\nevery Victorian.
\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.timesnewsgroup.com.au\/prod\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2022\/07\/Pool-in-article-2022-07-14T165438.228.png\")
\n\u201cThat took the most personal toll\u2026every decision was agonised. The pandemic was nothing like you can plan for, it went on and on and on and it keeps going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
BELLARINE MP Lisa Neville is now recovering from COVID-19, diagnosed within 24-hours of her announcement last month that she\u2019ll retire at the coming election
\nin November.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not exactly how she pictured her departure, particularly as the immunocompromised MP has hade five vaccinations against the virus, but the 20-year state parliamentary veteran is otherwise leaving the way she wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile your seat\u2019s in a really strong position\u2026 when there\u2019s a level of respect for you and you\u2019ve left some legacies in your portfolios\u2026 obviously health has not been an ideal contributor to that, but it\u2019s still been very much on my own terms, not to be pushed, not to be seen as being there too long, not to have lost the election.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should celebrate people who know when it\u2019s time to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the depths of the pandemic lockdowns, the state\u2019s longest-serving police minister worked from her kitchen bench while making decisions that affected
\nevery Victorian.
\n
\n\u201cThat took the most personal toll\u2026every decision was agonised. The pandemic was nothing like you can plan for, it went on and on and on and it keeps going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Neville barely had time to draw breath between the pandemic and the Black Saturday bushfires, and did not do so until hospitalised with Crohn\u2019s disease last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was starting to get pretty unwell about middle of 2020, I was trying to manage on my own, you weren\u2019t really seeing doctors, I got extra work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Acknowledging that her government did not get everything right during the pandemic \u2013 including hotel quarantine \u2013 she\u2019s confident Daniel Andrews and Labor will be returned at the November poll.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe might lose some seats around the edges, I don\u2019t think you go through a big event like the pandemic where that doesn\u2019t happen\u2026 but I think the opposition have still got a long way to go to make ground.
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.timesnewsgroup.com.au\/prod\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2022\/07\/Pool-in-article-2022-07-14T164950.904.png\")
\n\u201cWe socially transformed Victoria\u2026 people know who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Closer to home, Ms Neville feels her work as a local member is almost complete.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m determined to get the DAL done,\u201d she said of the Bellarine Distinctive Areas and Landscapes policy, that will determine planning growth in the region for decades to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery school has been upgraded\u2026we subsidised the Portarlington ferry, the Drysdale bypass, sports precincts, extended irrigation to Bellarine growers\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Anti-fracking campaigner and Labor staffer Alison Marchant has been named as Ms Neville\u2019s successor to contest the seat of Bellarine at the coming election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BELLARINE MP Lisa Neville is now recovering from COVID-19, diagnosed within 24-hours of her announcement last month that she\u2019ll retire at the coming election in November. It\u2019s not exactly how she pictured her departure, particularly as the immunocompromised MP has hade five vaccinations against the virus, but the 20-year state parliamentary veteran is otherwise leaving […]<\/p>\n