'They don't want to talk about politics': Braddon and Bass voters resist starring role

The Coalition desperately needs to win the two volatile electorates in Tasmania’s north, but all parties are battling disillusion and disengagement,
writes Adam Morton

The sun is high, the drivers are honking and yelling hello and Jacqui Lambie is exhausted. The former senator is working a power drill as she replaces a poster that has been torn down on the highway outside her home town of Burnie, in the heart of Tasmania’s battle-hardened, electorally volatile north-west.

Just back from Hobart, putting up corflutes on the way, she is low on funds and energy. While waving to passing traffic, Lambie sighs and ponders the detached mood in the electorate.

“People are so disengaged, I tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it,” she says. “They are happy to talk but they really don’t want to talk about politics.”

Lambie is reflecting not just on her bid to convince voters to send her to Canberra for a third time but also the campaign for Braddon, Tasmania’s most knife-edge seat. Held by Labor with a margin of just 1.7%, it is a vital peg in the Coalition’s bid to retain government.

A snapshot view from Cattley Street in the heart of Burnie gives some insight into why Lambie might be finding the campaign a slog. Braddon voters are about to be hauled back to the ballot box for a third time in 14 months, following last year’s state poll and a federal byelection in July. Even those motivated to lodge a pre-poll vote in a converted sports store appear disillusioned or indifferent about the options before them.

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“It’s like choosing between gonorrhoea and syphilis,” says Tony Easton, a truck driver from the nearby town of Penguin who is voting early in case he has to work on election day. “Whoever we vote for, we don’t know how long they will be there. Australia is the only country where voting is compulsory, but it doesn’t matter who you vote for.”

How did he decide who to back? “It’s a bit of a random lucky dip at the moment.”

Tony Lacey, the grandson of Joe Lyons, the only Tasmanian to serve as prime minister, says his ancestor would be terrified by the state of today’s politics. Uniquely, Lyons was a Labor premier in the 1920s before becoming prime minister in the 1930s as leader of the United Australia party (the original model, precursor to the Liberals, long before Clive Palmer appropriated the name). Lacey leans Liberal, as much in antipathy to the alternative as enthusiasm for the government.

“I don’t mind who’s in power as long as they manage the money and don’t just go … getting the country into heaps more debt,” he says.

But he prefers Scott Morrison’s bloke-on-the-street persona to his predecessor, a common refrain in this part of the country. “I think he’s doing a good job. Malcolm Turnbull should have listened to other members of the party rather than trying to run his own show and that’s what got him kicked out.”

Asked about Bill Shorten, he considers his words and opts for pith. “I just hope he doesn’t become prime minister, OK?”

Kayla and Jason Arnold, from the nearby town of Wynyard, say this is a commonly held view in the north-west. Left-leaning voters out to vote while their son is at school, the Arnolds don’t care for Morrison, but doubt Shorten’s electability.

“We’ve got a prime minister who ultimately is not likeable, people out there don’t find him pleasant or agreeable and the party has backstabbing and infighting … but we’ve got an opposition leader in Bill Shorten who people just can’t see as prime minister and I think that is a stumbling block for the Labor party,” Jason says.

“I personally don’t have a problem with him – I like him and I think he’s got good policies – [but] I think if they want to get serious about winning an election they should let Albanese or Plibersek have a go, [otherwise] Morrison has a better chance.”

Beyond personalities, the Arnolds believe Labor’s emphasis on services, particularly increased support for healthcare and Tafe, speaks best to the needs of people in Braddon, where wages are lower and unemployment higher than the national median. The couple, whose son has special needs, particularly want to see a strengthening of the national disability insurance scheme, which they applaud in principle but believe was rushed and is under-resourced.

For Kayla, who is of black African heritage, election campaigns are a reminder of the social conservatism of her adopted home. She moved to north-west Tasmania from Adelaide six years ago and says she regularly encounters prejudice on the street that she links to sentiments voiced on the political right. “I know the [Liberal party] say they are not, but they are quite racist,” she says. “I don’t go out on my own without Jason because people are quite rude in this area.”

Later, she summarises: “There’s just a lot of disappointment with every election really. It’s sad.”

‘Health is such a massive issue’

Along with the neighbouring electorate of Bass, centred on Launceston, Braddon is central to the Coalition’s hopes of squeaking a third term in power. Most analyses mapping a potential path for the government back to power have found they need to win at least one, and probably both.

Braddon takes in the regional cities of Devonport and Burnie in the east, King Island in Bass Strait and runs down the west coast through towns, farming land, some mining areas and the state’s famed wilderness. Traditionally working class and largely rural, it was a Liberal stronghold for decades until the GST election of 1998, when it began to swing. While parts of Tasmania buzz with newfound confidence on the back of the tourist boom triggered by David Walsh’s Museum of Old and New Art, the north-west has been slower to feel the benefits.

The Liberal party goes into this election with no lower house seats in Tasmania, having lost Braddon, Bass and Lyons in 2016. A few weeks ago, the prevailing wisdom among political observers was that if the swing was on to Labor nationally, the most likely scenario was that all three would remain with the ALP.

That view no longer necessarily holds. Both parties believe Braddon and Bass could be in play, a point underlined by the time and money the leaders have dedicated to them.

What’s changed? Answering that requires examining what happened three years ago. Lyons, a rural electorate covering more than half Tasmania, has traditionally been a Labor seat and its return to the ALP was not a great surprise, but the extent of the swing in the state’s north and central regions was greater than predicted.

In hindsight, three factors stand out. The losing Liberals in Bass and Braddon, Andrew Nikolic and Brett Whiteley, were abrasive figures whose approach turned off some constituents. This was amplified in Bass by a well-executed campaign by GetUp against Nikolic, a member of the party’s hard-right.

