Federal election 2025: Lindsay Cameron on immigration, cost of living and the big changes needed for O’Connor

Katanning church minister Lindsay Cameron will be running for the Trumpet of Patriots in the seat of O’Connor in the upcoming Federal election, and said he is ready to bring major change for the electorate. Mr Cameron grew up on a sugarcane farm in Queensland, before going to Bible college in Melbourne when he was 25. He worked on mission assignments around the world for more than a decade, including as the director of the Wesleyan church in Africa. Mr Cameron made the move to Albany in 2021 to be closer to his wife Rosalea’s family after struggling to live with COVID-19 restrictions in Melbourne, and is now the pastor of the Katanning Wesleyan Methodist Church. The move to politics first came in 2016, when Mr Cameron ran as a Senate candidate for the Australian Christians party. After he was not selected, he joined Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party before making the switch to Trumpet of Patriots in February 2025 following the High Court ruling that the UAP could not be re-registered for the 2025 Federal election. He said he wanted to join a party without religious affiliations this time around in an effort to keep his religious and political personas separate. “You don’t take your politics into the church,” he said. “For instance, immigration policy I might speak out against, but I wouldn’t stick my nose into politics from the pulpit.” Despite his extensive leadership experience within the Wesleyan Church around the world, Mr Cameron said leading a small local church group had been a welcome change, but was certain the skills he had gained from his years in the field would help him in politics. He said his childhood growing up in rural Queensland would also help him engage with the largely rural population of the seat of O’Connor, and said he would fight for regional issues including backing the Keep the Sheep campaign. Mr Cameron said Trumpet of Patriots policies included long-term solutions for the cost-of-living and housing crises, including building fast trains into major city centres to enable people to buy cheaper property further out of city centres. He said introducing a 15 per cent levy on Australia’s iron ore exports would work towards wiping out the country’s foreign debt, and subsequently be able to fund the party’s more expensive long-term solutions to cost of living and housing. “The policies that we have are generally aimed at solving the problem, rather than putting a band-aid over them,” Mr Cameron said. Another major promise from the Trumpet of Patriots is to decrease immigration to “sustainable levels and prioritise the needs of Australian citizens”. “I’m not opposed to immigration, but I’m opposed to immigration that is just the death knell to Australia,” he said. “Now, my faith tells me we need to be charitable, it tells me we need to look after the fatherless and the widows, and there’s some awful suffering in the world, and we need to think about how we can look after them. “But I also believe we’ve first got to look after our own people.” Mr Cameron said he believed the minor parties and independent candidates were gaining traction with the Australian public, as people start to look beyond the two major parties. “People are genuinely disillusioned with the major parties, not everyone, some people are just going to keep on voting the same way they’ve always voted,” he said. “But there is a growing frustration with what Labor has done, and they’re ready for things to change.” This is the seventh and final instalment of the Albany Advertiser’s series on the Federal election candidates for O’Connor. Read about Liberal incumbent Rick Wilson, Labor’s Darren Moir, Nationals candidate Heidi Tempra, Greens’ Giz Watson, One Nation’s Gemma Johnston and Legalise Cannabis’ Philip Arnatt. Australian Christians candidate Deonne Kingsford has not responded to requests for an interview.

Federal election 2025: Lindsay Cameron on immigration, cost of living and the big changes needed for O’Connor

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