Wonthaggi locals packed the pews of the St George’s Anglican Church on Thursday night to listen to Bass candidates make their pitch to represent the seat.
The setting: The event covered a wide range of local and state issues, from protecting the Western Port Woodlands and improving the livability of Bass, to disagreements around Treaty and abortion policy.
Bass has been won by the Labor Party at the last two state elections, but with increasing support for One Nation, a Redbridge polling analyst told the Monitor it is looking like a three way race between the Liberals, Labor and One Nation.
The players: Not all the candidates were in attendance at the event. Rochelle Halstead (Liberal), Sophie Thorn (Greens) and Antoinette Pitt (Independent) said they could not attend.
The Greens upper house candidate for Eastern Victoria Mat Morgan took Thorn’s place at the forum.
The speakers in order of who spoke first were:
Chris Buckingham (Labor);
Chris Jobe (Victorian Socialists);
Mat Morgan (Greens), and;
Nikole Schellekens (One Nation).
The local issues: Candidates debated a wide range of local, state and federal issues, from more action on gambling reform as well as better protection of domestic violence victims and care for the Western Port Woodlands.
Three major talking points took up much of the night: Poker machine reform, abortion rights and policy around Victorian Treaty with First Nations People.
Pokies: All the candidates at the event promised to bring stronger regulations on poker machines and the gambling industry if elected.
Buckingham (Labor) and Schellekens (One Nation) promised to reduce gambling harm, with Buckingham pointing to Labor’s legislation that allows patrons to set hard limits on time and money spent on a machine.
This was quickly countered by Jobe (Victorian Socialists) asking the candidates to raise their hands if their political party didn’t accept money from the gambling industry.
Only Morgan (Greens) and Jobe raised their hands.
“We've got both major parties saying they can take corporate donations and reduce gambling harm. No, you can’t. We need to get the pokies out of our pubs and tax gambling corporations,” Morgan told the Monitor.
Morgan pointed to research that shows Australia has the highest gambling losses per capita compared to anywhere else in the world.
Abortion: In a stark divide between policies, Schellekens (One Nation) was the only candidate at the event - or in the race - to oppose the state’s abortion laws, saying her party was a pro-life organisation.
Buckingham pointed to the Labor government’s October election promise that it will eliminate out-of-pocket costs for abortions across Victoria if given another term.
The Coalition has committed to matching Labor's promise.
Nikole Schellekens speaking to the crowd.
Treaty: In what was the strongest audience pushback of the night, Schellekens was repeatedly heckled with the word “shame” when she voiced One Nation’s policy to halt Treaty negotiations.
When asked about repealing the state’s Treaty with First Nations People, Schellekens justified the decision as a cost saving measure but didn’t offer any specific policies that would materially benefit the lives of Indigenous Australians.
Nationally, current policies and services are falling short on 15 of the 19 Closing the Gap commitments.
The Victorian Treaty commenced on December 12 last year, but the Liberal Party has stated it will repeal the agreement within 100 days if elected in November.
Buckingham (Labor) pointed to his party’s decade-long history in pushing for a Treaty, while Morgan (Greens) and Jobe (Victorian Socialists) said their parties would continue to uphold the agreement.
The view from the back of the church.
The 1-on-1’s: Morgan told the Monitor he was excited at potentially being the first Greens candidate to ever be elected to the upper house in Eastern Victoria, which Greens internal polling shows is a possibility.
“The seat of Eastern Victoria has never been represented by a politician that doesn't take donations from coal and gas companies, from gambling corporations and from the banks.”
Schellekens told the Monitor she was motivated to run for the seat because she wants a future where her children can afford a house, get a job and go to university.
Asked by the Monitor whether it was difficult to sell socialism to regional Victorians, Chris Jobe said Wonthaggi had been very receptive to his party’s politics because of its close ties to socialist unions when the state-run coal-mines operated in the town from the early 1900s to the 1960s.
Chris Buckingham told the Monitor he needed media approval from the Labor Party in order to speak with the press.
The vote: The electorate of Bass sits on Gippsland’s western edge and covers most of Western Port Bay and the coastline up to Venus Bay.
Phillip Island, Wonthaggi, Inverloch, Tooradin and Koo Wee Rup are within the district.
The current Labor Party MP Jordan Crugnale first won the seat in 2018 and was reelected in 2022, beating the Liberal Party candidate by 0.4 percent of the two-party preferred vote.
Last October, Crugnale announced she would not contest the seat at the upcoming election, opening the door for a new Labor candidate.