Frontline care worker and proud Gumbaynggirr man, Stephen Pope is stepping up as the Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party candidate for Parkes.
As someone who has been involved in politics for some time, but not actually stood for office before, he said of the campaign trail, “It’s been an eye opener.”
“I’ve been the chairman of the Dubbo Shooters Fishers and Farmers party for 10 years and have helped 2 candidates through the state election process, but when the party asked me if I’d like to run for the federal election this year, I decided it was time for me to step up.”
Helping others has been Mr Pope’s life mission.
“I’ve been a frontline care worker for over 20 years across all different areas – disability, aged care, in home – I’ve really just got a desire to help people,” he said.
“Too many people who need help actually just get treated like shit and I wanted to be able to make a difference.”
Shooters Farmers and Fishers cites a decline in leadership as one of the major reasons that regional Australia struggles. When asked how he feels about this sentiment, Mr Pope strongly agrees.
“Absolutely we’re a forgotten electorate – we never see our representatives.”
“If I win, I’ll be on the road 7 days a week talking to my electorate. All the major parties just want to do is throw money at problems to try and make them go away, it doesn’t work, we need to get back to a grassroots approach,” said Mr Pope.
When asked to elaborate one what this grassroots approach looks like to him, he said, “We need to get our local communities sitting down together with their chosen representative, identifying the issues and working together to solve them.”
One of the key areas Mr Pope believes will help regional towns is better access to police.
“All police stations should be manned. Take my home town of Warren – our nearest police officer is Narromine, that’s 85km away. If something’s going wrong, they’re not going to make it to us in time.”
“But if all towns had a police station and at the very least a liaison officer that could provide advice and refuge to people that needed it, I think it would go a long way to improving the rural crime problems we’re seeing.”
Another issue he feels strongly about is housing.
“We’ve got all these resources being wasted by the Department of Housing – there’s 29 blocks sitting vacant in Warren alone,” said Mr Pope.
“I contacted the Minister about and he told me there was no funding to build anything but that’s because they only care about building in the cities.”
“I’ve looked into it and you can build a 2-bedroom kit home for $20,000 – why can’t we be doing that and making homes for families in the bush?”
“There’s too much negativity and too much arguing; the Ministers need to get out of their offices and get back to the bush to talk to real people.”
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