Meet Port Stephens state election candidate Mark Watson from One Nation

Why are you running for One Nation in this election?

What do the people of Port Stephens have to gain by voting for you as their representative in the lower house?

What do you think the three biggest issues are for voters in Port Stephens?

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What are your party's policies/pledges to improve these issues?

1. We will work to reduce the number and kind of excuses an offender can use to obtain sentence reductions, such as faking mental health issues or blaming drug use.
2. We will bring legislation to widen the scope for victim impact statements and ensure the contents are considered in sentencing.
3. Offenders will be subjected to greater liability for compensation to victims.
4. We will employ more magistrates and judges and build more court houses.
5. We will build more prisons and reduce the use of home detention and electronic monitoring as a form of detention.
6. We will go after the profits of crime and unexplained wealth reducing the attraction of crime. We will strengthen anti association laws preventing organised crime members from being able to conspire or flout their wealth.
7. We will strengthen bail laws to ensure community safety is the main consideration when a bail determination is made.
8. Offenders who assault first responders in the execution of their duty will be subjected to a three-strike system where subsequent offences receive progressively harsher punishments. Our system allows for a youthful mistake but does not tolerate the bashing of our first responders. If offenders wish to repeatedly assault them, then they will face a mandatory period of incarceration which is more in line with community expectations.
9. One Nation will petition for a complete review on sentencing across New South Wales. We will be demanding that offenders are held responsible and accountable for their actions. The punishments will fit the crime and reflect the trauma they have caused their innocent victims.
10. Police and correctional officers do an exceptionally difficult job and for that reason we will show our support for better working conditions, including new police stations and prisons, state of the art resources, better training, increased pay, and fair early separation options

1. Returning to the evidence base of what works in classroom practice, especially with the use of Direct Instruction. Schools also need to develop what John Hattie calls 'Collective Efficacy': sharing a common pedagogy and professional development among teachers, so the whole school moves in one direction. For primary students, this means one 7-year experience instead of 7 one-year experiences as they move from class to class, year to year.
2. Creating a network of school inspectors to monitor what happens in classrooms: to ensure the curriculum is being followed and that teachers are teaching to best practice standards. These inspectors will report directly to principals and parents, giving them a guarantee that students are being educated in the best possible way (which in early literacy, must mean phonics). Substandard teachers will be removed from the system.
3. Introducing performance pay for teachers, based on the value they add to student results. Teachers say they want to be treated as an esteemed profession, and One Nation agrees. This means the modern professional standard of measuring performance, with high-achieving teachers receiving greater financial rewards, and failed teachers finding a different profession.
4. Banning dangerous subject material where teachers are trying to take over the role of parenting. Top of the list is gender fluidity teaching, which is a form of child abuse. We will also return the PDHPE subject to PE (physical education) for students, removing the grab-bag of gender, sexual and relationship indoctrination courses which have been added in recent years.
5. Improving the basics of learning in the NSW Curriculum. A deep knowledge of key subjects is required: studying the classics of English literature, understanding the virtues of our Western civilisation and fostering pride in the Australian achievement. Post-Modernist 'fluidity theories' and the excessive use of 'source verifications' should be removed from the syllabus.
6. Creating a new category of government schools: the Best Practice School (those already following the evidence and achieving quality results) to work with under-performing disadvantaged schools to lift their standards. We still have a limited number of evidence-based NSW schools, usually featuring strong, dynamic principals. They need to formally mentor schools that have fallen behind, showing them what is possible with best practice pedagogy, discipline and management.
7. Introducing a Charter of Parental Rights so that parents have advance notice of what's coming up in the syllabus; a legal right to take their children out of classes which do not accord with their family values; plus, a legal right to be automatically informed of issues relating to gender, sexuality and the personal development of their children. The performance of each government school needs to be constantly measured and reported to parents.
8. Overcoming the teacher shortage crisis in NSW by reinstating the many thousands of teachers rubbed out by vaccination mandates; plus going outside the existing teaching profession to bring a range of successful people into our schools (such as the Teach For Australia program).
9. Ensuring that every student is engaged with some form of learning - in particular, addressing the problem of 12-15 year old's (mostly boys) disengaging from the academic curriculum and becoming troublesome in class. Gonski money should be used to buy in vocational offerings (TAFE and private providers) for these students, creating pathways to work based on specialised skill development, work experience and sound careers advice. While a small number of high schools currently do this, it needs to be a system[1]wide standard.
10. Creating new special schools for violent, bullying and chronically misbehaving students. These children need expert assistance; but most importantly, the good kids who want to do their work and concentrate in class need a break from the destructive, dangerous troublemakers holding them back

1. Abandon the Government's Net Zero objectives and policy instruments.
2. Lift the ban on nuclear power and uranium mining in NSW.
3. Build another gas peaking plant to avoid blackouts in 2025-26. This is urgently needed to fill the electricity supply gap created by Kean's blackouts.
4. Abolish Kean's $10 billion worth of green energy programs, representing a huge saving to the budget and the creation of a level playing field in energy policy.
5. Set aside $5 billion of the savings in (4) above for a NSW Energy Security Fund, available for government-owned and controlled electricity generation. The emphasis will be on 24/7 baseload power, with nuclear, coal and gas. The Baird Government's electricity privatisation has been a failure. To avoid blackouts, the NSW Government needs to re-establish itself in the market as an electricity supplier of last resort.
6. Abolish the NSW Independent Planning Commission which has been a hand-break on the approval of resource development projects in NSW.
7. Set a 12-month maximum assessment/approval time for resource projects, thereby giving companies investment certainty and the fast tracking of development applications. Consideration of the impact of Scope 3 emissions will be abandoned. 8. Halt the foolhardy transition to a 'clean energy economy' and return the Government's $8 billion expenditure to households and businesses, immediately lowering the cost of electricity.

• See Mark Watson's election Facebook page HERE