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As local as it gets

As local as it gets

The Liberal Party’s new candidate for the federal seat of Macnamara Kate Ashmor knows our local area as well as anyone.

Having been preselected in September, the Caulfield mother of two enters the contest for the long held Labor seat with an impressive list of professional achievements both in business and the local community.

A career lawyer and principal of Ashmor Legal, Kate has served on a vast range of business and not-for-profit boards and from 2005 to 2008 she also served as a councillor for the City of Glen Eira.

A woman of proud Jewish heritage, she is also a member of the National Council of Jewish Women and Friends of the Holocaust Centre and said that since her family had migrated to Australia in the 1960s this electorate had been their life.

“My mother and her parents arrived in the late ‘60s as stateless refugees from Poland,” she told Southbank Local News. “At that time if they were able to get out Jews left Poland stateless and my parents were fortunate enough to have an opportunity to come to Australia under the assisted passage scheme.”

“My grandfather was a printer and he was offered a job printing the Jewish News in the old Abbottsford Print Works. They were initially going to come to Australia for two years and that was about 50 years ago.”

“They settled in Milton St in Elwood in a Jewish welfare organisation. They scraped every dollar and managed to get a loan and bought a nearby flat and I have many fond memories running around their home and learning to walk in the St Kilda Botanical Gardens.”

From her days growing up in Elwood and Elsternwick, spending time at the old Prince Henry’s Hospital in Southbank where her mum was a nurse, to now working and raising a family in Caulfield, she said she “lived and breathed” the area.

With Labor MP Michael Danby retiring after next year’s election having held the seat for 20 years, the newly named Macnamara (formerly Melbourne Ports) represents the one seat in Australia that is a true three horse race between Labor, Liberal and the Greens.

Kate will be up against new Labor candidate Josh Ward and Greens candidate Steph Hodgins-May, who is recontesting having narrowly lost to Mr Danby in 2016.

While acknowledging that it had been a tumultuous time for her party given the recent ousting of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and issues surrounding women, she said she was solely focused on the positives.

“I wasn’t there and I wasn’t apart of it so I can’t really comment on what’s happened,” she said. “There are a lot of good policies and plans to share and the thing is this - unlike my opponents, I’ve never worked for a politician.”

“I’ve never worked for a think tank, I’m not a member of a think tank and I’m not a factional player. I’m just an ordinary person with a family and a small business and a love for my community.”

If elected, she said she would push for a productivity commission enquiry into women at work, address housing affordability, support the Royal Commission into aged care and fight for a larger slice of the federal infrastructure budget.

Having recently resigned as a four-year board member of the Caulfield Park Bendigo Bank, a position that has given her deeper understanding of a range of community organisations, her main focus now is her community.

“This entire diverse community deserves representation,” she said. “There will be no bigger or bolder champion for them than me.”

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