INCUMBENT Member for Spence Nick Champion says this month’s federal election is a choice between his Labor Party’s “stable leadership, and stable policies” versus “a Morrison Government
that doesn’t have much to say”.
The 47-year-old is vying for a fifth term, after first being elected to the now renamed seat of Wakefield in 2007, and said he is still motivated by the same principles that saw him run for parliament more than a decade ago.
“Schools, Medicare, wages, decent jobs; they’re the reasons I joined the Labor Party,” Mr Champion said.
“Spence is a seat that relies on good hospitals, it relies on good schools, and it relies on having well-paid jobs.
“Nobody wins out of a society where working people are under pressure the entire time and living pay cheque to pay cheque.
“In this country we used to have a situation where the minimum wage was about 70 per cent of average weekly earnings, now it’s about 50.
“We’ve gone backwards and, obviously, that’s been the consequence of a Liberal Government which said it’s a design feature of their economy that wages growth is low.
“So, these things are a constant battle, they’re not achieved by being a shrinking violet, you’ve got to fight for these things.”
Mr Champion will contend with five other candidates at the polls on May 18 – one each from the Liberal, Greens, United Australia and Animal Justice parties, and one independent.
He said minor parties traditionally have a poor track record, and labelled their candidates as “the fish that John West rejects”.
“You know, the people who have been in and out of major parties and haven’t got what they wanted, so they go off to join another party,” he said.
“The observation I’d make is with all these minor parties, they’re on high rotation, and they’re on high rotation for a reason – because they don’t last.
“If they get elected they don’t last and we get this, sort of, chaos.”
Mr Champion said he has already helped secure $3 million to upgrade the Playford Sports Precinct, and is also seeking to bring 50 new Centrelink jobs to the Spence electorate.
“A third of my office’s work is dealing with people who are waiting for pensions to be funded, casual workers who have problems with Centrelink due to their earnings not being recorded, or some under or over payment issue, and people being breached from Newstart,” he said.
“That’s no criticism of the local Centrelink workers who all do a pretty good job with limited resources, but that’s a real problem from a service delivery aspect, and a real problem for them.
“The mix of (those 50 jobs) will either be service delivery or call centre jobs.”
Mr Champion said Labor has put its own well-documented leadership woes behind it, and that a vote for him would be one for stability.
“Prior to (Bob) Hawke we had never removed a Labor leader, and we’re really heading back to that,” he said.
“We’ve changed our rules, and we’ve also changed our culture and it shows because Bill Shorten has been our leader all the way along, and we’ve had a very stable shadow ministry and very stable leadership.
“When I go talk to businesses and the community that is what people fundamentally want.”