Health and education are two of the focal areas at Mudgee for Country Labor in the lead-up to the 2019 election, the party’s candidate for the Dubbo electorate said.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Stephen Lawrence said Labor’s focus would be ensure Mudgee had a hospital that met its needs with shorter waiting lists, and a fully-functioning TAFE.
“Mudgee is an important part of the Dubbo electorate and I will be a regular visitor to Mudgee in the lead-up to the election,” Mr Lawrence said.
He said he had appointed a campaign manager from the Mudgee branch of the Labor Party to head his campaign in the town and he was looking to the branch to fill him in about the issues important to local residents.
“Health will be a big one. The government promised the hospital redevelopment would happen in this term and I’m concerned that isn’t going to happen,” Mr Lawrence said.
“I’m also looking into waiting lists at Mudgee Hospital but also Dubbo and Orange Hospitals because people from Mudgee would also travel to those.
Mr Lawrence said he also wanted to look at TAFE courses at Mudgee and see how many had been cut in recent years.
READ MORE: A fresh Labor of love
A year out from the election, Labor has focused its campaign on the slogan ‘schools and hospitals before stadiums’, with Mr Lawrence saying Labor was focused on helping the entire state rather than knocking down and replacing stadiums.
“Luke Foley announced that Labor would spend 300 million putting air conditioning into classrooms, and would start with areas that had temperatures over 33 degrees,” he said.
“That includes Mudgee and that’s an example of the way a small fraction of the stadiums bill can have a positive impact statewide.”
Mr Lawrence was the Labor candidate in 2015, where he attracted 29.6 per cent of the vote, a 10.9 per cent swing away from Nationals MP Troy Grant.
Labor leader Luke Foley announced Mr Lawrence as Country Labor’s candidate for 2019 in Dubbo recently and said the party had “confidence in Stephen”.
“He … got a really big swing, a double-digit swing against Troy Grant who was at the time the deputy premier of the state, and he’s on council now and doing great work for the community,” Mr Foley said.
“You’ve got to pay on performance. This bloke got a big swing in his first election, put Labor back in the game.”
