Independent: Melissa Batten

We need tax incentives for small business, assistance with Workcover and insurances with employees, more incentives for taking on apprentices.

Along with my husband, we run a small business in Gosford.

Our parents have run local small business for the past 50 years and have trained 15 young local youth.

We want our hard work to be rewarded. We want to expand to provide further employment and to service our community.

Small business is important to me.

We need Gosford Hospital to have more staff, more resources, more beds and shorter shifts for the overworked doctors and nurses.

We need more doctors trained.

We need to focus on assisting mental health issues.

My four children were born at Gosford Hospital, from my first child being born in 1991 to my fourth child being born in 2009.

I have firsthand experience with the changes to Gosford Hospital over the years.

My youngest son had meningococcal disease in 2007, treated by the wonderful staff at Gosford Hospital.

I know what it is like to be a desperate parent in need of our health professionals, in a life or death situation.

My parents, now retired, were both employed by Gosford Hospital.

Health is important to me.

We need all youth to leave school with an OHS Green-White card qualification to ensure that work is always available to them on a jobsite - hands-on work, learning skills that are now obsolete to our young.

We need children to be encouraged to leave in Year 10 to take up trades and work with their hands, understanding the opportunity of the pre-apprenticeship training available to them.

We need all youth to take home those baby dolls for a week minimum to understand what it is like to commit to something for seven days, 24 hours a day.

We need all schools to have a vegetable garden, used for their school canteen, tended by the children from Kindergarten to Year 12 to encourage sustainability, health, and the enjoyment of time spent gardening and the well being this brings.

I have two sons, now in the workforce.

They have both attended local public and local private schools.

I now have a daughter in kindergarten, another daughter who needs childcare.

This again is real life experience that I am living, education is important to me.

We need youth clubs all over Robertson electorate, run by the local police force and community, demanding respect, responsibility and teaching the importance of physical health for mind and body.

I know from my own experience of being a single parent for too long, that our children need our help.

Fifty per cent of families are blended families.

This is not good enough for our children, and how are they to learn structure and stability, without the core of where life all starts?

Our children and youth deserve better.

I want all children to know that there is always a safe place for them to fall within their community, a community that cares.

Melissa Batten Independent