It’s always nice (and so unusual!) when one starts one’s little journey into the land of small parties and independent candidates with someone who gives every appearance of being sane and intelligent. Dr Christine Sindt looks suspiciously as though she might be both of these things.
Of course, I’m probably biased in her favour by the fact that she is a scientist (crystallography and biologically-active compounds) and speaks English, French and German. And I really love the fact that she helped establish the Sudanese Nuer Community Language School in the La Trobe Valley.
Dr Sindt is currently a La Trobe City Councillor, and is running as an Ungrouped Independent in the region of Eastern Victoria, which runs from the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne (Belgrave, Lilydale, Mornington), and stretches all the way to East Gippsland, taking in part of the Victorian Alps along the way. She is clearly very passionate about education, and is absolutely against a proposed merger between Monash University Gippsland and the University of Ballarat, on the grounds both of educational quality and governance (she is concerned that if the Churchill Campus is run from Ballarat, local priorities will be ignored).
