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9 AUGUST, 2022
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Hitting the Shitbox road It sounds nuts, but Michael White from Diggers Rest will be driving a $500 Holden Commodore from Rockhampton to Hobart as part of the Summer Shitbox Rally 2023, raising money for the Cancer Council. Through the guts of Australia, via the artesian basin, he and his mate Reece Brown will work as part of a team of six to make the 4000 kilometre journey. “We’ll drive sections every day, going from town to town, stopping, camping, having a bit of a party with the locals, and then moving onto the next town,” Mr White said. The 34-year-old triple-0 emergency radio dispatcher said the pair were full of blind faith. He and Mr Brown don’t know a lot about cars, but are keen for sponsors and donors to get onboard to make their trek worth it. “We’ve both had family and recently some mates die of cancer … it just seemed like a pretty important thing to jump in on,” Mr White said. To donate to the cause or find out how to sponsor, head to: https:// summer2023.shitboxrally.com.au/thetape-deck-of-destiny. Michael White is driving a ’shit box’ car from Rockhampton to Hobart to raise money for the Cancer Council.
(Damjan Janevski) 290747_01
Elsie Lange
Politicians target Melton By Olivia Condous Melton has been identified as a target seat for the Labor Party in the lead up to November’s state election, after research showed voter sentiment was largely against the two major parties. In the 2018 state election, the Labor Party’s primary vote in Melton dropped to a historic low at 34.9 per cent. However the party retained the seat, with 54.3 per cent of the all votes counted. Director of political consultancy RedBridge Group and former Labor Party deputy
campaign director Kos Samaras said Labor considered Melton to be a marginal seat that it had to “worry” about. The previous post-election margin was a mere 4.3 per cent, with 35 per cent of voters preferencing independent candidates. “The economic situation in Melton since then has not exactly improved … The issues that were animating people to vote for independence back in 2018 are still very much prevalent,” Mr Samaras said. While the Liberal Party has ramped up its efforts in the area with new candidate Graham Watt, Mr Samaras said a drift from Labor did
not necessarily mean the opposition would win the seat. “One thing that we do know is that many voters [in Melton] who are not who are not planning to vote Labor do not like the Liberals, for similar reasons,” Mr Samaras said. “They have very, very dim views of the two major parties … I expect a very big non-major party vote out there in Melton.” Mr Samaras said the challenge for the government was the significant financial cost that was required to meet the needs of the growth in the region.
“The problem for Labor is that they are not dealing with a normal seat, when it comes to a marginal seat, because the catch up that is required is going to break many a budget,“ he said. “We are dealing with multiple decades of neglect … You’d require billions to fix this.” While Mr Samaras acknowledged the Labor Party was focussing on the seat in the election lead up, he said the government did not understand the full extent of Melton’s problems. “They’re not fully across just how extensive the problem is.”
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