The climate crisis, energy, water and housing for young people — these were just a few of the topics posed to Nicholls candidates at the 2025 candidate forum.

On Monday, April 14, close to 120 people packed out the room at Shepparton’s La Trobe University campus eager to ask questions and understand what each of the candidates were about.

The event, which was hosted by Committee for Greater Shepparton chief executive Linda Nieuwenhuizen and McPherson Media Group assistant editor Geoff Adams, was attended by four of the seven candidates.

This included Kim Travers of Flowerdale for the Australian Labor Party, Paul Bachelor of Echuca for the Family First Party, Jeff Davy of Numurkah for the Australian Citizens Party and current Federal Member for Nicholls and Nationals candidate Sam Birrell of Shepparton.

Missing were Shelby Eade from Altona for the Greens, Aaron Tyrrell of Invergordon for One Nation, and Glen Francis of Maldon for Trumpet of Patriots.

Few new developments were revealed but Mr Birrell did forecast an announcement later this week regarding the Shepparton Sports Stadium.

Mr Davy started off by sharing his background with economics and community groups before stating his top objective for the region.

“The number one issue is to go back to a credit system that we had from 1912 to 1928,” Mr Davy said.

“That’s with an infrastructure bank, a post office bank and a development bank.”

Ms Travers stated that coming from a union background she had always been a big supporter of workers’ rights, and her childhood of growing up in public housing had influenced her passion for education.

“There’s a connectivity between having education on all levels, moving forward, connecting into jobs and opportunities in the area to keep families here, to make sure the kids aren’t moving away, and there are proper opportunities for everybody, no matter what your socioeconomic background is.”

Mr Birrell said he had put his hand up at the last election to continue on the work of the Nationals in the region.

“The reason I did that was because I’d seen what the Nationals in a Coalition government can do for this region and there are many examples of that,” Mr Birrell said.

Mr Bachelor, who has a background in electrical design and power engineering, said not only was his goal to uphold the values of Nicholls as established by Pastor Sir Douglas Nicholls, but also supporting businesses when disaster struck.

“I did a lot of soil testing for a while over in the Lockington to Echuca area and saw the devastation and the rapid diminishing of our dairy industry,” Mr Bachelor said.

“That’s what we’re about to find out and to sort out and to try and help recover the small-business growth in the country of Australia and especially in this area.”

Before getting into further topics, questions were put to Mr Birrell regarding what his office had achieved in the past three years in relation to his 2022 election promises.

Mr Birrell made it clear that it was harder to push legislation through when your party was not the one in power; however, there was progress with some of the projects, including funding for the Seymour Community Wellbeing Hub and Echuca Victoria Park redevelopment.

While he said he continued to work with groups in advocating for projects such as the Shepparton Clinical Health School and Seymour RSL redevelopment, no comment was made on the Shepparton bypass or Shepparton Sports Stadium.

When Mrs Travers was asked about what influence she would expect to have, she said her time working with Labor since the 1980s had helped connect her with the right people.

“Now, if Sam has done all this great work with being able to negotiate with the opposition in power, both in state and federal, how much better would it be if you had a friendly as your MP here?” Mrs Travers said.

Mrs Travers also said that Labor had put in funding for research and support towards the waterways, but it was always a matter of balance.

“They’re (the Labor federal government) increasing compliance by $35 million to make sure that the metering and the monitoring happens, and they’re going to make sure that the modelling and data is publicly available, which is incredibly important,” she said.

“Future-proofing our water system is incredibly important, but it is always a balance between agriculture, manufacturing, potable water for people to drink.”

Mr Birrell said the Goulburn Valley had suffered from a lot of water being taken from the river system and said the current plan that Labor had for water buybacks didn’t stand up to scrutiny.

“It damages our industries, it damages our kids’ futures, it damages our sovereign ability to grow food,” Mr Birrell said.

On energy security, Mr Birrell said it was about looking at what the best option was that could produce low-emissions energy.

“If we really do want a long-term solution that has low emissions and that stops our industries from moving offshore, then we need reliable baseload power and the technology that can deliver that, and that is nuclear energy,” he said.

Mr Bachelor agreed with Mr Birrell and said that nuclear was the best way to go.

Mr Davy didn’t answer the question. He instead attributed the rising cost of living to the price of oil and fuel.

Mrs Travers said that it was too late to build nuclear power plants, especially if trying to keep on track with target emission reductions, but Labor was working towards other solutions.

“You lower the carbon emissions, and you update car emissions standards, you lower the tax on electric cars, you make sure that farmers and landowners have projects that repair nature,” she said.

“And building generating capacity. We’ve got to nationally electrify the grid to electrify the nation, and we have 400 community batteries already under way.”

When it came to the matter of housing, candidates were asked what they would do to help young people find their first home.

Mr Birrell said the Nationals’ policy was to put $5 billion towards helping local governments to increase the supply of land and get services to estates.

“There are some tax arrangements that have been made to offer a tax deduction for young people who are making their repayments to help them service the debt that they will get when they get their mortgage,” he said.

Mr Bachelor said throwing money at the problem was not always the answer; rather, it came down to reducing the taxation rate.

Mr Davy brought the conversation back to money and said it came back to the credit system.

“That’s (the banks) the root of all our problems, and where our problems lie because all money is created out of nothing by banks as debt,” he said.

Mrs Travers said the current government had and would continue to invest money into housing for not just homeowners but for renters, too, by increasing rent assistance.

“Labor’s investing $33 billion in housing,” she said.

To read what candidates had to say about water policy, read next week’s Country News.

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