The Gazette spoke to six of the nine candidates running for the seat of Macquarie during the Federal Election.
Their pieces are all available in this in the order they appear on the ballot paper.
Ballot paper order: Jake Grizelj, Carl Halley, Susan Templeman, Louise Markus, Liz Cooper, Olya Shornikov, Hal Ginges, Catherine Lincoln, Terry Morgan.
Jake Grizelj, of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, Liz Cooper, of the Derryn Hinch Justice Party, and Olya Shornikov, of the Liberal Democrats, were contacted on numerous occasions by the Gazette but did not return our phone calls.
Carl Halley, Australian Liberty Alliance
Australian Liberty Alliance candidate Carl Halley is a long time Liberal voter but is unhappy with the direction of the party, and wants to see smaller government, tighter controls on immigration and equality of law within Australia.
Small business owner Carl Halley is running for office for the first time.
He is from the Blue Mountains, and voted for the Liberal party for a number of years.
While he has always immersed himself in politics, running is another step, but he felt it was time, as he watched Malcolm Turnbull topple Tony Abbott, and, in Mr Halley’s view, the Liberal party has drifted left.
Mr halley and the Australian Liberty Alliance have a number of policies, but one of the biggest is on immigration.
Mr Halley said the party wanted to see immigration, but done in the right way, which meant people assimilated smoothly into Australian society.
“I don't care if you're a muslim, hindu, jew or something else, I'll rock and roll with everyone,” he said.
Mr Halley said he had concerns about muslim people who came to Australia, and wanted to flaunt Australian law and follow Sharia law.
“We believe in assimilation and integration. Cosmopolitanism is a good thing,” he said.
“My wife is from Japan, and when she came here, she accepted that she had to abide by our laws and values.
“The vast majority of people who come here understand that and get it, but there are a growing number of people who don't.
“We want immigrants to denounce Sharia law, which is important. You can't have two legal systems, that is our belief.”
Mr Halley said he wanted to make it clear, he was not anti-Islam, but he did not like the idea of outsiders, from any corner of the globe, coming to Australia and telling him how to live.
“There needs to be an oath, and it needs to be spelled out, and people need to sign off on it,” he said.
“If you break it then you can be expelled. I don't care if he is British and a protestant, everyone has to sign off on it.”
In the seat of Macquarie, Mr Halley said the new Western Sydney Airport and the Windsor Bypass were the two key local issues.
“We believe the airport is a good thing, but we don't want it to impact local residents. We're pushing for a no fly zone over residential areas,” he said.
“We need jobs and development. A lot of people from the Blue Mountains will get jobs from the airport and other companies will grow around it.
“But you need to make sure it doesn't impact on people's lives, because they have to live there. You move to the Blue Mountains for lifestyle.”
Mr Halley added just about every person he had spoken to in the Hawkesbury had brought up the Windsor bypass, and said it was clear it was wanted in the community.
At a federal level, Mr Halley said his party also wanted smaller government and sensible policies around renewable energy.
“The Greens mean well, it is ok to put up wind turbines, but you have to be able to pay for them,” he said.
“We can get an enormous amount of hydro-electricity, and you just need to build a dam before the hydro-electricity plant is built.”
Susan Templeman, Labor
Labor Party member Susan Templeman is running for the seat of Macquarie for the third time. She wants to see equitable education for all students and Medicare stay the way it is.
Life doesn’t always go to plan, as Susan Templeman would readily tell you.
A decade ago, before she had considered trying to become a politician, things were going fairly smoothly for the mother of two.
Yet, as is prone to happen in life, things went awry. Ms Templeman found out her teenage daughter had depression.
“Some families get through that and some families don't and sometimes that is because one family has access to better health care than another or has the resources to do it and that seems to me wrong,” she said.
Ms Templeman and her family got through it, though 10 years on, recalling that time still brought a tear to her eye, and a wavering voice.
It was this realisation that pushed her onto Labor’s ticket for the seat of Macquarie.
“A lot of other families shared their experiences with me and it showed we really weren't being heard,” she said.
“It didn't matter whether it was mental illness, physical disability or learning difficulties, families were struggling with things.
“I just felt it was time ordinary people who had lived life for all its good and bad things got up and had a voice and I thought I might be able to help those people have a voice.”
Ms Templeman said she believed the ability for anyone to access health care was crucial if Australia was to advance.
“If medicare is not the ticket to good health care then as a society we get a two-tiered society,” she said.
“Australia is all about a fair go and that starts with getting to good quality health care based on your medicare card not your credit card.”
The contents of a family’s wallet should not determine the quality of a child’s education either, said Ms Templeman.
“The best thing we can do for the future of Australia is to make sure the next generations are well educated,” she said.
“It shouldn't matter what your post code is, you should get a great education.”
Ms Templeman added that areas of the Hawkesbury were fortunate to have the National Broadband Network’s fibre to the home, which in her opinion could boost business.
