Lainie Anderson: Home turf key factor in Mayo’s two-horse race
IN MAYO, we get snarky when told to suck eggs. And egg sucking has been going on ever since Senator Michaelia Cash Googled “Where the hell is Mt Barker?” and turned up to launch Georgina Downer’s campaign with an “I am woman” roar, writes Lainie Anderson.
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I SAW a lovely photo of Mayo by-election candidate Georgina Downer on Facebook last week. She was standing by a busy road with a big smile, waving to passing motorists in her quest to win back the Adelaide Hills electorate for the Liberals.
The post said something along the lines of “Georgina Downer thumbs her way back to Melbourne after losing the Mayo by-election”. Ouch. We voters can be a prickly lot.
In my electorate of Mayo, we get especially snarky when we’re told to suck eggs. And egg sucking has been going on for weeks now, ever since Senator Michaelia Cash got out her iPhone and Googled “Where the hell is Mt Barker?” and turned up to launch Ms Downer’s campaign with an “I am woman” roar.
I’m struggling to think of one thing the Liberal Party has done well in this clumsy campaign to oust the Nick Xenophon Team-turned-Centre Alliance’s Rebekha Sharkie, whose former dual UK citizenship prompted the by-election.
We’ve had Ms Downer nodding behind Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as he suddenly shows great interest in all things Mayo (she was also put on noddy duty, looking about as relaxed as a hostage, at the Future Frigates announcement).
We’ve had Liberal Minister Craig Laundy parachuting in from NSW to accuse Ms Sharkie of some Leftie conspiracy for being photographed with the Bananas in Pyjamas, and whining on radio that Mayo is a conservative electorate.
How would he know?
We’ve had a fancy campaign lunch with Ms Downer versus a music trivia night with Ms Sharkie, and a beaming Foreign Minister Julie Bishop pouring beers in a country pub like she and Ms Downer are two old besties back in the ’hood on a girls’ night out.
Sinister corflutes tell us a vote for Ms Sharkie is a vote for Bill Shorten, when her record shows she’s sometimes voted for the Liberals on big issues (e.g. needs-based funding for schools, reinstating the Australian Building and Construction Commission) and sometimes against them (supporting a royal commission into banks and rejecting cuts to penalty rates).
We’re also being told Ms Downer does not support funding cuts to the ABC or the abolition of penalty rates, and that she only made those comments in her role as a research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs (and you shouldn’t believe everything a person says on the public record).
I’ll admit I’m conflicted. I really like Alexander and Nicky Downer.
I met Georgina Downer during this campaign – at a freezing country footy match in Bridgewater where she told me she’d spent a lot of the day at footy matches and I remember thinking, “God, who’d put up their hand for this gig?” In the 10 or so minutes that we chatted, I found Ms Downer to be interesting, smart and funny, if a little defensive about criticism that she isn’t local. I sympathise to a point.
I grew up on Yorke Peninsula, and despite moving away to study and work 30-odd years ago, I still visit often and refer to Port Vincent as “home”. You can take the girl out of the electorate, but you can’t take the electorate out of the girl.
But then I think about this “local” issue from the perspective of other people.
I could not return to Yorke Peninsula (after failing in a bid to win federal pre-selection interstate, as Ms Downer has done) and expect voters to accept me as a true local.
Not when the incumbent MP is a woman who’s spent almost all her life there – and in the past two years has shown herself to be a hard-working “local member” first, and a career politician second.
So, what will happen next Saturday?
Well, neither major party is wowing the masses right now. In Ms Sharkie, the voters of Mayo have an opportunity to thumb their noses at the Government, without backing that Shorten bloke, either.
As the polls suggest, a Liberal win will be a tough ask.
And another thing ...
You might remember back in 2016 I wrote about our Labrador, Po, and how being a dog owner is one of the great joys of life.
We’ve felt the flipside of that joy this week, after losing Po suddenly on a trip to Yorke Peninsula. He was running around on the beach and in a couple of hours he was gone, poisoned from eating a piece of puffer fish.
Despite growing up by the sea, I had no idea how lethal those dead fish on the sand could be. It’s been a sad week made a little bit easier by thoughts of the Rainbow Bridge, which so many of you told me about after we lost Lala. Thank you for that.