Route to power passes along Gilmore’s rutted roads

It’s an issue that will have passed most Australians by, but whether Labor gets to govern with a majority may well come down to … potholes. The Liberal candidate for Gilmore, Andrew Constance, admitted as much on election night when he was interviewed on the ABC.

“I made my Labor opponents match everything that I’ve done,” he said of his campaign on the South Coast. “Wouldn’t matter if it’s filling in p – you know, rebuilding roads,” he said, correcting himself, “... through to the Nowra bypass.”

Andrew Constance is in a photo-finish to with the South Coast seat.Credit: James Brickwood

Gilmore has proven to be the tightest electoral contest in the country. The count is on a knife edge. Constance, formerly the state MP for Bega, has bucked the national trend to report a 2.7 per cent swing to the Liberals and had the lead over sitting Labor MP Fiona Phillips on Sunday – but only by 214 votes. Some polling booths have recorded a dead heat on preferences.

Should Labor retain the seat, Anthony Albanese will have his majority in Canberra. If Constance wins, the balance of power in Parliament may well rest with the Greens and independents. It’s a fascinating, slightly Monty Python-esque twist to this election.

I know the potholes in question, a byproduct of the recent rain. Phillips calls them “craters” and they threaten to ruin the day of any unsuspecting driver who comes upon them. They’re so deep and so violent that fed-up locals have started sending their car repair bills to Shoalhaven City Council. On just one rainy morning in April, an especially nasty hole knocked the tyres off half a dozen cars.

Memes abound on the local Facebook page. “In New Zealand, they drive on the left; in Australia, we drive on what’s left,” declares one. “They can close our beaches … but they cannot close our potholes,” notes another, above a picture of a woman bathing amid the bitumen.

Knowing it was the issue everyone was talking about, Constance got Scott Morrison down to Gilmore on the first day of the campaign to stand beside him and promise $40 million to fix the potholes – I mean, “rebuild the roads” – and upgrade an intersection. It was a promise quickly matched by Phillips.

The Gilmore vote is perhaps a reminder that for all the big national issues at play during the election – the economy, national security, gender equality – local issues count, especially in regional areas. On the South Coast, voters were worried about roads, yes, but also about access to healthcare and the scarcity of affordable housing, and both parties recognised that.

Australian National University political scientist Ian McAllister says vote-buying strategies targeting marginal seats rarely work because voters are more altruistic than politicians give them credit for, although the promises for Gilmore are at least directed at real problems. They’re not commuter car parks in suburbs with no traffic.

Whichever way the seat goes, Gilmore voters are big winners from this election. Phillips’ office says her promises will be delivered by the federal Labor government, regardless of whether she is re-elected. It just might not be her cutting the ribbon (or driving the steamroller).

Meanwhile, far away in Canberra, all the prime minister can do is keep hitting refresh on the tally room website, waiting for the result in Gilmore to reveal itself, as he braces for a few possible potholes of his own from the crossbench, should Phillips lose the seat.

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