Well, our Queanbeyan and surrounding NSW readers will be off to the polls on Saturday. 

In Monaro, they have a choice between the sitting member, the vivacious, energetic and competent Nicole Overall and the solid, experienced former member Steve Whan, who was parachuted in to replace former Raider and Queanbeyan Blues legend Terry Campese. I’m not quite sure why the ALP ditched Terry. I have seen videos of the party where everyone seemed to be having a good time but it may have more to do with some friends he visited in jail. Politics is a tough game and whilst in my view Terry would have been a good member if elected, Steve Whan is a more than capable replacement.

Nicole Overall, having up until recently been a local government representative, has proved to be a highly capable, energetic and valued local member. In my view, she is an outstanding candidate who deserves to be re-elected and it’s just a shame that Steve can’t stand for the ALP somewhere else and be elected. I would also hope that Terry can be considered by his party at a later stage for election if he does not lose interest in the meantime. 

Dominic Perrottet has done nothing wrong to lose the election and the baseball bats don’t seem to be out for him, but the NSW Libs have not covered themselves in glory with their internal squabbling, and treasurer Matt Keene really should be in the Greens. ALP leader Chris Minns has not made many mistakes in this election and I liked that when he became opposition leader, he wanted to build things like trains in NSW again. Great idea, Chris, but you will need reliable electricity for that, mate, so I’d go easy on closing down reliable coal and gas power sources until they can be properly replaced by reliable cleaner power sources; you may also like to try modular nuclear power sources. Remember President Xi’s sage words last year. He promised that China would “not be getting rid of the old until the new is ready to replace it”. Why on earth can’t this country do that?

I think Labor will win with either a small majority or as a minority government. As long as they are not dependent on the Greens; I found it concerning that the Greens want separate Indigenous seats – that smacks of Apartheid to me. I thought we wanted to bring people together, not divide them.

Another candidate who impresses me is Mark Latham, former ALP federal opposition leader and now One Nation leader in NSW. Being a former member of the NSW right faction, his centrist and anti-woke politics will, if his party has the balance of power in the upper house, be a brake on any silly measure a Labor government dependent on Green support in the lower house might try to inflict on the people of NSW. My only advice to voters would be if you want a change of government, just vote ALP in the lower house.