The knife edge Queensland seat crucial to the federal election
We’ve heard the politicians’ plans for climate change action but what do the voters in the fossil-fuel driven, Gladstone-based seat of Flynn think should be done?
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From his worksite high on the eastern slope of Auckland Hill, Lachlan Hardman has a bird’s eye view of what makes Gladstone tick.
To the left, the three stacks of the coal-fired Gladstone power station stand out against the blue sky, fuelling the alumina industry that launched the city’s growth as an industrial hub in the 1960s.
Ships and tankers forge through the natural deep-water harbour, some en route to the wharves servicing the relative newcomer to the city, the liquefied natural gas industry.
Smack in the middle, beyond the tributaries leading to the marina, is the RG Tanna coal terminal, the oldest of two terminals which shipped out more than 70 million tonnes of Queensland coal last financial year.
Soon, the observation platform that Hardman and his crew are digging into the slope will be finished, giving locals and visitors a spot to sit and contemplate a city surrounded by its past and confounded by its future.
Because there are big questions here, questions that will come to the fore in the federal election as those in this fossil-fuel driven electorate, Flynn, grapple with terms like transition, renewable energy and net zero emissions by 2050.
The people of Flynn are integral to the change needed to meet Australia’s targets. They want to know what those changes will mean for jobs, wages, property prices, but they’ve got other worries, too: health services, childcare, cost of living, the casualisation of the workforce.
Hardman, who, at 22, is the site’s project manager, is concerned about climate change because “the younger generation are the ones who are going to experience more in our lifetime than other generations did”.
He thinks Australia has “been pretty slow to our feet” and action is needed to reduce emissions by industry – but with caution.
“You can’t just pull the rug out from underneath people,” he says.
“There’s probably always going to be a need for coal; I don’t think you can completely turn it off. Small steps in the right direction is the best thing to do.”
For Hardman, construction jobs – consistent, reliable jobs – is the main promise he wants at the election.
He supports the plan by iron ore baron turned renewable energy advocate, Andrew Forrest, for a “green” hydrogen bonanza in the city, starting with a $115m manufacturing plant to make electrolysers and turbines. But that’s a job “for the big guys”.
Gladstone is a boom-and-bust town, Hardman says, and he’d respond well to a party that pushed for projects that levelled out the uncertainty.
He’s got no idea how he’ll vote. He’ll consider the options closer to polling day. He’s not alone.
Many Flynn voters have turned off politics – or politicians.
“They’re all the same”, is a regular refrain during a tour of parts of the electorate. Some don’t even know the Labor leader is Anthony Albanese.
No-one mentions the hot button issues out of Canberra – the need for a federal anti-corruption commission, the treatment of women, the integrity of the Prime Minister Scott Morrison. When asked, few have strong views. They get much more fired up about the state of the roads.
But some raise another question – why doesn’t Australia go nuclear?
Power is the undercurrent running through this electorate and as the tussle between Morrison and Albanese builds to its crescendo, Flynn will be a seat to watch.
Not just to see where power falls but because the future of this resource-heavy region affects us all.
HOME TO BILO
On the way out of Gladstone, Matt Burnett’sbig, meaty face grins from a corflute heralding him as Labor’s candidate for Flynn.
The 21-year veteran of local government has been Gladstone Regional Council’s mayor since 2016, winning the most recent poll with more than 73 per cent of the vote.
Albanese hand-picked the popular, pro-mining mayor to run for Flynn. Burnett, 46, is quick to add he’s pro-renewable energy and manufacturing, too, pointing to his record of transitioning the city’s economy.
“I’m supporting net zero by 2050 but I also support our local coal mining and coalfired power stations. I believe you can do both,” he says.
Prior to the 2019 federal election, the LNP’s Ken O’Dowd held Flynn by 1 per cent. Labor hoped to topple him but its mixed messages on climate change policy – and locals’ umbrage at outsiders convoying to central Queensland in a Greens-led anti-Adani mine protest – led to a 7.6 per cent swing to O’Dowd.
But O’Dowd is retiring and the National’s Colin Boyce, the current LNP State member for Callide, will leave that role for a tilt at Flynn. Drive around Biloela, about 120km south-west of Gladstone where Boyce’s electorate office is located, and the 59-year-old’s face is everywhere.
Flynn is a big electorate, roughly twice the size of Tasmania, and while Gladstone tends towards Labor, the agricultural and mining base of much of the rest of the seat attracts strong LNP backing.
