By Amy Remeikis
ANALYSIS
From the moment the political fate of Scott Driscoll was sealed, the political equivalent of the Eye of Sauron has been firmly fixed on Redcliffe. The energy of the major political parties, their associated lobby groups and affiliated organisations has been expended on telling the 30,000 or so Bayside voters what they are casting their ballot on.
Ballot boxes and voting boothsCredit: REUTERS/DAVID GRAY
Health. Education. Scott Driscoll. Asset sales. The past two years of LNP governing. GP Superclinics. Transport. Unions. What has and has not been done/said/meant/implied/carried out.
But strip away the politics, the ideologies, the ulterior motives and the he-said-they-said, you are left with one thing. A community that has been left unheard and unrepresented, too long.
ALP candidate for the Redcliffe State by-election Yvette D'AthCredit: Michelle Smith
Come polling day, the good burghers of Redcliffe will be voting for Redcliffe.
Almost 30 kilometres from George Street, the political-slanging matches count for little. Recent history has shown that this is an electorate not blinded by political allegiances. The Labor Party’s Ray Hollis resigned, citing ill-health, in the middle of a burgeoning political storm, in 2005. Terry Rogers won it for the Liberals in the resulting by-election. Lillian van Litsenburg won it back for Labor in the 2006 general election. Scott Driscoll rode the anti-Labor wave to a 15.6 per cent swing in 2012. Now it looks set to return to Labor’s hands, with Yvette D’Ath poised to become her party’s eighth state MP.
The latest Galaxy Poll, published in The Courier-Mail last week, puts the swing at close to 18 per cent in Labor’s direction. That’s not to say the rest of the candidate field, nine in all, have phoned it in.
Kerri-Anne Dooley, a former Family First candidate turned LNP cheerleader, has campaigned well. She has won the respect of Premier Campbell Newman who labelled her the “real deal” and the “finest candidate” he has worked with. She has hit the streets, smiled, done her best to combat the “Scott Driscoll factor”, spruiked health, transport and anything else the party has deemed positive to highlight, doorknocked, stood next to the Mr Newman (but not on her how-to-vote card) and ticked all the boxes in the grassroots campaigning how-to book.
LNP candidate Kerri-Anne DooleyCredit: Michelle Smith
Len Thomas, the independent-who-could, has marched to the beat of his own campaign drum. He has resonated with the community – he fiercely defends his independence, has hounded the major parties on their records, has consistently brought issues back to local concerns and is expected to split the vote.
The rest of the field – Sally Vincent for Family First, independents Andrew Tyrell, Gabriel Buckley, Liz Woollard and Talosaga McMahon and John Marshall for the Greens – have also run strong local campaigns.
Candidates for the Redcliffe State by-election speak to voters at a forumCredit: Michelle Smith
But Queensland’s Parliament only has two independent members out of 89 seats. While support and humour for both major parties seems in short supply in Redcliffe, the majority of voters seem set to put the number one in a box bearing one of their candidate’s names.
When Ms D’Ath wins (and barring a major, major upset, she will) it won’t be because Labor’s fortunes in Queensland have begun to swing around.
Oppositions don’t win elections. Governments lose them.
Ms Dooley said her campaign had been “thwarted” by the “lies and deceit” of the union movement’s campaign against the government. But that doesn’t take into consideration the anger of a community essentially left unrepresented and floundering for a year.
Politicians have played politics in Redcliffe. They have come bearing gifts, finger pointed and slung their mud.
But the community haven’t seemed to care about that. For them, this is not about the bigger, state-wide picture. It’s about their own backyard and what’s best for it.
And ultimately, that’s where the focus should be.