Hi all,

Another week,

And this week the Goulburn campaign made the national news in a couple of ways.

Firstly, Sydney Morning Herald and other national media outlets reported on comments made by Adrian Van Der Byl and Wal Ashton at the Goulburn District Union’s candidate forum two weeks ago (and reported HERE two weeks ago… catch up Sydney media).

Secondly, in his online prognostications, election guru Antony Green has included Goulburn as one of the seven seats to watch in the “Battle of the Bush” that may prove to be a lot closer than its current status (Liberal 26.8%) implies. Green believes that the potential loss of Liberal voters from the north of the electorate, replaced by disenchanted and overlooked National voters, and the selection of the strongest Labor candidate for many years in an experienced senator, may make for a “a closer and more vigorous contest than the margin suggests.”

So if it’s going to be such a close race, where are the voter enticements? In neighbouring Monaro, both of the leading candidates have chequebooks out and are signing away furiously.

Chequebook reference too dated? Ok, they have their credit cards out and are swiping away on Pay Wave like a fly-swatter at a sewage farm.

In Monaro, Barilaro has promised more than $32 million on behalf of the Nats, and Labor’s Steve Whan is up to $88 million. Meanwhile, how much has Goulburn been promised? Seriously…  that’s not a rhetorical question. I have no idea how much we've been promised. Or, for that matter, if there have been ANY promises aside from vague “I’ll see what I can do"s.

Politicians love to trot out the old chestnut that they won’t engage in pork barrelling, but it’s only true if their entire party isn’t pork barrelling. Otherwise, it IS happening, just not here because a decision has been made that your seat is either too safe or unwinnable.

Monaro (and all other electorates) have the same tax rates as Goulburn, so Goulburn voters have every right to feel dudded if they keep seeing expenditure funnelled towards marginal seats and not here.

Of course, financial enticements aren’t everything. You want a local member who you believe in, who represents how you feel and who stands up for the electorate and that could well be the sitting member, or it could be a challenger.

But whatever choice you make, as Queen B says, if they love you, they better put a ring on it.

I digress.

Back to Goulburn and this week Greens candidate Iain Fyfe popped in and recorded his candidate video for the election (see below). Hopefully we can tee up times with Wal and Adrian soon and have the whole bunch uploaded.

There’s now only three weeks left until the big day so the candidates need to scramble for every vote they can get. Don’t forget the Goulburn Post forum is on Friday March 13 and we hope to see a lot of you there to ask the questions you want answered.

As always, the itineraries below are listed in the order they arrived. The photos in the carousel above are all of the ones received from the candidates and their teams. As you can see, this week, all are from Ursula Stephens (but we welcome more if candidates have some late additions).