The battle of Longman is being fought by a grumpy old bearded man who appears irritated by everything, and a ridiculously younger man – 39 years younger to be precise - who looks so juvenile that he might celebrate his victory by getting his Ps or buying a six-pack with a fake ID.
Longman is held by a couple of thousand votes by Labor’s Jon Sullivan, 59, a veteran politician who spent nine years in state politics before knocking off former Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mal Brough in the 2007 Queensland Ruddslide.
Sullivan faces the galling and very real prospect of losing this 1.9 per cent marginal seat to 20-year-old Wyatt Roy, a baby-faced political assassin who has the frame of a jockey, who only recently finished his HSC, and was working on Mum and Dad’s strawberry farm until winning preselection for Queensland’s rebranded Liberal-National Party.
Longman is one of those parts of Australia which is described by its inhabitants as their own little slice of paradise. Its coastal hamlets may well have been the inspiration for the mythical seaside Queensland town of Porpoise Spit in Muriel’s Wedding. About an hour north of Brisbane, Longman takes in the suburban sprawl around the inland satellite city of Caboolture, celebrated in song by the Queensland indie band Custard, a predominantly monocultural place where diversity means a choice between Red Rooster or Sizzler for dinner.
To the east of the seat lies the pensioner haven of Bribie Island, which could easily pinch the title Spike Milligan bestowed upon Woy Woy as “the world’s only above ground cemetery”. On Bribie, as it is known, the most common form of transport seems to be the mobility scooter, closely followed by the early model Commodores driven by young bogans who’ve found themselves stranded there.
Sitting member Jon Sullivan has clearly had a gutful of the novelty factor of Wyatt Roy’s youth which has attracted out-of-town blow-ins such as my good self to this generally forgotten seat.
Sullivan can’t reasonably blame us for being curious – the spectacular entertainment value of Longman was confirmed this week when a crusty old volunteer from the Wyatt Roy camp belted a Labor Party worker who was standing on the side of the freeway running through Caboolture holding an over-sized L-plate in ridicule of Roy’s tender years.
The other bonus is that the entire electorate is festooned with Wyatt Roy corflutes, featuring a headshot where he literally looks about 14 years old. “We’d almost be prepared to pay for them ourselves so he can get more of them printed,” one ALP figure said. “The oldies up there won’t vote for him, he’s a kid.”
The person who said this isn’t a Queenslander, and isn’t in Longman on the day I meet both Jon Sullivan and Wyatt Roy, when not to put to fine a point on it Sullivan has a serious case of the shits.
He’s just received a frosty reception from a roomful of 100-odd pensioners at an oldies’ forum at the Bribie Island RSL. Grievances here range from valid questions about Julia Gillard’s deliberations within Cabinet about the increase in the aged pension, to garden variety One Nation style nonsense about how there’ll soon be nothing but halal food in the RSL bain-marie if all these burqa-clad reffos keep rolling up unannounced.
The pensioners forum has swung strongly behind Wyatt Roy. With his slightly high-pitched voice and his unstoppable monologues, Roy reminds me of the orator piglet Snowball in George Orwell’s political fable Animal Farm. He could talk underwater with a mouthful of marbles. But the pensioners like what he’s saying as he bangs on about Labor’s reckless stimulus, killer pink bats, unneeded school spending, the trashing of the Howard-Costello surplus, union influence, factional assassinations, uncontrolled borders, and so on. He gets loud applause when he talks about the cost of living, the meagreness of the pension, the fact that Gillard resisted the $30-a-week increase, all of it without saying how the Coalition would put more money in their pockets.
Many of the lady pensioners think he’s kind of sweet; some of the men who support him rationalise that if he’s old enough to go to war, he’s old enough to represent Longman.
“If we were at war Wyatt Roy would be in the army, given a gun, and sent overseas to shoot someone, and if he’s old enough to do that he’s old enough to be our local member,” retiree Stan English says.
Stan’s affection for Roy is fuelled by a series of gripes with the Federal Government – and Anna Bligh’s State Labor Government – which combine to show why Labor fears a result-determining rout in the Sunshine State.
I was very impressed with Wyatt. He speaks very well, straight forward and forthright. He’s young but he’s got his future in front of him. We suffer here not just from the federal government but a state government which has seen drivers licences going from 70-odd dollars to $150, we’ve had our power going up by $250 to $300 a year, water has gone up by about 700 per cent this year. So yes we got a 30 per cent increase at the start of the Rudd Government but that’s eroded, that’s gone, just with utilities. I don’t drive a car anymore because the car I had I was paying $600 a year in registration and it went to over $1000, and that’s just in the last two years.
I didn’t get to ask a question today but I would have asked if we could get a guarantee that being a democracy, where we democratically elect a government that prime ministers can all serve their full term and not be expelled by faceless men. This happened in Fiji and they called it a coup. What’s the difference? Rudd was legitimately elected and rejected illegitimately. I don’t think it was the right thing for the party to do and I think a lot of people are disillusioned about that. I didn’t particularly like Rudd but that was not the right thing to do. You don’t stab the democratically elected prime minister of the country in the back.
It’s a sentiment which Roy is shamelessly exploiting as he works the crowd, and also in his interviews with the press. I approach him and quite deliberately start eavesdropping on his conversation with a pensioner – he’s nodding in furious agreement with an old lady who’s going berserk about Muslims, bolstering the theory that people are often more worried about multiculturalism in the least multicultural parts of the country. Roy is uncritical in his acquiescence to the utter tosh this woman is talking, which is funny as, when he talks later to me, he says that he wants to see greater diversity in the Parliament for people of every age, gender and race.
