This is the third time the Taralgaborn Citizen’s Electoral Council candidate has stood for public office, previously taking a tilt at both the state seat of Burrinjuck and the federal seat of Hume.

However, with discontent with the two major parties at an all-time high he believed he was in with a chance.

“I don’t think (this election) will be quite as polarised as the last few.

Julia Gillard is only where she is today because of the discontent from John Howard’s Government so they have really only gone from one side to the other. So this time (people) might look an alternative a bit more closely,” he said.

At the centre of his campaign is a push to re-establish a national bank, owned and operated by taxpayers, and legislate a separation between savings and investment banks to prevent another catastrophic economic meltdown.

“Australia is nowhere near as sound financially or economically as we are being led to believe,” he said.

“The four big banks are not too big to fail and there is frantic work going on to get a bail-in system, which means taking depositors money to prop up the bank.”

Mr Cosgrove was concerned about the shrinking manufacturing industry, the downsizing of agriculture and the pressure being put on farmers by high interest loans, droughts and lack of water infrastructure.

He supported the granting of low interest, long term loans which could be used to bail out struggling important industries, protecting our economic future and Australian jobs.

By placing everybody on a fixed interest rate over a long period of time would restore stability to the often volatile money market, he said.

High Speed Rail and water security should be at the top of our national agenda, he said.

He supported the construction of the Bradfield Scheme, which would see water Northern Queensland pipelined to the Murray Darling Basin, with a small amount being returned to the Burdekin River.

If elected he would also promote the completion of the Welcome Reef Dam in Shoalhaven, to provide water security Bungendore, Braidwood and Goulburn.

However, he said none of this would be possible without first reestablishing a national bank and providing infrastructure funding on credit.

“The bank would works for country, not the other way around,” he said.

Mr Cosgrove believed we needed to start thinking long term as a nation both on policy and economics.

“There are no long term statesmen anymore just short term operators…” he said He said he didn’t believe in the Greenhouse Effect or that carbon dioxide pollution was causing air global temperatures to rise.

“Environmentalism is basically a fraud and that is what climate change is based on,” he said.

He supported the scrapping of the Carbon Tax but said direct action could be used more broadly to reduce pollution in general.

Mr Cosgrove was also pro-nuclear and believed that it would eventually be used to satisfy Australia’s energy demand.

He doesn’t support the government’s Gonski reforms. While he admits he hasn’t ‘gone into it in depth’ he doesn’t believe they will be ‘that much of an improvement’.

However, he believed every Australian was entitled to a ‘classical education’ and would see more money poured into education through interest payments from the newly established national bank.

Mr Cosgrove was also opposed to gay marriage saying, “It’s not a natural function of the human race.”

“(People) can be whatever they like but I don’t know that I would legislate for gay marriage… God said one go forth and multiply, he didn’t say one go forth and not multiply.”

He recognised there could be a link between prolonged social stigma regarding sexuality and higher suicide rates among gay teens, saying it is something he would be prepared to look into.