Boyce does not support his own party’s commitment to net zero by 2050.
In October, he said he’d campaign against it. He’s less bolshie now, saying he has to “respect that decision” even though he doesn’t believe in it. “Zero net carbon by 2050,” Boyce says, “is very similar to the beauty pageant cries for world peace.”
He’ll get no argument from Les Fowler, 63.
“Climate change is a load of crap,” Fowler says, emerging from the local supermarket with three bags of homebrand muesli.
“They talk about zero emissions; you’ve got cows, they fart, people fart. We can never have zero pollution, never.”
He’s unaware net zero does not mean absolute zero emissions.
“All right, well, the way you read it, that’s how it comes across,” he says. “We’ve got a billion-dollar power house out here (the Callide Power Station, one of three in the electorate), if there’s no coal, what’s the go?”
Fowler is a conservative voter, but is “peeved off” with both major parties, particularly given the former banana farmer can’t get the pension until 67.
“I’ve been a hard worker all my life, I’m tired now,” he says. “I work in a nursing home; I clean toilets, empty garbage bins.”
His vote will likely go to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation because “she speaks her mind” but he’ll second preference Boyce. He might reverse that order if the LNP promises better roads and more bridges, because after “a bit of a shower” access is cut in various parts of the electorate.
Outside Rita’s Blue Cafe, Lutheran pastor, Graham Pfeffer, 57, and wife Judy, 56, have just had lunch and Dianne Forrester, 51, is picking up her order to take back to Little Market Co, where she sells her homemade soaps.
The Pfeffers and Forrester tend to vote differently; the Pfeffers for the LNP and Forrester for Labor. Forrester believes in manmade climate change, although thinks it’s a bit “overblown”, and the Pfeffers are even less convinced.
Both voice similar concerns about easing back on coal. Where are the jobs out here going to come from, and the power?
None are sure solar and wind power is the answer, with Forrester, whose partner works at the nearby Boundary Hill mine, worried that solar panels last about 15 years and “then they’re landfill”.
“And you still need coal to make wind turbines,” she says. “A lot of it contradicts itself.”
The mother of two is more interested in what the parties will promise for healthcare. Doctors can be booked out for weeks.
“You can’t have a preferred doctor because they’re either not there or fully booked,” she says.
The Pfeffers object to Covid-19 vaccine mandates, a concern to a number of Flynn voters, and support Hanson’s stand against them.
“I’d love for the federal government to listen to her views and take them on board,” says Graham. Adds Judy: “She has a lot of good words to say but there’s a lot of rot that comes out, too.”
One issue unites Fowler, Judy and Forrester: the Murugappan family. The national spotlight fell on Biloela after the Tamil asylum seekers – and their two Australian-born girls – were removed from their home in 2018 for immigration breaches.
They’ve been in some form of detention since. Bring them home, the trio says.
It’s a point of difference between Burnett and Boyce. Both support mining and the emerging hydrogen industry, both want inland rail to come to Gladstone and the port expanded to take container ships but Burnett wants the family back in Biloela – “those poor little girls” – and Boyce says “the law is the law”.
FAMILY TIME
It’s a stinking hot day and Jack Gibson is fooling about with his three-year-old daughter Lexi in the splash playground at Gladstone’s East Shores.
Like much of the city’s infrastructure, this recreational precinct on the edge of the harbour was largely funded by the resource industry, with the Wiggins Island coal export terminal contributing $35m.
Gibson, 30, loves it, and thinks there should be more family friendly places like it in town. He works in the mines at Moranbah, comes from a family of miners and reckons his son Lincoln, the two-year-old sitting with mum, Amy, 31, will follow.
He has little time for global warming talk.
“We dig coal out of the ground so I’m not too strong on the whole climate change thing,” he says.
“It’s just a cycle the world goes through.”
Wind and solar energy alternatives don’t look great to him. He had a stint at a solar farm and, like Forrester and others, raises the issue of the short lifespan of panels.
But the advent of the nuclear-powered submarine deal with the US and UK has made him think favourably about nuclear power, despite the cost, waste and construction time issues. “I think it’d be a step forward.”
He’s not impressed by Albanese and thinks Morrison is doing “not a bad job”, although thinks the government’s commitment to net zero by 2050 “is a bit of a long shot”.
He’d never vote Green and likes Pauline Hanson. “She’s more of the Donald Trump of Australia and that’s not a bad thing.”
