In June 2022, public servant Ed Cocks became the Canberra Liberals member for Murrumbidgee in a ballot countback following Giulia Jones’s retirement from politics. Canberra Daily talked to the MLA about his “busy and successful” first year managing three shadow portfolios and representing the residents of Woden, Weston Creek, Molonglo Valley, Deakin, Yarralumla, and Kambah.

“I never planned to be in opposition coming in, but it’s been really valuable being able to spend so much time connecting with my community, my constituents, and advocating for them,” Ed Cocks says.

“It’s been a privilege this year, and I’m looking forward to more success to come.”

Mr Cocks stood as a Canberra Liberals candidate in the 2016 and 2020 elections, then served as the party’s ACT policy convener from 2016 to last year. Nevertheless, he says, he came to politics late.

“I wasn’t brought up in a household that had any open, political statements; politics and the way someone voted was a personal decision.”

As a public servant in 2007–08, having worked only under the John Howard government, Mr Cocks noticed a change in attitude when the Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard came in.

“It wasn’t just a matter of management or where money went; they were fundamentally different approaches to the world. I guess that was the trigger for me to start looking at what the different beliefs were in the different parties.”

He found that the Liberals’ values fundamentally aligned with his own: “Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of worship, freedom to own property and to make choices in the market, and freedom to contribute to society in the way that you see fit… Those were all things that I saw and resonated with me, and things that I thought worth standing up for.”

The “trigger point” issue that inspired him to enter politics was Mr Fluffy in 2015; he recently sponsored a petition for a board of inquiry into the Loose-fill Asbestos Insulation Eradication Scheme Buyback Program, started by a couple concerned that the scheme pressured homeowners to surrender their properties while maximising profits from land sales.

“I really still believe strongly that had we had an ACT Government that had better managed its finances and was in a better position financially, we would have been able to have a compassionate response to people who, through no fault of their own, were being impacted by loose fill asbestos. We should have been able to be compassionate…

“I found myself complaining too much about the way things were happening, and I decided I couldn’t just complain about it. I needed to be able to put my money where my mouth is and stand up for it and try to make a change. I don’t like just talking about things and complaining about the way things are.”

After the 2016 election, Mr Cocks put his hand up to become Liberal policy convener in the ACT.

“Having a reasonable background in policy from my public service work, it was a way that I could help contribute to making a case for the Liberals in the ACT.”

His vision for Canberra, he says, is “a place where we have a more independent economy, where people aren’t held back, where you can put in effort and get ahead. At the moment, our economy is still fundamentally tied to the public service. I’d love to see us become a place with a much more diverse economy, where people who want to get out there and start a business feel like they’re supported. I’d love to see it be the sort of place where people have hope in home ownership again, where if you get out and work hard, you can work towards planning your own home, raising a family here. They’re fairly basic things in my mind, but they’re really important.

“I’d love to see it be the sort of place where you can spend less time in your car and more time with your family and friends and doing the things you love. It’s about having the opportunity to do good things, not just the everyday.”

Shadow portfolios

Of Mr Cocks’ three shadow ministries, “the Mental Health portfolio is probably the one that takes the greatest amount of time, and has some of the biggest issues,” he says. He is also Shadow Minister for Regulatory Services and for Jobs and Workplace Affairs, but “because I worked in mental health previously, I guess it’s the one where I was most equipped to step in and start dealing with those challenges straight away.”

Until last year, Mr Cocks worked in the Department of Health, dealing with primary care reform, mental health and suicide prevention, telehealth, federal financial relations, diagnostic imaging, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.

“The stories I keep hearing are that there are gaps and cracks throughout the mental health system,” Mr Cocks says. “People can turn up at hospital and be discharged without the supports that they need in the community – and these are people in real crisis.

“The service providers, who are out there trying to do their best for people, keep telling me that they are being so squeezed they have to keep on tightening their eligibility requirements, which means that the gaps and the cracks get wider.

“And so, if you have a mental health condition and a drug addiction condition, for example, it can be really difficult to find a service that is able to take you. If you’ve got severe complex mental health issues, it’s really hard to find someone who’s got space. These are people who are really vulnerable.

“And then the work to stop people getting to that point is also kind of disconnected. There’s a real missing space between the prevention work that the Commonwealth does, the basic supports that you can get from a GP, and then there’s this big gap where you can’t get support from the ACT until you’re severe enough. But by that stage, then the organisations providing that support are stretched as well.”

Mr Cocks is building a comprehensive policy that the Liberals will bring forward at next year’s election.

“This is a space that needs to be dealt with holistically, not in a piecemeal way, so we will have a plan [to] make sure we can deliver a connected effective system.”

