Only four of the invited eight candidates attended the Ballarat Central Uniting Church pre-election forum. Candidates for the LNP Ben Green, UAP Terri Pryse-Smith, and One Nation's Rosalie Taxis failed to attend. The Liberal Democrat's Julia McGrath sent an apology as she was unwell.

The four candidates present, the Greens' John Barnes, ALP's Catherine King, Australian Federation Party's Kerryn Sedgman, and independent Alex Graham spoke to the key issues of climate change and federal integrity before facing questions from a well-informed and prepared audience of around 50 people.

Among the issues addressed in the public questions, the strongest approbation received was in response to questions about the future of rural media and the ABC. The four candidates expressed support for restoring funding to the national broadcaster and securing funding for the work, pay and conditions of regional journalists in the electorate.

"I can't imagine Ballarat without The Courier," John Barnes said. "In my life in Ballarat I could not not start the day without having read The Courier because it covered so many things that were topical."

Other questions canvassed the future of education funding and the return of free higher education, cuts to the NDIS, the lack of advancement of climate change policy, and the poor federal responses to the recent bushfires and floods across Victoria and NSW.

Some questions to candidates:

(To Catherine King) Australia is a country and access to higher education is important on an individual national level. Why then is free education a privilege enjoyed by people of your generation, but not for Australians today?

KING: It's actually a great question. And whilst I am older, I did actually have to pay for a HECS. I think you're right, education is incredibly important, higher education. That is why we have announced free TAFE places in those areas where there are skill shortages. So that's been part of our offering, as well as additional Commonwealth supported places to keep university education accessible. What we've seen, unfortunately, in the last decade is a massive defunding of our universities. We saw in the paper today, the loss of income at Federation University, each of them have had to then go and become far more dependent on income sources from overseas, so overseas students, and that has really meant that the viability and the quality of our university education has suffered. We certainly want to put research back at the heart of universities, make sure that it is accessible to people. But we don't have policies intended to abolish HECS, but we do have TAFE places because it's important to actually bring people back into that area.

BARNES: We would seek to forgive any outstanding HECS debts so that people aren't handicapped when they try to get into the housing market, carried over from their tertiary education. We're proposing free TAFE. And we are proposing substantially increasing funding for public education at primary and secondary level. Early childhood education is a big deal. And we're talking about universal access with three and four year olds, and free universal childcare. You're going to ask how are we going to pay for this, because I want to answer that question at some stage.

SEDGMAN: I actually had a free education because I am older. And then with my kids, seeing how the debt is built up for them, and it seems to be, my understanding is, those who graduate university aren't necessarily creating an income to pay back the debt, which I think is critical. It pulls them back in their careers and holds them back from what they can actually potentially change. So, as a minor party, we will not be holding the key positions in power, but I will really absolutely 100 per cent support pulling back all those things, so that they can actually enter the workforce debt-free.

GRAHAM: If the referendum goes through (Mr Graham proposes a referendum on s.51 of the Constitution and a change to the fiat currency), it will not be a problem for me to be paying for their education. The first item of policy on my website is a new banking model using this system that would make interest-free loans available to everyone. And they would pay a fee for service to the network of banks doing that.

Since 2014, the ABC has lost over $800 million in funding and over 1250 jobs. If elected will you support increased funding and resourcing to ensure the viability of the ABC and the accessibility of the ABC for Australians?

KING: I'm really proud of the Friends of the ABC in Ballarat who have been, again for many, many years, protecting the ABC and making sure this is raised. Labor will restore that $83 million in funding cuts. We also have said we will have five new funding contracts or agreements with the ABC because again, this lack of certainty is really problematic in terms of particularly Australian content and being able to keep Australians employed. The other is obviously integrity and independence of the board. I think the incredible pressure this organisation has been placed on, the incredible political pressure, has just been appalling to see and appalling to watch. The loss of loss of programming, loss of journalists and loss of an Australian voice and we will restore that and actually protect our ABC. It's one of our most valuable assets and it's one of the most important parts of our democracy.

BARNES: I concur and SBS shouldn't be forgotten either. We need look after both the ABC and SBS; they are important voices in our democracy and we need them strong, particularly with Murdoch Press doing all the horrible things they do on the planet.

SEDGMAN: Yes. I absolutely support this.

GRAHAM: Absolutely agree.

