Raj Saini; Kirti Alle & Yashaswini Srinivas Kanakagiri
Independents

Summary

Policies & Commentary

Raj Saini has a website, with a picture of him, and two women I assume must be Kirti Alle and Yashaswini Srinivas Kanakagiri, although which is which is not specified. In fact, nothing much at all is specified. The entire website consists of this image

The page’s title is “Raj Saini is coming soon”. I hope so, for his sake. He’s running out of soon pretty quick.

And within a few hours of me typing that, Raj came through with one of the most detailed policy suites I’ve seen from an Independent. (Still no indication of which woman is which, though.) Raj has provided an “About Raj” page for himself (though not for Kirti or Yashaswini, although this is probably just the calculation that Group T will most likely succeed in electing a single Senator at best). It mentions that he’s a JP from Melbourne’s western suburbs, and that he works for Mercy Hospitals as a Consumer Advisor (whatever that is – the description on the page does not serve to clarify). It also mentions his actions distributing food and other necessities as a volunteer during lockdown, and his involvement with various community events, mostly related to the Indian community in Melbourne’s west and the Hindu faith, such as the Lord Ganesh Festival.

Mostly, however, it details his involvement in the ALP, of which he is not only currently a member (and has been since 2014), but Assistant Branch Secretary in Melton, and also a delegate for the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) within the Labor Party. Which begs the question: why is he not running as a member of the ALP? And if elected, will he simply vote with them anyway? Conversely, if elected, will he leave the party? His policy suite has many differences from theirs, after all. I don’t know what to make of this, and I’d like see some more clarity about this from Raj.

Finally, there are the policy offerings, in 17 separate headings¹The cute little icons are from the original, btw.. Before we get into the weeds here, I do want to mention that one thing I like about this policy suite as a whole is Raj’s holistic approach. A lot of policies here work in more than one way to support Raj’s goals – like his economic ideas being largely centred on Green Economics, so that they create jobs while also helping the environment. It’s not something he chooses to emphasise much in the pages I read, but it’s undeniable there, and it shows a kind of big picture thinking too often lacking from Australian politics. That said, they often fall prey to the pitfalls of big picture thinking: a lack of detail, and a tendency to either treat systemic problems with band aid solutions, or to propose drastic systemic transformations without a roadmap to getting there. I’m willing to believe Raj has more detail, but the sheer number of interviews that it would require to get it all is daunting.

Now, I am a Victorian myself and I care about the issues facing this state. It’s great that Raj does too. It’s less great that he’s taking a set of ideas mostly for Victoria – nearly every policy area mentions the state, or locations within it – to federal politics. Sure, if elected, he’d be representing Victoria, but in practice, that doesn’t tend to be how the Senate works. I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he’d be behind similar policies for other states, I just wish he’d clarify that position a little better.

🧠 Mental Health & Holistic Healthcare for All
I mentioned above that Raj works in the Health sector, so it shouldn’t surprise that this is the field that he has the most ideas for. And they’re pretty good, for the most part:

• More Medicare-funded mental health sessions – Expand beyond the 10-session limit to 52
• Bulk billing for mental health – Ensure GPs, psychologists, and psychiatrists offer bulk-billing options and are well trained.
• Mental & overall Wellbeing Initiatives – Promote holistic health, mindfulness, and mental well-being initiatives across the state
• Mental Health in Schools – Both public and private schools will be offered support to facilitate & incorporate mental health and mindfulness programs facilitated by trained mental health and wellness practitioners.
• Mental Health Curriculum Integration: Incorporate mental health education (emotional regulation, stress management, empathy, and positive self-talk) into health or wellbeing classes in schools and colleges.
• Seniors’ Mental Health Care – Prioritise emotional well-being in aged care facilities through mindfulness programs.
• Teach students how to recognize signs of anxiety, depression, and burnout, and when and how to seek help.
• Culturally-Inclusive Mental Health Support – Fund mental health programs that reflect the cultural needs of CALD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) and Aboriginal communities
• NDIS Mental Health Funding – Guarantee comprehensive coverage for psychiatric and psychological support through more funding.
• Promote Holistic Wellness – Encourage mindfulness, Women’s & LGBTQIA+ health, nutritional and functional medicine and alternate therapies to offer holistic Wellness.
• Gender-Specific Healthcare Inequities – Further research funding for clinical studies to assist with improving health needs.
• Chronic Disease and Conditions – alternate treatment programs for Autoimmune diseases (e.g., lupus, rheumatoid arthritis—more common in women) and reproductive health.
• Guarantee free, publicly funded palliative care services across all regions of Victoria, including in-home, hospital, and aged care settings.
• Early and Ongoing Access – Early integration of palliative care for all eligible patients—not just end-of-life—focusing on quality of life, symptom relief, and patient dignity.
• Innovation and Data-Driven Care – Establish a state-wide Palliative Care Innovation Fund to pilot new models of care (e.g., telehealth, community-based hospices).

