Victorian election 2022: Martha Haylett Labor for Ripon

What led you to the Labor Party?

I joined about eight or nine years ago, and was always a political person. We always talked about politics around the dinner table, but I didn't join at 16 like Jaala; I didn't get involved in student politics when I was at university at all. But just saw Julia Gillard and her misogyny speech, all the amazing work that was happening in the Federal Labor space with Julia, and got motivated to get involved.

Was there someone within the party who took you under their wing, so to speak, and said, This is the way forward for you?

No, not particularly. I just got involved through Young Labor and made friends with people.

The amazing thing about being a candidate for Ripon is I'm completely surrounded by a big 'hug' of rural and regional Labor women. It's not one person I call, it's Maree Edwards, or Jacinta Allan and Mary-Anne Thomas or Juliana Addison or Michaela Settle. They've all surrounded me with support. Jaala (Pulford) has been amazing to me from the very beginning. (Former Ripon member) Joe Helper has been incredible. He's just been fantastic, giving me really helpful advice about the lay of the land, how to get engaged with all the different communities; there's over 100 communities in Ripon. And all politics is local, so an understanding of these different communities and what their issues are and how to be a real grassroots advocate.

You don't shy away from turning up to meetings.

I'm like Where's Wally.

What are the main issues and the main things that you're going to bring to the electorate?

So the three biggest issues that everything comes back to - obviously town by town, there's issues of particular sporting clubs, or particular community groups and halls that want money, but the overarching issue is roads. It is the number one issue that I hear: on the doors, on the phones, on the street constantly. With all the rain that we've had as well, the floods and the damage, but even prior to that, there was a lack of funding for councils to deal with all the 1000s of kilometres they're trying to maintain.

I brought the Roads Minister up to Waterloo near Beaufort just a few weeks ago to check out the damage on the roads. I was discussing with him about how a lot of people raise the patch jobs, that we constantly do patch job after patch job - it actually ends up costing more money long-term. What we need to start doing - he agreed - is rip up whole sections of road starting from the base again, and actually doing it right that first time. That's something I will advocate.

One of the first government agencies I want to meet with if I get elected is Regional Roads Victoria, understanding how their contracts work. What are the sort of regulations around the work that's been happening? And how is maintenance working? How can we improve it?

Healthcare is the second biggest issue coming up constantly. We've got a really good track record with healthcare across these hundreds of communities in Ripon. So an $8.6 million upgrade of Ararat hospital, a $100 million upgrade of Maryborough hospital; the student accommodation is almost done. That's all going to be complete by the end of 2020. Half a billion dollars for Ballarat Base, which is huge and benefits Creswick and Clunes and surrounding areas.

We've also done a million dollar upgrade of the Beaufort nursing home. Through the regional health infrastructure fund there's been more new equipment and smaller scale upgrades. But a lot of people raise with me you can't just upgrade the buildings. We need to make sure staff are supported, we need more nurses, more people actually on the ground - that comes up a lot in Maryborough and Ararat as well. The lack of GPs across Ripon. In St Arnaud, it's a couple, a husband and wife are the two GPs in town. They're almost in their 70s. If we lose them, the whole town doesn't have GPs. Avoca has lost its GP.

I was doorknocking in Clunes recently, speaking to elderly people there who have said they've just stopped going to the local GP because they're not bulk-billing anymore. It's not only that we don't have enough GPs, but they're also not bulk-billing enough. That's something I want to address with the federal government: how can we address our shortage of GPs in our rural areas, but also the bulk-billing and the Medicare issue? That's a really big one.

The third one is the cost of living. That comes up time and time again, the stress that people are under, the cost of everything. The power saving bonus just got snapped up, everyone picked it up. The massive news about making train fares fair for our areas is huge. If I'm elected I want to work really hard to get more services on the Maryborough line. It would benefit the kids of Maryborough wanting to come down to TAFE in Ballarat, as well as people across Ripon who have to come down to Ballarat for health appointments, It's not just about getting to Melbourne, it's about actually making the train fares fairer for the whole region. That's a really significant one and will save people a lot of money.

One of the things that draws younger people to a town is tertiary education. It's good to have a three or four time-daily public transport to and from, but if you're only taking people to another work, you're not bringing income to a town. How do you advocate for those kinds of facilities in Creswick, St Arnaud, Maryborough, Ararat?

If you if you have to go to Bendigo or Ballarat to go to TAFE from, for example, Maryborough - Maryborough has the highest amount of one-car families. So if someone goes to work, they can't get around anywhere. So public transport - better bus connections, better train services mean we can get people to these to these TAFE programs.