The Courier carried yesterday, on the front page, that the cost of printing the paper will be increased by 80 per cent. No fault of theirs. Rural media is already under tremendous pressure from different platforms, from huge competition; we have lost a lot of journalists. And ACM has 140 newspapers across the regions, all of which are under threat, again, not through any cause of their own. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me - Ben Green for preference, but since he's not here, what are your plans to protect and strengthen rural media?

KING: I can't imagine a circumstance where we will not have The Ballarat Courier here after 170 years of history of having our own regional newspaper. And I think many of us have been, watching what happened when ACM took many of these papers over and there's been a number of closures across communities as well. Anthony Albanese said yesterday, he was asked directly a question about this. This hasn't just emerged. There's been a real pressure on regional news services for quite some time now. There was emergency measures put in place due to COVID but clearly no plans beyond that. We will work with the sector if we're in government in 16-17 days time to see what we can do. But our view is absolutely that we do need to keep regional media. But I also think that in return for government money, we need to make sure we are keeping local journalists, we're keeping local stories and local voices alive. That it is not just a handout to a large multinational. It has to come with some strings.

BARNES: I'm with Catherine. I can't imagine Ballarat without The Ballarat Courier. All through my life in the Ballarat, I could not go out and start the day without reading The Courier because it covered so many things that were topical. Now it's slimmer pickings these days, and that's just the reality with the media landscape in the country. But I cannot tell you specifically what the Greens will do on this matter. It's above my pay rate. But it's something that we would be concerned about. And we would work with Labor if we are holding the balance of power.

SEDGMAN: As a community person in Glenlyon, we used to have The Advocate. We don't have that now, and The Courier is sold at Coles. And it's not particularly working, I guess, for our particular part of the community. Basically the role of news comes from the Glenlyon Progress Association, it gets delivered to our letterbox. And that's pretty much all we've got left. We really miss The Advocate. And I'm wondering how the government, whoever whoever gets in, is going to support our communities with local media.

My question is to Catherine and John: as we've touched on Australia is one of the most marginal climates in the world, and we've already experienced catastrophic fires, floods, storms, wind storms and plagues. Our ability to deal with these events and the actions needed to overcome them cross between state and federal jurisdictions. To what extent does Australia's political system need to adapt and change in order to adequately address these threats? I'm thinking not so much of responses to events, but how we move forward and actually prevent these things from happening, and how we get Australia up to speed like other countries. For example, Sweden, Germany, who are way ahead of us, and all the technology is already there. If I could just elaborate slightly: 15 years ago, Christine Milne from the Australian Greens came and gave a talk in Ballarat. At that time, she said that Sweden had all of the technology needed to create all of the industrial systems with zero carbon emissions. That was 15 years ago. All of that technology exists. I'm wondering why Australia hasn't developed holistic policy across global state and federal governments to address this enormous threat?

KNG: Again, a really great question. So the first thing I'll say:, we've had a decade of a government that has been held hostage to the National Party on this, and some of the fringe elements who don't believe in climate change. So you have to have a federal government that is willing to do something about it. And if you remember, when we were last in government, we had a business community that, frankly - it's terrific that they've now adopted net zero, that they're now talking about it that, they now see the economic potential - but when we were last in governmen, they stood alongside Tony Abbott on the whole carbon tax campaign. So we had this divided country. I think we've got this unique opportunity. Now we need to get Labor elected. John will say, we need to get Labor and the Greens elected; I'll say we need to get Labor elected, in order to actually tackle and end the climate wars. Many of the states have actually far outstripped what the Federal Parliament has been doing anway. They've been investing in renewables you've seen all of that.. So I think we've got the capacity to do it. We're already decades too late. But I think we've got capacity to end the climate wars and only getting Labor into office is going to do that.

BARNES: We do need to get the policy setting right. We've had several goes at it. It's been unraveled by the destroyers. And if we can get that policy setting right, we can free up private sector capital, we can get a market response engaged with this thing. And things will happen very quickly and the likes of Michael Cannon-Brookes and what he's doing with sun cable and what he's doing with our biggest retailer AGL and so on, and what Fortescue Future Industries is doing with electrolysers.in Gladstone, with future fuels... they are hot to trot and we just have to get it going. And it needs to be something on which there is national leadership and we don't have anybody who's capable or prepared to be national leaders.

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