By Jem Anshaw
Muswellbrook is a strong and proud community that is not afraid to stand up and fight for what it deserves, and that is why Steven Fordham is putting the call out for the community to get behind a very visual message to the State Government that we deserve better.
His plan is to collect 1,000 work shirts that will be sewed together and taken to parliament house in Sydney with a message – give us what we deserve.
“I want to surround parliament, I literally want to do a lap of parliament with our shirts and hold them up high to show that our high vis matters,” Steven told The Hunter River Times.
“We’re the ones that continuously put money to this economy, we’re the ones that provide their food, their energy and everything else that they need for their day-to-day life, but they (politicians) forget us, and they continuously forget us.
“Look the last New South Wales state budget, which was a joke, they put billions of dollars into more hospitals into the city, and they cut more resources out of our region.”
Steven has been campaigning hard for the Muswellbrook Shire to get its share of the billions of dollars that the region puts into the economy for years. He is bitterly disappointed that as his family grows, none of his children have been able to be born in the town they call home.
“We lost our maternity ward, we’re now about to go to four years without one, and that’s a joke,” he said.
“I know some people go ‘this is just how it’s becoming’, but it’s something that we can’t accept, because mother’s lives matter, our kids matter, and our kids shouldn’t be worth any less than what the kids in city are.”
Steven has put a donation collection bin outside the Blackroo Community Indigenous Corporation Hub ad 6 Market Street in Muswellbrook to collect work shirts for the campaign, he is also happy to collect bulk lots from anywhere that is willing to do a drive and collect on his behalf.
“Each one of these shirts that we put up to Parliament represents the families that are working their asses off each and every day to contribute into this economy and get what we deserve,” he concluded.
