Mike Kelly, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation
1. What is your stance on climate change and your policies regarding it?
It’s become evident during the covid debacle that false news, manipulation of reports to meet international agendas and suppression of any alternative view to the government narrative have unreasonably manipulated the ability for the community to have a rational, balanced debate. Seeing the lengths the government will go too in order to promote their narrative has made me question everything I’d previously considered to be credible. The more I research, the more questions I have.
2. How do you plan on ensuring the safety of the roads in the Southern Downs?
As the only candidate that has driven the entire electorate, I’ve experienced first-hand the condition of the roads. The blame game between different levels of government needs to stop. I aim to close the federal offices (currently costing $1,000,000 per year in office and administration expenses) and relocate into the local shire offices for better communication and coordination between local and federal levels of government. Hopefully those savings can be reallocated to things like roads.
3. What are your policies regarding the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)?
Recent reports indicate the NDIS annual budget will blow out to $45 billion within two years. That equals the defence budget. “Sticky fingers” syphon the funding all the way through; leaving very little for the end user. While driving the entire electorate, every Maranoa community has been very critical of the NDIS program on the ground. “Dysfunctional” is the most common word used to describe it. We need One Nation type of transparency and accountability.
4. How will you combat the rising cost of living?
Taxation is our single biggest expense (7th highest globally). Government spending is paid by taxing incomes, goods and services. Reckless government spending increases taxes to fund everything so it must stop. Nonsense “handouts” (to win votes) must stop. Tough times ahead, yes. Even tougher if we continue to increase the tax burden on everyone to fund the handouts. One Nation opposes increasing handouts and taxes on our citizens and supports increasing taxes on multinationals.
5. What are your policies regarding the Ag Visa?
The Agricultural and Skilled Work Regional visas both attempt to solve the short-term issue however One Nation takes a long-term view attempting to solve the structural issue permanently. Declining populations in our rural communities is the problem, caused by lifestyle and career opportunity challenges. Solving the water challenges with the national building Hybrid Bradfield Scheme gives our communities long term water security so we can rebuild the regions with confidence for all future generations.
6. How will you and your party support our growers, given the rising costs of production?
The Ag-Tech industry has tremendous scope to increase productivity and efficiency in many Agricultural sectors, however our Water Policy will bring the greatest benefit to the industries. We aim to remove foreign and investor ownership of water rights to ensure price gouging doesn’t occur during the most volatile times of limited supply. One Nation believes the only people who should own the water are people directly connected to the land (not outside profit driven investors).
