Once again at election time the Settlers function centre is set up with the familiar scene of a showstealer opening campaign speech. Showstealer looks calm and confident as he takes the microphone

Well here we are again huh? It seems like only a few short weeks ago that we were here talking about Nicholls at the by-election. Yet we're back here again. Friends, today I once again am here to ask the people of Nicholls to put their faith in me as their member for parliament in this coming election.

The things we talked about a few weeks ago during the by-election campaign still hold true, in fact friends the petulance of the government who called this election only proves what we have been saying all along. No one asked for this election, no one wanted this election except the government and a Prime Minister solely driven by his own ego, there are people in his own party who don't want this, yet here we are. This, this laid clear is Australia finally getting to see what we here in Nicholls have sadly seen for quite some time now, that the major parties do not care about the people once they've been elected. They do not care unless they need something from you and once they have it, they will go back to treating you with the same contempt that they always have.

We saw it during the floods that devastated not only many parts of the Murray here in Nicholls, but in parts of New South Wales, South Australia. Many families are still trying to pick up the pieces and place their lives together and what have we seen from the major parties? Complete and utter silence!. Not one MP visited during the floods, not one care package was given out to victims of the floods, not even one message of support. Many families were just simply left to the hands of fate and left to fend on their own through all the red tape of insurance, cleaning up, finding alternative accommodation. They were abandoned.

Abandoned like our farmers here in Nicholls. Nicholls is home to the nation's food bowl. From the orchard rows of the Goulburn Valley that provide the peaches and pears that fill our children's lunchboxes, to the dairies in Gippsland and the south west that provides the milk that we put in our coffees and on our cereal. The Mallee has long provided some of the world's best citrus fruits, while the staples of our pantries come directly from fields all over the electorate of Nicholls filled with wheat, barley, canola and more.

Yet what have we seen to protect these farmers from the major parties? Nothing but the same tired policies they've had for decades, for our dairy farmers a price floor, a floor that does nothing to help them with the rising cost of feed and maintenance of equipment needed to deliver the quality product we all expect and have enjoyed for so long. For the farmers relying on water, no real policies to help adjust to a new age, for the farmers whos crops were wiped out by the floods, complete and utter stonewalling. This from parties that claim to stand for people of the bush, that claim they came from the land and care about the land. That look the battlers in the eye and shake their hands with one hand, while the other hand is reaching into the battlers pockets to take what they can get for the big end of town.

This election here in Nicholls is once again a chance to tell the major parties that our voices are just as important, if not more important than those voices that would only see to fill their own pockets and the coffers of the major parties. Once again, it is a chance to tell the major parties that without the farmers of Nicholls, the country would cease to function. It is once again a chance to tell the major parties that our voices can not, will not be ignored any longer.

Friends, I stand for your vote because I believe in this electorate. I believe in its people. I believe in our spirit. I believe in our voice. For too long we've been ignored. It's time for our voice to be heard.