It has added gloss to his profile and provided a catch-all response for any tricky questions throughout his campaign. But during a live radio debate in Armadale on Thursday, a reference to the military by the Liberal candidate for Canning, Andrew Hastie, had several watching locals tutting their disapproval.
Hastie was answering a question from ABC 720 mornings host, John McGlue, who wanted to know why the former SAS soldier kept saying he was not a politician. After all, he is running for political office.
Stuck, it seemed, for an answer, Hastie referred, as he has throughout the campaign, to his time in the Australian Defence Force.
“I have worked overseas under Labor governments and – you would have heard in my state conference speech – overseas, I didn’t think that Labor had our backs,” he said. It was that, Hastie explained, that convinced him of the need to go to Canberra to help get the “policy settings” right.
But the mostly elderly local crowd, sitting in rows of plastic chairs in front of the red tent of the ABC local radio mobile booth, were not impressed. Heads shook in disapprobation. The military, several said, ought to be beyond partisan political commentary, even by ex-servicemen.
The Labor candidate, Matt Keogh, took issue as well.
“Andrew seems to have, now a few times, had a dig at Labor government support for our armed forces, and I of course have the greatest respect for Andrew’s service to our country,” he said.
“But Labor increased funding to our armed forces … I think it’s terrible that those sort of things are being made a political football in this election, because I think we need to have a unified support behind our defence forces at all times.”
Speaking to Guardian Australia after the debate finished, several audience members agreed.
“I think it was shameful,” one woman, who asked not to be named, said. “The defence forces ought to be above politics.”
There are just two days left until the Canning byelection, a poll that has seen an unprecedented level of interest in the electorate on the south-eastern fringe of Perth, Western Australia. The poll was predicted to be the trigger that could spell the end of the former prime minister, Tony Abbott, but the change of prime minister on Monday has somewhat dimmed national interest.
The interest of locals, however, has not waned. The radio debate proved surprisingly tough for Hastie, who ought to be feeling more confident since the change in prime minister on Monday led to a “sugar hit” in the polls.
According to a report in The Australian, Labor’s own internal polling says it will lose the byelection.
Keogh, with a zinger worthy of Bill Shorten, dismissed that concern when it was raised by McGlue: “well, John, you referred to it being a sugar hit; everyone knows sugar is not necessarily good for you.”
Hastie, when asked how the change in prime minister would affect his campaign, said that was for commentators such as McGlue himself to decide. He did, of course, support Turnbull.
But it was when answering questions from voters the debate swung Keogh’s way.
The first came from an elderly gentleman by the name of Walter Edam, who threw a bit of a dixer to Keogh and asked whether he thought infrastructure in Canning had been neglected.
Keogh did, and went on to say the train line should be extended to Byford, a small hamlet about 8km from Armadale that has rapidly been swallowed up by housing developers keen to perpetuate Perth’s urban sprawl.
That’s part of state Labor’s proposed Metronet policy, which had a $5.2bn price tag when it was first rolled out at the 2013 state election. There’s no firm cost now; the proposal is to build in stages, and the Byford extension has been costed at $300m.
Trains are not something Hastie has thought about, but he will advocate for them if they are something the people of Canning want. He adds that he caught the train from Perth to Mandurah with Malcolm Turnbull a few weeks ago. “He loves his trains,” Hastie assured the crowd.
The crowd went on to ask the candidates about the Turnbull government’s position on cuts to penalty rates, cuts to welfare payments, ongoing cuts to mental health support services, and whether it would ban the use of genetically modified crops.
To all questions, Hastie said he would represent the views of the people of Canning, if only they would please tell him what those views were. “My boss is the people of Canning,” he said. “If I get elected, you are my boss.”
It was probably a welcome win for Keogh, whose earlier attempt at a press conference had been gatecrashed by a disgruntled voter who took issue with Labor’s line on the China free trade agreement.
Setting up outside Armadale train station just after 8.30am, 10 minutes before the radio debate was scheduled to start, Keogh and the deputy leader of the Labor party, Tanya Plibersek, were halfway through assuring the watching media they weren’t remotely concerned about the change of Liberal leadership when the irate voter, who later introduced himself as Peter Galellis, interjected.
“Excuse me, I’m a local resident and the only thing I know about you, I received a pamphlet in the mail about the Chinese coming in and taking our jobs,” Galellis said, stepping forward from behind the television cameras.
“Now, that insults my intelligence,” Galellis continued. “I used to be a member of several unions, and I have seen some stupid things done in the unions, but this is just ridiculous.”
Both Keogh and Plibersek attempted to answer, before abandoning the press conference and the malcontented Galellis to the persuasive efforts of Perth MP Alannah MacTiernan, who applied herself to the task.
With less than 48 hours to go before election day, both candidates have learned to pick their battles.
