Federal Election 2019: Dobell voters go to the polls
Incumbent Federal Labor MP Emma McBride might be the bookmaker’s unbackable favourite at $1.06 to retain the seat of Dobell but the Coalition’s candidate Jilly Pilon is not giving up without a fight.
Incumbent Federal Labor MP Emma McBride might be the bookmaker’s unbackable favourite at $1.06 to retain the seat of Dobell but the Coalition’s candidate Jilly Pilon is not giving up without a fight.
A dismissive Ms McBride brushed attempts by the Express Advocate for a word on how she was feeling as she handed out how-to-vote flyers at Brooke Avenue Public School.
Happily chatting to a Liberal volunteer next to her handing out flyers, Ms McBride declined to comment to the newspaper.
“My media person is over there,” she said pointing to her adviser Jackie Pearson.
When asked a second time if she was willing to be interviewed Ms McBride flatly refused.
It was a diametrically opposed response from independent candidate Gregory Stephenson and the Coalition’s candidate Jilly Pilon who were only too happy to chat as this morning’s first voters began to filter through the school gates.
“It’s been a long campaign, I’ve been up every day at 4.30am,” Mr Stephenson told the Express Advocate.
“I’ve been up at the railway talking to commuters at 5am. My hand is starting to get very sore and my voice is starting to get a little wavering.”
A 37-year veteran firefighter, Mr Stephenson said he was running as an independent for his three-year-old granddaughter “so she can have a lifestyle as good as we had”.
Dressed in his distinctive black and white shirt, cowboy hat and herringbone jacket, Mr Stephenson campaigned alongside his distinctive Australian-built Ford Capri.
“And I’m not handing out land fill,” he said.
The Coalition’s hopeful, Ms Pilon, conceded it would be a “major upset” if she toppled Ms McBride but she remained “quietly confident”.
“You just never know,” she said manning a polling booth at Tuggerah Lakes Secondary College.
“It’s been pretty positive. When we got here there was a line up, it’s been relatively steady since. There’s been so many pre-polling. I think we had about 1300 yesterday.
“If I get up, really it’s a major upset compared to what the swing is.”
Ms Pilon in the three weeks of pre-polling she has not heard one “bad word” about Prime Minister Scott Morrison but she had heard plenty of remarks about Bill Shorten.
“We will just see how it goes at the end of the day,” she said.
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