I really want to sit down with Bendigo TAFE and Ballarat TAFE and see how can we bring them to our regions, not just expect people to come down to Ballarat for example. I know there's some really fantastic work being done with Federation University and Ararat. There's a partnership with the council there and some exciting work being done with psychology students, to bring psychologists to Ararat, put psychologists in the schools and have an actual pool of psychologists for our region. I want to see more of that, and I want to see more innovation.

We've seen the City of Ballarat adopt LGBTQIA+ protocols. I'm wondering in Ripon what are some of the issues facing women, facing gender-identifying people, facing Indigenous people?

Family violence is a serious epidemic across the whole state, the whole nation, the whole world. That has come up - victims and survivors talking to me about their experiences. That is a significant gender issue that a lot of women are dealing with.

I've actually worked in the prevention of family violence space, so I'm very passionate about it, and I'm so excited to see there's an Orange Door now in Maryborough, and we've got one in Ballarat. I want to see the prevention of family violence programs supported around the regions, as well as supporting women who have been victims and survivors of family violence.

Childcare is a big issue as well. The whole of the Loddon Shire does not have childcare services, which is huge. And I am pushing so hard with the Victorian Government. have to make, you know, to get childcare services for that shire and, and across Ripon, because we have too many childcare deserts, meaning it's disproportionately impacting women. It also impacts men as well. But largely mums are not able to get back into the workforce, even when they want to, because there are not enough childcare services.

Free kinder is exciting; people over the moon about that. But also childcare and just a lack of childcare workers - workforce issues are significant across Ripon. The unemployment rate is fantastic, 2.9 per cent is so low. But we need more workers: even here in Creswick there's not enough hospitality workers. There's no childcare workers, teachers, nurses. We need to bring more actual workers to our regions across the board.

This is still one of the most disadvantaged parts of Victoria, and that's generational as well, it's hard to shift that. How do we get people to stay at school? Do you see other ways of trying to address not just the cost of living but also generational poverty?

One of the issues at the root of all of this is we need to address mental health. Some exciting stuff is starting to happen, but also we need to make sure it happens even more. The Victorian Government's Royal Commission into the mental health system was really significant in rural and regional areas. Growing up in the country, I knew people who killed themselves because they didn't have access to mental health services close to home. That is a huge one.

It comes up in Maryborough, Ararat, Beaufort, Smythesdale. Across the board, it is huge. Just the access issues, as well as not enough psychologists, there are counsellors who can't get Medicare rebates. I'm so excited there's going to be adult mental health centres in Ararat and Ballarat from mid-next year. But I want to make sure it's not just for those communities, I want to make sure it feeds out to the smaller towns of 50 people or 100 people, making sure they can actually access it, because I think, especially with intergenerational trauma and intergenerational disadvantage, mental health and housing is at the root of all these issues. I'm very passionate about, and I want to work hard to address it.

Let's talk about housing, planning and the pressures on communities to develop. There is pressure to remove the existing building fabric with infill but there's also pressure on greenfield development. Everywhere developers want more houses on smaller blocks. You need somewhere for people live but the question is how well do you want them to live - in 10 or 20 years time, when planning is so poor? How do you plan that?

Housing is not only my passion, but it's my profession. I've worked over the last five years in the housing sector and for the peak body for public housing tenants, as well as more recently in the public service at Homes Victoria, which is building all the social and affordable housing across Victoria.

It's a real passion area of mine.The issue around how do we do developments properly, how to do infill? I've knocked on hundreds and hundreds of doors across Cardigan Village, Miners Rest, Lucas, Mitchell Park. There are different developers who've done those communities across time, but even just the basic things of drainage, and footpaths and all of these types of smaller issues - that's one thing that we need to address. I really want to work with Ballarat Council on those issues.

Especially with recent flooding, there's a lot of a lot of strong feelings about how we need to improve that. But it depends on where you're talking as well, in terms of housing. For example, in St Arnaud and Ararat, it's a serious supply issue. We need to just build housing, because the factories in Ararat can't find workers because there's nowhere to live - there are zero rentals in Ararat and St Arnaud.

Whereas in Maryborough, Creswick, and Clunes it's more of an affordability issue. We need to address making sure homes are affordable, that not so many are getting pulled up to become AirBnBs. There's some really exciting work being done by the Victorian Government on affordable private rental schemes. That's something I really want to see brought forward.

It's not just about social housing, although we need so much social housing, because the waiting list is so long. But we also need affordable private rentals for that missing middle of people who are not necessarily in crisis as much but they're never going to be able to afford to buy a house. And we need to support them in the regions, especially key workers and key worker housing, because that's a significant issue.