Political parallel in fight for Bass
Nikole Schellekens missed the third Western Port seat by 80 votes and a countback would put her next in line
ONE Nation has named its Bass candidate and set up a contest in which the Liberal cannot win the state’s tightest electorate without handing her rival a council seat.
The party announced Tooradin-raised beef farmer and mental health social worker Nikole Schellekens last Wednesday to run against Liberal candidate Rochelle Halstead and Labor’s Chris Buckingham.
Bass is the most marginal seat in the state after State Bass MP Jordan Crugnale held it by 202 votes in 2022 and she is not recontesting.
The two women have met on a ballot before.
At the 2024 Bass Coast Shire election Ms Halstead topped the Western Port Ward poll with 2,877 first preferences, comfortably clear of the 2,264 quota, and was first of the three elected.
Ms Schellekens polled 1,176 first preferences and finished 80 votes short of Cr Jan Thompson at the final count.
Ms Halstead has said she will stand down as a councillor when writs are issued for the state election in November, and under the Local Government Act she would have to go anyway if she won Bass because a member of parliament cannot hold council office.
A Bass Coast Shire Council spokesperson confirmed the vacancy would be filled by a countback of the 2024 votes rather than a by-election, and that Ms Schellekens is next in line for the seat.
The only outcome that keeps her out of the council chamber is winning Bass outright.
She has volunteered in the electorate since she was 14, went to Tooradin Primary School and Koo Wee Rup Secondary College, and apart from a short spell away has spent her whole adult life in Bass.
She runs a beef farm with her husband while raising two young girls, works with military veterans, and founded AgMind Australia, which has taken mental health education onto farms through more than 20 workshops across Victoria in its first year.
“I looked at Victoria and worried about the future for my kids and decided we need to start standing up and doing something about it,” Ms Schellekens told the Sentinel-Times in her first interview as a candidate.
She said much of her campaign would be spent countering assumptions about One Nation.
“I want to hear what people want and share what One Nation actually stands for, to undo the misconceptions about the party and its supporters,” she said.
Cost of living tops her list of issues, ahead of growth, health services and the protection of farmland, and she took aim at transmission lines and renewable energy projects going onto productive country.
“I would prefer to see a million dairy farms over a million solar farms any day,” she said.
Both are campaigning on incentives to pull doctors and nurses into the regions, a plan the Liberals announced at Wonthaggi Hospital on Sunday and one Ms Schellekens had put to the Sentinel-Times four days earlier.
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson was asked at Wonthaggi how concerned she was by One Nation in a seat as tight as Bass.
“We have an outstanding candidate in Rochelle, and I know she’s working every day to listen to the local community, but more importantly, she’s sharing our plan and our solutions,” Ms Wilson said.
Ms Halstead said she was focused on her own campaign rather than her rivals.
“I’m not concerned about other people in the race,” Ms Halstead said.
“I don’t have time to be worried about that.
“You can never take for granted there are others in the race, so you can never take any vote for granted, and that’s why I’m out every day talking to the community.”
Two days before the Bass announcement One Nation named its Gippsland South candidate at a sold-out fundraiser in Sale with Senator Pauline Hanson.
Cowwarr mother of two Bianca Wilkie will challenge State Nationals leader Danny O’Brien after being unveiled alongside Senator Hanson, Victorian One Nation leader Warren Pickering and East Gippsland candidate Steve Goodman on Monday night.
Ms Wilkie has spent 11 years in ambulance and emergency healthcare across Gippsland, holds a degree in paramedicine and worked for much of her recent career in Yarram.
She said her husband lost his logging-industry job last year before setting up a small business as a diesel mechanic.
“Definitely not a politician, let’s start there,” Ms Wilkie said.
“I want to get to every town that’s in the electorate to be able to hear from people, because for too long, I believe we haven’t had a voice.”
Mr O’Brien has held Gippsland South since 2014 and One Nation did not field a candidate there in 2022.
Victorians go to the polls on November 28.
Labor candidate for Bass Chris Buckingham was contacted for comment.