Men’s health is another issue. Mr Cocks supported shadow health minister Leanne Castley’s motion last year for a men’s health plan, which the ACT Government negated, on the grounds that it was already implementing strategies.

“Men are disproportionately affected by mental health issues,” Mr Cocks says. “The rate of suicide in men is far higher than in women, which means that there is a really important space for tailored targeted initiatives. Sadly, we didn’t get the support from the government on that… If we can’t get the support from them, then we will ultimately have to put it as a choice at an election.”

The Regulatory Services portfolio is “a really mixed bag”, according to Mr Cocks. People tell him that staff at Access Canberra shopfronts work hard and do a great job.

“But when you go to try to engage with the government, things are unclear, murky.

“If you need to change a title on a house because something’s happened, it turns out there’s only one office that you can go to, and you must book an appointment ahead of time – but you might not find that out until you turn up at the shopfront. If you’re trying to find information online, a lot of things have been out-of-date, you can find the wrong form, things like that. So the ease of dealing with government just isn’t there, despite how hard some of those workers are working.”

Turning to the Jobs and Workplace Affairs portfolio, Mr Cocks says the big challenge many businesses face is finding employees.

“We have such a high cost of living in the ACT that it becomes really difficult for people to come to Canberra and work in a lower paying job.”

In the Phillip business district, for instance, the government plans to restrict a couple of carparks to the bus depot workers. That will affect the people who work in the area, Mr Cocks says, many of whom are lower-paid and lower-skilled – apprentices and mechanics, not office workers on $100,000-plus salaries.

“If you take away access to free or low-cost parking, those people may well not be able to afford to keep on working in those jobs… If those people can’t afford to work there, they’re not going to be able to find a similar job in a lot of places in the ACT, and the businesses end up going over the border to Queanbeyan.

“You see that across all sorts of businesses. The cost of doing business in the ACT is so high. The cost of their employees just living here is so high right now. They’re really struggling to make ends meet.”

The biggest challenge – and the “big disappointment” – about being in opposition, he finds, is that “the government has the numbers, and they will use them” to shut down Liberal motions advocating for “really important and good things”.

“It’s not always that we even see a vote against them. Often, the government, to my mind, doesn’t have the courage to vote against a really sensible motion, so they amend the motion so much that it becomes meaningless or so that it’s just self-congratulatory, and ignores all the major issues that we’re trying to draw attention to. To me, that shows that there are issues that need to be dealt with, but the government’s unwilling to do so. At times, it’s frustrating. But it’s part of what the government will be judged on ultimately, because there are really serious issues out there in the community that the government hasn’t paid attention to, and it’s not good enough.”

The Calvary Hospital acquisition, he says, threw the government control of numbers into stark relief. There were serious concerns – Should the government have the ability to “just take” and simply make acquisitions? Where is the line when it comes to private property? Should other organisations be concerned that the government might take them over? But the government, Mr Cocks says, put them to one side because “they wanted to just get it done. And ultimately, they have the numbers to just change the laws, and very rapidly, without any scrutiny, acquire a major public hospital in the ACT.”

Local politics

In his election speech, Mr Cocks said Murrumbidgee residents felt the ACT Government had walked away from them, and had neglected local infrastructure and services. Constituents had also lost trust in the integrity of government. Those have been issues he is trying to address.

“A lot of people across the electorate feel like we’ve been missing out in the south,” Mr Cocks says. “There hasn’t been that sort of emphasis on making sure people have things that they need to live and spend their time happily in their homes.”

Molonglo Valley, the fastest-growing region in the ACT, needs community infrastructure: a town centre, its own police station, and for the Molonglo Bridge to be completed. (Mr Cocks counts getting the contract for the bridge signed after years of delays as one of his achievements this year.) Woden residents need arts and cultural facilities and sporting facilities, which have gradually disappeared from the area, while inner south dwellers complain that footpaths, roads, and ovals are degraded.

Mr Cocks believes Molonglo needs a town centre (a regional hub like Woden), given its population is expected to reach more than 86,000 people by 2060, and to be bigger than Woden and Weston Creek combined by 2040. The government, however, believes that a group centre (a larger local shopping centre like Mawson) is sufficient – but Mr Cocks says that plan was based on a population of 50,000 people. “It’s very clearly not enough.” His campaign has hundreds of signatures so far; he would love to get more than 1,000, more than 10 per cent of current residents.

“We’ve got the community coming in and saying this is something that we desperately need, and that provides us with a good case to get in and do something about it,” Mr Cocks said.

Woden and Weston Creek are low on sporting facilities; he says there is “a severe shortage” of basketball courts, while the Phillip swimming pool has been closed for two years, despite “constant promises that it was about to reopen”. Developer Geocon bought the pool site at the start of the year, and promised to operate it and the ice-skating rink, but locals worry that access will eventually be restricted by the planned high-rise WOVA development.

