Election’s biggest showdowns revealed
There are swing seats and key battlegrounds, but Campaign Confidential reveals the contests that are shaping up as the biggest all-in brawls of the election.
Federal Election
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Campaign Confidential finishes its first week with a look at the seats with the most candidates – and those with the fewest.
Big battlegrounds
POLITICAL hopefuls still have a few days to declare their candidacies for the election, but some electorates are already shaping up to be the democratic equivalent of a mass brawl. By far the biggest is the seat of Robertson on the NSW central coast, where 11 candidates are standing. It’s held by Lucy Wicks on a margin of 4.2 per cent, and Labor would definitely like it back … but that could ultimately depend on preference flows from a bevy of minor players, including the Animal Justice Party, the Indigenous-Aboriginal Party of Australia, and a new mob called the Informed Medical Options Party (you can guess what they’re about). Pearce in WA is likely to be another melee, with nine candidates declared so far, while there are eight hopefuls vying for votes in the seats of Fremantle, Brand, Indi, Hawke, Cooper, Leichhardt, Forde, Blair, Warringah, Reid, Page, Hunter and of course Eden-Monaro, because everyone wants a slice of the ol’ bellwether.
No contest
AT the other end of the spectrum is the seat of Blaxland, where only the United Australia Party has so far put forward a candidate to take on Labor’s Jason Clare. Blaxland could be a contender for the title of most boringly stable seat in the country: it’s been held by Labor since its creation in 1949, and has had just four MPs in that time, including one PJ Keating. Another seat attracting few candidates is a bit more surprising. Gilmore on the NSW south coast has been hyped as a key battleground, but so far it’s just a four-horse race, with Andrew Constance of the Liberals trying to wrest the seat off Labor’Fiona Phillipss, while the Greens and the UAP round out the field.
All candidates survive first week
LIKE Anthony Albanese, Campaign Confidential is not afraid of owning its mistakes. On Monday we cockily predicted it would be a “matter of hours” before an endorsed candidate was dumped by their party, in the time-honoured tradition of Australian elections. But here we are, at the end of week one, and nobody‘s gone … yet. (Even WA Liberal Senator Ben Small will continue as a candidate, despite resigning from the Senate on Friday after finding out he held dual citizenship with New Zealand.) On Monday we asked readers which party they thought would be the first to dump a candidate, and 35 per cent said Labor. But our money’s on the Liberals, after their candidate for Warringah Katherine Deves was exposed for a litany of past anti-LGBTI social media posts. She was also forced to apologise for likening anti-trans activism to resisting the Nazis, a comparison that earnt her a rebuke from the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies.
Albo gets some new ties
CAMPAIGN Confidential will own its mistakes, but we also reserve the right to crow about our successes, no matter how ridiculous and trivial they might be. We’re pleased to report that after this column pointed out that Albo had opted for grey ties for the first three days of the campaign (was it maybe even the same tie?), the Labor leader changed it up with a yellow tie on Thursday and a brown one on Good Friday. Nice to see we’re being taken seriously. We will be curious, however, whether we’ll get to see Albo in a socialist red tie on the campaign trail. Updates to follow, natch.
A lesson in mateship
OVER on Twitter, there’s been an illuminating discussion about Adam Bandt’s deployment of the word “mate” at the National Press Club on Wednesday. In response to a tricksy question about the wage price index, the Greens leader said “Google it, mate” – a blunt reply that probably qualifies as the funniest moment of the campaign so far. Twitter user iGordy2.0 posted: “My favourite bit about ‘Google it mate’ is every Australian knows what he meant by ‘mate’,” setting off a discussion about the way Aussies imbue the word with many different meanings, depending on intonation. It’s great, mate.
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