Jasvinder Sidhu has lost the pre-selection for the safe labor seat of Tarneit in Victoria. Three were two candidates in total, namely, Jasvinder Sidhu and Sarah Connelly. In the first stage of pre-selection, Jasvinder had received 54 per cent votes from the local members as compared to 46 per cent for Sarah Connelly.
Voting in the second stage by the Public Office Selection Committee was to decide the winner for this seat. The results came in on 15th November, in which Sarah Connelly won the seat by 75 per cent votes.
Talking to SBS Punjabi, Jasvinder Sidhu said that he already has an established profession of University lecturer and researcher, but on a personal level he feels a bit disappointed and discouraged.
“I think it’s a bigger loss on a community level. But, I will continue my work within the community regardless,” he said.
He said he has received a lot of support from the community members after the results were announced.
“I’ve received around 100 to 150 phone calls since last night and people are angry and disappointed”
Jasvinder Sidhu said that after working for more than eight years and seeing politics so closely, he has realized that its factions that work in politics. He said Sarah Connelly was neither a member of Labor when she stood for this seat nor was she always from Victoria.
“She has come from NSW and I had never even heard her name in Labor party before,” he said adding that, “this is not only a discouragement for me but for any new candidates that may want to run in the future. You work for eight-nine years in the area and then a new person comes in and takes the seat. That’s a great discouragement.”
As for his future plans, he believes that he will keep working in the area and the community.
“I’ve never worked for rewords. I will continue projects in Tarneit.”
He said that he will work towards building a safer community in Tarneit, improving the infrastructure and developing the Tarneit station, where the parking, according to him, looks like something out of a third world country.
"I will, in fact work more aggressively towards these projects now because as a candidate I would have had to work within the party code,” he said.
Jasvinder Sidhu said that for him, if one door has closed, another has opened.
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