Prostate surgery and contesting the seat of Brisbane are two battles Andrew Bartlett is up for

Political donations, climate change, housing affordability, work security and better treatment of refugees will be key campaign messages for veteran politician Andrew Bartlett, as well an issue that’s much closer to home, writes Leisa Scott.

ANDREW Bartlett is struggling to find the right words, wary of sounding glib.

He’s in his campaign office in Fortitude Valley — headquarters for his tilt at winning the federal seat of Brisbane for the Greens — but he’s not talking policy.

He’s revealing his diagnosis of prostate cancer and how, despite his apprehension about surgery and side effects, it has come with the profound realisation that he wants to live.

That’s not always clear to someone living with chronic depression, as Bartlett has for decades. Thoughts of death often play on his mind.

“If you’re the sort that ponders dying reasonably regularly but it’s academic, and then someone says it’s not academic and you feel yourself choosing life — for want of a less naff phrase — then that’s a good sign.”

He allows himself a grin. The next few months will be tough but the experienced political campaigner is determined to continue his bid for a Lower House seat as he deals with his health.

Andrew Bartlett, long-time politician, is running for the federal seat of Brisbane as a Green. Picture: Mark Cranitch

The former Democrats leader, who joined the Greens in 2009, vowed to run again in Brisbane (he’s done so before, with the Democrats and the Greens) after returning as a Greens senator in 2017 when Larissa Waters stepped down because of her dual citizenship.

“Anyone who pays attention can see how badly politics is failing us, but it was something else to be up close again and see just how badly it was failing,” he says.

Bartlett opted not to hold on to the Senate spot but run for the Lower House, his disillusionment marshalled into resolve.

“There’s only so much you can do in the Senate,” he says. “It’s important but not transformative. A House of Reps seat turbocharges your ability to make people pay attention.”

The Greens have only one Lower House MP, Melbourne’s Adam Bandt. Waters resumed the Senate seat in August last year.

Bartlett, 54, rejects suggestions he won’t be fit enough for the campaign.

“Because you have a diagnosis doesn’t mean you have to withdraw from existence,” he says.

“People can, and do, make a full recovery, particularly if it’s discovered early, so in a sense it’s an opportunity to reinforce that message.”

Former Australian Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett delivers his valedictory speech while Senators (L-R) Natasha Stott Despoja, Andrew Murray and Lyn Allison listen in the Senate Chamber of Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Ray Strange

Bartlett’s cancer was confirmed just before Christmas, about the same time his mother, Lesley, 90, died.

It was not a complete shock: he has been tested for prostate cancer since he was 40, after his father, John, and grandfather, Harold, died with the disease.

The Gleason scale for prostate cancer ranges from six to 10 and Bartlett’s is seven.

“It’s low to intermediate and it seems it’s isolated in one spot,” he says.

He will undergo a radical prostatectomy (prostate is removed) “with consequences of incontinence and impotence for an indeterminate period of time”.

He is yet to schedule the operation but hopes for a date next month or March.

It is not expected he will need radiation or chemotherapy.

If the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, calls an election on March 2, not May as indicated, Bartlett says he might postpone the operation.

But he believes the Liberal Party will want to pass the Budget before going to the polls.

“They look a mess whatever they do but to go without even bringing down a Budget — which is a fig leaf but it is a perception in the community that they can do economic management — seems crazy.”

LNP candidate for Brisbane electorate Trevor Evans casts his vote at New Farm State School polling station in the 2016 election. Picture: Claudia Baxter

Returned Australian Greens Senator Larissa Waters. Photo: AAP/Dan Peled

He reckons this is his best chance yet to take Brisbane, held by LNP first-termer Trevor Evans.

“We need a 6 per cent swing, that’s collectively a 6 per cent swing in the non-Liberal vote and within that, we need a 3 per cent swing to catch Labor.”

In his 2010 run for the seat, he got 21.3 per cent of the primary vote, the highest Greens vote for any Lower House seat in Queensland.

The one-time Goth, passionate animal rights activist and 4ZZZ stalwart says his long involvement in the area, and recent stint in the Senate, gives him a strong profile.

Some voters will recall his fall from grace in 2003 when he drunkenly abused a Liberal senator.

He apologised, swore off alcohol and stood down as Democrats leader for a month.

Soon after the incident, his depression was made public.

He says there is less stigma about mental illness now but is appalled by how badly health services are funded.

Three years ago, he weaned himself off all medication and uses cognitive therapy. He has had alcohol since leaving politics but is going dry this year. “Election years focus the mind,” he says. “As does surgery.”

A 2002 photographs of Australian Democrats in the Senate including Senator Andrew Bartlett (far right).

Having doorknocked the electorate since April last year and witnessed the fallout since the toppling of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, Bartlett believes “a tidal wave” of voters is ready to devastate the Liberal Party.

He concedes that could work against the Greens in the seat.

“It makes the first part of the task of getting the Libs below 50 per cent easier but the second part of getting ahead of Labor harder because they’ll just get some of those default votes.

“We’re all trained pretty much from birth that if the Libs are in government and you want to get rid of them, you vote Labor and vice versa,” he says.

“What we’ve got to do is make people aware we’re a genuine chance and you’d get more meaningful change if we did win.”

Political donations, climate change, housing affordability, work security and better treatment of refugees will be key campaign messages.

It pains him that many of these issues were on the table when he first entered the Senate in 1997, and, he says, have got worse.

“It’s just reinforced to me that we’ve got to win a House of Reps seat,” he says. “I’ve got to give it a shot.”