Kylea Tink, Trent Zimmerman, Catherine Renshaw: North Sydney candidates embrace TikTok during 2022 federal election campaign
With kissing babies off the cards, pollies have had to resort to other measures to endear themselves to the masses, with very mixed results.
North Shore
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North Sydney candidates have hit the hustings hard relying on everything from good old fashioned door knocking to viral social media clips to get their message to the people.
TikTok has emerged as an unlikely channel for campaigning in the blue ribbon electorate with candidates notching up tens of thousands of views on videos of them dancing, pitching policies and sledging their opponents.
Independent Kylea Tink has her own posse of cool kids known as KTnextgen churning out catchy clips such as one of her strutting through a clutch of cheering fans as Eminem’s Without Me plays and a caption proclaims she will take action on climate change.
Labor’s Catherine Renshaw has more than 65,000 views on a TikTok of her announcing her candidacy while another criticising the voting record of moderate Liberals featuring a flexible young supporter ducking and weaving to Flo Rida’s Low has been seen almost 10,000 times.
Sitting Liberal member Trent Zimmerman is in on the action too, merrily waving a corflute to Fleetwood Mac and staging a mock storm out when a STEM student from North Sydney Demonstration School asks if he is “100 years old” when he shows her a photo of a vinyl record.
Tink said one the reasons she chose to stand for election was to ensure all voices in North Sydney, including youth, were heard in Canberra.
“I’m very acutely aware for people of my generation this is a tipping point for deciding what sort of country and world we are going to be leaving for our kids,” Tink said.
“KTnextgen are an extraordinary group of young people who have mobilised.”
Despite her social media fame, Tink said she’d also enjoyed meeting people in real life including a recent visit to the Willoughby Men’s Shed and out and about every day at bus stops and pubs.
“Without fail action on climate is the number one issue people talk to me about. They remain incredibly frustrated and have serious concerns about Australia not having more ambitious targets,” Tink said.
Zimmerman admitted he was a bit apprehensive about TikTok at first.
“I’ve been a very hesitant TikTok convert but it’s a platform you can have fun on,” Zimmerman said.
“It’s an opportunity to reach out to particularly younger voters but also it’s showing the human side to politics.”
Zimmerman said he was being regularly quizzed about post pandemic Australia on the campaign trail.
“Residents and small businesses are asking about how the budget is going to help our economy recover as we emerge from the pandemic. There’s a lot of support for small business in there and people are quite excited about the cost of living relief package and reducing petrol prices.
“I’m running a very grassroots campaign out every day at shopping centres and train stations.
“That’s what I love about election campaigns – connecting with people.
“I’ve been receiving some great feedback … and also the frank feedback.”
Zimmerman said he hadn’t shied away from the “frank” conversations.
“Issues like climate change are very important and I’m taking their feedback on that but also highlighting the budget investment in renewal energy infrastructure and my work in delivering the net zero commitment which is vital to our trajectory,” Zimmerman said.
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