Matthew Abraham: All over red rover, but Georgina Downer’s talent will find a home
GEORGINA Downer, it’s time to go home — to Melbourne, where she will feel both properly at home and her considerable talents valued, says Matthew Abraham.
GEORGINA Downer, it’s time to go home.
Not home to the new house you have optimistically but unwisely purchased in the seat of Mayo. But home to Melbourne, where you will feel both properly at home and that your considerable talents are valued.
The voters of Mayo have delivered an absolute kick in the pants to the so-called Downer Dynasty.
By 6.33pm on Saturday, just 30 minutes after the polling booths closed, and with just a few hundred votes counted, the writing was already on the wall.
By 7pm it was all over red rover.
It was clear the former-Xenophon-now-Centre-Alliance candidate Rebekha Sharkie had reclaimed the seat she was forced to quit after the High Court’s Section 44 citizenship ruling in May.
Sharkie led from the front on the primary vote, lifting it to 45 per cent – a hefty 10 per cent jump on her vote when grabbing the seat from Liberal Jamie Briggs in 2016.
She needed only a handful of Labor and Green preferences to triumph, defeating Downer with a massive 58 per cent to 42 per cent two-party-preferred split.
This reflects almost exactly the Reachtel polling conducted by the Sunday Mail that consistently showed her to be in an unbeatable position throughout this 78-day campaign.
The background narrative has been that Georgina Downer could operate a two-election strategy to regain Mayo for the Liberals, and her father.
If she lost this by-election, as the party expected, the thinking is that it should be treated as a trial run for the general federal election, possibly only months away.
With less focus on local issues and candidates in a federal election, the Liberals think votes will flow back home.
If Downer had got within cooee of Sharkie, maybe the two-election strategy would be worth a shot, but the size of her defeat makes it a dud of a plan.
One well-placed Liberal source from deep within the Mayo camp said he feared she might lose even more ground if she ran again. He said it was a big mistake for Downer to say yesterday that she would stand again as this was a decision for the party, not her.
“It doesn’t matter what attributes she’s got, the people of Mayo don’t want another Downer thrust on them. That’s the guts of it,” the source said.
“It’s been that way the whole way through the campaign.”