You mean you don't just make this stuff up?

It's both refreshing and a bit depressing to hear that the issues I and the Greens have been banging on about in this and other electorates is repeatedly echoed by the real people that live here. It's depressing on two fronts, one because the situation is actually this bad and two, because this is happening in new suburbs. In suburbs that should embody the collected wisdom of over 100 years of urban development, instead we are creating suburbs with inadequate infrastructure and restricted accessibility. We are at the start of the 21st century surely we should be getting the hang of this.

So what recently leads me to this view, you guessed it, out talking to the people who live in the electorate and I'm going to share some of their observations again. I had a fellow at the Laverton Station making the observation that he could not fit his bike in the lift to the platform and because the new platforms will be accessed by stairs he will have to carry his bike up and down stairs. (When will they get people who actually use public transport to design stations and signage).

But that doesn't matter now because after some near misses on the road he's not prepared to ride on Point Cook Road anymore. He asked the obvious question, 'shouldn't separated bike trails be built as a part of new suburbs'. At the start of the 21st century, I'd say he has a point.

Then there was the young woman just turned 18, she lives at home in Altona Meadows and on the weekend works for 3 hours in next suburb, Point Cook. It takes her 2 hours to get to work and two hours to get home. She is so disengaged she was going to put in a donkey vote, her Dad said to me 'you'd better talk to her'. I suggested there was an alternative to the Labor/Liberal 2 party model, one that aimed to raise the bar, one that was focused on working towards new solutions, not the getting and maintaining power. I told her how I saw the Greens. I don't think she'll donkey vote.

Then there was the fellow storming past, 'you're all a bunch of f...ing pricks doing it for yourself'. He expressed rather bluntly the high level of cynicism and scepticism that I suspect many people are too polite to state.

I firmly believe at the start of the 21st century that people expect an enlightened parliament, one that looks for new ideas, embraces differences, works toward a future. Our democratic system is deliberately built with checks and balances, it is designed to manage differences, if it was meant to be a boxing ring, I think it would have been designed differently. I believe over 1 million people vote for the Greens because they know we need new ideas and new ways to deal with the real and evolving challenges of the future.

And we need them now.