Who am I? – Matthew Stephen

I will never forget the night I told my wife I was going to run in politics. I found myself whining with my teammates about the state of this country and I told her I could no longer stand on the sidelines. With the way this country is heading I fear what future my 2 young children will face.

During my schooling only a few clicks down the road, I never saw myself entering politics. This is the area my parents bought their first home, I bought my first home and where I first started my business. Never had I imagined that I may be in the race to represent our area in federal politics.

I have 2 jobs. First and foremost is as a Husband to my high school sweet heart May, and father to our 2 beautiful kids.

Second, is running a small businesses as a tradesman and owning and operating cafes. We employ some 30 local tradesman and hospitality workers as well as training local apprentices. Like all small businesses it hasn’t been smooth sailing.

Without warning, in 2013/14 the principle contractor I was sub-contacting to decided not to pay us. A 2 year court battle followed. In that moment we went from 25 tradesman and apprentices with a healthy business to being 100s of thousands behind, having a mortgage on the family home, not knowing how I was going to pay the wages, how to keep food in the fridge and the lights on to feed my family.

The thought of folding up and running never entered my mind.

I got up in the morning and went to work. I fought, scratched and scraped, and worked 15 hours a day to trade my way out of 100s of thousands in the red.

I wasn’t easy however, I am one of the few small businesses to climb out of that hole many find themselves in.

Going through that made me realise how much red tape exists in this country to keep bureaucrats in a job without protecting people or serving any kind of purpose.

I am sick of these career politicians who have never had to face the daily grind and struggles that the people of Longman face sometimes just keeping food in the fridge and the lights on.

I want to bring back accountability, honesty and commonsense in our politics.

Let’s get rid of this PC rubbish that is crippling our society, create sustainable immigration that we can support, protect and defend our pensioners and veterans and fight for our farmers. Lets get politics back to what politics should be, fixing things.

This is why I decided to run.

Remember, we cannot change the past however, we together can shape the future.

The post Who am I? – Matthew Stephen appeared first on onenation.org.au.