I’m Jess Whittaker and a first time candidate for Cunningham. I'm excited to have a chance to represent the great and wonderful people of this electorate.

I’ve grown up in Bulli and I work here, while also juggling life with two wonderful children, a great husband, and struggling with the many cost of living difficulties that we experience every day.

Right now we have lower growth in our economy, our wages are barely keeping up with the cost of living, and our once great public services, our health care, our education, and our other services, are in decline. I find this sad.

Both of the main parties are now hollowed out to the point where they have no new policies to change our prospects. They owe more to the large corporations and wealthy people in Australia and the prospects of them being able to change this dire situation is slim, very slim. 

Both major parties--and they’re not major parties at all as the ALP won 77 seats with only 32.5 percent first preference votes, the Liberal Party won 58 seats with 23.8 percent--offer little by way of answering a major question: what are their plans to help make life better for people like you and me. How will that occur when the current Labor government is still unable to pass legislation without compromise.

This election we’ve a chance to make great strides to improve our healthcare system by putting dental and mental health into medicare, change the funding for our children’s education, tackling the housing crisis throughout the nation. We also have the chance to accelerate our shift to renewable energy sources, create a generation and supply network where we, the local people, benefit, rather than large corporations or friends of the two major political parties. 

We can’t wait for the shift to highly contentious, costly and dubious nuclear energy nor can we wait for the current government to stop approving new coal and gas mining operations. We need to strike right now to reduce our greenhouse gases and ensure that together we gain the benefits of the enormous potential that Australia offers.

So a vote for a local, hard working candidate will see major changes in our lives.

Make this year a point when we say, “Enough, the two parties are not here to help us with our cost of living, housing affordability, or the climate crisis. We need to make the change ourselves.”

Together we can do more and we should demand that. Nothing will change unless your vote does.

If you want to get in touch, follow me at Jess on Facebook 

Thanks heaps, Jess Whittaker