Ann-Marie Hermans has had a busy 18 months. The Liberal candidate for Cranbourne has been campaigning since 2017, determined to end Labor’s 16-year hold over the marginal seat.
Now the end is in sight. At a pre-poll booth at the Cranbourne homemaker centre, the Hermans adjusts a makeshift eye-patch — excessive hayfever and airborne irritants being one of the perils of a spring campaign — and hands out how-to-vote cards.
“This is a really important seat and it’s important to me. It’s important to our family that we actually get a genuine local representation out here,” she says.
Hermans has lived in Cranbourne since the early 2000s, when she and her husband, Mark, bought their first house. Her in-laws have lived in the area since the 1960s, and her own parents moved down 12 years ago. She has four children.
It’s a key point of difference for Hermans. Labor candidate Pauline Richards, who is handing out how-to-vote cards at the same polling booth, a few metres along from Hermans, moved to Lyndhurst, on the northern tip of the electorate, last year.
Another key difference is the focus Hermans has placed on crime. Both parties have promised about $1bn in new investment in Cranbourne, centred on road and rail upgrades, upgrades to schools and a bipartisan commitment to build a new police station.
“I have spoken to a lot of people that have lost their cars out of their driveway or they have had a home invasion … It’s a genuine concern that we have a lot of crime out here.
“It gets called Crimebourne and I don’t like that. I have lived out here for a long time; I don’t want to have an area called Crimebourne.”
She is unfazed by predictions that Labor, based on state-wide polling that puts the Andrews government ahead in two-party preferred terms of 54-46, is likely to retain the seat.
“This is very winnable,” Hermans says. “I would not be fighting so hard for the people if I didn’t believe it was.”
Hermans said the Coalition would match Labor’s commitment to duplicate the train line from Dandenong to Cranbourne but would do so after extending the train line in the next four years to add two new stations at Cranbourne East and Clyde. Labor has pledged money to plan the extension but not yet the extension itself.
Richards is also emphasising the train line, saying Labor’s proposal will have trains arriving every 10 minutes instead of every 20. She has also been focusing on health, with Labor promising to upgrade the local Monash community health clinic to a community hospital, meaning it would stay open past 5pm.
She says she is taking the campaign a day at a time.
“It’s not a sense of whether I’m confident or not, it’s just a matter of continuing to talk to people about different policy options,” she says.
But at this booth, among volunteers all sweating in heavy party-distributed shirts, political differences are set aside for a sense of common purpose.
A volunteer for Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party hands out jelly snakes, and a Liberal volunteer has put himself in charge of ensuring everyone has enough water to drink on this 30C afternoon.
“It’s very collegial,” says Greens candidate Jake Tilton.
Later, Nicole Lee, an independent candidate for the upper house seat of South East Metropolitan, steps in to distribute how-to-vote cards for the lower house candidate for the Transport Matters party, Dr Tarlochan Singh, while he takes a brief pause to talk to Guardian Australia.
“Dr Singh, do you want me to hand out yours along with mine?” Lee asks.
Lee is a domestic violence survivor. She is campaigning with running mate Tarang Chawla, whose 23-year-old sister was murdered by her husband in 2015.
“We are running to put survivors of violence at the centre of the domestic violence reforms, and the only way to do that is from the upper house,” she says.
Singh is concerned about decentralisation as a way to reduce congestion. He has preferenced Hermans third, after independent Norman Fosberry, and placed Richards in the last spot despite Labor’s extensive state-wide public transport commitments.
Fosberry is supremely confident. His business, Desi Burgers & Co, opened in the Cranbourne park shopping centre last year but he does not live locally.
“We need a change,” he says. “It is like the Wentworth byelection and the independents came in.”
