Liz Ingham is an environment campaigner with nearly 20 years of experience in community campaigns. She is passionate about the environment, from remote old growth forests to our urban creeks and grasslands, from the air we breathe to the soil that grows our food.

A committed volunteer, Liz has been active in Environment East Gippsland’s campaign against clearfell logging for over a decade, and she spent four years campaigning against inappropriate development on the Stony Creek in Yarraville.

Liz writes a gardening and lifestyle column for Earth Garden magazine. She joined the Greens because environment protection goes hand in hand with social justice, democracy and peace.

Liz sees public transport, health care and gambling as key issues in the West.

A better public transport system would help prevent isolation, get people to services they need, get people to work, save money and tackle global warming and air pollution, all in one.

"Everyone should have access to a community health centre, for health promotion, illness prevention and care as well as cure. This would reduce the burden on our hospital system as well as add to quality of life."

"Pokie machines are a tax on the vulnerable. Every day we read about another addicted gambler’s life going down the tube – crime, family poverty, depression, relationship breakdown and violence. In the new suburbs, sometimes the gambling venue is the only family-friendly business within cooee – something that needs to change. We’re not wowsers; we don’t want to take away peoples’ entertainment, or sporting club revenue, we just think it shouldn’t be at massive society expense."

Liz Ingham stands for:

• Protection from industrial logging for old growth forests, water catchments and threatened species habitat.

• Protection for the West’s remaining grasslands and local creeks, by strengthening the planning scheme and reforming VCAT.

• Extending train and tram lines to outer suburbs, with 10 minute service in peak periods. Connecting buses with the trains, and extending their operating hours.

• Ensure new developments invest in sustainable transport at the development stage.

• No more freeways and truck routes carving up our suburbs.

• Removing two thirds of pokie machines across the state – a massive cut. We’ll kick pokies out of shopping centres. Getting rid of the ATM machines in venues, and the pokie machines that only accept bank notes.

The Western Metropolitan Region covers an area from Craigieburn in the north to Williamstown and Altona in the south, and from Werribee, Caroline Springs and Sydenham in the west to Gladstone Park, Coburg, Moonee Ponds and Footscray in the east.

For more information on the new electoral system for the Upper House, visit the Victorian Electoral Commission's website: http://www.vec.vic.gov.au