The Nationals’ candidate for the seat of Ballina in this month’s state election has defended practices labelled ‘pork-barrelling’ in the lead-up to a Meet the Candidates forum in Byron.
‘Look, I cannot accept this talking down of fighting for investment for regions,’ Nationals’ candidate Josh Booyens told Bay FM 99.9 listeners in a recorded interview aired last Friday, ‘I cannot accept it at all’.
Mr Booyens said the electorate was in ‘a unique situation’.
The Nationals candidate said he’d spoken to clubs and organisations ‘from Ocean Shores to Wardell’ that had been recipients of grants from the state government.
The grants had been allocated ‘not because of our local member,’ Mr Booyens said, ‘but because these clubs, organisations and councils bypass our local member and go to Ben Franklin, or go directly to the minister.’
‘Councils do the same thing as well,’ Mr Booyens said.
‘That to me is effective representation.’
Any dollar a good dollar
The Nationals candidate told Bay FM’s Community Newsroom the practice was ‘also dysfunctional representation when the funding is being fought for not by your local member’.
‘Now, I think that any dollar that comes here to comes to our electorate is a good dollar,’ Mr Booyens said.
When pressed on whether he would support a merit-based grants allocation system and what he thought of councils having to apply for competitive grants to have essential roadworks done, Mr Booyens said there was ‘always room for improvement’.
‘I will say, though, that there are quite adequate checks and balances behind the scenes,’ he said, ‘and if a grant isn’t recommended by a panel and the minister chooses to sign off on it, there needs to be a very robust reason around that’.
The Nationals candidate said he was ‘confident that the system and the processes are quite strong’ for government grants allocations but he would ‘always accept areas for improvement’, referring to ‘process analyses’ he’d experienced through his ‘professional career’.
‘People go “OK, great, you know, this needs improvement, there’s a risk here, OK, let’s have a talk, let’s have a chat and conversation about it.”’
Mr Booyens had previously said he’d had a long career working in home finance for a major bank before moving into the ‘community-owned lending’ sector.
Booyens brings back NSW koala population-doubling target
Ballina’s latest Nationals candidate said he identified with the party’s ideals at a young age growing up in Bowen, north Queensland, a town famous for its mangoes and, more recently, proximity to the Adani Carmicahael coal project site.
Mr Booyens took care to differentiate the NSW Nationals from Queensland’s LNP, pointing out his age and sexuality as signs of the party’s progressive values: Mr Booyens is forty and gay.
The Ballina candidate also defended the party’s environmental policies and reiterated a goal not heard of since Treasurer Matt Keen was the Environment Minister: a doubling of the state’s koala population by 2050.
‘Now with koalas, it’s really important to point out that this government has committed close to $200 million to making sure that we’re protecting koalas,’ Mr Booyens said, ‘that’s close to $200 million for one species’.
‘That’s not seen anywhere else in this country,’ Mr Booyens continued, ‘and the other part is that the government is committed to doubling the koala population by 2050’.
Mr Kean told mainstream media in July 2020 as the state’s environment minister he was committed to a target of another 20,000 koalas in NSW by 2050.
Former Liberal Party upper house member Catherine Cusack, who famously crossed the floor over the coalition’s so-called ‘koala kill bill’, which would have allowed more landclearing, later described the announcement as meaningless spin.
But when asked if he was sure the government was still pushing the koala doubled population goal Mr Booyens said ‘absolutely’.
The Nationals candidate also defended existing landclearing laws in NSW saying there were ‘actually still really quite strict rules’.
‘So we need to make sure that that conversation isn’t taken too far from what it what it actually was,’ Mr Booyens said.
Earlier Mr Booyens had praised Nationals Member for Tweed Geoff Provest for abstaining to vote on the controversial bill, saying he’d put his community before the party.
‘That’s a great example of how the Nationals best reflect their communities,’ Mr Booyens said, ‘we will only ever do that in extreme circumstances’.
NB: Mia Armitage produces Bay FM 99.9’s Community Newsroom every Friday from 11am.
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