Council
3 August, 2026
Independent aims for Upper House
WITH the State Election approaching, an independent candidate has raised her hand to run for the upper house seat of Western Victoria.
Aleta Moriarty recently launched her campaign, having spent much of her life as an advocate and a humanitarian worker.
She said one of her biggest passions was working towards ending economic inequality and poverty, particularly in rural and regional areas.
“I started doing all this research into the richest and poorest countries in the world, the poorest households or most disadvantaged in every country in the world and what key characteristics need to be targeted to eliminate poverty and inequality,” Ms Moriarty said.
“Several things came up; one was less access to education, one was being more likely in a rural or regional area, and one was single parents.
“My goal is to try and work on those factors that relate to inequality and poverty – politics is just one way I’m interested in doing it.
“I want to become a strong advocate for rural and regional areas; being able to analyse the data and pull out where they’re being left behind.
“People feel like they’re on a treadmill; working harder and going nowhere. That’s a policy failure that’s been compounding for decades – you can’t fix a broken system with the same people who broke it.
Having grown up in a rural area, Ms Moriarty has a strong affinity with rural and regional communities, which represents 23 per cent of the state’s population.
She has compiled a report into the divide between metropolitan and regional Victoria, having analysed the budget and highlighted a number of gaps.
“My analysis of the 2026–2027 Victorian Budget found that Transport and Planning capital expenditure totalled approximately $9.4 billion, while projects explicitly identifiable as regional represented approximately $320 million, or 3.4 per cent,” she said.
“When operational spending is included, the estimated regional share rises to approximately 14–17 per cent, but much of this maintains existing services rather than building new infrastructure.
“The education picture is similarly concerning – the Budget included approximately $1.6 billion for school infrastructure.
“However, the major new-school construction program funded new schools or stages in metropolitan growth areas, with no new regional school among those projects.”
She added that the government’s own regional budget announcement identified $481 million for regional transport services and approximately $279 million for regional education and health, within a broader claimed regional package of more than $2.7 billion.
Ms Moriarty said the analysis showed additional gaps in health expenditure as well as a wage and poverty rate discrepancy.
“It leads to results where we see school kids being further behind in rural and regional areas, and we see a massive health gap materialised in access to doctors,” she said.
“Victoria already faced an estimated unmet demand of approximately 370 full-time-equivalent general practitioners (GPs) in 2024.
“Without substantial workforce reform, the Commonwealth’s modelling projects that shortage will rise to more than 870 by 2028.
“Smaller towns feel these shortages most acutely because losing even one doctor can substantially reduce local access to care.”
Ms Moriarty said she has been thrilled with the support she has received since announcing her plans to run for parliament.
“It tells you something about how desperate people are for real change and how ready they are to act,” she said.
“We have a situation where major parties that have to get those inner-city areas across the line – because that’s where all their voters are – just funnel money into where the votes are and leave these areas behind.
“Running as an independent, I can actually address some of these stubborn areas.”
She said as a community rep, she wants people to understand the rep works for them and not the other way around.
“You’re just a human who’s a voice piece for what the community wants, so I’m going to be coming down and chatting to people in the community.”
Ms Moriarty said she hoped to evolve her platform with the wants and needs of the community.
“What I would like to see is schools that are fully funded and get their adequate infrastructure spend,” she said.
“I would like to see health spending up, more access to GPs and a pro-rata infrastructure spend that’s fair to rural areas.
“You get a whirlwind of politicians who come through before an election, and it’s honestly outrageous – it happens in almost every country in the world.
“That’s why I think the community independent model is a good model – because it breaks away from that political party and inner-city votes thing we see.”
