What is it like living in your community right now?
There is a lot of fear and uncertainty. While there has been such an outpouring of love and support across the country since the flooding crisis started, our greatest fear is that we’ll be forgotten once the news cycle moves on. It will take our area months and years to rebuild, not days and weeks.
Why are you running for state government?
They call it a one-in-100-year flood, but now we’ve had two in less than a month. We need to start accepting this is our new reality so that we can finally start putting environmental strategies in place to help prevent it, because we’re running out of time. I’m there every day helping with the clean-up, cooking meals in the community centre and replanting the forests. I feel we’ve been painfully failed by the current system of government and I’ve got ideas and something to contribute.
What can we at home do to help out?
What we are experiencing in the Northern Rivers right now is what the rest of Australia will start to face soon. We all need to focus on what is in our backyard, our fridge and our car, and start to find ways to live more sustainably. My campaign will be entirely digital, so it won’t contribute to even more waste and environmental damage by printing off thousands of leaflets. [So] when you have the chance to have your say and vote, make it really count!
