of the climate crisis, stopping new coal and gas, and making fossil-fuel companies help pay for our skyrocketing insurance. Investing in cheap and reliable renewable energy and ensuring workers can transition from old to new industries. Protecting our precious native forests, rivers and seas, and the threatened creatures that live in them. Cancelling the $375 billion AUKUS boondoggle with its handful of ill-suited nuclear submarines that will arrive either too late, under foreign command, or not at all. Developing our own independent, echidna-style defence capability in light of an increasingly unreliable US `ally’. And supporting our First Nations peoples’ rights to self-determination over their own destiny.

On each of these issues and more, the Greens have been prepared to take the lead, far ahead of the old parties, and changed the debate in this country. Sometimes, like with our popular policies to see the GP for Free, subsidising home batteries or taking on supermarket price gouging, Labor and even the Coalition have been forced to at least partially match our commitment. But the best way to guarantee that these policies actually get implemented is to vote Greens representatives like me into parliament. This election, to keep the Coalition out and force a minority Labor government to take real action, vote Green in the lower house and in the Senate.

Dr Luke Robinson, Greens candidate for Page

To find out more about our policies, go to https://greens.org.au/platform.

To find out more about me or support my campaign, go to:

Facebook:           https://www.facebook.com/DrLukeForPage

Website:               https://greens.org.au/nsw/person/dr-luke-robinson

Authorised by A. Croft for The Greens NSW. 19/1 Hordern Place, Camperdown, NSW, 2050