It has been one of those election campaigns. As photographers and cameramen crowded around the three-metre Liberal billboard truck to get a shot of the foreign minister taking a selfie with the Liberal candidate, Andrew Hastie, a man in a “Hastie” embroidered cap shook his head and muttered to a fellow volunteer: “Mate, we’ve actually got some stormtroopers headed this way.”
And there they were. Flanking a particularly tall Darth Vader, who stalked through the crowd with more gravitas than either of the men who have been Australia’s prime minister this week, the stormtroopers pointed their guns at volunteers of all camps and told voters to “vote for the Empire.”
One elderly gentleman, clutching a plastic shopping bag, sidled up to the Sith Lord. “What party are you here for?” he asked. Heavy breathing was the only answer.
It sounds insane because it was. A short time later, Groot stomped by and then almost tripped over Gamora, who was sprawled on the ground for a Guardians of the Galaxy/Star Wars crossover photo, as Starlord’s phone played the Jackson 5.
They were interviewed by Channel 7’s Sunrise and asked who had their vote in the Canning byelection, an unfair question when you’re standing next to an armed stormtrooper who demands you vote for the man with the James Earl Jones voice-reproduction helmet. They acquiesced.
The Canning byelection is, after all, why we were all there. (Darth and friends had popped over from a bone cancer fundraiser next door.) The vote that captivated the nation for three weeks until the leadership spill it was expected to trigger shot off a week early will be decided on Saturday night.
It appears to be all but in the bag for Hastie. A Reachtel poll, conducted for the Weekend West Australian, has him winning the two-party-preferred vote 57 to 43. That’s a significantly reduced swing from the 52 to 48 result predicted by a Galaxy poll conducted for rival tabloid The Sunday Times last week, and more in the order of the 5% swing expected at byelections, even accounting for the 20% who have voted at pre-poll or by postal vote.
The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, whose arrival with Hastie at the Serpentine-Jarrahdale community recreation centre in Byford on Saturday morning preceded the stormtroopers by at least 10 minutes, said she was confident Hastie would be elected.
Speaking at a press conference in front of a wall of Liberal volunteers, Bishop said she had rarely seen “a candidate connect so immediately with the local people,” a reminder that Hastie only moved into the electorate last month.
“I have been in a number of campaigns in my time in politics and this is one of the most positive reactions I have seen to a candidate, so I’m feeling very optimistic,” she said.
Hastie, who posed with his three-month-old baby who slept through the entire proceedings clad in a “vote one Andrew Hastie” onesie, said he was not counting his chickens just yet: “I’ll be working all the way til 6pm tonight to get out there, talk to voters and communicate my message to the people of Canning.”
The Liberal volunteers were holding Hastie corflutes which listed only one policy: his plan for mandatory sentencing for selling meth to minors, or rather his plan to ask the state government to introduce more mandatory sentencing laws. If he’s elected, Hastie said, he’ll implement his “ice taskforce” and start drafting his “ice action plan” within 30 days.
It was a friendly contrast, for Bishop, to the placards featuring a picture of her and the former prime minister, Tony Abbott, and emblazoned with “Loyalty”, which Labor appears to have made by editing the Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard “Remember” signs from elections past.
Asked for her reaction to the image, Bishop said: “I don’t react to it.”
She did, however, react to a question about the Daily Telegraph dubbing her “the Lady Macbeth of parliament” for her role in Monday’s leadership spill, letting off a peal of laughter before saying: “Oh, the Daily Tele, I love them. I just think they’re one of the most animated media outlets in this country.”
At another polling place 20 minutes away and 90 minutes earlier, the Labor candidate, Matt Keogh, commanded a much more low-key gathering of his family and supporters who submitted a group vote for the cameras.
The chosen venue was Kelmscott Senior High School, where a bright-eyed young Keogh cast his first vote in 2001. Although he and wife Annabel, like Hastie and his wife, Ruth, were not registered to vote in the poll – both moved into Canning after the 28-day cut-off period – his parents and siblings were.
“It’s been great today to have all of my family out voting, and it’s been great for them – and for me – for them to be able to cast a vote with my name on it,” Keogh said.
Remaining upbeat despite his pending defeat being heralded on the front page of the newspaper, Keogh gave the first indication that he may do what others have long suspected, and put his hand up to run for the new federal seat of Burt – which has been recommended by the Australian Electoral Commission and will be carved out of the northern half of the Canning electorate – in the 2016 general election.
“As I said, I’m focused on today,” Keogh said. “We’ve got a few hours now to go, probably about eight or so hours until polls close, and then we’ll start looking at what happens next.
“But I’ll tell you this: this campaign has invigorated me even further to make sure that we are sending a strong presence from Labor to Canberra to make sure we are standing up for Western Australia.
“Because what we’ve really seen … what this campaign has been able to highlight, is how much WA has been taken for granted by this Liberal government.”
He took one last opportunity to run what has proved to be the most popular Labor argument of the campaign – concern about the China free trade agreement. The same Reachtel poll that predicted a Labor loss said the union campaign against the agreement had cut through, with 52.5% of respondents, including a third of those who identified as Liberal supporters, reportedly believing it was a threat to local jobs.
“A good result will be winning and that’s what we’re aiming to do,” Keogh said.