“Take one of my cards,” Roy tells me. “That’s my mobile number on it right there, I give them out to everyone.”
He actually does. One of the oldies, Mr Carl Trost, tells me that a friend of his wrote to the local paper saying there was no way a 20-year-old could represent the interests of families and pensioners. Roy got her details and rang her asking if he could meet her for a cup of tea and if she could bring some friends with her. “At the end of that meeting he had 12 votes,” Mr Trost says.
“You’re going to shock me with this question aren’t you,” Roy says smiling when I apologise in advance for the predictable question I’m about to ask.
Look, it’s good that you are here today Dave because one of the points that I made was that I won a local grass roots democratic preselection. The Labor Party doesn’t always do that, they haven’t done that up in North Queensland where they come in and appoint candidates over the top. And the same people who do that have now deposed of the prime minister. Voters naturally feel disenfranchised by that. I have always taken this approach that I’ve got two ears, one mouth, get out there and listen to the people about their concerns and stand up for them. In my preselection there were 80 locals and 60 per cent of them were over 70. It’s not about me, it’s about the policies, and that’s what I am now out doing, putting our policies directly against the Labor Party. My age I think is a good thing. It is a good thing that the parliament will be more diverse. We do need a better age mix, we do need a better gender mix, we do need a better ethnicity mix. I’m just a small piece of that puzzle. I’m just doing what my Labor opponent hasn’t done. He hasn’t been proactive, he never listens to locals, I’m out there doing that because that’s my job, if you listened to him today he wasn’t across health issues, he’s playing catch up. He’s even compared me to Genghis Khan. Is that enough for you. Are we all good?
We’re all good but Jon Sullivan isn’t that good. He’s been rolling his eyes as Wyatt runs around this meeting room at the Bribie Island RSL like it’s the SRC elections, gladhanding pensioners, giving out his mobile number, running down his opponent.
I approach Sullivan and ask him if he’s got time for a chat.
“Not really,” he says as he starts meandering towards the exit.
I follow him down the staircase past towards the pokies area and ask him if he’s sick of the local campaign being treated as a sideshow because of Roy’s age.
“I don’t talk about my opponent’s age.,” he says. “What is an issue is what he believes in and what he wants to do, not how old he is.”
Sullivan is still walking off and I ask him what kind of feedback he’s getting from the voters.
“I think generally people around here are not unhappy,” he says. “But not overjoyed either.”
By now we’re outside on the footpath and I ask him about his use of an analogy in his address to the pensioners where he likened the GFC to an economic version of September 11 in that it was unforeseen and changed the priorities of the government.
“I think it’s a good analogy and I think that people need to think about what governments do in encountering that kind of challenge. Hopefully they got the point.”
He’s now looking around for his car and I ask how worried he is about the Rudd factor in Queensland.
“Don’t go there,” is all Sullivan says as he gets in the car and drives away.
I walk back into the RSL and go back up the stairs and there’s Wyatt Roy, still yapping away to about two dozen pensioners who have stayed back for a cup of weak tea and some milk arrowroots in a room decorated with medals, weapons, uniforms and other memorabilia from our past wars.
Lorna West and Esmee Fischley are both in their late 70s and are worried about the future of the country they feel like they might soon no longer know.
“As soon as one of those refugee boats turn up why don’t they put just them on a plane and send them straight back?” Mrs West asks.
“They’re paying all this money to get her. If you just put them straight on a plane and sent them back that would stop them coming over wouldn’t it. They keep them in motels here, they take them out for the day, I saw it on TV. It’s just ridiculous.”
Ms West and Ms Fischley have met Wyatt Roy for the first time today and despite some qualms about voting for someone who is almost 60 years their junior, they say that they will.
“His age was an issue to start with,” Mrs West says, “…but it’s not now after hearing him. He goes into things very well, he seems very bright. I must say he does look very young though.”
Don’t miss: Get The Punch in your inbox every day
Get The Punch on Facebook
Facebook Recommendations
Read all about it
Punch live
Up to the minute Twitter chatter
RT @toplitigator: @farrm51 Very difficult to believe the excitment of 'Water Efficiency Labelling and Standards Scheme' website doesn't have ppl all over it.
Recent posts
The latest and greatest
Reports of Ron Paul’s death are greatly exaggerated
Reports of Ron Paul’s political demise have been greatly exaggerated and his tactical genius is…
They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
A private school girl’s family is sueing her elite, extremely expensive private school for not…
Our Budget blade didn’t cut aid, it’s being paid in spades
Ten million children vaccinated. 2.5 million people with access to safe drinking water. And 30 million…
Nosebleed Section
choice ringside rantings
From: They must pay for one’s bitter disappointments
Michael S says:
"A teacher at Geelong Grammar had criticised her for using words that were too long, which had left her confused and had made her doubt her ability to write essays. She became ''quite distressed'' when her English marks began to fall." I can sympathise. My scholastic mentors conveyed to me a causal relationship… [read more]From: Welfare for breeders is a bonus for everyone
Change Up! says:
I have no problem paying my taxes. As a single, childless person on a very decent income, I can afford it and not have my life severely altered. Plus I understand that my taxes paying for things like schools, childcare and infrastructure is ultimately a good thing. A better community is better for me… [read more]Gentle jabs to the ribs
Real women like men who drink beer
British comedian John Cleese calls them “beer fairies”. It’s a euphemism for… Read more
Most commented