Federal election 2022: Melbourne, Sydney migration to affect Leichhardt candidates
A big-city blowout could have dramatic implications for Far North election results as southern state escapees bring their politics along for the ride. LEICHHARDT’S BIGGEST BATTLE
Cairns
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A BIG-CITY blowout could have dramatic implications for Far North election results as southern state escapees bring their politics along for the ride.
Population data show 31,000 interstate migrants made their way to Queensland last financial year, with Melbourne and Sydney recording the biggest losses.
The Cairns Regional Council area has had 7 per cent population growth from 2015-2021, with the biggest jump (2000 residents) between 2019 and 2020, driven partly by interstate migration.
The effect on the Far North economy is still being felt as more cashed-up Covid refugees flood in.
Median house prices in some Cairns suburbs jumped as much as 34.2 per cent in the two years to March 2022, and every suburb recorded a house price hike in the most recent quarter.
What has not been measured is the likely impact of those new arrivals on the upcoming vote.
Melbourne and Sydney collectively delivered wins for Labor in 34 seats at the 2019 election, with the LNP picking up 21, and independent and Greens candidates securing one apiece.
It bodes well for Labor candidate for Leichhardt Elida Faith in what is highly likely to be a two-horse race.
Some residents accused Leichhardt MP Warren Entsch of arrogance after he declared it would be “either me or Labor, there won’t be a third person”.
History shows he had reason to be confident in the assertion. Leichhardt has never been held by a minor party since the boundaries were drawn up in 1949.
The majors secured an unassailable 66.38 per cent of first-preference votes in 2019, leaving six minor party and independent candidates to share the scraps.
This time there will be at least seven minor-party and independent candidates to dilute the numbers.
Unprecedented times could lead to unprecedented voting patterns, but it is more likely that preferences will play a major role.
Past results suggest this race will be a battle of two titans, with equal measures of personality and policy weighing on voters’ minds.
Mr Entsch is a brand unto himself, having won all seven elections he has contested on the back of a carefully cultivated image as a no-bulldust Far Northerner who is not afraid of a scrap.
He is relying on experience and massive name recognition to get him across the line this time around.
Just this week, he said that political longevity allowed him to secure $107.5m for the Cairns water security project despite urban water being a state concern.
The running theme had been that the federal government stepped in to save agricultural water – which is within its remit – from being siphoned out of Tinaroo Dam. There was more to the story.
“I remembered six or seven years ago, I managed to get some federal money for Douglas Shire’s big new reservoir,” Mr Entsch said.
“We only got it because I remembered and could say we had a precedent.”
He is the old warhorse, but voters have long memories.
They remember the times he channelled John Farnham and declared his farewell tour, only to return for another tilt.
Ms Faith represents the new guard – a younger, passionate, female unionist who is as un-Entsch as saying “flip-flops” is un-Australian.
She began the last election campaign with a name recognition rate of just 4 per cent compared to 46 per cent for the LNP incumbent, according to Labor’s internal post-mortem emails.
That is no longer the case.
Ms Faith has been campaigning across some of the most remote areas of Cape York and the Torres Strait to get her name out there.
Her position in the Labor left faction places her firmly within party leader Anthony Albanese’s stable, and the upswing in southern-state migrants could feather her nest.
She also has a nationwide swing of 4.53 per cent to Labor working in her favour, according to the latest Newspoll taken on April 10.
If that holds true and translates to Far North voting habits, Ms Faith will be the next member for Leichhardt.
Mr Entsch is off to a better start.
He has scored the biggest funding pledge to date, while Ms Faith has copped flak for failing to show up at an election debate in the Labor heartland of Machans Beach.
She has secured some big ticket items, including $500,000 for a Cairns North community battery, $50m for a new CQUniversity campus and $40m to upgrade marine access infrastructure across the Torres Strait.
For his part, Mr Entsch has just rolled out $19m in Far North project funding, including $8m for major marine precinct upgrades.
He can also rest on a suite of recent major announcements including $16.5m to build an electricity microgrid in the Daintree and the creation of a $10bn reinsurance pool, both of which have resulted from his own long-running personal crusades.
That goes with the territory, and Ms Faith would have had her own track record to spruik if she won last time around.
If it does go her way, the Far North will be a red-wash with four state Labor MPs and her in the federal seat – although Kennedy’s likely return to Bob Katter would add a splash of colour.
Co-operation between the state and federal tiers could go either way.
Stopping the cross-purposes political jabs may streamline economic development.
Removing an extra layer of political scrutiny might make the region easier to overlook.
Far North voters have 35 days to decide.
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Originally published as Federal election 2022: Melbourne, Sydney migration to affect Leichhardt candidates
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