In this special series, Crikey teams up with the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism to delve into the heart of federal marginal seat Chisholm, in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne, to see what people are thinking about in the lead-up to the election. Read more in the series here.
As a new father and proprietor of a domestic building company, and as someone who has been chafing against political responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mount Waverley resident Matthew Zervides says politics has lately become a whole lot more interesting, and personal.
It wasn’t always so. “To be honest, I haven’t been really aware [about politics] until the pandemic. I never really cared until it affected me,” he says.
“Now I’m taking a bit more of an interest.”
When Zervides, 34, first voted in a federal election, he was a 19-year-old apprentice living with his parents in Mount Waverley. It was 2007, and he backed Chisholm’s long-serving Labor incumbent Anna Burke, helping a Rudd-led Labor government oust then prime minister John Howard. The “Kevin07” campaign secured Labor the biggest two-party-preferred swing since the 1970s, with the electorate of Chisholm proving to be a bellwether.
Zervides then switched camps, voting for the Coalition in every election since 2007. This time around, as polling day looms again, he’s experiencing another powerful shift in political allegiance. After the past two years of COVID-related lockdowns, he feels increasingly disenfranchised by the two major parties.
He’s disappointed with the performance of the Coalition government on COVID, mostly around its ineffectiveness against state-enforced restrictions. But ask Zervides about Labor’s chances of ever earning his vote again, and he doesn’t mess about.
“Even if I had an inkling to vote federally for Labor, I would never, just because of Dan Andrews … I’m so disgusted by the way we have been governed [in Victoria] the past four years.
“I don’t want anybody to have the authority to restrict my movement. Like I don’t think anybody has the right to lock me in my home, or put me in a curfew”.
He is no anti-vaxxer, he says. He’s got a seven-week-old daughter and is fully vaccinated against COVID. His frustration stems from having to implement vaccine mandates in his own business, which he believes turned “the community against themselves”.
Zervides says at this point he is undecided about who he will be voting for, but is leaning towards the Liberal Democratic Party candidate in Chisholm, Ethelyn King. The party is running on an anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine mandate platform, detailed in their “Freedom Manifesto”.
Asked about federal issues that might make a difference to how he votes, it’s hard to get past Zervides’ responses to the pandemic restrictions.
“My family are refugees … My dad came from Cyprus. He was 14 years old when the country was invaded. That’s the only other time in his life where he’s been under a curfew.”
