Jeremy Rockliff rode into the campaign launch on a tractor before addressing the party faithful wearing a pair of worn Blundstone work boots and blue collar shirt, half untucked.
All that was missing was a piece of hay hanging from his lips and a perhaps a banjo strung over his shoulder.
Rockliff is a fifth-generation farmer who grew up on the farm in Sassafras, in Tasmania’s rural northwest, which featured in Sunday’s party launch.
Even so, the scene on Sunday appeared curated by spin doctors. The message was clear: I am one of you, a farmer, a worker, not an elite, latte-sipping, blueblood pollie from Hobart.
It’s a message he needs to get across, as the Liberals try to talk thousands of Tasmanians out of their plans to vote for Labor, Jacqui Lambie or independent.
The Liberal campaign for the March 23 state election has so far been well targeted and aimed at addressing the government’s perceived shortcomings. It has also attracted claims of dishonesty.
Last week, Rockliff announced plans to log contentious forests for the timber industry, despite a distinct lack of enthusiasm from key industry players. Unless industry develops a greater willingness to provoke a wider war with greenies, the forests in questions may never be logged.
The policy was really about trying to wedge Labor, forcing it to publicly side with the Greens … and to that extent at least, it worked.
Other policy solutions have seemed a tad too cute for many.
Taxpayer spending on the AFL stadium has been “capped”, for example, with a vague suggestion the private sector will fill the void of inevitable and likely significant cost overruns.
Similarly, the unpopular UTAS Hobart city move will be subject to a vote of parliament, not quite the same – as the press release suggested – as keeping the campus in Sandy Bay.
Sunday’s campaign launch sought to address the Liberals’ biggest problem: a health system in crisis, with GPs in short supply and hospital EDs ramped as never before.
The centrepiece “banning” of hospital ramping requires another a huge leap of faith.
Rockliff argues that new ED doctors and nurses, and measures to increase GP numbers, will make the “ban” possible, but there will be no way of enforcing it.
Patients cannot be abandoned in ER without care or clinical assessment or space for them, just to comply with an election slogan.
It seems little more than a reiteration of an existing target; just with a new level of hyperbole.
The two big questions remaining for the Liberals are whether voters, after 10 years of Liberal government, are still listening.
And if they are, whether too-clever-by-half promises and perceived sleights of hand will turn off as many as they attract.
However, at least we’re talking about the Liberals.
Labor’s campaign has so far failed to take flight, as evidenced by polling suggesting the party is losing ground to Lambie.
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