Locally, Ms Templeman is opposed to the currently planned Windsor Bridge crossing.
“We have a piece of heritage worthy of national listing sitting in Thompson Square,” she said.
“Our local member [Louise Markus] needs to get involved and help a community fight to keep something that economically could be a fabulous basis for exploring our tourism here.
“The economy of the Hawkesbury has such a potential from a tourism perspective.”
Louise Markus, Liberal
Member for Macquarie Louise Markus wants to see young people find employment, small business prosper and mobile communications improve across the Hawkesbury.
The Liberal Party’s Louise Markus has been the Member for Macquarie since 2007, and before then was the Member for Greenway.
Mrs Markus was a social worker for over two decades before moving into politics.
The move to politics was a natural extension of her social work according to Mrs Markus.
“For me that [serving the community] is what I have always done,” she said.
Mrs Markus said her long time occupation as a social worker allowed her to see people’s lives destroyed by Labor policies, and it convinced her she needed to run for office.
“I saw the impact every time Labor came into government while I was working as a social worker,” she said.
“I saw people who should never be dependent on welfare, because they tried to plan for their future, who needed food parcels.”
Mrs Markus said she wanted to see young people succeed, and the recently announced PaTH program, was one way to ensure that happened.
“[PaTH] is about preparing young people with skills like how you go into an interview or prepare a CV, followed by an internship with a real employer,” she said.
“I think that young people need to be supported and provided with opportunities to develop the skills and the connections that is going to step them into a future job opportunity
“It is the responsibility of all of us to do whatever we can to help young people step into their future and we need to believe in them and place value on them.”
Mrs Markus said she also wanted to see small businesses succeed.
“Under the Coalition there is always greater opportunities for jobs, and increased opportunities for businesses to grow and create more jobs,” she said.
“The budget is managed more efficiently, effectively and more targeted, there is greater opportunity for funding to strengthen the community.”
Mrs Markus said one of her personal goals was to see mobile communications improved in the Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains regions.
“We live in a disaster prone area and in communities like this access to mobile communications is how emergency services personnel receive a call out and it is how people receive warnings,” she said.
“If landlines and power, and when other services fail, access to mobile communication is critical.
“You have distances to travel and isolation and it is important to have access to mobile communications.”
She added she thought the Hawkesbury’s tourism potential was untapped.
“It is really important that we gain access to the growth that is happening in tourism,” she said.
“There are opportunities for tourism to flourish in the Hawkesbury.”
Hal Ginges, Animal Justice Party
Animal Justice Party candidate Hal Ginges, pronounced with two hard Gs, is a criminal defense lawyer from the Blue Mountains, and cannot abide cruelty to animals or humans.
Hal Ginges and the Animal Justice Party want to give animals a voice in the Australian Parliament, but they are more than a one issue party.
As a defense lawyer, Mr Ginges has spent many years of his life, devoted to defending and representing people who are often in no position to do either thing, and it was a natural progression to attempt to move from the law into the political arena.
Mr Ginges and his wife have been vegetarians for many years and a few years ago, decided to go one step further and become vegan, putting their money where their mouths are, as the saying goes.
“The Animal Justice Party’s focus is the welfare of animals and the avoidance of suffering of animals, and we're very much focused on trying to be a voice for animals in parliament,” he said.
“We just feel the other parties don't speak out enough on animal issues.”
Mr Ginges said he was vehemently opposed to the live exportation of animals for slaughter.
“We think live exports is a terrible trade and a terrible tragedy that animals have to suffer in the way that they do,” he said.
“We are looking to see the major parties start to see that animals matter and it wouldn't hurt them to develop policies along the lines to see that animals don't suffer.”
He won’t ask you to stop eating meat, although freely admits he wouldn’t mind if you did, but he will ask you to consider how you treat animals, and indeed other humans, and whether your actions are born out of compassion.
“The basis of our focus fundamentally is compassion,” he said.
“When it comes to other issues we determine them on the criterion of compassion. It gives others a guideline for how we might vote if we were in parliament.
“Our view is regardless of where sentient beings finds themselves there is no reason not to treat them compassionately.”
Mr Ginges said his party’s views on compassion extended toward the topic of refugees, and also other areas of social policy.
“We're very conscious of the very difficult issue of refugees, we want to extend compassion to refugees,” he said.
“There is a confusion there because people assume that just because we shouldn't be allowing more people into Australia that refugees can languish in places like Nauru and Manus Island.
“One needs to treat human beings compassionately, so even if those people are not allowed to come to Australia, the conditions in which they live in those places need to be better than they actually are.”
Mr Ginges said he was a supporter of the National Disability Scheme, and he also wanted people in prisons to be treated humanely.
Catherine Lincoln, Christian Democrat Party
Christian Democratic Party member Catherine Lincoln is running for the seat of Macquarie. She wants to see power decentralised from the Labor and Liberal parties, is staunchly opposed to abortion and wants the Safe Schools program abolished.
