WA election: dying town of Collie last straw for lifelong Labor man

David Miller, a lifelong Labor voter and former union shop steward, will contest the WA election for One Nation.

One Nation candidate David Miller has lost faith with big parties as he watches his town of Collie become a ghost town. Picture: Colin Murty

David Miller knew he had to do something. The electrical fitter from the West Australian coal town of Collie grew angry as Chin­ese and Indian investors bought the two local mines and hundreds of workers were forced to take pay cuts.

As the jobs disappeared, one of the two football teams in town, 200km southeast of Perth, was disbanded. He watched unemployment grow and drug use and crime increase, as it has in many other towns.

The final straw, he says, was Premier Colin Barnett’s election pledge to partially privatise Western Power, the electricity utility that Collie — home to three coal-fired power stations — relies on for much of its economic activity.

“The town is dying,” says Mr Miller, 55, who reckons both of Australia’s major political parties have lost touch with the concerns of voters in towns such as Collie.

So the lifelong Labor voter and former union shop steward decided to contest next month’s WA election for One Nation, a party he says is “honest” and can shake up a broken political system.

He is running in Collie-Preston­, a seat won narrowly by Labor in 2013 but now notionally Liberal after a redistribution.

And he may be in with a chance, with One Nation state leader Colin Tincknell nominating Collie-Preston as one of 10 lower-house seats he believes the resurgent party can win. A Newspoll survey in The Australian yesterday showed One Nation­’s share of the primary vote has soared from 3 per cent to 13 per cent since October. University of Western Australia election analyst William Bowe said Collie had a lot in common with areas of the US Midwest that swung so strongly behind Donald Trump.

Collie is considered One Nation­ heartland, given its strong support for the party during its heyday in the early 2000s.

Mr Bowe said if the swing against the Liberal Party on March 11 was strong, as expected, it was possible One Nation could win the seat on preferences.

Speaking in Collie yesterday, Mr Miller said he was motivated to run by the Barnett plan to sell 51 per cent of Western Power, a move that would slash state debt.

“If Barnett sells Western Power, within three years this place will be a ghost town,” he said.

He said he had lost faith in the Labor Party’s economic polices. “I’ve always voted Labor but Labor have forgotten who they are supposed to represent,” he said. “They talk and talk, but there’s no meat on the bones.”

 

On the streets of Collie, potential One Nation voters are not difficult­ to find. Trevor Barrett, 70, another former­ Labor voter, said his main motivation for backing One Nation­ was Senator Hanson’s strong stance on immigration. He said he was preparing to put a One Nation sign on his front lawn and would volunteer to man the booth on polling day. Mr Barrett­ claimed Labor wanted to bring thousands more Muslims into Australia and that he was given the cold shoulder by local Labor MP Mick Murray when he raised his concerns about this.

The retired mine worker said he believed that Australia should be looking after homeless people and war veterans before it welcomed more immigrants.

Unsurprisingly, he is gloomy about Collie’s prospects. “It’s pretty much dead,” he said.

But not everyone is so negative.

The head of Collie’s chamber of commerce, Glyn Yates, said business conditions in town were not as bad as many suggested.

He said that authorities were working on a long-term plan to diversify­ the region’s economy and he believed tourism and agriculture held plenty of potential.

“But there is no silver bullet,” Mr Yates said.