This is the most pro-mental health policy offering I’ve seen anywhere in this election (and a brief skim shows it to be moreso than even the Greens or the Socialist parties). It’s broad and sweeping, and likely to attract accusations of being a Nanny State position, as well as how to afford it. I think it needs a little work (Senior’s mental care might need more than just mindfulness, for example), but it’s definitely a conversation we should be having. I was initially somewhat concerned by the mention of alternate therapies, but the emphasis on data-driven care would prevent the worst excesses of alternative health grifters from getting funding.

One thing I will say – for someone who works in health, and who volunteered to help out during the covid lockdowns, there’s a total absence of mention of vaccines here that surprises me. It’s a thing I would expect that Raj has a strong opinion about, one way or another, but perhaps this omission merely represents a health professional who regards the science as too settled to argue about.

💰Cost of Living & Economic Fairness
Raj has some fairly straightforward ideas here, and it’s hard to deny that any of them wouldn’t be an improvement. He wants reduced income taxes for lower and middle income earners, he wants better oversight of our supermarkets and their pricing, and he wants to ensure that fuel prices remain fair across Victoria (and presumably, the nation as a whole). He also wants a lot of reform in the energy sector, including price caps, better price transparency, and government grants for installing energy saving technologies – he specifically notes solar and insulation here. There’s no mention here of how our energy is to be generated, but that is covered in Climate Action section of his platform.

🏠︎ Affordable Housing & Rental Reform
Short and sweet, Raj calls for an expansion of social and community-led housing projects and incentives for affordable housing developments in both urban and regional Victoria. He’d also like to Implement rental reforms to protect tenants and ensure fair pricing, and it’s this one that strikes me as the most uphill battle – I think it’s good policy, but it will face a lot of opposition, not least because landlords as a class are over-represented in Parliament.

🏫 Education Reform
This is a tricky one. Raj states that his objective is to Deliver modern, equitable, future-ready education across all Victorian schools. Ensure every Victorian public school has modern facilities, sufficient staff, and the resources to deliver world-class education. Which is laudable, but seems more like the policy of a state candidate. In fact, of the eight bullet points under this heading, only one is a federal policy: Raj wants to Increase University Funding [to] Make higher education more accessible and affordable. Which is a little too broad to grapple with – but surely the key to making university accessible and affordable is to reduce costs for the students? Don’t get me wrong, I like his policies in this space, but he does seem to pursuing in the wrong venue.

💼 Small Business Support
His small business policies are almost entirely things we already have, but I assume that he wants to continue and extend these things, and that strikes me as a positive. And it’s heartening to see someone whose idea of cutting red tape is to Streamline business registration, permits, and grant access rather than do away with them entirely²Why yes, I have been reading a lot of policy documents from far right candidates. How could you tell?.

🏗️ Regional Development & Infrastructure
This is a big one, and based on the number of points here, seems to be a primary focus of Raj.

• Build affordable homes – Build more affordable homes in regional towns to address housing shortages and price spikes.
• Provide grants for renovation of underused properties and regional housing developments.
• Essential Infrastructure – Invest in healthcare, clean water, high-speed internet, EV charging stations, and libraries to all rural communities.
• Expand to Regional Hubs – Boost train and bus services in Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Gippsland and other towns in Victoria.
• Better Transport for Country Communities – Upgrade regional rail lines and bus networks, especially in Gippsland, Western Victoria, and Hume corridors.
• Improve Connectivity – Invest in safe, well-maintained rural roads and freight routes to reduce accident risk and improve connectivity.
• Rail extensions – Provide electrified rail extensions to underserved towns like Bacchus Marsh, Seymour, and Traralgon.
• Support Regional Self-Sufficiency – Back community-led initiatives and local resilience projects.
• Regional Job Creation & Industry Growth – Invest in renewable energy hubs (solar, wind, hydro) across regional Victoria to generate sustainable local employment.
• Expand to Regional Hubs – Boost train and bus services in Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Gippsland and other towns in Victoria.
• Support agri-tech and food innovation industries – in areas like Shepparton, Mildura, and Warrnambool, Ballarat and Geelong and more.
• Create a Regional Start-Up Fund – to support small business innovation and entrepreneurship in rural towns.
• Rural Healthcare Access – Expand telehealth and mental health outreach programs and hospitals in remote communities.
• Incentivise doctors and allied health workers – to live and work in rural areas through scholarships and housing support.
• Reinvest in local emergency and maternity services that have been cut in regional hospitals

