Sitting in the tea room of his tree-lopping business in Kelmscott, Paul Harrison is wondering if he might be jinxed.
Just three days ago, the Liberal candidate for Canning, Andrew Hastie, ducked into this warren of offices to get changed into his suit, ready to greet the prime minister, Tony Abbott, who visited the premises of Harrison’s business, Beaver Tree Services, on Saturday afternoon. Abbott was there to announce that the government would echo Labor’s promise to fund the $145m upgrade of Armadale Road, but the story, relayed by a small media pack, was that he had dismissed predictions he would be rolled on the Monday following Saturday’s byelection.
A lot can change in three days. As Harrison spoke to Guardian Australia on Tuesday, the new prime minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, was being sworn in by the governor general in Canberra. Abbott, so happy to shake hands and eat party pies with members of the Armadale business community on Saturday, was nowhere to be seen – he would later make a statement, which pointedly did not congratulate his successor.
But worrying Harrison was the sensation that he’d been here before. He had a meeting with the late Don Randall, the popular Liberal member for Canning, whose death triggered Saturday’s byelection, three days before his sudden death in July.
“Some of the group were saying maybe we’re not good for pollies,” he said.
As president of interest group Business Armadale, he is no stranger to rubbing elbows with politicians – he was in the next room when Randall, swearing and shouting down the phone, decided to support fellow West Australian backbencher Luke Simpkins in calling for a spill motion against Abbott’s leadership in February.
But he doesn’t really know Turnbull, and that is another source of worry. Reaffirming the government’s support for the Armadale Road funding, he said, would go a long way to appease voters.
“The general consensus on Malcolm is probably less positive than it was on Abbott, to be honest, unless he can do something in the next few days to show that those promises are going to be kept,” Harrison said.
The same qualities that make Turnbull popular with inner city voters on the eastern seaboard – his erudition, wit and charm – can make him an object of suspicion in working-class seats of the west, like Canning.
“I think some people have reservations,” Harrison said. “They were saying on the TV last night that he’s obviously private school from Sydney, and I think you realise, out here, that most people don’t go much past year 10 unfortunately.
“I left school at 14, went to Kelmscott High School, and I think a lot of people were educated in the public schools and have that natural paranoia of people who come from private schools.”
There’s also the negative reaction to the leadership spill itself, which has become a regular event in Australian politics. Canning, Harrison explains, needs jobs; for that it needs business, and business needs certainty.
“I thought Andrew Hastie was pretty much a shoo-in at one stage there, but I’m not so sure now,” he said.
The Liberal candidate, speaking outside a crowded pre-poll station in Armadale on Tuesday afternoon, was sticking to the script that has carried him through four weeks of the five-week campaign: a mention of his military service interspersed with statements about his values and integrity, rounded off by a promise to keep things local and fight Don Randall-style for the people of Canning.
He had already spoken to both Turnbull and Abbott before facing the media.
“I didn’t ask for this, I went into a meeting with one prime minister last night and emerged with another,” he said. “That’s the reality. And I support the prime minister, Prime Minister Turnbull, today.”
“Of course the Australian people are a bit dissatisfied with the political class. But from day one I have made my campaign about the values that I have learned and have been inculcated with during my service in the defence force: honour, integrity, commitment, service, compassion; they are the things I want to bring to Canning.”
Hastie thanked Abbott for his support, dubbing him “a good bloke” but in defiance of the cries of Abbott’s supporters, who said a change of leadership would be unfair and damaging to the byelection campaign, insisted that the elevation of Turnbull did not affect him.
In the Jull Street mall in Armadale, news that the leader of the country had changed overnight caused barely a ripple. Perhaps it was boredom with the familiar, but while people Guardian Australia spoke to were abreast of the goings on, they didn’t care much.
Jeanine was one of the more excited. Shopping with her husband, Bob, the retiree said the change in leadership had also changed her vote – although she still disliked spills, as a general rule.
“I was going to stick a knife in them and stay, ‘stuff you! I’m going to let you know that I’m not happy with government,’ and I was going to vote completely out of it,” she said. “But no, I’m back to Liberals now.”
Interestingly, what made her come around to Turnbull’s prime ministership was the motif of government ministers that the problem was not with Abbott himself, but with his communication skills. That’s what gave it a different feel to the 2010 and 2013 leadership spills in the Labor party: “It’s not that they don’t respect Tony Abbott, they just don’t think he’s got the right voice communication.”
At the other end of the shopping strip, Pam was also contemplating changing her vote. Usually a Labor voter, she would be prepared to give Turnbull a go. If only she didn’t prefer Labor’s Matt Keogh to Hastie.
“It will be interesting to see what Malcolm Turnbull does because even though he is Liberal he has got a lot of views that I agree with.”
Mandy, sitting on a bike barrier outside the Armadale shopping centre, was more sceptical. She doesn’t follow politics and doesn’t care that the prime minister has changed – she’ll still vote Labor. “It’s a different person, but it’s the same party,” she said.
That’s the message Keogh, who was campaigning with Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese on Tuesday, is desperately hoping to get through – a tough task when Abbott’s name features so heavily on his campaign material.
Hastie and Keogh appeared at a Business Armadale debate in a pub on Tuesday night. Questions were hastily edited to reflect the new political reality.
Keogh insists that nothing has changed and that the Coalition still has the “wrong priorities”.
“They are wrong under Malcolm Turnbull as they were wrong under Tony Abbott,” he said.
