Life on the hustings in a highly marginal seat can be a surreal experience. One minute you’re part of a forum with the other candidates and 26 locals in an airless room at the local RSL – the next the Prime Minister or Opposition Leader has swooped into town, press pack in tow, to say your name out aloud three times and gaze in wonderment at some sort of machinery.
Then they’re off again, leaving just a whiff of jet fuel and funding for a new convention centre behind them, and it’s back to shaking every hand you can and hunting down people prepared to wear T-shirts with your slogan on them.
The journos on the Julia Gillard plane have touched down at the RAAF base in Townsville in Far North Queensland so many times this election campaign they’ve started referring to the electorate of Herbert as simply “Herb”.
To call Herbert marginal is an understatement. One could even keep a straight face while indulging in the political cliché that it’s “on a knife’s edge”.
Sitting Liberal National member Peter Lindsay is retiring, and a redistribution has placed the seat notionally Labor with a margin of 0.03 per cent.
The ALP has preselected former mayor Tony Mooney, while the LNP has chosen local auctioneer Ewen Jones.
The Greens and Family First are also running, but the Greens have never secured a huge vote in Herbert, and neither FF’s Michael Punshon or the Greens’ Mike Rubenach are likely to have much of an impact.
It’s a two horse race.
Jones is up against it in the name recognition stakes. Everyone in Townsville knows Mooney, which can be a huge advantage. On the other hand, you can’t be mayor for a decade without making a few enemies.
Polling in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald has the seat going to Labor and as Jones succinctly put it to The Punch earlier this week – “I’m shit scared”.
The conventional wisdom on this campaign is that Queenslanders are angry with Julia Gillard for knifing Kevin Rudd.
Certainly the ALP subscribed to that view, which is how we ended up with that excruciating photo opportunity between the PM and her predecessor the Saturday before last.
So while I didn’t go looking for an anti-Julia sentiment in Herbert, I was a bit surprised not to find it.
Yes, I spoke to plenty of people who thought the whole thing could have been handled better. And one or two who thought that Gillard’s lack of children was an issue.
But where was the vitriol those of us down south have been led to believe would decide this election for our northern cousins?
Maybe it was just the gorgeous weather, or maybe it’s that the people of Herbert have far greater things on their minds than the inner workings of the ALP, but the Rudd factor isn’t as big a deal in Herbert as we’ve been led to believe.
What the people of Herbert do care about is health, roads, the economy, and, depending on who you talk to, illegal immigration.
There’s also a strong sense that a seat of government more than 2000kms away in Canberra has little understanding of their needs.
Indeed more than one voter raised with me the issue of tropical diseases, which is not something that voters in any southern seats have ever felt the need to mention.
In fact Alex and Dave Edelman said if there was an outbreak of Dengue Fever they’d likely pack their gorgeous daughters Lucy and Rosalie up and leave town.
While I was there the Coalition announced funding for a Tropical Health and Medical Research Centre at James Cook University. Not your usual election promise of an upgrade to the sports stadium or local highway.
In trying to get a handle on just why Herbert was so marginal, the Edelmans were kind of illustrative.
Dave is an engineer and Alex works in policy at James Cook and they moved to Townsville for the work and the fabulous lifestyle. They’ve always voted Green then preferenced Labor second, and intend to do the same this time.
There are 3000 people employed by the Uni, and 7000 Federal public servants in Townsville.
The Indigenous population is 5000, and there are 1000 registered voters on nearby Palm Island.
You’d think the seat would be safe Labor, but there are also 5000 military personnel stationed in Herbert, and they have 5000 family members with them.
It’s a fascinating town that appears to be busting out of its own constraints.
The hospital is too small. The roads are lagging behind development. And everywhere you look something is being ripped up and rebuilt.
Nothing either Tony Abbott or Julia Gillard have said during their whistlestop visits have really fired local passions.
In fact many voters I spoke to were feeling pretty uninspired and were yet to make up their minds.
