For three unbroken decades, through six different prime ministers, the seat of Brisbane remained a Labor possession.
It took the taint of Julia Gillard’s putsch on Queensland son Kevin Rudd for Brisbane to finally fall into Coalition hands – those of Teresa Gambaro – in 2010.
Gambaro’s abrupt retirement just before this election, and an eight-month headstart for Labor’s likely lad, the former army major Pat O’Neill, gave Labor high hopes of taking Brisbane back.
The inner-north city seat, with its swath of young voters, beckoned as just the sort of place Labor’s progressive agenda should make inroads.
And yet, in a story that mirrors many marginal seats across the country, Brisbane appears to have shown a stubborn refusal to go into the red.
Bookies are now offering slim pickings for a punt on the Coalition, the odds with Tabcorp on Thursday firming to $1.30, with Labor’s rising to $3.40.
Left-leaning activist groups such as Get Up! focused their attention away from Brisbane some time ago to target rightwing controversy magnets Peter Dutton and George Christensen.
The Coalition, with former Dutton staffer and National Retail Association boss, Trevor Evans, supposedly playing catch-up, has consistently shown up as the narrow victor in published polls.
A Newspoll taken last week gave Brisbane to the Coalition 51% two-party-preferred, with a primary vote of 44% against Labor’s 32% (barely up on the 2013 election result of 30.1%).
Labor is not out of it, Greens candidate Kirsten Lovejoy’s primary vote rising to 18% and her preferences likely to be a critical boost to Labor.
What is it that holds Labor back?
One factor is spelled out in the Newspoll. Half of Brisbane voters gave Malcolm Turnbull the thumbs-up as better prime minister, against 34% for Bill Shorten.
Despite a strikingly unusual array of local candidates, fortunes could hinge on the appeal of the respective national leaders and, that old chestnut, their credibility as economic managers.
Another lingering factor is Labor’s knifing of Rudd while still popular (externally if not internally) and the shifting debacle with Gillard – in which Bill Shorten’s role has not been entirely forgotten.
Turnbull’s cutting down of the unpopular Tony Abbott seems less damaging, the urbane multimillionaire’s honeymoon among small-l liberals proving a stumbling block for Labor in seats such as Brisbane.
Of course, nothing lasts forever.
“We expected bigger things from Turnbull but there’s nothing going on,” says Nicky Jones, a retired teacher and swinging voter who lives in the city centre. “We’re just status quo, haven’t seen any grand moves.”
But Shorten is just as disappointing, and the Labor party leadership machinations are “too fresh”.
“Shorten represents a very dysfunctional party and that’s not forgotten by me,” she says. “They could have put any frontman there and that would not be forgotten.
“We need somebody who’s going to lead and I’m not sure that either one of them are fitting that bill – pardon the pun.”
Had the Labor party had a “more standout” leader, possibly Tanya Plibersek, Jones might have been swayed.
But she has already cast her vote and chose the Coalition, figuring a mandate to lead may give Turnbull greater rein to implement a more personal agenda.
“I think he’s trying to do things but he’s held back by the party and maybe this time if he does get in properly without throwing anybody out, we might see some better results. There’s a slim chance, but we might.
“The big thing is the finances,” she says, more than issues such as marriage equality. “The deficit and getting on with the job of getting the money back into balance and then we can move from there.”
Jones also followed the Liberal suggestions on the Senate ballot.
“Whatever it takes to get a decent government and not be held back by the Senate and all these dodgy parties. Just vote and get that person in properly without the Senate pulling everyone back.”
Patrick Watson, an early-career solicitor who also lives in the city centre, says his perception of voting choices is shaped by his reliance on media for political information and its focus on leaders over local candidates.
He’ll check the locals out by election morning, “but so far I don’t even know the names of the people running in my electorate”.
Watson says he is unimpressed by Shorten’s attempts to “exploit the underdog position”.
“The headline is attacking the Liberal party’s policies rather than pushing and trying to increase the public’s awareness of the Labor party’s policies.”
While Watson intends to vote for the Coalition, nothing has “stood out” from Turnbull, either in what has “largely been a campaign of two leaders not wildly impressive, not wildly far apart”.
