I don’t have time to read all of this!
The Basics

Website: https://www.melton.vic.gov.au/Council/About-Council/Councillors/Cr-Kathy-Majdlik
Themes: Serving the community, disability services.  Somewhat conservative.

With friends like these…
The Group Voting Ticket

As an ungrouped independent, Majdlik does not get a group voting ticket, but it’s always interesting to see where the independents are placed by other parties.

Unfortunately, we don’t get much of use here.  Majdlik is usually grouped with her fellow Ungrouped independent somewhere toward the bottom of the ticket, though Hinch and the ALP rank both the independents fairly highly, with Hinch putting Majdlik at 13th and the ALP putting her at 14th.

Only the Greens and the Australian Liberty Alliance bother to place the two independents separately on their ticket, and in both cases, this placement does not favour Majdlik.  The Greens put her in the middle of her ticket, with Grima quite high; and the ALA put her dead last, with Grima in the lower third of the ticket.  I suspect the Greens have put her in the ‘don’t know / don’t care’ basket, while deciding that they actively do like Grima; the ALA have almost certainly done the opposite, putting Grima on the ticket wherever, and putting the woman with the foreign-sounding name at the very end of the ticket…

The Body Politic
Policies, Snark, Terrible Theme Songs and Other Observations

Kathy Majdlik is standing as an independent candidate for Western Metropolitan Region.  She is the Mayor of Melton, and there are a bunch of articles online about her, but her own profile is elusive – she has no website, her Twitter account (@mayormajdlik) has never tweeted, her Facebook profile is locked, and while she does have a Facebook campaign page, it is for her Council candidacy in 2016, and she has not posted in it since then.

I’m guessing that as a Mayor in the region, she is relying on people knowing her personally, or at least not just through her online profile, but it does seem like a very strange way to campaign.  And it means that this commentary relies more than usual on how others see her rather than on how she chooses to present herself.

Her profile on the Melton Council page tells us that Ms Majdlik is a local resident of Melton with an MBA and a Master of Entrepreneurial Innovation.  She has graduated from the Australian Institute of Company Directors and has a Diploma of Local Government.  She has been Deputy Mayor twice and Mayor three times.

Ms Majdlik has a teenager with a disability and is passionate about disability support programs and services, and about ‘making decisions that help families thrive in a happy, healthy and safe environment’.  She also cares about local employment.

There is also an interview with Majdlik on the Brimbank City Council page, where she talks about how much she enjoys meeting the community, her immigrant background, and her passion for disability support services.

But my interest is in making our community a better one, for our children, our youth, families and seniors. The City of Melton is fantastically diverse and I am privileged to be in a position to help shape our future with six other dedicated Councillors.

In another interview, she talks about her strong female role models, her mother, who instilled in her the value of independence, and the difficulties of juggling life as a mayor, mother and wife.  There is also a nice article about her deciding to cancel the mayoral ball and put the money saved towards charitable grants.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the articles I can find about Ms Majdlik centre around her being investigated for offering financial incentives in exchange for preferences from candidates in a council election.  She appears to have been cleared of this, however.

Ms Majdlik’s educational background, her emphasis on independence, on creating a safe environment for families, and on being a mother and wife as well as a mayor sounds to me like someone who would sit on the conservative side of politics – but the more community-oriented sort of conservative, who believes strongly in volunteering, charity, and giving back to the community.  She also comes across as being intelligent and organised, which is never a bad thing.  She looks like a candidate who will be useful on disability issues, which is worth noting, because we haven’t had a lot of parties or candidates talking about this sort of thing.  I’d love to know what she thinks of the NDIS.

(And I do wonder why she isn’t campaigning.  It seems really strange, since she clearly has campaigned before, and quite competently.  I’m hoping that it isn’t an indication that her daughter is doing less well at the moment.)