Perth Voice Interactive

Jonathan Hallett has put his hand up for the Greens in Perth for a fourth time.

The 32-year-old Northbridge local has stood for the state seat twice and in the 2010 federal poll scored a 5.8 per cent swing. A lecturer and researcher at Curtin university’s school of public health, Mr Hallett was preselected unopposed by local party members.

Key to his agenda is shining a light on Kevin Rudd’s cuts to things like:

• $213 million from the biodiversity fund;

• $143 million from carbon farming futures;

• $362 million from the clean technology program.

On a local level he wants city people to have better access to fresh food, directly from growers.

The Greens’ $85 million four-year plan would see grants connecting growers with local farmers’ markets, mobile markets and community food boxes, aiming to help them compete against Australia’s grocery duopoly.

And he says local families will benefit from a new Greens plan to invest in social housing, noting some families are on waiting lists for a decade. The Greens want to build 122,000 new houses nationally in 10 years.

With Labor losing compassion-cred among voters concerned about its new PNG policy for asylum seekers, Mr Hallett is hoping to appeal to voters who are “appalled” by the big two parties’ attempts to out-tough each other.

“We’ve always maintained that punishing refugees after they get here isn’t actually going to stop boats in any way, and the only way to stop boats is to create a safe alternative which currently doesn’t exist,” he says.

“A better option would be for us to better resource the UNHCR to procure people quicker, to increase our humanitarian intake.”
The Greens want the intake bumped from 23,000 to 30,000.

“We want a proper regional solution like the one we had with the Fraser government after Vietnam.”

by DAVID BELL