First challenger for McEwen

WHITTLESEA resident Robert Hyndman is throwing his hat into the ring and plans to contest the seat of McEwen at the next Federal Election, expected to be in May.

Mr Hyndman retired from a career as a veterinary surgeon in 2016 and said the time off has made him more aware of today’s political sphere.

Mr Hyndman identifies his political beliefs as liberal conservative and while he once had great passion for the Australian Labor Party, he said he suspected the ALP has lost its way.

“It [Labor] doesn’t quite know what its doing and how it’s going about it and you could probably say the same for the Liberal Party too,” he said.

Mr Hyndman said he thinks the past decade of politics had been a personality issue rather than a policy issue.

“We’ve gone from Prime Minister to Prime Minister, they’ve gone through the place like a revolving door and all our current politicians seem intent still on jockeying for position which doesn’t seem to me to be installing a great deal of governance in the country,” he said.

“We went through 12 months where the entire country was besotted by the same sex marriage issue and it hasn’t created anything in terms of making sure my grandchildren will have future education prospects that are improved.”

While Mr Hyndman hasn’t officially entered yet, he plans to stand as an independent and do it all by himself.

“I haven’t got a campaign manager and I don’t intend to have one,” he said.

“I don’t intend to go on the streets begging for money because that means I would be obligated to somebody if they wanted to make a donation. I just want to see government go back to being government of common sense.”