South Australian Conservative Party Senate candidate Rikki Lambert was in Clare last week campaigning ahead of next month’s federal election.
The Northern Argus reports, the visit is part of Rikki’s tour around the State’s Mid North region.
Mr Lambert engaged with regional voters on the tour as he aimed to provide a voice for South Australia in a chamber dominated by east coast representatives.
Born and raised in the Riverland, and now living in Angaston in the Barossa Valley, Mr Lambert has the interests of regional and rural SA at the forefront of his mind.
“On that green ballot paper, the South Australian seats are only 10 not 11 for a party room, either Labor or Liberal, is going to be dominated by those eastern states concerns and infrastructure spend is going to be in Sydney or Melbourne or south east Queensland and we will miss out,” he said.
“But if you have got senators, where the senate has equal representation of every state, that are standing up for South Australia and particularly regions, that is the way we can put the pressure on and say SA is not getting its fair share. We argue people are just throwing their votes away if they give them to the major parties in the senate,” he said.
Areas of particular focus for Mr Lambert were the shortage of general practitioners in rural and regional SA, and the lack of investment into the state’s crumbling road networks outside of metropolitan Adelaide.
He praised the funding commitments from the federal government in their latest budget for South Australian roads, which included the notorious Horrocks Highway, but argued that more needed to be done.
In a more broad sense, Mr Lambert labelled Australian’s right to free speech as a topic that he felt strongly about.
The phrase “bring back common sense” appears at the top of the Conservatives’ corflutes. Mr Lambert was also in favour of shifting the emphasis off tertiary education options and encourage trade options to combat a job shortage in those industries.
