Labor Party’s lost voters resent city elites

Working-class Labor voters in its Queensland heartland feel they have been left to compete against the demands of the inner-city elite.

Ken Bischof and Roy Stirling enjoy a beer at the Raceview Hotel in Ipswich. Picture: Glenn Hunt

Working-class Labor voters in the party’s regional Queensland heartland feel they have been left to compete against the demands of the inner-city elite.

That was the message from several pub-goers in the federal seat of Blair, which includes Ipswich­, who spoke to The Australian on Thursday.

Ipswich, southwest of Brisbane, has long been the epitome of what Labor stands for — working-class and hardworking.

It is seats such as Blair, currently held by Labor’s Shayne Neumann, that the party needs to maintain connections with to claw back regional Queensland voters, who largely turned away from Labor at the May election.

On a warm Boxing Day afternoon, Ken Bischof, 72, and Roy Stirling, 75, stayed cool with a schooner at the Raceview Hotel in Ipswich. Raised as a self-proclaimed “Labor kid”, Mr Bischof spent more than 25 years in the aviation industry before retiring.

At the May election he abandoned his roots and sided with the Coalition, which he felt better represented his values.

“They have gone away from the working man and have lost their base. Labor is becoming the yuppie, inner-city party and is siding­ with the greenies,” Mr Bischo­f said. That was a common view expressed by voters across the Blair electorate who spoke to The Australian.

Blair is Labor’s only regional seat in the state after it lost ­Herbert, in north Queensland, and Longman, north of Brisbane, to the Liberal National Party.

Labor’s win in Blair came despite a 6.93 per cent swing towards the LNP, meaning longstanding incumbent Mr Neumann scraped home with a two-party-preferred vote of 51 per cent. He has held the seat since 2007.

Labor voter Brock Harders at the Hotel Metropole. Picture: Glenn Hunt

Mr Bischof said the changing demographics of the area would not help Labor’s cause, with the ageing working-class population making way for younger people and families from the city.

The seat briefly flirted with One Nation in 1998, when Pauline Hanson moved from Oxley and ran for the lower house. She ultimately lost to the Coalition, which held the seat for nine years.

Mr Stirling, a longtime Telstra worker before his retirement, said that, while he supports Labor, he would support Ms Hanson in a heartbeat.

But the younger generation is not as jaded. At the Hotel Metropole, local meatpacker and small-business owner Brock Harders, 26, said he voted Labor at the last election but did not know much about its current leader, Anthony­ Albanese. “I reckon I’m middle-class. I’m not well off but I’ve got money,” Mr Harders said.

“Labor is younger and for the working class. The guys that are currently there now (the Coal­ition) are for big business, you know, they are for the guy that is making one million dollars.

“Scott Morrison seems like a chill kind of guy. I’d want to have a beer with him and learn how to get rich. I don't know much about the other one (Mr Albanese).”

At the Prince of Wales Hotel in the heart of the Ipswich CBD, patro­n Stephen Caldwell, 59, said Labor’s lurch to the left had alienated voters not only in Australia, but also in his native Britain.

“Unless the Liberals make the biggest mistake, they won’t lose the next election because no one is game enough to vote them (Labor) in,” he said.