Major parties vulnerable as locals show independence
The home of the Downer dynasty is becoming a no-go zone for Liberals. Voters are not interested in the establishment — they simply want representatives who get results
The spiritual home of the Downer dynasty is becoming a no-go zone for the Liberal Party as infrastructure fails to keep pace with urban sprawl and voters turn to independents to put the screws on governments for more cash.
The story of the population surge in the Adelaide Hills can be best told on the 7km stretch of Wellington Road between Mount Barker and Wistow, which just 20 years ago was home to nothing more than a strawberry farm, a Catholic Church rosary garden and a handful of sprawling rural properties and horse agistments.
Today, the paddocks have been turned into streets, small suburban homes line the main road, and tracts of recently cleared land await the construction of more.
The Mount Barker region has grown by 11,000 people in 10 years — just 10 per cent of its projected growth over the next 30 years after 1300ha of farmland was cleared by the Rann government in what former planning minister John Rau later described as a major mistake.
Over four of the past eight decades, the seats of Mayo and its precursor Angas were held for the Liberals by the Downer family, first by Sir Alick Downer for 15 years during the Menzies era then his son, Howard government foreign minister Alexander Downer, from 1984 to 2008.
This has always been a political no man’s land for the Labor Party.
It now risks going that way for the Liberals.
The Hills are now home to more hippies than cockies, the demographics changing from rural conservatives and well-heeled retirees to a mix of people with new money, battling suburban aspirationists and Greens-oriented tree-changers.
These voters have little affection for and no allegiance to anyone in the political establishment — they are simply looking for local representatives who get results, even if those results may sometimes appear to be achieved through extortion.
The death-knell of the major parties in Mayo was sounded at the 2018 by-election and 2019 federal election when lawyer and diplomat Georgina Downer, hamstrung by a whiff of birthright, was beaten on both occasions by the now-entrenched independent Rebekha Sharkie.
Last week, the independent surge spread to state politics with a man regarded by some as a future Liberal leader, the member for Kavel, Dan Cregan, quitting the Liberals to serve and contest next year’s poll as an independent.
Never mind that Cregan’s supposed purity in wanting to focus solely on his local community was sullied immediately, with a late-night coup in state parliament on Tuesday installing him as Speaker, handing him a $150,000 pay rise and doing immense damage to the Marshall government’s stability on election eve.
On the streets of Mount Barker, the locals are overwhelmingly keen at the prospect of another Sharkie-style independent who is beholden to no one and trying to get the best deal for the Hills.
Bricklayer Alan Wainwright and his wife, Diane, live in Strathalbyn and while Alan says the building boom has been great in his line of work, the entire region lacks services that are taken for granted in the city.
“I had to get the bus from Strath to Mt Barker when my daughter was in hospital and I just missed it and when I rang to find out when the next one was, they said one or two hours,” he said.
Third-generation shoe store owner Scott Fairley, born and bred in the Hills, says locals are crying out for rail services and more coherent housing planning.
“We are doing everything backwards up here – it’s like the houses came first and now they’re trying to retrofit the whole area.
“And they are taking their time,” he said.
As a former political adviser within the Liberal Party, Sharkie had a front-row seat for seeing how electorates were treated.
“It was always about which seats we needed to swing our way, which ones we had to defend, and it meant safe seats often missed out,” she said. “When I ran here the first time, it was only really my intention to make this seat marginal. That’s the way you get attention.
“When I was elected, we did not even have one overnight doctor here in Mount Barker. I have been really fortunate to be elected three times now.
“It has been the only way we have been able to put pressure on governments state and federal to get attention. The community here understands this now. In an ideal world, I would like every seat in Australia to be marginal.”
With SA having a history of supporting third political forces such as the Australian Democrats and Nick Xenophon, Sharkie traces the seeds of Mayo’s drift from the major parties back to the 1998 federal election.
At that poll, Alexander Downer was very nearly knocked off by Redgum vocalist John Schumann, running as a Democrats candidate while working as an adviser to then-leader senator Meg Lees.
“Only about 400 votes needed to change hands and that result would have gone John’s way,” Sharkie said. “The fact it was so close meant the seat finally got some attention.”
Sharkie says Downer’s near-defeat was the wake-up call for the Coalition to finalise the construction of the Heysen Tunnels, a major project on the South Eastern Freeway that made the busy road faster and safer.
As the local member, she has now lobbied Labor and Liberal governments at both state and federal levels to receive $50m in state money and $200m from the commonwealth for the new Hahndorf Interchange, near another once-sleepy Hills hamlet that’s fast resembling suburbia.
“I will work with anyone, I don’t care,” she says. “I get on well with people across politics. I just want them to listen to what my constituents have got to say and what they need.”
At the state level, Premier Steven Marshall last week rubbished Cregan’s claim to be motivated by nothing other than a desire to help Hills residents.
In his statement announcing his resignation from the Liberals, Cregan cited a lack of public transport and hospital services as the key driver of his departure.
“There is currently no state plan for the massive population in the Hills,” he said. “A senior government adviser told me: you’re a safe seat, you won’t get the investment you’re asking for right now.
Marshall strongly dismissed both claims, saying Cregan’s exit was a case of impatience and ambition at the fact he believed he was languishing undeservedly on the backbench.
The Australian met Cregan in his Mt Barker office at the weekend where he is busy reorganising his new life as an independent.
He said one clincher for his decision to quit was the Liberal government’s broken promise on Globelink, a major transport plan announced by Marshall ahead of his 2018 victory to get heavy vehicles off the freeway, which was subsequently shelved.
“I went door-knocking on that issue throughout the entire seat before the 2018 election,” Cregan said. “What am I meant to say to my constituents now? I want to be able to look people in the eye.”
It is a sentiment that resonates on the old main street, Gawler St, running through this once-small town. “People aren’t interested in party politics,” Picadilly resident Therese Bussell says while walking her black labrador Sooty.
“It’s the main reason we trust people like Rebekha. She’s a local, she’s one of us, she’s not controlled by anyone, she cares about local issues.”
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