“It is going to be a very tough fight for Labor. It will be
a very close election,” she says.
Scott believes that industrial relations will be the
critical issue in the forthcoming election: “I think that is the area that
provides the starkest divide between the parties,” she says.
Her involvement in grass-roots politics began early, growing
up in an activist family in Canberra.
She became involved with the Labor party while she was at the University of NSW.
“What encouraged me to get involved in this particular election is that Morris
Iemma came straight out of being Health Minister and had a good understanding
of what we needed to do to help mental health problems in the state and also
domestic violence. Those are exactly the problems I am interested in and
exactly the kind of issues I would like to see real thinking done about and
some work into helping,” says the 28-year-old clinical psychologist.
She is proud of her work in Chippendale where her submission
to secure a park was successful.
“I think we need to work very hard to ensure that everyone
views Chippendale as a residential suburb and not as part of the CBD. I believe
that very passionately,” she says.
She points out the other critical issue is climate change:
“Labor has maintained for a decade that it would sign the Kyoto protocol and we
have had a period of John Howard’s inaction on climate change. They have now a
thrown together water plan that has not been clearly thought out at all,” she
says.
A passionate supporter of the injecting room in Kings Cross
she says: “I think the Self Injection Centre is one of the smartest kinds of
harm minimisation strategies and if you speak to residents most agree that it
is a very sensible initiative.”
She brushes away suggestions about trying to clean up the
Cross but believes that a balance needs to be found. “Kings Cross is a
wonderful, vibrant, thriving place. I do think however we need to keep in mind
that it is a residential area and we need to find a sensible balance in the
Cross between maintaining its history and vibrancy and at the same time
maintaining its residential amenity,” she says.
A former employee of the Bureau of Crime and Statistics, her
research on alcohol-related crime led her to believe that many assaults are
alcohol-related and closely linked to late trading premises. “We do not want to
sanitise the Cross but we need to sensibly stem the increase in the tide of
late trading premises,” she says.
“I think the people of Sydney
are under represented,” she says. “I will be working very hard to make sure
residents are taken seriously.”
Source: South Sydney Herald March 2007