In the Mandurah campaign offices of Liberal candidate Andrew Hastie, a haggard support team is crossing their fingers the four-week-long attempt to persuade voters the world ends at the boundary of the Canning electorate has paid off.
Camp Hastie has been playing the local game since day one in an attempt to distance themselves from the polarising figure of Tony Abbott. They even kept him off the how-to-vote cards, a measure which could prove a great saving in printing if Monday’s leadership spill, called by the outgoing communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is successful.
According to Gareth Parker, the state political reporter for the West Australian, Hastie’s campaign team is staying the course and is “adamant that its local-first strategy won’t change”. Guardian Australia attempted to contact Hastie’s office to verify this statement but was it not taking calls on Monday evening.
Abbott, asked on Saturday whether he was concerned a poor result in Canning could sound the death knell for his leadership, said: “It’s not about me. It’s about the people of Canning.” Hastie’s team will be hoping he was right.
Before Monday afternoon, Hastie could have been fairly confident of winning Saturday’s byelection and becoming the next member for Canning. Two polls at the weekend, the Fairfax Ipsos poll and a Galaxy poll commissioned by the News Corp-owned Sunday Times, put him slightly ahead in the two-party preferred vote, 52 to 48.
That’s a 10-point swing towards Labor from the 11.8% margin held by Liberal MP Don Randall, whose sudden death triggered the byelection, but it was still winnable.
Abbott’s personal approval was also slightly higher in Canning than the national average – he was preferred prime minister over the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, 41 to 38.
Kevin Bonham, the political analyst and avid poll-watcher, suggested the polling results should actually have shown a slightly bigger margin for Hastie. The Galaxy poll assumed a 40% preference flow to the Liberals, based on federal preferences in the 2013 election. Bonham points out the preference flow in Canning in 2013 was actually 48%, which would make the two-party preferred vote more like 54 to 48 for the Coalition.
That’s irrelevant now. Hastie, in an attempt to keep the focus on the West Australian seat in recent weeks, has voiced his own distaste for the speculation of “east coast twitterati” and said the people of Canning were sick of “Canberra games”.
He was right: Canning, generally, has no appetite for politics. The outer suburban electorate has been the focus of a leadership spill before – Randall supported fellow WA backbencher Luke Simpkins in moving a spill motion in February. Randall said at the time he supported the motion in order that the leadership question might be finally resolved.
But Canning is unlikely to reward this leadership spill, which could be seen as a return to the instability of the Rudd/Gillard years.
Turnbull all but admitted at much, in his speech announcing his intention to challenge the leadership, saying that timing a leadership spill six days out from the crucial byelection was “far from ideal”.
“There are few occasions that are entirely ideal for tough calls and tough occasions like this,” he said, before adding, “from a practical point of view, a change of leadership would improve our prospects in Canning.”
It’s unlikely Hastie would agree. A socially conservative Christian who opposes marriage equality, the 32-year-old former SAS soldier is a natural ally of Abbott, who he described in a bizarre word-association game on commercial radio in Perth on Friday as a “good bloke”.
The feeling was clearly mutual: while the Liberal party has been united in the view that Hastie was an “outstanding candidate”, Abbott’s praise stood above.
Asked about the pending leadership spill earlier on Monday, Hastie said that mounting leadership reports were “really not a concern for me”.
According to the ABC, he raised the issue without prompting in his address to a seniors forum at Mandurah tennis club on Monday, saying: “This byelection is not about the prime minister, it’s not about Bill Shorten, it’s not about Canberra, as much as people in Canberra might make it out to be.”
At a press conference later, he said he supported the prime minister.
The Labor candidate, Matt Keogh, will to have to reprint some campaign material if Turnbull’s challenge is successful. Labor has been specifically targeting Abbott in its pitch to voters. Indeed, Shorten, in a speech to union members on Saturday, said ending Abbott’s prime ministership was a key reason to vote Keogh.
Keogh told Guardian Australia last week that he was approached several times a day on the hustings by people saying: “Please win this so we can throw Tony Abbott out.” He repeated that statement at a press conference on Monday.
According, again, to Gareth Parker at the West Australian, Labor has workshopped the possibility of a Turnbull prime ministership as part of its overall campaign plan.
Both candidates have RSVPd to an Australian Christian Lobby candidates forum in Kelmscott on Monday evening. Keogh has confirmed he will still be going; Hastie could not be contacted.