Late this year, Catherine Lincoln was laying in Hawkesbury Hospital. She was not well and it went downhill from there.
“I had a near death experience at Christmas time. I actually died. I was in hospital, I had an infection in my gall bladder. I didn't know that at the time. all I knew was I was in a lot of pain,” she said.
Mrs Lincoln fell unconscious.
“All I know is I was totally unconscious and I said ‘Lord please accept me into paradise’ and he said ‘no’ and I relaxed back. When I woke up I thought "I died! My goodness!
“When you come that close to death it changes you and it made me start thinking. ‘Why did God say no not yet?’ I'm 62, I could very well have died. My heart could have given out or had a stroke.”
After some reflection, as well as a call from someone in the Christian Democratic Party, she decided to run for the seat of Macquarie.
The 62-year-old mother of three and grand mother of six feels strongly on a number of issues. She is staunchly opposed to abortion, except where a mother’s life might be in danger. She is distraught to see rural land replaced with high density housing.
Perhaps the one she feels most strongly about is that the Labor and Liberal parties have too much power and money at their disposal.
“My concerns are that freedom and democracy here in Australia is slipping away from the people into the hands of two wealthy and very left wing parties, Liberal and Labor,” she said.
“The people of Australia need to wake up and this is my call wake up, Australia, diversify power. You need the minor parties to keep them accountable.”
Mrs Lincoln said she was opposed to same-sex couples marrying under the Christian institution. However, she said was not at all opposed to granting same-sex couples the same benefits heterosexual married couples received and wanted to see a plebiscite on the issue.
“The people have the right to vote on what happens in our community. If they vote for it, then they have to live with those consequences afterwards,” she said.
“Same sex couples need protection. They need every legal right for their finances, health, wills and it needs to be recognised just not under marriage.”
The safe-schools program is something Mrs Lincoln describes as an abomination, and is something she would vote to remove funding from.
The program’s stated goals are to help Australian schools create safe environments for students who are same sex attracted, inter sex or gender diverse.
Mrs Lincoln said she did not want to see young people bullied, but was horrified by some of the learning materials.
“It has been teaching students that heterosexuality is not the norm and encourages children to explore their sexual and gender diversity,” she said.
“A school room should be a place where tolerance of all people is taught. Love, tolerance and forgiveness should be taught, not bullying.”
Terry Morgan, Greens
Greens candidate for Macquarie Terry Morgan is an academic at Western Sydney University, has worked extensively with Indigenous people in the Northern Territory and is passionate about the environment and has grave concerns about the Badgerys Creek airport.
Terry Morgan has been politically active for most of his life, and for the 2016 election decided to have a crack himself, running on a ticket of improving the environment and better treatment of asylum seekers who come to Australia.
Mr Morgan, a Blue Mountains resident and father of two, thinks the proposed Badgerys Creek airport is a disaster waiting to happen.
“It is an ill planned development at all costs proposal which has potentially dreadful ramifications for western Sydney and the environment in the entire area,” he said.
Mr Morgan said he was particularly concerned the airport would see the Blue Mountains lose its World Heritage Listing, and in turn, see the tourism industry there crumble.
“That heritage listing is a key factor in the tourism industry of the Blue Mountains which directly and indirectly employs 6000 people,” he said.
“People don't come to the Blue Mountains to hear aircraft flying overhead every day and night, they come for the peace, tranquility and pristine environment.”
In the Hawkesbury, Mr Morgan said the Greens also supported those who oppose the Windsor Bridge going through Thompson Square, Windsor.
“One of the things the Greens are extremely strong on is the protection of our natural and built heritage,” he said.
“We believe the state government's plans for Thompson Square are terribly short sighted and destructive and we would of course vote against that.”
As you would expect from a Greens candidate, Mr Morgan also feels strongly about the environment.
The Badgerys Creek airport is one thing he is concerned about, but he said he also despaired at the granting of mining licences in Australia, and the potential loss of the Great Barrier Reef.
“Even though we have signed the Paris agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, we have a government and opposition that won’t rule out opening new coal mines,” he said.
“The Greens have a plan to phase out coal mining and to retrain workers in the coal to take advantage of the coming boom in renewables and other sustainable industries.”
Mr Morgan launched his campaign, by going on a 140-kilometre bike ride from Mt Victoria to St Albans. While serving as a vehicle to raise his profile, he also wanted to raise awareness of the plight of refugees.
“People say to me all the time that people can't in all conscience support Australia's treatment of refugees and asylum seekers,” he said.
Mr Morgan is from Melbourne, and has lived in the Blue Mountains permanently for about 18 months.
His wife is from the area, and after many years of working across remote parts of the Northern Territory with Indigenous communities, he wanted to settle down.
“I was recruited straight out of university as a teacher and was sent straight to East Arnhem Land which was a great culture shock,” he said.
“I eventually grew to love it and my children grew up there bilingual and bicultural.”
