Van Thanh Rudd

Hi I’m Van. I’m running in this year’s state election as a candidate for Laverton with Victorian Socialists because I believe residents in this electorate deserve a fruitful life that includes an abundance of affordable housing, freely available public healthcare, childcare, education, and transport.

Billionaires are now making trillions, while ordinary workers and the unemployed struggle to survive in a nightmarish cycle of debt and poverty.

As a public school maintenance worker and unionist based in Melbourne’s western suburbs, I’ve seen how much school infrastructure is underfunded. Having rented in the western suburbs for the last 20 years, I know how distressing it is to find a place to live. As a community soccer coach I see younger generations yearning for community, health and wellbeing against a system that creates poverty, loneliness and division. And through decades of creating political cartoons and street art, I’ve experienced the hostility the establishment has towards our right to express the horrors inflicted upon the people of Gaza.

The banks and developers are making record profits out of a rigged property market. They’re the cause of the housing crisis, not migrants.

I’m running in this election because I want to shake up this system and flip it the other way round and put people and generosity first, not profit.

I’ll continue campaigning for public housing, higher pay and better conditions for workers, price caps on essential foods, rent freezes, and more public transport routes free of charge.

Sunshine hospital is at breaking point so I’ll fight for more public hospitals in the west. We need low fee childcare centres and to reverse the privatisation of these essential services.

I’ll also continue to make sure racism and the far right have no place in the west.

If elected in November, I’ll continue to fight for the better world that ordinary workers and the unemployed need and deserve.