In general, these are solid policies, but the first three are overlooking the stumbling blocks currently affecting the construction industry: shortages of both materials and qualified workers. But it’s hard to be too critical of anyone who classifies public libraries as “essential infrastructure”. The policies do seem a little Victoria-centric for a federal candidate, and some of them are specifically state rather than federal responsibilities, but as ideas that a federal government could rally state governments around, I like them a lot, especially the health and small business ones.

🚉 Public Transport Expansion & Affordability
Everyone has their own particular fixations in this area. Raj isn’t fussed about the SRL, or tram route extensions anywhere. (Nor does he mention High Speed Rail, so put your glass down.) What he does think matters is:

• Lower Fares Statewide – Make public transport affordable for all.
• Free Travel for Students & Low-Income Workers – Ease cost-of-living pressures.
• Electrify Transport by 2040 – Provide further government support to fully transition buses and trains to electric by 2040³Just to clarify with this point – suburban trains are already electric (other than the Stony Point line), so I would read this line as referring to Vline services..
• Expand to Regional Hubs – Boost train and bus services in Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Gippsland and other towns in Victoria.
• Late-Night & Weekend Services – Extend train and bus timetables in suburban and rural areas to support shift workers and students.
• Invest in Active Transport – Support cycling infrastructure and walkable cities

I like these policies – there’s a broadness to them and a willingness to invest in small cumulative improvements that is worthwhile, both in terms of service provision and greening the state. The stumbling block here is, as with Education above, that these are all state or local government responsibilities, and Raj is running for federal office. So as much as I like these policies, I don’t see a vote for Raj in this election as a vote for getting them implemented.

🌏 Climate Action & Environmental Protection
Again one of Raj’s larger sections, and one that clearly shows his preferences: a 100% renewable target and a phaseout of single use plastics (both by 2030), an end to all new fossil fuel projects (no word, alas, on extensions to existing ones), a Green Innovation fund to Support climate-tech startups and eco-entrepreneurs and tax incentives for existing businesses to move towards clean energy. He’d also like to see a transition to Circular Economics and the clean-up and restoration of marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

⚖️ Labor Rights & Workers Protections
Short and to the point, in this section, Raj is calling for a living wage that adjusts to inflation and an Increase [of] paid leave for individuals experiencing family and domestic violence from 10 to 15 days.

👶 Childcare, Family Leave, Elder Care Support
This one splits in two so I’ll deal with each section separately.

Childcare & Family Support

• Universal, Affordable Childcare: Introduce a subsidized, universal childcare system to reduce the financial burden on families, ensuring equal access to high-quality childcare regardless of income.
• Childcare for Non-Traditional Hours – Fund extended childcare services for healthcare, hospitality, and shift workers.
• Expanded Paid Parental Leave: Increase the duration to 26 weeks of paid parental leave for both parents, ensuring that families are financially supported during the critical first months of a child’s life.
• Support for Single Parents: Implement additional financial support for single-parent families to alleviate economic hardship, including direct tax rebates or subsidies

This is fantastic stuff, exactly the kinds of policies the ALP once stood for. It will, however, be very expensive, and run into the usual problems associated with trying to wrest any industry from for-profit to non-profit.

Elder Care Support

• Dignified Aged Care: Guarantee access to affordable, high-quality aged care for all seniors, both in-home and in facilities, with a focus on mental health and personalized care.
• Support for Aging Communities: Invest in community-based services for the elderly, including mobile health services, social engagement programs, and accessible transport options to combat isolation and promote healthy aging.
• Aged Care Workforce Support: Improve wages, training, and conditions for aged care workers to ensure they can provide the best care for the elderly without burnout

I feel like this engages with some, but not all of the problems in this sector, and in particular, that it tends towards throwing money at the problem rather than the kind of complete overhaul the sector has demonstrated itself to desperately need.

🛡️ Community Safety & Crime Prevention
This one is a mixed bag. On the one hand, he wants to be tougher on crime, with harsher sentences and stricter bail conditions. On the other hand, he’s calling for an increase in police funding specifically for better community policing and more attention paid to mental health issues as an underlying cause of crime. I like the latter and the bail reform, but the former (bail excepted) tends more to punishment than prevention. It’s an odd disconnect, and less ‘holistic’ (to use one of Raj’s favourite words) than I was expecting.

