Australia’s youngest ever federal minister, Wyatt Roy, has paid tribute to “my mate Malcolm” as the prime minister joined him on the hustings in his vulnerable seat of Longman north of Brisbane.
Roy, who according to a poll last week is running neck and neck with his Labor challenger in Longman, introduced Malcolm Turnbull as “the man of the moment” at a politics in the pub-style gathering at Sandstone Point on Friday.
Turnbull in return said Roy, a key supporter in his rise to the leadership who was appointed the assistant minister for innovation last year at the age of 25, “personifies the 21st century – he’s smart, he’s nimble, he’s agile [and] dealing with one of the most important elements in our national economic plan”.
In a brief speech before mingling with the crowd with his wife, Lucy, Turnbull lauded the Coalition’s program of company tax cuts, retention of investment breaks and pressing for free trade opportunities in Asia.
“This is a very important election … sometimes you get elections and both sides are trying to pretend to be a bit like the other and people say you can’t tell the difference [but] it is absolutely clear cut,” Turnbull said.
He repeated his attack that Labor, which opposes tax cuts for larger businesses and proposes restricting negative gearing and raising capital gains tax, was running a “war against business”.
Confronted briefly by a “welcoming committee” of vocal Maritime Union of Australia members who were then ejected from the premises, Turnbull drew his largest cheers from a supportive crowd with the government’s pledge to “restore the rule of law in the construction sector” by returning the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
A Seven Reachtel poll last week showed Roy was level with the Labor challenger, former teacher’s aid and unionist Susan Lamb, on 50% of the two-party preferred vote.
Roy told Guardian Australia he took “nothing for granted” having “won this seat off the Labor party” in 2010, when he became the youngest federal MP at 20 years old.
“It’s fantastic to have my mate Malcolm with me. We’re very close and he’s visited this seat many times, he actually launched my last campaign, so it’s fantastic to have him back in our community again, he’s a regular visitor.”
Roy said job security and job creation were the key concerns in Longman, where “in 2007 we had one of the nation’s lowest unemployment rates [but] today we have a very high one”.
Roy said the Coalition by “backing small businesses by lowering taxes” would bank on restoring confidence and new hirings in an outer suburban area with “a huge spread of small businesses”.
