FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 14/04/2025
Community Independent candidate for Groom Suzie Holt officially launched her campaign yesterday at an event in her home in front of hundreds of supporters and special guests Tony Windsor AM, Everald Compton AO, and Adam Wenitong from Adapt Mentorship. Ending the divisiveness of party politics was an recurring theme across all the speeches, with a focus on listening, community conversations, and bringing people together.
Mr Wenitong spoke about his work in youth crime prevention, and thanked Ms Holt for her support of Adapt Mentorship, saying;
“I'm just here to thank Suzie for her continued support. She comes a lot to all of our programs. She's one of our biggest supporters. We always say that, organizations, government agencies, that's good, but we need community. Community is the key to help heal our families”.
Mr Compton reiterated his announcement of Saturday 12 April to appoint Ms Holt to the Inland Rail Task Force to get the route through Toowoomba. He then regaled the crowd with anecdotes from his 68 years of work in Canberra, but his message for this campaign was simple.
"Toowoomba has suffered because being a safe seat, governments don't spend any money here. Labor doesn't think they can win it, and the other mob don't think they can lose it, so you get nothing. And the time has come to change," said Mr Compton.
“You can’t trust political parties, but you can trust Suzie”.
He then joked to the crowd, "if i come back here in a month's time and Suzie is not the member for Groom you're all in a hell of a lot of trouble".
Mr Windsor spoke of his time as the Independent Member for New England, and of the value of independents in parliament;
"Now, I've seen a lot of people over my years in politics, but I have never come across someone like Suzie Holt who has a natural empathy to actually represent people and not herself. We need people in the parliament that aren't there for self-aggrandisement, but they're there to actually represent you people. She's shown over the last three years, not just coming into an election, that she's prepared to do the work. Electing someone with a work ethic is probably the major ingredient.
Some people, particularly those in the political parties, at the end of the day, they'll have a few drinks together and debate who won the day. Who won the day? What's that got to do with anything? Who won the day in question time, who made the other one look the silliest today so that they could claim some sort of victory in relation to the issue,” said Mr Windsor.
Ms Holt thanked her guest speakers and supporters, telling the crowd,
“I'm going to work hard. The last election, at our final night, I said to Miles, 'there's more to do’."