🛂 Fair & Skilled Immigration Policy
As an immigrant himself, Raj unsurprisingly has opinions about this. He wants to see skilled migration “in areas of genuine shortage”, and pathways to residency for “long-term contributors to Australia”. He also wants to see the visa system reformed to make it faster, an easier path to reunifying families and protections for migrant workers against exploitation. Not one word about asylum seekers, though.

🏭 Manufacturing & Jobs for Australians
This is fairly basic: bring back manufacturing, with an emphasis on green jobs. It isn’t a bad policy per se, but it is, under current economic conditions, an impossible one. Australian manufacturing is always going to be undercut by manufacturing in countries with less rigourous human rights laws.

🛡️ Insurance Reform & Consumer Protection
Raj is calling for a Public Insurance Ombudsman with real power to investigate and penalise unfair practices, in particular by holding insurance companies accountable for fair pricing and pushing for transparency in policy premiums and [to] reduce hidden fees. As someone who has worked in an insurance company in the past, I find these policies to be reasonable responses to the behaviour of the players in that sector.

🚀 Skill Development, Jobs & Community Wellbeing
Raj has three ideas here, and they’re all pretty solid:

• Skill Development & Job Creation: Empowering youth, women, and regional workers through targeted training programs and small business support to boost local employment and opportunity.
• Jobs Exchange Program: Creating a streamlined digital and community-based platform that connects job seekers directly with local employers — fast, fair, and accessible.
• Innovative Kids’ Learning: Delivering fresh, engaging education models that inspire creativity, curiosity, and confidence in every child — preparing them for a future that works

This is all fairly standard motherhood stuff, vague statements of aspiration rather than concrete proposals. Except for the middle point, which seems to be proposing an alternative to the current, and frequently terrible, Workforce Australia system, and looks to be like an updated and revived version of the old Commonwealth Employment Service. I certainly hope that’s he proposing, because another system working in parallel to the current one will only lead to more pointless admin that gets in the way of actual job hunting.

🌾 Backing Our Farmers & Rural Communities
This one’s a bit of a grab bag. There’s a lot of different ideas in here, but they don’t cohere to a whole:

• Agricultural Investment – Support innovation in farming, drought resilience, and sustainable food production.
• Farm-to-Market Infrastructure – Improve roads, freight access, and cold chain logistics for rural producers.
• Disaster Support Readiness – Ensure rapid response funding and infrastructure recovery for floods, fires, and droughts.
• Fund sustainable farming practices – Support for regenerative agriculture, organic farming, and water-efficient technologies.
• Boost agri-tech innovation – Invest in research and tools like precision farming, automation, and climate-smart equipment.
• Subsidies for modern equipment – Help farmers upgrade machinery and adopt clean energy on-farm.
• Insurance & risk management support – Government co-funded schemes to protect against crop failure and weather events

It’s all good stuff, but none of it will be cheap or easy to implement. Under ordinary circumstances, the last item would concern me, but Raj has already addressed issues relating to the insurance industry above. Honestly, this just seems like a slight refocusing of his policies under Regional Development & Infrastructure, above – some of the bullet points even have the same names.

🛕Protecting Public Spaces & Places of Worship
This one gets me 50/50. I’m in favour of Zero tolerance for hate crimes and targeted attacks & Stronger partnerships between law enforcement and multicultural communities, both of which contribute to a better society for all of us. But Enhanced surveillance and protection in high-risk areas gives me the heebiejeebies, and I’ve never been a fan of the any kind of special treatment for religions, especially not Increased penalties for vandalism of community and religious spaces. Crimes against religious sites may be hate crimes, but there’s no need for any additional level of legal severity beyond that.

So, will Lord Ganesh, Remover of Obstacles, remove the obstacles preventing Raj from entering the Senate? It’s possible, but I think it’s probably unlikely while there are questions about who exactly he will be representing. All in all, Raj’s policies seem to be a mix of old school Labour and new school technocratic, with a distinct tendency to assume that more funding is the solution to most issues. That said, he’s asking questions that others aren’t.

It seems to me that the way to think about him is this: at worst, he’ll vote like an ALP Senator. At best, well, see his positions above. Where you land from that depends on how you feel about the ALP. For myself, I’ll be putting Raj near the top of my ballot, and ahead of the ALP.