Swift resolution to keep Liberal hold on Boothby

The dirty politics that took down Liberal Nicolle Flint will seem like child’s play for the woman vying to replace her.

Rachel Swift, Liberal candidate for Boothby, is ‘more than happy’ to fight on the basis of her belief in climate change. Picture: Roy Van Der Vegt

As an infectious disease expert who lived in Rwanda and worked in West Africa combating the Ebola virus, Rachel Swift is unfazed by the prospect of a few rowdy pickets outside her campaign office as she seeks a new career in federal politics.

But the newly minted Liberal candidate for Boothby is hoping for a much cleaner fight than the one faced by her predecessor Nicolle Flint, who announced last year that she was quitting politics after facing sustained abuse and harassment throughout the 2019 campaign.

The candidacy of Dr Swift gives the Liberals a chance to craft a more sellable message to environmentally conscious voters in Boothby because, unlike the conservative Ms Flint, Dr Swift is a fully fledged believer in climate change who sees renewables as the way of the future.

Her Labor opponent is also a political newcomer, first-time candidate Louise Miller-Frost who until recently was chief executive of St Vincent De Paul SA and previously headed the Catherine House women’s shelter.

Both women hope there is no repeat of the mayhem that marred the 2019 campaign, despite the fact that the battle for Boothby will be the most hard-fought in South Australia as the only seat in the state that could change hands at the coming election.

The seat is held by the Liberals with a 1.4 per cent margin, after Ms Flint faced a relentless campaign led by GetUp! and the unions attacking her as an IPA fellow and climate change sceptic.

Despite being backed by the moderate faction, Dr Swift said she had nothing but sympathy for the treatment her conservative predecessor faced.

“In a democracy that kind of behaviour is unacceptable for any candidate from any party in any seat,” she said.

“We collectively need to be clear that we don’t think that contributes to good debate, good discussion or a good outcome.

“But my background and my experience means I tend to take things with an attitude of ‘let’s jump in and see how it goes’.

“I spent time working in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Liberia, places that are quite distinctly different, so you would probably have to get up a bit earlier in the morning to throw me off my game.”

Ms Miller-Frost agrees, saying that having spent much of her career working on women’s safety, no one in public life should face harassment over their views.

“I absolutely think that women should be safe at work, indeed everyone should be safe at work,” she said. “This should be about respect, it should be about policies, it should be about positions.

“I would hope that people look at what’s being offered from policy positions and make their decisions. It shouldn’t get aggro.”

The all-female battle for Boothby is rounded out by independent Jo Dyer, the Adelaide Writers Festival director and high-profile advocate for the woman known only as Kate, her University of Adelaide friend who made rape accusations against former attorney-general Christian Porter before taking her own life.

With Ms Flint’s exit, the absence of a polarising conservative will reduce the impact of Ms Dyer, especially in a solidly suburban seat that has been held by the Liberals since 1949.

It will be hard for any of Dr Swift’s opponents to paint her as a right-wing hardliner, as she makes it clear that she has zero interest in the factional side of politics.

Dr Swift said she was also “more than happy” to fight the election for the Liberals on the basis of her belief in climate change. “I am scientist at heart, and I am the daughter of an agricultural scientist,” she said.

“I was brought up talking about things like water security and how our actions affected the environment. My grounding for looking at any issue comes from that basis.

“I am also practical about the economic position. If you look at the rate of decline in megawatt-hour prices for sources like solar you can see that it is economically competitive.

“At the big picture level we know that other countries are looking at tariffs and taxes on imports that are high carbon-emission products. If we are not thinking about this nationally we are doing a disservice to our agricultural sector, our export sector and our manufacturing sector, incredibly important industries that we need to support.”

Ms Miller-Frost dismisses any notion that the Morrison government has done enough on climate change and says it was Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s initial ambivalence about attending the Glasgow summit that galvanised her decision to run.

“On top of that, there were all the issues about the way women were treated, the PM’s lack of action on the Christian Porter allegations, where he didn’t even read the document, the treatment of Brittany Higgins.”

The management of Covid-19 since the opening of the state’s border on November 23 will also be a flashpoint in the seat.