“”There is no comfort for Jim in his 4.5 per cent; Eden-Monaro always goes with government.”
These are the confident words of the Liberal candidate Rob de Fegely. ÿ(subs: first e has an acute accent bottom left to top right)
For nearly a year he has crossed the electorate in his Pajero, talking to party members to get pre-selected and more recently to voters.
Paul Keating’s tactics on the election timing have hit their mark. Challenging candidates like de Fegely have to juggle work commitments with electoral ones, unlike the MPs they are challenging. While the big-picture watchers look at the effect on television advertising bookings and the machine behind the Coalition’s national campaign, the uncertainty over the date has had a more profound effect at the local level. De Fegely went back to work on Thursday after taking annual leave to criss-cross the electorate. Some of that work will get stale if the election is delayed much longer.
He has to pay for his own petrol, unlike the sitting Member. He has to rely on volunteers, unlike the sitting Member. And unlike the sitting Member he has to ring first before he can go into hospitals, nursing homes and the like. This local-level advantage to the Government is often over-looked.
“”But to be fair to Jim,” he says, “”he has to do all the non-campaigning electoral and parliamentary work at the same time.”
(Snow attended all sitting days in 1992.)
De Fegely lived and worked in Bombala for eight years to 1988. He is a forestry graduate from ANU and wears the uniform: elastic-siders, moleskins, blue cotton shirt and conservative tie. Young, blond with blue eyes, he has played rugby for Cooma and rules for Pambula. That’s the Eden-Monaro diversity again: Aussie rules near the Victoria border and union and league elsewhere; skiing in the Snowies and surfing on the coast.
“”I’m just trying to sell myself as an ordinary fella,” he says. “”You know, a bloke working on the road told me, “It’s good to see a young bloke who’s not a solicitor or a big businessman having a go.’#”
He’s happy with Fightback.
“”I’ve got something to sell,” he said. “”No-one’s said to me, what if Hewson cuts public servants in Canberra, what about my business. More are saying, we have to change the way we do things.”
His written material says: “”Encouraging individual excellence is paramount but it is also important to realise that the synergy of the combined effort can achieve far more than the individual. And this teamwork ethic translates from the global community through to the family unit.”
What difference will his campaign make? What if, hypothetically, he didn’t do any campaigning at all, but just put his name and party on the ballot paper. How much difference would it make?
“”Not as much as Jim; about 2 per cent.”
Another realist.
It is a diverse electorate. De Fegely is more comfortable in the farming and foresting south than in the retirement belt on the coast.
He thinks the national issues will decide it. Income in the electorate is lower than the national average, and unemployment is much higher.
The seat is between de Fegely and Snow. The Nationals are putting up Tom Barry (who has been an unsuccessful state candidate, but Snow has a good word about his debating skills), and Norm Sanders, former Democrat senator for Tasmania, is standing as a Green Independent.
Sanders says he will give preferences to the Liberals, but Snow says greens are intelligent voters and will ignore the advice as cynical.
Barry, a Jindabyne farmer and small businessman, says he can win the seat because the Nationals’ Peter Cochran “”has done such a good job” in the state seat and because of his local knowledge.
Barry is not completely comfortable with Fightback. He doesn’t want the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation sold off if it will cause harsh economic and social trauma. Fightback says it will be sold. How and when will depend upon the equity markets; it makes no mention of social trauma.