Six candidates and hundreds of community members came along to the election forum at Bellingen Memorial Hall on Tuesday night.
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The event was flawlessly organised by the Bellingen Chamber of Commerce and the Bellingen & Nambucca Affordable Housing Action Group, with moderator Paul Harper ensuring speakers kept to their allocated time of a minute for each response.
Questions on four major topics had been prepared in advance: the business economy (which covered small business, youth unemployment and the NBN rollout), the environment (climate change, biodiversity), human rights (asylum seekers and Indigenous Australians) and housing affordability.
There were also questions from the floor, and this is where Paul had to crack his whip a few times as people were inclined to preface their queries with a great deal of commentary.
Despite the short answers imposed on them, the candidates gave thoughtful, interesting responses and some managed to reveal some unexpected personal information along the way.
When they were asked about supporting industrial hemp all of them said they did, and Alexander Stewart, from Clive Palmer's United Australia party, said he used to be a production manager at Hemp Foods in Bangalow.
Pat Conaghan said he would also fight for medicinal cannabis to be made available across Australia because he'd seen first-hand how it helps those with chronic pain.
They divided along party lines with regard to asylum seekers, but were of like mind regarding the need to have Australia's First Nations people constitutionally recognised.
Nationals candidate Pat Conaghan told the audience he wholeheartedly supports The Uluru Statement, adding that as part of his law degree he wrote a 10,000 word thesis on the over-representation of Indigenous people in custody.
Bellingen High student Stella Rees posed a question on the environment that OzGREEN's Youth Leading the World Congress had devised.
"How do you propose to demonstrate leadership and act on the changes needed to tackle the climate crisis by 2030?" she asked.
Lauren Edwards said the Greens were the only party with a comprehensive, costed plan to pursue the goal of keeping global warming under 1.5 per cent. "We can transition and we must," she said.
Kellie Pearce said the Animal Justice Party were concerned about climate change, land clearing and biodiversity.
"We represent more than just animals, we also see that climate change is a global emergency requiring immediate and substantial action across all sectors of society," she said.
Labor's Andrew Woodward outlined Labor's plan for progressing towards a clean, green future and also noted that he leads by example by being personally "carbon neutral".
"I have solar and a battery on the house, I have a part-electric vehicle, I buy carbon credits for myself and I'm also vegan," he said.
Alexander Stewart from the United Australia Party drew some titters when he began his response by referencing his party leader.
"Climate change is a serious issue - that's a quote from Clive Palmer."
There were groans when he stated there was "no point damaging our economy when China, India and Japan are not doing [emissions] reductions".
"Climate change is a serious issue, but it's not an emergency in our view," he said.
Nationals candidate Pat Conaghan said there was a "mistruth" that his party doesn't care about climate change.
"That's simply not true. But we need to address climate change through technology and science," he said.
Independent Rob Oakeshott said he'd thought long and hard about "why we lost control of the politics when we established a carbon scheme in Australia through the multi-party climate change committee".
"I've come back to try and do better this time," he said.