You’ve run for The Greens before. Why are you running this time?

I have been a candidate before, going back about 20 years. I had a spell starting 10 or so years when I wasn’t a candidate because I felt it was time to give others a go.

Then about six or seven years ago, I had a period of ill health and that really put a stop to everything. But I’ve been steadily recovering, so although I’m getting older my health is improving and, to be honest, one of our Greens upper house members David Shoebridge really decisively won our preselection ballot for the March election and I thought ‘I’d love to work with David’, so I was thinking of nominating for preselection for the March election and of course we then had this byelection called.

What sort of feedback are you getting?

I think more and more people are realising the system is broken and the environment is in massive decline and the problem with everyone else is that they are tinkering with the edges, and we’re past the point of tinkering. 

We need majaor, major structural change, both in human life, society, goovernment services and so forth and in terms of the environment as well.

What sort of changes would you like to see?

Well, one thing I have been very conscious of, largely because of the Wagga Feminist questionnaire, is housing because they point out particularly how many older women will be homeless, and the sort of change I am thinking – and it’s not just me but The Greens and progressive parties worldwide – is universal housing.

Social housing is in incredibly short supply, so people can’t get on the list or if they get on the list, they are waiting and waiting and waiting, and it’s often really low standard.

Whereas, universal housing is affordable rental housing for everybody. It’s a bit like the universal basic income for everybody. 

It is affordable because the state government could replace stamp duty with land tax, because stamp duty is basically a sales tax when you're buying property, but a land tax would be anyone with property, so that would make buckets of money available for universal housing.

What else would you like to see introduced?

Another way in which the system needs a change is what used to be called pork barrelling and now it’s called cash splashes.

The idea is that instead of doling out some money when an election rolls, services would always be resourced to a high standard. Of course, that’s another mindset change.

It should be resourcing public institutions: education, health and libraries, and that should be the norm.

Wagga library is a real community hub. People who go there not just to borrow books, but to read the papers, the number of people who use computers. There’s an assumption that everyone has one, well sorry but not everyone can afford a computer.

There’s a community learning space at the library and children’s storytime, and I’m sure in this weather some people just go there to get out of the cold.

Not everyone can afford to heat their home.

What are you hearing about cost of living?

Again, this is another major change, another way to mend the completely broken system.

Privatisation of the electricity and gas supplies did not work, and to me it’s as plan as daylight that once you privatise anything, you’re putting the profit motive ahead.

Returning electricity and gas to public ownership would certainly reduce the prices. 

Somebody said to me the other day ‘so you want to renationalise electricity’, but public ownership is not necessarily the same as nationalisation. I’m thinking of community-owned solar farms, community-owned wind farms and so forth, and, on the coast, community-owned tidal generation. 

What do you think of Snowy 2.0?

Well, it’s another sort of cash splash, isn’t it? It will help,. but again it’s tinkering at the edges.

Another really important thing in my campaign is public ownership rather than privatisation in many aspects of our society because the state government is in love with privatisation.

They’re privatising everything they can, and you might think ‘oh well, that’s motorways in Sydney’ and it certainly is, but we’ve got it here: Visy’s money into the intermodal freight hub. That’s partly privatised it and it should be completely 100 per cent in public hands.

What about the environment?

One way in which the current state government has really damaged the environment is its legislation to allow basically wholesale clearing of native vegetation, and it’s only a couple of years old that law.

That does two major things: it destroys other flora and it destroys the habitat for fauna.

Also, land clearing encourages drought.

Let’s talk specifically about Wagga?

We need reliable ongoing sustainable funding for education, which is schools, TAFE and universities.

Also, I’m forever hearing that childcare is too expensive, preschools are too expensive. Well they’re all privately owned, aren’t they? Why don’t we start public education at preschool level?

We need to resource the Base Hospital and schools properly. We also really should be investing in public transport.