Andrew Barr has been around ACT politics for so long that his name has become a kind of byword for the territory government.
Pothole not filled in and grass left unmown? Andrew Barr's fault. School bursting at the seams? Andrew Barr's fault. Light rail costing a fortune? Something to do with that Andrew Barr, no doubt.
He became the ACT's longest-serving chief minister earlier this year. It means the question of when he's going to give it up hangs over the election campaign.
"I think if you ask most 50-, 51-year-olds 'Are you ready to retire?' they'd probably say 'no'," Mr Barr says in an interview in his office. He later adds the idea of retiring at that age is "absurd".
The other leaders who defined the COVID-19 era in Australia are now out to political pasture. But not Andrew Barr.
"In the end, all political careers reach a conclusion. And that is either voters say, 'Thank you very much, time to move on', or, you know, individuals make that call," he says.
"I determined following a period of consultation with colleagues [and] I knew in myself that I wanted to continue as long as I had the support of the team to do so."
Mr Barr's government is 23 years old. Mr Barr, who has been a member of the Assembly for 18 of those years, plays down the "It's time" factor which has formed a key message from the Canberra Liberals. The majority of his parliamentary team are one- or two-term MLAs, he notes.
"You've got to remember that a lot of voters in Canberra have not been here for 23 years, whether they are more recent arrivals from overseas or interstate, or who are young. So those sorts of messages don't resonate that well with that section," he says.
Mr Barr says one of Labor's most effective responses has been to ask which time the community should have voted for the Liberal Party?
"And, you know, people then shake their head at the thought of Alistair Coe or Jeremy Hanson or Zed Seselja having been elected chief minister, if you were to sort of go to the historical counter narrative," he says.
"So, you know, it's not our fault that we've won elections. I mean, we've campaigned hard on the issues that have been relevant to voters. And so we'll continue to remain focused on those things."
Barnacles tend to accumulate after long stints in office. Actions taken in the Deputy Chief Minister's office are being considered by the Integrity Commission. The government had to halt a public service IT project that spent $78 million and achieved hardly anything. A former Canberra Institute of Technology chief executive was the subject of damning corruption findings.
Is the stink around the government on integrity and waste as real as the opposition says it is?
"I think the community can have confidence that there are checks and balances and safeguards, oversight agencies. I mean, all of these issues are extensively debated because we have an Auditor-General, we have an Integrity Commission. We have annual reports, we have estimates, we have a whole range of accountability measures," Mr Barr says.
In tougher economic times, voters tend to take out their frustrations on whichever party has formed the incumbent government.
Mr Barr says Labor's raison d'etre is good, secure jobs. "So I think people understand that's a priority for us and are supportive of the agenda that we've put forward to ensure full employment as best as we can," he says when asked if the economic climate will hurt the current government.
"I do recognise that there are areas where we can help and make a difference. I guess the thing that has been a feature of the political debate has been the extent to which the available resource the ACT government can apply, whether that is targeted or generalised," he says.
Mr Barr says criticism comes no matter how governments offer cost-of-living relief, either because some miss out or others who don't need it receive a benefit.
"Canberra has, on average, higher incomes but not everyone is a beneficiary of that. And so they were the groups we were particularly focused on," he says.
The Canberra Liberals have tried to define the campaign in terms of Mr Barr's poor economic management and a failure to deliver surpluses (while ignoring the Mr Fluffy loan and COVID-19 crisis).
But the Chief Minister defends his record on the budget and says all the constraints of the budget have guided ACT Labor's promises.
"How can they be promising to spend more and raise less revenue? How is that going to improve the budget position," he says of the Liberals.
"And then at the other end of the spectrum, the Greens party, who have sat in the government expenditure review committee, having seemingly ignored all of that and are promising even greater spending than the Liberal Party."
Mr Barr says Canberrans are smart and "they recognise when people are making promises that they just have no capacity to be delivered".
Can Labor and the Greens keep working together, as they have done in a formal partnership since 2012?
"I think a little will depend on the make up of the Assembly. ... We may in this election see a very different form of progressive crossbench elected or we may see some very conservative people elected," Mr Barr says.
"Clearly for us to be able to form a government, the crossbench will need to remain progressive. But there might be different avenues to achieve a pathway to be able to deliver an agenda that we will have taken to the election.
"It's hard to tell at this point exactly how the final seats in the electorates are going to fall. We'll need to wait and see."
And what would be on Mr Barr's to-do list if he returns after the election as chief minister, finding a way to form a government with whoever makes it into the Assembly?
Work would start "almost immediately" on the first budget of the new term, he says, and decisions on tenders would need to be taken, including on the theatre expansion.
"Given the experience I have, we will be able to hit the ground running, knowing exactly what we need to do in order to implement our agenda," he says.
And after securing Labor a record seventh term, will the end of Andrew Barr's long career in territory politics come in the next four years?
"This question is entirely understandable. Look, the commitment you make is for four years," he says.
"I would hope the most convincing answer I can give on that point is the election period, the whole election year is an incredibly demanding, highly engaging, highly scrutinised experience. You have face-to-face conversations with thousands of people. There's the most engagement there is in territory politics in this year.
"You don't go through all of that and then, if you're fortunate enough to form a government on the other side, to just disappear shortly thereafter."
