The host, Paul Murray, asked the obvious first question to Cathy McGowan and Sophie Mirabella: “Is this campaign more personal than it was three years ago?”
Three years ago, Tony Abbott led the Coalition to an emphatic victory but there was one Liberal seat that swung the other way. Prominent frontbencher Mirabella lost the regional Victorian seat of Indi to McGowan, whose exuberant grassroots campaign promised to change the way politics was done.
Mirabella has returned to challenge McGowan and the lively Sky News pub debate in Wangaratta on Thursday night proved she has lost none of her punch. She and McGowan were a contrast in styles – Mirabella the combative conservative, McGowan the calmly spoken conciliator.
After McGowan insisted there was nothing personal about this rematch, that the campaign was “actually going to be about policies, it’s going to be about professionalism and it’s going to be about leadership”, Mirabella jumped in.
“The last campaign was very personal,” she said. “Over the last couple of days we’ve seen one local paper defame me by saying that I pushed Cathy.” Could people imagine, she continued, the impact on a candidate, on a mother and on a campaigner against domestic violence, “having an accusation that you committed assault – it just gutted me”.
She was talking about a five-paragraph story in the Benalla Ensign that reported that Mirabella “very publicly pushed Ms McGowan out of the way” to prevent the MP having a photograph taken with a federal minister in front of a plaque commemorating the opening of a new wing of a nursing home. Mirabella has emphatically denied the allegation.
Such things matter a great deal in local politics.
This incident took up more than five minutes of the debate and was a strange thing to watch – a sign that this will be a fascinating psychological contest, as well as a political one. McGowan wanted to let it go.
“Do you want to talk about it, Sophie, or do we go on to policy?” she said. “My sense is that we don’t want to talk about it publicly.” Indeed, in a statement on Thursday, Mirabella said she would make no further comment on the matter but she had changed her mind.
“No, I’ve been defamed in a newspaper that didn’t even ring me up and I think people deserve to know ... My integrity has been abused and you know campaigns are about debating the integrity of people,” Mirabella said. The newspaper has stood by the story.
Mirabella said some supporters of McGowan were “slagging me off on Twitter and Facebook” about the alleged push. She also said a statement by McGowan’s team had confirmed there was no physical contact, which was not quite true – it said Mirabella had “intervened” to prevent the photo.
Mirabella said it would cause her “great comfort” if McGowan would confirm on national television that there was no push.
McGowan looked slightly stunned by all this and noted Mirabella’s “enormous distress”.
“I think I’d actually rather leave it, Sophie,” McGowan said. “I think it’s a time for another place, that’s my sense of it. Tonight’s about policy.”
And so we got on to policy, in a fashion – about farmers’ concerns over access to water, about funding cuts to the ABC, about Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers in offshore detention, about climate change and local health needs. Candidates from the National party, the ALP and the Greens also had their say.
But the personal kept intruding, as did the bitterness of the 2013 election, which McGowan won by fewer than 500 votes.
A local asked about the candidates’ commitment to provide funding to upgrade the Wangaratta hospital. McGowan did her thing – her “Indi way” politics aims to empower local groups to learn and lobby themselves, to work together as a community to achieve things. She noted that another town, Shepparton, had recently received money from the Victorian government for a new hospital. Its state member is an independent.
“So I just say to all you people who want to go with independents ... we can work with both sides of politics and we can actually deliver for our communities,” McGowan said.
Mirabella was disdainful. “I had a commitment for a $10m allocation to the Wangaratta hospital that, if elected, I was going to announce a week after the election,” she said. “That is $10m that Wangaratta hasn’t had because Cathy got elected.” A few cheers went up in the crowd and a few jeers.
It was all about “who has the ability and the knowledge and the contacts” to get local projects to the top of the list, Mirabella said. “Cathy wasn’t able to do it. I will be,” she said.
McGowan laughed. She is known for her “niceness” but she is no pushover.
“Sophie, first you’ve got to be elected,” she said.
