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Perth, |
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Knock, knock - it's a labor hopeful
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The artist and activist is pitting himself against Julie Bishop, the sitting federal Liberal MP for Curtin, who has one of the safest seats in Australia. He will need a swing of nearly 14% to push her out of the seat in this year's election. He said that she won the last election with an increased majority to 62%, Labor 37% and Greens 11.5% because the Australian Democrats vote collapsed. Despite that hard fact, he says he is confident of making progress as he sets out to doorknock the core of the Curtin electorate - Dalkeith, Peppermint Grove, Nedlands and Cottesloe, the town where he lives. He said: "This is the best educated electorate full of thoughtful people. This electorate voted for a republic. "They know how the government has let them down on issues, including the environment, education and the care of elderly people. "They know that when nursing homes are privatised, there is a risk they will cut costs, stop feeding and caring for patients properly - they become units of the economy. "We need more retirement centres like Ocean Gardens at City Beach where the people themselves run it. It's a great model. "The answer lies in zoning and in licences. The best ones are community-run. Not those run for profit by private companies." He said his grandmother had been the victim of being shunted out of a home where she had lived for years, breaking friendships and making her extremely unhappy in her final years. Mr Grant's background has been in arts, communications and the environment. He has been director of the Artrage Festival, the Joondalup Festival and the Qfest - Cue Outback Festival. He is deputy chairman of the University Credit Society and former chairman of the Film and Television Institute. Mr Grant said his personal interests were embedded in the environment. Changes in energy-efficient house design were moving at glacial pace and needed to go much faster with initiatives from the federal government to encourage industry. He said: "The University of NSW is a world leader in solar photo voltaics, but they have recently lost three of their top scientists going to Germany to work on Australian designs. "Australia desperately needs help for research and design and manufacturing clean and cool. We're not playing to our strengths. "Car manufacturers need incentives to build small cars. The government needs to be pro-active, not re-active." Mr Grant drives a small Renault sedan. He said he was concerned about the Howard government move to run the whole nation from Canberra - particularly education and health. He said: "A Rudd government will restore the states' power. "There's an increasing hegemony. Rudd's coming in to re-negotiate the space over who makes the decisions that affect our daily lives." He said he was inspired to run for parliament in 2005 after a trip on the Trans-Siberia railway with his seriously-ill father, Professor Don Grant, "an unreconstructed communist". He said: "It was really a great journey for us in many ways. We met people in Russia who talked about how repressed they had been under communism - but how they also had a rich and strong cultural life before democracy came with television that diluted their culture. "It made me realise after we came home that you never want to leave undone something you're tempted to do." Both his parents have died in the past two years and he, his partner and baby have moved back to Cottesloe. Mr Grant was a student artist working, and sometimes living in, with a group at The Lab, the former factory office on the old Humes Concrete Factory site when it was owned by the Holmes a Court family in the early 1990s before it was turned into what is now housing at Subiaco Rise as part of the Subiaco redevelopment project.
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