Turnbull’s prescription of corporate tax cuts to strengthen the economy did not go down well in a region where voters are most concerned about services and the cost-of-living. By comparison, at a time when Tasmania’s public hospitals appeared under siege, Labor’s so-called “Mediscare” campaign on health spending was effective.

The question facing Labor at this election is whether it peaked in Tasmania in 2016 and, if so, how big a correction it should expect.

The member for Braddon is Justine Keay, a former Devonport city councillor and ALP staffer. She was less than two years into the job when she was forced to resign – like Lambie, she was found to be a British citizenship by descent – and recontest the seat. The byelection that followed was a replica of 2016, with the Liberals once again preselecting Whiteley, and Keay winning by effectively the same margin (she had a 0.1% swing in her favour).

There are some new variables this time out. Independent Craig Garland, a recreational fisherman who won more than 10% of the vote and directed preferences to Labor at the byelection, is now in what appears to be a race with Lambie and a third ALP representative for the state’s final Senate seat. He has been replaced in the Braddon field by a long list of minor party and independent candidates, mostly from the right. It suggests Keay may need to lift her primary vote above the 36.7% she received last year to be safe.

Liberal candidate Gavin Pearce, a farmer and RSL president in Wynyard, was a relative unknown in much of the electorate before the campaign. He was not made available to speak with Guardian Australia but told an ABC radio forum he was running because he supported a “Tasmanian way of life” rooted in family and community.

Keay’s pitch focuses on her personal story as a mother of three young boys who wants a majority Labor government to improve health and education in the area. Speaking after a candidate forum in the town of Ulverstone at which Pearce was a late withdrawal, she says she believes concern about healthcare is biting with voters and that, contrary to the mood on the street in Burnie, people are becoming more positive about Labor as election day draws near.

“Health is such a massive issue in this electorate,” she says. “I think for some people it’s probably justifying them switching their vote this time around.”

‘His heart’s in the right place’

If Braddon is volatile, Bass is an explosive device waiting to go off in the face of a sitting MP. It is 18 years since it returned an incumbent to Canberra and it was the only electorate in the country to record swings of greater than 10 percentage points in both 2013 and 2016.

Labor’s Ross Hart, a former lawyer, holds the seat by 5.4%. But the sense of a fickle constituency ready to strike received a boost early in the campaign when the Australian Forest Products Association released a widely publicised poll that claimed the Liberals were leading 54-46, briefly pushing the government ahead in betting markets (the same happened in Braddon, despite the association having the Liberals up just 51-49).

The sense of momentum for the government has been maintained by newspaper reports based on selectively leaked government polling claiming Shorten is deeply unpopular in the region. But political observers say there is little evidence on the campaign trail that another wild swing is in the works.

The Liberal candidate for Bass is Bridget Archer, a farmer and the mayor of George Town, a small municipality north of Launceston that is traditionally Labor territory. In part, she is pinning her hopes on Launceston’s improving economy and the injection of federal money for a city deal that will bring the university campus closer to town. Archer did not take up invitations to talk to Guardian Australia.

Hart believes healthcare is the major issue in the seat, particularly dissatisfaction with emergency care at Launceston general hospital, the only option in town for those needing urgent treatment. “The Liberals can’t deny that the health system is under stress – we say it is in crisis – and it needs funding,” he says. “Irrespective of the suburb, it is health that comes up on every occasion. It is a priority across demographics.”

Sisters Dani Ankin and Jessie Pengelly say they are particularly swayed by Shorten’s promise to reduce childcare costs for families earning up to $174,000 a year. Ankin, a mother of two and the manager of a local Bras N Things store, says it would make a meaningful difference in their lives.

“At the moment, it’s ridiculous. It’s stupidly expensive and it makes it super hard,” she says. “I work full-time and my husband works full-time but if my mother-in-law didn’t take our kids two days a week we couldn’t do that.”

It is enough to sway her vote, probably. “I think I’ll go for Labor, but it’s weeks to go so who knows? At least they’re focusing on working parents, not the rich.”

Wayne Higgs, a former executive officer of Master Builders Tasmania, is headed the other way. He says he has watched the local economy change and recover in recent years, with some of the big industry of the past, such as forestry, mostly gone, but construction performing strongly.

He is dismayed by what he sees as a shift towards people expecting handouts the country can’t afford and governments relenting, a situation he likens to parents giving kids lollies at the supermarket to keep them quiet without considering the eventual cost. A big fan of Turnbull, who he saw as a statesman, but turned off by Tony Abbott (“what were they thinking?”), he is slowly coming around to the idea of Morrison as a different kind of leader.

“He’s a sort of down-homie, wants-to-be-accepted-as-a-run-of-the-mill sort of fellow [but] it’s hard to tell from the picture you get in the media,” he says. “What’s he really like? I don’t know. I think his heart’s in the right place.”

For anyone trying to read the tea leaves from this, the main message from Tasmania’s pre-eminent election expert, Kevin Bonham, is: don’t spend too much time using polling as a guide.

He says the idea Labor could lose Bass on a margin of more than 5% would seem unlikely – if it was not the seat of Bass.

“It’s tricky as there is not an obvious baseball bat issue this time, though there is some sense that Labor strategy is too Hobart-focused,” he says, citing Liberal attacks and critical headlines in the north over an ALP pledge for $50m for a new convention centre at Mona.

“But seat polls are rubbish. They’re always unreliable and in Tasmania they have tended to skew Liberal at federal elections. All we can say is it is vaguely close.

“I think we knew that already.”

Contributor

Adam Morton

The GuardianTramp

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