With just 34 days until the federal election, Nationals candidate for Richmond, Matthew Fraser, launched his campaign over the weekend at Chris Cunningham Park in Tweed Heads.
The launch was attended by around 100 supporters, including MPs, volunteers and party members, on the back of the NSW Nationals Conference, held nearby.
But while the would-be MP started his campaign call-to-action on a positive note, an attack on what he called Justine Elliot’s lack of action over funding for Tweed Hospital has brought an angry rebuke from the sitting Labor member.
Mr Fraser said that his biggest pitch for a positive local change will be the ‘lack of accountability in politics’.
‘People are genuinely sick of politicians working for big multinationals, big banks and big unions instead of locals like us,’ Mr Fraser said.
‘We deserve better than an MP who uses taxpayer-funded parliamentary entitlements on attack ads that have been made down in Canberra.
‘We deserve better than an MP who criticizes everyone on the Tweed Hospital but has made no official representations to current ministers.
‘This election is about who can actually deliver local projects in Government. If elected, I will make representations to absolutely everyone to secure local funding.
‘I will write letters, knock on doors, call for the funding on the floor of Parliament, and do whatever it takes to have our concerns heard,’ Mr Fraser said.
But current Labor Richmond MP Justine Elliot has blamed the state Nationals member the hospital cuts, accusing him of lying about funding to get re-elected.
‘I call on state Nationals member Geoff Provest to admit that he lied to get elected at the 2015 state election when he promised $48 million to upgrade the Tweed hospital when the money wasn’t there,’ she told Echonetdaily.
We now know that Geoff Provest and his state Liberal-Nationals government now have a $100 million funding black hole for the Tweed Hospital and the Nationals have no explanation as why Tweed Hospital’s funding has been cut.
‘The fact is the Nationals cannot be trusted with health and hospitals and Geoff Provest’s $48 million election lie proves it.
‘As the local MP, I’ll always fight to get our fair share from Canberra,’ Ms Elliot said.
More stories on the 2016 federal election
Greens’ Richmond campaign ‘people powered, not fossil fueled’
The record vote by the Greens in Saturday’s federal election in Richmond has encouraged candidate Dawn Walker Greens to keep the ‘Green’ momentum going across the northern rivers.
Thus Spake Mungo: The worm turned, the maggots squirmed
My fearless prediction is that the coalition will end up with between 76 to 78 seats in the House of Representatives, a thin but decisive majority. But this is not the way it was meant to be.
A hung parliament? It may be the best we can hope...
Nearly three years ago, on the eve of the last Federal election, this web site warned that a Tony Abbott-led Coalition government presented a grim outlook for clean energy and climate change, and we warned too that it could be even worse than most people feared.
Elliot, Hogan retain their north coast seats
Incumbent northern rivers MPs Kevin Hogan (Page, Nationals) and Justine Elliot (Richmond, Labor) have retained their seats after a knife-edge federal election result which could see a hung parliament.
A voting guide for dummies
Still haven't made your mind up who to vote for yet? Well, crawl out from whatever rock you've been hiding under and pay some fricking attention. It's really quite simple. Just match your ideology with one of these political parties and away you go.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
