AFTER 28 years as the Midland MLA Michelle Roberts has decided to not run in the state election on March 8.

Mrs Roberts told Echo News about some of the achievements she was most proud of after she was given the Police portfolio, the big role the Midland Railway Workshops played in people’s lives and some advice for whoever wins her seat.

In opposition, when Dr Geoff Gallop first suggested she take on the police portfolio she was taken aback but he convinced her and she went on to achieve quite a lot.

She said providing occupational health and safety coverage for police officers was essential and looking back people would now question how it could ever have been a contentious issue.

“But let me assure people it was very contentious and it had been put off for over 20 years,’’ she said.

“So providing occupational health and safety coverage was a number one thing from the Gallop government era from a supporting police officers’ perspective.

“Then in the McGowan government era it was great to be able to give them the bullet-and-stab-proof vest but putting in place a proper scheme for the medical retirement of police officers I think is probably the proudest thing I did in that time.’’

From a community policing perspective the most important was introducing remote Indigenous police stations which were whole-of-community facilities.

“So they were a police station, court house and also to provide community service hubs.

“And to put that in context there were remote Indigenous communities that didn’t have a police station within 400 or 500km and we know really bad things were happening in those communities.

“The initiative for that came out of the death of Susan Taylor here in the metropolitan area and Magistrate Sue Gordon did a report for government and basically you couldn’t just leave the communities unpoliced and unregulated and have young girls and children with nowhere to go with their complaints.’’

In her valedictory speech in Parliament on November 26 she said her family connection to Midland went back generations, with her grandmother Olive Hopkins, nee Middleton, being born in Midland in 1912.

Olive’s father Joe Middleton and his brother Harry had come to Midland as young children in the late 1800s with their parents, John and Emma.

Her mother’s parents, the Wisbeys, also lived in Midland, having arrived as free settlers in the 1850s.

When Mrs Roberts contested Midland at the December 1996 election, the Court government had closed the railway workshops, despite promising in 1993 to turn them into a centre of engineering excellence.

Her great grandfather Joe Middleton and his brother went to primary school in what’s now the Midland Junction Art Centre in the early 1900s.

“Their dad John Middleton worked at the Midland Railway Workshops – I found his death notice from the workers at the government railways – and his years of service went back to a year before the workshops even existed, which at first I thought was weird but the first workshops were actually at the Fremantle end.

“So he must have come across from Victoria worked his first few years at the Fremantle end and then the main workshops once it was established in Midland all the work forces transferred up here.’’

Her grandmother’s family was a big family – some of the extended family worked at the workshops as well.

“My grandmother’s sister – Rose Kenworthy – her husband was the last man to be killed at the workshops.

“The story was that he’d gone back to work but was possibly still recovering from flu or something and he was backed over by a locomotive – she thinks she was about 10 at the time and it was devastating for the whole family.’’

She said the workshops were a big part of everyone’s lives in Midland.

“One of the original shop stewards at the workshops was the late Jack Marks, I had served on Perth City Council with him so my first campaign for Midland, Jack came out and helped me – they were special memories.

“We door knocked a lot of the streets around the old part of Midland near the workshops and there were still a lot of railway workshop workers living there most of whom knew Jack and most wanted to invite him in for a drink.

“People don’t realise it was like its own little city.’’

In conclusion Echo News asked the first woman Police Minister, the first woman Emergency Services Minister, the first woman manager of opposition business, the first woman president of the Western Australian Labor Party and the first woman Speaker of the WA Parliament her advice for her replacement.

She said genuinely listen to people and be open to what they were saying and feed that into the political process because it was your job to represent your electorate and the people and you can’t do that if you’re not listening.

Also it doesn’t hurt to be kind and walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.