“The government seems to have been unwilling to enforce the conditions around that, and the community just want their swimming pool,” Mr Cocks says.

An indoor sports centre for Woden and Weston Creek was an election commitment for both the Liberals and the Greens; that, Mr Cocks hopes, gives them a “good platform” to push for it. Mr Cocks also has sponsored a community petition for a multi-purpose arts facility for visual and performing arts in the Woden Town Centre.

“It’s a real need to have those sorts of facilities in the area – otherwise, people have to go somewhere else,” Mr Cocks said.

Police

Tackling crime in Weston Creek is another issue. The Canberra Liberals have for years called for more police and a dedicated police station in Weston Creek / Molonglo Valley to address crime in the area.

“Sadly, it’s an increasing issue right across the electorate,” Mr Cocks says. “I was doorknocking in Chapman recently. You meet people who have been directly impacted by a break-in, and it stops being just about statistics. When you meet someone who’s had their house broken into, you get to understand that it’s about an invasion of privacy and people stop feeling safe in their home. That isn’t something we should be willing to accept.”

At the moment, Molonglo Valley suburbs rely on Woden, which both the Liberals and the police union, the Australian Federal Police Association, say is understaffed, while the AFPA queries whether petty and minor crimes are being reported. In 2021, ACT Policing announced that it would introduce an online reporting system for some property crimes, rather than having police attend.

“It’s not acceptable for most people to think that they’re going to be just told to report it online, and that means people aren’t reporting it,” Mr Cocks says. “People have given up in too many cases reporting what to me is fairly serious crime: car break-ins, house break-ins. Those things deserve a rapid response from the police, but right now, the police are just too stretched to be able to provide those services.”

The AFPA has repeatedly said that police officers are overstretched physically and psychologically, and risk burnout and exhaustion. (The ACT has the fewest police officers and the lowest recurrent expenditure per capita in the country; the government response has been that the ACT is small and has low crime rates.)

As Shadow Minister for Mental Health, Mr Cocks has talked to some of the police officers affected.

“Burnout and exhaustion contribute to a real mental health impact, and that has a flow-on to turnover in the force. And sadly, our police officers see some of the highest suicide risks as well. So there’s a real community impact when you don’t properly resource law enforcement to make sure the community and the police themselves are safe.”

Shadow police minister Jeremy Hanson moved earlier this year for more police and called in 2022 for a Molonglo police station.

The ACT Government announced in June that it would recruit 126 police personnel over five years, and deploy them across Molonglo, Woden, and Weston Creek, among other areas; both Mr Hanson and the Australian Federal Police Association, however, insist that more police are needed immediately.

“Every time we have tried to raise it in the Assembly, we have been rebuffed,” Mr Cocks said. “They basically said that there are plenty of police. They keep talking about increasing staff for the police. But we don’t have the police numbers there now, and we’re going to keep on pushing to make sure we can do that. I have no doubt that that is one of the platforms that we will bring forward next year. It is too important to be dismissed the way the government has.”

Election 2024

The election is 14 months away. Mr Cocks will spend much of the next year continuing “Knocking on doors, meeting with people in the community, making sure I’m standing up for the issues that matter to them. I will continue to push for good changes in the Assembly, and I’ll continue to advocate for them publicly as well. Fundamentally, my number one job is as a local member, and that means that I need to be meeting with people and representing their interests, not just what I think is a good idea.”

He has doorknocked on more than 4,000 homes in the last year; on a given day, he might visit 125 residents.

“I find it a really worthwhile way to connect with people and find out what’s actually going on in their world and what they actually want to see changing. Just standing around at a shop occasionally isn’t going to give you that sort of connection. When you turn up on someone’s doorstep, people are very happy to tell you exactly what they think.”

Will the Canberra Liberals win the next election? Mr Cocks has no doubt that it will be hard work, following the last federal election, but a lot of people – including lifelong Labor voters – have told him they are ready for a change.

“It’s been over 20 years of a single government. That’s a very long time. It’s going to be a lot of work. We shouldn’t be able to take things for granted. I think that’s part of the problem the government’s had, that they have taken things for granted. …

“But I’m confident that with the leadership team that we have, and with the Assembly team that we have, and if we keep on working with our community, we’ll get there.”

In the meantime, Mr Cocks says he is “always available for my constituents, no matter what.”

“I’d encourage anyone in our community, if there’s an issue, to reach out and get in touch, because sometimes there are things that we can do to help an issue get attention. I’m always happy to talk, happy to help wherever I can.”