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Madeleine West tilts at NSW parliament

"There is a point in time where you stop talking, and you start doing. I'm not agitating to see change anymore. I want to be change."

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Actor Madeleine West has announced she will run as a candidate in the next NSW election.

West (Neighbours, Playing for Keeps, Underbelly), is based in the Northern Rivers region which has been decimated by floods.

Today she told Studio 10 she would make a tile at state parliament.

“There is a point in time where you stop talking, and you start doing. I’m not agitating to see change anymore. I want to be change. So today I’m formally announcing that I intend to run for State parliament at the New South Wales elections next year,” she said.

“I want to be the voice for my region. We need a strong voice on the floor and I want to be it. When I came to my region six years ago, of course, I love it like everyone does. But I wanted to understand it. I want to understand better. So I dived in deep. I’m a mum of six. I want to see the region flourish. I want to see my children flourish and everyone’s children to flourish there. I’ve worked with the homeless. I’ve been doing my homeless facilitated training. I’m an environmentalist, I’ve been spending three years regenerating the big scrub, which was Australia’s most significant rainforest throughout the region. I teach drama. I’m about raising the voices of young women and breaking the bias, closing the pay gap for women in the workforce. And now managing these floods.

“I think that the what all Australians need is a reassurance that this won’t happen again. It happened in the bushfires? Why did we have a two year royal commission if it’s done nothing,? Because that Royal Commission declared that our Commonwealth has the power to say this is a state of national emergency and get the forces in. We’re at day 10. The Army’s only now being deployed, It’s too late. What they’re going to be there now to do is pick up the pieces and pick up the bodies because that’s the reality. I don’t want to see this ever happen again in my region or anywhere in Australia. And so that’s my platform and here we go.”

West is yet to confirm if she will run as an independent candidate.

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