For Inside Story, Natasha Cica talked to the main candidates in a seat that might hold a surprise for Labor and the Coalition. Here’s a taste…
MIDWAY through this election campaign, Hobart is the only Australian capital city that’s been more or less ignored by Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. Labor’s Duncan Kerr has held Denison – which takes in most of the metropolitan area – for almost a quarter of a century, and with a comfy margin of 15 per cent it looks about as safe as any seat can be in contemporary Australia. But there’s rising speculation that, with Kerr’s departure at this election, Denison’s not quite the done Labor deal many assume.
Kerr’s anointed successor is Jonathan Jackson, a thirty-six-year-old accountant. Born in Hobart and educated at the expensive Friends’ School, he’s the son of retired state Labor minister Judy Jackson. Although he was preselected ahead of some talent not enjoying all these advantages, and has been promoted heavily in recent months by better-known Labor faces, in person Jackson isn’t the hack you might expect, and there’s more to him than autocue slogans like “moving forward.” Important as that direction is for Jackson – by improving educational and smart, sustainable employment opportunities in a state that’s not (yet) renowned for leading on either front – his evident passion is social justice. “The fundamental thing is to give Tasmanians an equal opportunity in life, the people who don’t have a voice in society, and what you can do as an effective representative is give people a voice,” he tells me, “You need to stick to that, and remember you’re there to serve the people in their best interests – and that means you need to listen, and fight for what’s right.”
For starters, that means communicating with some diverse sub-constituencies, with potentially competing priorities. The electorate stretches along the Derwent River and wraps around Mount Wellington. It runs from the generally socioeconomically disadvantaged northern precinct of Glenorchy (traditionally Labor – heavy on “blue collar” manufacturing work, and featuring high levels of dependence on welfare and public housing and noticeable ethnic diversity compared with wider Tasmania). It proceeds through Hobart’s inner suburbs (Denison’s latte belt, in a city unusually dependent on government employment and stacked with members of the “creative class,” and with the strongest Greens support base in the nation). And then it takes in Hobart’s wealthier southern suburbs (most strongly Liberal and business-focused) and folds in the sparsely populated peri-urban communities on the periphery.
Isn’t connecting with all that difficult – never mind finding commonalities and, ah, moving forward? Not according to Jackson, who returned to live in Hobart after professional stints in Utrecht, London and Shanghai. “I like campaigning, I really enjoy the peacefulness of doorknocking and meeting people. You listen to people’s issues and concerns, in their environment. It’s a real privilege to knock on someone’s door and ask them how they’re feeling, and there’s no better way of finding out.” He cites early inspiration. “My grandmother was a strong influence on me as a young person – my mother too, who grew up in Glenorchy, and my father, who was a doctor and spent a lot of time away from home helping people. I see them all as very kind people who are very giving. My grandmother, who was a life member of the Labor Party, always volunteered – she never had a lot of paid work, but she did that until the day she couldn’t catch a bus anymore.” But why the Labor Party, beyond this pedigree? Essentially, it’s because of the party’s roots in a quest for fairness for workers, “and the fact is if you don’t have fairness in the workplace, as a society there’s not equality. Equality in a workplace resonates outside.”
For old-style class warriors, it may be a strike against Jackson that he lives in Taroona, one of those affluent southern suburbs. But so does the Liberal candidate for Denison, Cameron Simpkins, a forty-something former Australian army major. Since leaving the Australian Defence Force he’s worked in Cairns, Darwin, Sydney and Karratha – in a warehouse and a slipway, in IT project management, human resources and cable TV installation, and in a lobbying role securing funding for remote Indigenous communities. He was born in Canberra, where his father attended Duntroon, footsteps in which he would eventually follow. An early stint in primary school in Hobart when the family was posted to Anglesea Barracks left a happy impression on Simpkins, so when he and his wife sat down a couple of years ago to choose the place they really wanted to live, Tasmania was in the mix. Hobart won over Perth, and they relocated there two years ago, where he now works as a bank manager.
Simpkins sees Hobart as the best fit for what he calls their “values set.” “I have two young children, and I worry about the society that we are creating for them,” he tells me. “I watch the television and read the papers, and I hear the platitudes coming out of politicians’ mouths, on all sides of politics, right across the spectrum, and I get angry at that. And I thought, well, I could just get angry – or I could see if I could make a difference.” The impact he wants to make isn’t exactly like Jackson’s, of course. “Duncan Kerr has held this seat for twenty-three years, and people have been loyal to this man and that party. Then you go to Glenorchy, to Moonah and Claremont, even the city – and after all that loyalty, you’ve got every right to be saying, where’s the money?” Simpkins says. “If I can win this seat, whichever party wins in Canberra will drop money into the electorate, to win the seat back. If I get voted out in three years’ time, that’s okay. I will have achieved my aim.”
Simpkins also seems squarely on Jackson’s broader social-justice page. He talks a lot about fairness, and this week publicly supported gay marriage. His campaign office is in Hobart’s northern suburbs, and it will stay there if he wins, because “the people that need to see a politician in this electorate are Glenorchy, Moonah and Claremont people. You need to be close to the people. You look at where Duncan’s office is in the CBD, he’s too far away, and it’s intimidating in that building. If I can be half as good as Michael Hodgman, as a servant of the people, then I will be an okay politician.” (Hodgman was Kerr’s Liberal predecessor in Denison, from 1975 to 1987, and a minister in the Fraser administration. Known as the “Mouth from the South,” he spoke out in favour of East Timor, water fluoridation, daylight saving and even saving Lake Pedder, when none of that was popular.) Simpkins continues, “I’m a small-l liberal, very much a moderate. If you want to see change in the party, you need more moderates like me. One of my fundamental beliefs is in the freedom of the individual. That’s why I’m standing for the Liberal Party, because Labor’s all about the collective movement. I have no issue with the trade union movement, as such, I’m talking about the party culture.”
Simpkins freely acknowledges that winning is “a really long shot, I’d only just creep over the line.” The same has to be said for the Greens’ Geoff Couser, even though…
Read the full article on Inside Story: HERE