Gail Pattison, Townsville born and bred, gave me a very detailed briefing on what she thought of the two main party leaders.
She was the only person I found who was still angry with Gillard over the Rudd shenanigans, and Gail said her life-time Labor-voting father was wavering for the first time in his life.
Gail’s husband is a glazier who picked up a lot of work during the peak period of the stimulus package, but now that work has dried up and she’s worried we’re headed for another downturn as the rest of the world recovers. Not a big tick for Labor.
But her assessment of Tony Abbott, however, would give Ewen Jones little confidence.
“Abbott’s like Pa Kettle going along with what Ma Kettle wants,” Gail said. “They rabbled around and said ‘oh my god, we need a leader’ and he was what they came up with.”
“I just think it’s too much for him. He could be as intelligent as Einstein, I don’t care, but I don’t think he can carry people forward with him.”
Anyway, Gail’s still undecided.
So is Jane, who’s a doctor.
“I’m not really happy with either of them,” she said.
Rudd, for Jane, is not Gillard’s biggest problem.
“It all feels very staged. Maybe it’s the intonation of her voice but it all feels very scripted. That combined with Kevin Rudd’s situation makes her seem very disingenuous.”
“(Labor’s) also done a lot of spending with no consultation on how to spend it.”
Jane and her family moved back to Townsville from NSW two and a half years ago and says she had a similar feeling at the 2007 state election down south.
“I almost think ‘what’s the point?’ – it’s a very disheartening feeling.”
Amy Glapiak is prepared to give Gillard a chance.
Amy is expecting her second child in September and is not bothered by Gillard’s lack of children. “She’d know people who have kids,” she said.
On the economy she’s taking a bit of a punt.
“The thing is you just never know how they’ll handle it until they’re put on the spot.”
The Townsville Bulletin editorialised on Tuesday about life in a marginal seat.
“With it on a knife edge, close to $1 billion has been promised by both parties during the past four weeks for upgraded roadworks, a new convention centre, a cruise ship terminal, a tropical health and medical research centre, better broadband, the copper string mining project … it’s been a fistful of dollars.”
So how is a local candidate to cut through?
I tagged along for Ewen Jones’s daily sunrise walk along the stunning Strand, which is a mecca for all the fit people in Townsville.
Apart from the obvious health benefits, the Jones camp sees the morning constitutional as a good way to remind voters he’s there.
After scooting by a 7.30am Julia Gillard press conference, where she and Tony Mooney stared agape at a truck stringing cable for the National Broadband Network, I then attended Jones’s daily campaign meeting in the kitchen of his home.
The half a dozen key supporters there included retiring sitting MP Peter Lindsay and Senator Ian Macdonald. Lindsay’s job oscillated between cracking the whip and giving pep talks. Macdonald’s task it seemed was to good naturedly torment Peter Lindsay.
Regardless, Jones has some seasoned campaigners guiding him, and their strong message was shake every hand you can between now and 6pm on Saturday.
“I’ve never felt that I would lose, but now that it’s three days away I’m shit scared,” Jones said.
“I’m now waking up at night thinking ‘what else can I do?’”
Later that day Mooney told me his strategy involved a lot more phone work, the thinking being he could get to more people that way.
He was convinced to run last November by his good friend Kevin Rudd, who joined Mooney last week on a visit to Palm Island.
He’s confident the electorally poisonous Anna Bligh won’t do him too much damage.
“Just how much cross over (between state and federal issues) there is I’m not sure but as people get closer to the election day they’ll make a decision about who’s best to run the country,” Mooney said.
“The only time it’s been directly raised with me is when I’ve been over to the railway workshops to talk to the union delegates.”
Indeed, no one raised it with me either, and when asked said they thought state and federal issues were separate.
Regardless, those who’ve written off Herbert one way or another on a Rudd/Gillard theory or an Anna Bligh theory, shouldn’t underestimate the voters of Townsville.
The seat is genuinely still on that proverbial knife’s edge.
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