Amy is more concerned about health services – as are many hanging out in the precinct. Like Meg Clarke, 34, who had to take her daughter to Rockhampton for a tonsillectomy, and Val Stanton-Cook, 74, who moved to Bundaberg while her dying husband received treatment and whose son has to travel to Rocky when his mental illness is acute.
Stanton-Cook doesn’t like to speak ill of people, shuffling uncomfortably when asked about Morrison. Then she says: “I don’t believe one word that comes out of his mouth”.
The “sports rorts” scandal in which the bulk of funds went to marginal or LNP seats last election is still clear in her mind.
“I mean people are stupid if they don’t see it (was pork barrelling),” she says. “It was quite clear to me.”
She has no doubt humans are contributing to climate change and action is needed now. It’s difficult, she says, because she has children and relatives in the resource industries, so “it’s got to be a transition, all these people have to get jobs”.
The Murugappan family case outrages her, as it does Paul Charalambous, 40, who is enjoying a coffee before a meeting.
“The rules and processes are stupid rules and processes,” he says. “Change them.”
Charalambous works in the superannuation industry and is keeping a close eye on the changes following the banking royal commission.
“It’s taken a while but they’re getting there.”
He’s worried about inflation post-Covid, too. He knows the LNP touts itself as a better economic manager but ponders whether that’s just good marketing.
For now, he likes Burnett.
“He’s always seemed to have the best interest of the locals at heart; the party he represents is neither here nor there for me.”
Deborah Redman, 35, has her hands full with six kids, including 10-month-old twins Luca and Lola and the squealing, cavorting three-year-old, Peyton. The big issue occupying Redman’s mind is childcare.
Before falling pregnant with the twins, she looked into sending Peyton to childcare so she could return to teaching.
“Nearly half my wage would have gone to daycare”.
Now with another two – “No special discounts for twins” – a return to work she loves will be some time off. “It sucks that it’s got to come down to money.”
Any policy that improved that equation will concentrate her mind at the election.
Her husband works at Queensland Alumina and Redman knows “there’s a lot of talk about all the industry here and the effect it has on the environment”. She believes in manmade climate change and supports a transition to renewables.
“Especially where we live on the Great Barrier Reef if it’s going to help all that, I’m all for that,” she says.
“We live in a very beautiful area and it would be a shame for all that to be gone when these kids are adults and their kids are around.”
DRIVEN BY MINING
A lone dump truck makes its way along the base of Moura’s Dawson Mine, its bulk dwarfed by hill after corrugated hill of grey and ochre overburden.
This 60-year-old operation became an open cut mine in 1994, after the third fatal underground mining disaster brought the death toll to 36. Men are buried here.
The people of central Queensland have sacrificed much for coal but it remains the lifeblood. Coal mines are dotted about Flynn, in places such as Emerald and Blackwater, along with a growing number of gasfields.
At the supermarket in Moura, 66km west of Biloela, workers in high-vis duck in for water and snacks before heading to shifts. Steve Sharpe, 41, contracts to coal seam gas multinationals and is concerned about the casualisation of the workforce.
“I think companies are taking the piss out of people,” he says.
“Go to any big company and they’ll tell you the number one asset is the people but then there’s all the casuals and thousands of redundancies in the last few years,” he says.
Transitioning to renewable energy is “a good plan” but Sharpe isn’t sure if net zero by 2050 is achievable.
“If it’s going to make things healthier, let’s do it, but at the same time, I think we’re pushing these targets a little hard.”
Neels Botha reckons global warming is overhyped and the push for renewable energy “is going to kill rural Australia”.
He knows Burnett is pro-mining but “the bloke at the top (Albanese) is very anti. (Burnett) will still have to do what the bloke at the top says. If that mine next door closed down, this place would be a ghost town.”
The mine won’t last forever: its lifespan is estimated at 15 years.
City people just don’t get how much of a powerhouse the regions are, says Botha.
“They bitch and moan about all sorts of things but they’ve got no idea about the real world. Where their lights come from, where their food comes from. No bloody idea.”
Botha owns an electrical company based in the coastal town of Agnes Water, also part of Flynn, and does work at the Dawson mine and for Westside, which produces gas in the Meridian gasfields near Moura.
He objects to vaccine mandates and Botha wishes Morrison “had the balls to be firmer with the states”.
His biggest beef is the condition of the roads, including the Bruce Highway from Bundaberg to Gladstone.
