INDEPENDENT candidate Bernardine Atkinson has announced she will contest the seat of Wannon in the 2025 federal election, campaigning on policies aimed at restructuring governance and restoring public services.<\/p>\n
A key focus of her platform is constitutional recognition of local government to enable direct federal funding and greater autonomy in service delivery.<\/p>\n
“Local government is in the best position to provide essential services,” she said.<\/p>\n
She argues outsourcing to private providers had increased costs and unemployment, describing it as a shift of public money to “opportunistic oligopolies”.<\/p>\n
Dr Atkinson is also advocating for tax benefits for married couples and a mothering allowance for stay-at-home parents, saying it would help strengthen families.<\/p>\n
“It would help families stay together if financial incentives for couples eclipsed the attractiveness of receiving much more than the single parenting option,” she said.<\/p>\n
Her other proposals include a National Development Bank to provide low-interest loans, a return to local government-managed essential services, and the development of small nuclear reactors for energy and desalination.<\/p>\n
She said she was encouraged to run by local supporters but ultimately made the decision herself.<\/p>\n
“I was ‘encouraged’ to run, not by lots of people, because politics is a nightmare for most people, but by a couple of politically-concerned, prominent, local women who think my policies are on the right track,” she said.<\/p>\n
Atkinson previously served as a councillor in Ararat Rural City and has a background in academia, with research spanning climate change, ecological sustainability, and nuclear energy.<\/p>\n
Her campaign is focused on what she describes as “renewing Australia” through economic and policy reform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
INDEPENDENT candidate Bernardine Atkinson has announced she will contest the seat of Wannon in the 2025 federal election, campaigning on policies aimed at restructuring governance and restoring public services. A key focus of her platform is constitutional recognition of local government to enable direct federal funding and greater autonomy in service delivery. “Local government is […]<\/p>\n