It’s an issue that most Australians will have overlooked, but if Labor manages to rule with a majority, it may be reduced to … potholes. Liberal candidate for Gilmore, Andrew Constance, admitted it on election night when he was interviewed on the ABC.
“I made my Labor opponents agree with everything I’ve done,” he said of his campaign on the south coast. “It wouldn’t matter if it’s filling up, you know, rebuilding roads,” he said, correcting himself, “… to the Nowra ring road.”
Andrew Constance is in a photo-finish with the South Coast seat. Credit: James Brickwood
Gilmore has proven to be the tightest election contest in the country. The count is on the edge of the knife. Constance, a former Bega state MP, has rejected the national trend of reporting a 2.7 per cent change to the Liberals and led Labor MP Fiona Phillips on Sunday, but only by 214 votes. Some ballot boxes have registered a dead heat in the preferences.
Should Labor retain their seats, Anthony Albanese will have a majority in Canberra. If Constance wins, the balance of power in Parliament may be in the hands of the Greens and the Independents. It’s a fascinating twist, a bit of Monty Python, for this election.
I know the potholes in question, a byproduct of the recent rain. Phillips calls them “craters” and threatens to ruin the day of any unsuspecting driver who finds them. They are so deep and so violent that fed up locals have started sending car repair bills to Shoalhaven City Hall. Just one rainy April morning, a particularly nasty hole dropped the tires of half a dozen cars.
Memes abound on your local Facebook page. “In New Zealand, they drive on the left; in Australia, we drive for what we have left, ”says one. “They can close our beaches … but they can’t close our potholes,” says another, above an image of a woman bathing in the middle of the bitumen.
Knowing that was the problem everyone was talking about, Constance had Scott Morrison go to Gilmore on the first day of the campaign to stand by his side and promise him $ 40 million to fix the potholes, I mean, “rebuild the roads “and improve an intersection. . It was a promise that Phillips quickly fulfilled.
Gilmore’s vote is perhaps a reminder that local issues, especially in regional areas, count for all the major national issues at stake during the election — the economy, national security, gender equality. On the south coast, voters were concerned about roads, yes, but also about access to health care and the scarcity of affordable housing, and both sides acknowledged this.