“I’ve got four lekkys working for me and we travel a lot; the roads are absolutely dire,” Botha says.
“We spend a lot of money on vehicles because the roads are so terrible.” Could a commitment to improve roads change his vote? “Bloody oath it would.”
But most people outside the supermarket offer versions of Laura Linaste’s response when asked about the election.
“I live in my own bubble to stay happy,” says the 32-year-old labourer and “all-rounder” with GrainCorp.
“Politics drags you down and wears you out so I try not to get involved.”
HOW ABOUT NUCLEAR?
Jimmy Barnes’s rendition of Chain of Fools isfilling the public bar of Gladstone’s Harvey Road Tavern, the races are on and Denis Butler, 53, is enjoying a beer with his mates at knock-off time. Life’s good.
“I came here with nothing 16 years ago and now we own a fabrication company,” he says. “We’re in God’s country here.”
Why’s that? “Mining. Mining’s where the money’s at.”
Yet Butler reckons Australia should have committed to phasing out coal by 2030 at last year’s Glasgow climate conference.
“Can’t dig coal forever,” he says. “We’ve been talking nuclear here.”
He acknowledges the drawbacks, including the average 10-year time frame it takes to build a nuclear power plant. Still, says Butler: “You’ve got to start some time.”
It’s a talking point in Flynn.
At cricket practice, Chris Cain, 34, a steel manufacturing sales rep and Liberal voter, says nuclear should be considered; Bill Fawzi, 73, the lessee of the Auckland Hill Outlook Cafe says it’s “the solution” and construction boss Bob McCosker, 64, reckons nuclear “solves all your CO2 issues”.
Then adds: “Assuming that is an issue.”
He’s not convinced about manmade climate change.
Rebekkah Keen is. The two come from different sides of the political divide – him conservative, her progressive – but both are worried about the state of political debate and engagement, even if they come at it through different lenses.
Keen, 51, from the coastal town of Tannum Sands, is back in the region of her childhood after more than 20 years overseas, most recently in the US through the Trump presidency. She fears Australia is on a similar, polarising path and blames much of it on politicians who stoke the flames, and social media.
Voters are so swamped by misinformation, she says, they become apathetic or adopt hard-line positions. Keen describes herself as left-leaning “but gently, gently”, supporting zero emissions by 2050, but not before.
“Australia is so driven by mining and I don’t think the people who want radical change understand that. They don’t get the economy. If you take off that chunk, Australia is just going to … ” She makes a thumbs down gesture.
She thinks acceptance of a determined but transitional course towards renewables could be less fractious if political leaders soberly explained the cost/benefit equation.
“Things like: do you realise mining brings this much money into this country and this is how much our school’s cost in Australia?” she suggests.
“And instead of saying, ‘We will create jobs in the alternative energy markets’, tell us exactly what jobs. A lot of lower skilled people think they’ll be adrift and there’ll be all these engineers strutting around, waving things at the sun.”
McCosker disagrees that “the science is in” about man’s role in climate change but does not oppose reducing carbon output.
“Why would you? But in saying that, the transition has to be a positive one, not based on emotion.”
Australia needs leadership, he says. McCosker thinks Morrison is “the best bet we’ve got” but is beholden to polls, social media and marketing. Albanese seems “a reasonable, caring Australian”, but “he’s in the same boat.”
“They’re catering to these whims of Facebook, this fervour of bad information that is disseminated through the entire community and it’s controlling major decision-making without any proper debate,” he says.
“Young people are in a state of hopelessness; they think they’ll be dead in 10 years.”
He’s a harsh critic of climate change activist Greta Thunberg, doesn’t believe solar is a cost-effective option and is not a fan of wind power.
“Can you imagine our harbour with bloody windmills all through it?” he says, looking out from Auckland Hill to the harbour, where heavy cargo ships and LNG tankers ply through the water and coal-loading conveyor belts churn.
“It’d be an eyesore.”
But one man’s eyesore is another man’s progress. There’s a memorial up here, erected in honour of William Golding, Gladstone’s mayor in the ’60s and ’70s.
Golding was someone, the inscription says, who, “by his vision, leadership and determination saw the transformation of Gladstone from village to international port city”.
The seat of Flynn and the city on which it is based is at the crossroads of a new transformation.
The voters here have a big role in determining which road this fossil fuel-heavy region – and country – takes, and how far it travels down it. Whose name will be etched into future memorials, and what will their legacy be?
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