“The only thing that really sets them apart is perhaps oration skills but that’s not a reason to vote for somebody in my view,” Watson says.
Watson says leadership instability has marked the experience of both major parties “and it’s the nature of Australian politics at the moment”.
For him, economic management takes precedence over climate policy and marriage equality “but only by a small margin”.
“Those other things are certainly very important but they are not as important as financial management.
“I come back to the legacy position of the Liberal party being an economic management party typically, small government, free markets, and the Labor party almost the opposite, directed by and acting in the interests of trade unions.”
Erin Co-Beng, a sociology student casting her first federal election vote at the age of 20, says she’s “a lefty”, meaning she will back the Greens.
“I think that Labor and Liberal have kind of become indistinguishable at this point,” she says.
Labor will get her preference as “the better of two evils” but her view of Shorten is not flattering.
“Shorten is a little bit weak. He comes across as a bit spineless and he’s just doing his job.”
Her impression of Turnbull is coloured by his previous dissent from the Coalition party lines on climate change and marriage equality – but then toeing those lines on assuming Abbott’s mantle.
“I liked [Turnbull] before, not really in an ideological sense, but just kind of in the fact that he went against the main party’s talking points,” she says. “But now I kind of feel like he’s been squashed into the rest of it.”
John and Mary, of Paddington, are swinging voters with a long background in social work. Each has voted Labor in the past but will go with the Coalition this time.
John says experience has made them doubt the worth of Labor’s job creation schemes, dating back to Whitlam.
“It doesn’t have that longevity about it – and we both come from a social welfare background.”
But in what John says is an increasingly complex calculation weighing up respective policies – which basically requires a leap of faith in one party or the other – the perceived trustworthiness and appeal of each leader becomes critical.
Stories about Turnbull and Shorten’s parents make a strong impression. Mary likes Turnbull’s apparent strong bond with his single father, who in the mind of John, now a family mediator, acted nobly by not turning his son against his absent mother.
“You can see it in him, in the pictures of them together when he was younger, there’s a real strong bond there,” Mary says. “Twice I’ve heard Shorten asked about his mother and he sort of had to stop and think about it.
“Like when he was asked something [on the Today Show] yesterday and he let out this terrible stupid noise before he could get the words out. He has to really think about the right thing to say.”
John says: “No spontaneity.”
Mary: “Bill Shorten’s got so much to say about Malcolm Turnbull and all this other stuff that by the time he’s shut up, he hasn’t actually said anything that’s meaningful.”
John: “Because it’s getting a lot more presidential than our Westminster system, I think a lot of people would be attracted to Shorten because he’s quite a brutal performer. He’s assassinated two prime ministers and you’ve got to be ruthless in that role.
“I don’t want to sound glib, but Malcolm Turnbull’s only assassinated one prime minister – but he did it nicely.”
Mary: “With dignity and respect.”
Sam Dell, a casual retail worker of millennial vintage, from Herston, is a Labor voter who disputes the common perception that the Coalition is the better economic manager.
The national leadership contest is again what exercises his voting mind over local candidates.
“They’re bigger celebrities – you’ve got more of a relationship with them than you do with your local candidate because you see them on the TV, you get to hear what they’re saying.
He’ll vote Labor in spite of and not because of Shorten, who has “done what he can do in the situation” without an obvious alternative in the party.
Rudd’s fate at the end of his first stint as prime minister still doesn’t sit right for Dell.
“I was really disappointed when they got rid of Rudd because I think he was a fantastic prime minister and it’s kind of a shame how they’ve really done a job on his reputation,” he says.
“People look back on that period as though it was a bad period but I thought it was really good. He did a lot of good social things like apologised to the Stolen Generations and it seems he did save us from a lot of the financial crisis.
“And I love the idea of taxing the miners, getting in late on the mining boom.”
Whatever is said about inner Brisbane being a hotbed of progressive voters, Dell is not surprised Labor is not gaining critical traction.
He thinks the newfound prominence of young progressive voices through social media is deceiving.
“I think we forget that Australia is actually quite conservative in general,” Dell says.
“I think young progressive people with social media [experience] are more outspoken now so our voice is being heard but then there’s all these people who traditionally vote for the Liberal party. I think that’s creating the perception that society is more progressive than it actually is.”
