It’s only 18km or so from Cromer Golf Club to Dunbar Park in Avalon on Sydney’s northern beaches, but you could have measured the distance in light years. Two election events in Mackellar kicking off at 2pm on a rare sunny Sunday — afternoon tea with Liberal Jason Falinski at the club, or “Election Beats” in the park with independent Dr Sophie Scamps.
You decide, Mackellar.
Someone on Twitter suggested it was a battle of the dress codes. “Twinset, pearls and bare feet should cover it.” A few said maybe I should call on “Bronnie’s helicopter”.
I managed to get to both shows, but only just.
Mackellar incumbent Falinski launched his campaign at Cromer with 250 die-hard supporters, two senators, a brace of senior NSW pollies and an afternoon tea of mini quiches, sausage rolls, free beer, wine and cuppas.
It’s the same way it’s been done for decades here on the beaches at a surf club or RSL. Competent speeches to quiet applause and a few cheers.
Meanwhile, independent Scamps was centre stage in Avalon with headliner bands Lime Cordiale, Angus and Julia Stone, and local support act Sons of the East. More than 1500 turned out — groups of teens, a sprinkling of oldies, and mums and dads pushing strollers through grass turned into a quagmire after months of relentless rain.
No “teal” for this part of the world. Jason’s team in navy, Sophie’s supporters in sky blue.
Among the first to arrive at the Cromer Golf Club is Carolyn, who still hasn’t recovered from the loss of Warringah to an independent in 2019.
Liberal helpings
“I call her ‘Zali do-nothing’,” Carolyn says. “We miss Tony so much. When he was in the fire brigade, which he still is, he was just one of the boys. He’d get in there, really hands on. Then Zali arrives talking ‘climate change’ with a fuel-guzzler car…”
Carolyn says that when she was young she used to go and watch the spectacle of the bushfires. Nothing’s changed that much. She’s been to China and notes how many coal-fired power stations they have. “Australia is only, like, 1% of pollution. There are more important things.”
Max Tobin is decked out in Falinski merch. He’s 19 and already a veteran of university student Liberal politics in uni and has been volunteering with Jason for some months now.
“I think a lot of young people are scared to say they support the Liberal Party, but I don’t think people like Jason, like Tim Wilson, Trent Zimmerman, are the traditional, conservative Liberal Party.”
He sees them as the future. Different.
“They’re more socially progressive.” Drivers of net zero, same sex marriage, he says, and that’s why it’s “counter productive” for independents to be running against them. “We’ve got great policies, a great message, and I don’t think we can be beaten on that.”
I raise the nomination of Katherine Deves next door in Warringah with David Hand, member of the Liberal Party NSW council. Could it affect votes here in Mackellar?
He’s emphatic. “Absolutely. I believe that the trans issue — biological men playing in women’s sport — is a big sleeper issue across Australia and will win votes everywhere.”
“The rabid trans lobby will shout you down, call you all sorts of names, call you evil. So you don’t say anything, you don’t talk about it. But then on polling day you go in and you vote,” says Hand.
It seems to be a theme here this afternoon. Conservative voices silenced. Too frightened to say their piece.
Up first with the formalities is Victorian Senator Jane Hume, who lauds Falinski for his brain “the size of a planet”. The thing she likes most about him? “He argues, he argues with me, ALL the time. I don’t think I’ve put a policy out there that Jason hasn’t shot down in a heartbeat, built back up again, reframed and moved forward.”
This, she asserts, is something that simply will not happen with independents who lack a party room to test and refine their ideas. “They have the hubris to think they know best.”
When Jason Falinski steps up, he’s all too aware of what’s happening up the road a bit.
“I have to confess that I woke up this morning and thought I’d be speaking to an empty room … mostly because my opponent is having a rock concert at Avalon, and I know how many of you are hipsters.” This zinger gets laughs from the older crowd.
“If things get really bad we’ll get Braggy [NSW Senator Andrew Bragg] on his banjo. Hopefully it won’t come to that [pause] … it’s a ukulele, apparently.
“It’s a choice between freedom and more government control. Big government means disempowerment for individuals, societies and communities.”
And with a rhetorical flourish about a “long, twilight struggle” and, weirdly, the “summoning of trumpets”, it’s over.
Time for piccies and that arvo tea.
Independent music
A 30-minute drive on roads around the back way and I’m in Avalon. It’s mayhem. I score a magic carpark spot and it’s like I’ve touched down on another planet.
An excited crowd is pressed to the front of a huge sound stage, singing and clapping along to the final live song. By the time I make it backstage, the MC (comedian and climate activist Dan Ilic) is wrapping up the day, the DJ is on deck and Scamps is on a high.
“These bands have contorted their schedules and flown in from across the country to be here and we even had someone from America fly in as well. It’s been incredible!”
I put to her the mutterings from Falinski’s camp that her campaign is being funded by “dark money”.
“Oh gosh, how crazy! We know exactly where our money’s coming from. We’ve raised, I think, $560,000 from within the community and Climate 200 has over 10,000 donors and has pledged to match fund us.”
She says her concert has broken the mould for campaigning. The aim is to get young people involved. “They’ve been shut out and cut out for so long. It’s their future that’s being created and they deserve to be heard.”
MC Ilic has come across town from his electorate of Wentworth for “the most important election in my lifetime”.
“This is our last chance to get it right on climate change before it gets infinitely harder to get it right again. We are led by fossil fuel companies and we can’t afford that leadership anymore.
“The number of young people here is remarkable, and all wearing Sophie’s shirts. It’s so baffling, right? Climate action is the number-one issue for most Australians right now and it’s the least talked about by the major parties.”
The playground is now packed with kids and their parents before the trip home, and everyone I speak to wants to talk climate change.
Carina’s here with her little ones, aged two and four.
“I’ve never been interested in politics in my life. Now I’m fired up,” she says. “Finally we have someone who’s worth voting for and represents everything we care about in Mackellar. Climate change is something we all worry about for our kids’ future.”
A group of shy teens, at 15 too young to vote, are straggling home. Did they come for the politics or the music?
“A bit of both,” Charlize admits, “but I’m more interested in politics after this.”
Nina’s here to support Sophie: “She’s a good person and a good role model.”
And final word of the day goes to Lucy: “Global heating is bad and we need to do something about it right now!”
With a 13.3% swing needed to take the seat of Mackellar from the conservatives after 73 years, it’s a big ask for the independent.
But there’s no doubt about it: change has already come to this part of the “insular peninsula”.
