An immense amount of trust is placed in surgeons, often when people are at their most vulnerable. Through evidence, empathy and specialist knowledge, I have worked with people to gain their trust and collaboratively find solutions to their healthcare challenges.
Trust in politicians and our democratic institutions has been seriously eroded over recent decades.
As an Independent MP, I will apply my professional skills to restore integrity in politics for the people of Forrest.
Australians are losing faith in the major parties to apply big-picture, long-term thinking to the problems we are facing right now. I am committed to ‘doing politics differently’ to demonstrate representative politics can be collaborative, transparent and accountable.
We can improve transparency in Parliament by identifying and disclosing lobbyists who meet with politicians, publishing Ministerial diaries, and introducing an exclusion period for retiring parliamentarians with direct conflicts of interest seeking private-sector employment.
I support government funding being distributed to projects with merit via open and competitive grant funding rounds. The Prime Minister and Opposition Leader must stop ‘pork-barrelling’ taxpayer money during election campaigns. Promising large sums of money for uncosted projects without community consultation - to win votes - goes against my commitment to evidence-based decision-making.
My campaign runs on donations from our community. I ask all donors to join my 'donation transparency wall' on my website. If I, as an Independent, can manage to be transparent about campaign funds then the major parties can too. We need electoral reforms that stop corporate money and wealthy donors from influencing elections, including close-to-real-time disclosure of campaign funding. Individual candidate campaign expenditures should not be hidden behind Party declarations. Australians deserve to be as informed as possible before casting their vote.