A few weeks ago, the Greens candidate Tim Read was at pains to say his bid to win the seat of Brunswick from Labor was a “50-50” proposition.
Standing outside a polling booth on the first day of early voting on Monday, he wants to update his answer. “You know, I feel a little more hopeful than that now,” he says.
Away from Brunswick, the Greens’ statewide campaign is under huge strain as various candidates face grief over their past conduct on social media or, in the case of its Footscray hopeful, for writing misogynistic lyrics during a fledgling rap career.
Locally, Labor has been promising millions to update a number of local schools. After Bill Shorten joined candidate Cindy O’Connor a few weeks ago to warn against a “protest vote”, Read accused Labor of gifting “cash presents” to marginal electorates.
It should all amount to a few headaches for the Greens campaign. Yet even in progressive, politically-minded Brunswick, how many people are really listening? And in a tribal place like this, how many undecided voters are still out there?
“I don’t think there are many,” says Pam Duncan, of the non-partisan Brunswick Residents Network, which organised a candidates forum earlier this month.
Outside Brunswick North West primary, one mum notes Labor’s $6m promise for a new science building, before telling Guardian Australia, “I’m not that engaged, I just vote Greens”.
Emmuna Aloni, 19, is a new Brunswick resident who cast her first ballot on the first day of early voting. “I only found out three days ago I had to vote and that was with Tim Read coming into the cafe,” she says. “I made him some coffee and he taught me how to vote.”
As Labor focuses on education and the Greens on their policy for a mammoth cycling path that would stretch from south of the Yarra River to Sydney Road in Brunswick, voters are apparently not tuned in, or have their minds made up, or both.
One who is considering his vote is Domenic Gigliotti, who’s owned a clothing store on Lygon Street for 46 years.
Going inside the shop is like going back in time – to when this was still ALP heartland. But Gigliotti says he’s still thinking about who to vote for and won’t decide for another week.
“Usually I stick with the same,” he says, standing between tall piles of Levi’s and Wrangler jeans. He’d be considered part of what the author Shane Maloney described as the Labor base in Brunswick.
This time he might “give the vote to my friend here”, he says pointing to a Tim Read sticker in the front window. Read comes to Gigliotti to “fix things, buy things … but it’s not because of that”. “He’s a good man.”
One thing that could turn the tide is the strife that has struck the Greens’ campaign statewide. That could pose a problem among local progressive voters, says Duncan.
“It depends on how much the Labor party decides to blow it up,” she says. “Everyone has been terribly polite [in the local campaign].”
As if on cue the premier, Daniel Andrews, on Wednesday accused the Greens of harbouring a “massive cultural problem”.
Nine candidates have filed to run in Brunswick, including the Animal Justice party and the Liberals’ Adam Wojtonis, a former staffer to Kevin Andrews. In a blow to Labor, the Liberals are not directing their preferences.
However, O’Connor will get a leg up from Catherine Deveny, the high-profile candidate for Fiona Patten’s Reason party who is running to boost her leader’s hopes of being re-elected in the upper house.
Deveny, who can often be spotted riding down Sydney Road on her bright red Dutch bike, reckons “no one knows who Cindy O’Connor is”, a few more know of Read, “no one knows what Reason is but everyone knows me”.
According to Duncan, Read is well known locally while O’Connor, who has “good credentials” as a union official among local lefties, is still playing catch up.
On YouTube and Instagram, Brunswick voters are seeing targeted autoplay video ads introducing them to Read. As early voting began, O’Connor made her own pitch on Facebook.
“Progressive change happens by being in the room, being heard and being a part of a bigger movement for change,” she wrote alongside a photo with Ged Kearney, the former union leader-turn-Labor MP who fended off the Greens in the nearby federal seat of Batman this year.
Despite O’Connor’s best efforts, Duncan thinks the Labor campaign in Brunswick was far more visible at the local level in 2014. “I might be wrong,” Duncan says, “but it feels like there’s change coming.”
