Federal election 2016: logo-free Wayne Swan does it his way

Former treasurer Wayne Swan is recycling his yellow election signs, which boast only a tiny splash of Labor red.

Former deputy prime minister and treasurer Wayne Swan is recycling his yellow election signs — which boast only a tiny splash of Labor red — as he prepares to fight to keep his marginal north Brisbane seat of Lilley.

He says the signage, spruiking his combination of “local experience, your national voice” above a small Labor badge does not mean he is distancing himself from the ALP.

“I’ve always run my corflutes the way I run them now,” Mr Swan told The Australian.

“It just reflects my approach to my electorate.

“I’m a local, and what the poster reflects is I’m a hard-working local representative with experience … you would not find many people in the electorate who didn’t know I have been, and am, a prominent Labor politician.”

He held the seat, which takes in Brisbane’s northeastern suburbs and the city’s airport, between 1993 and 1996, and has done since 1998.

Lilley now has a margin of 1.3 per cent, about 1200 votes, down from 3.2 per cent before Labor’s 2013 election loss.

LNP candidate David Kingston, a 43-year-old environmental engineer who moved from Adelaide to Brisbane in 2013, said Mr Swan was using his election mat­erial to dodge the party’s negative baggage.

“Perhaps it demonstrates his connection with the party is somewhat of a spent force and he’s relying on his local connections,” he said. “He’s had 18 years to build up his brand and has probably done a good job of that, but he was treasurer and the party carries serious baggage. The electorate remembers the debt he saddled the country with as treasurer.”

Mr Swan disagrees. “Generally when I go around the community, there’ll always be someone who will sidle up and say thanks for what you did to keep me or my business in work during the global financial crisis.”

When asked which issues were biting locally, Mr Kingston nominates the cost of living, road congestion and Malcolm Turnbull’s cities policy.

He’s expecting a visit from the Prime Minister as early as today.

For Mr Swan, it’s the “failure of the Liberals to roll out the NBN”, the Cross-River Rail project, and federal cuts to state health and education funding.