2 weeks Ago By Charlotte Grieve, Rachael Dexter, Clay Lucas, Cara Waters
With less than three weeks until election day, campaigning intensified in Wills over the weekend, with some candidates – though not the sitting MP – attending a forum in Fawkner, the seat’s poorest suburb. Hot topics included poverty and food access, the poor performance of local public high schools, the need to upgrade the Upfield train line, the environment, violence against women, and the situation in Gaza. Present were the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam, Socialist Alliance candidate Sue Bolton, a Fusion party representative as their candidate couldn’t make it, and One Nation’s Bruce Stevens.
Australian Greens candidate Samantha Ratnam. Credit: Luis Ascui Forum organisers noted that Labor MP Peter Khalil did not attend and that Liberal candidate Jeff Kidney did not respond to their invitation. The Legalise Cannabis Party was an apology but supplied a statement that was read out.
While Khalil wasn’t at the forum, he was still busy, announcing $3.3 million to restore Brunswick’s historic Gillon Oval, including repairs to the dilapidated grandstand and lighting upgrades to allow night games at the oval. Khalil was out again on Sunday, with $3.
7 million to rebuild the Inner Circle Linear Park, particularly its cycling and walking path, in two of the seat’s most affluent suburbs, North Fitzroy and Princes Hill. Once a railway line, the park was converted by Labor in 1992 into a green space with a cycle path now used by 3000 riders daily. Khalil was reluctant to be drawn on whether the funding stood even if Labor lost Wills to the Greens.
“A re-elected Labor government is going to deliver on its promises like we did in the first term.” He said the rebuilt park would “integrate play and meeting spaces into the existing environment”. Yarra’s Socialist mayor Stephen Jolly warmly welcomed the federal Labor funding, and said it would resolve key issues with the park and its paths.
“The problem with the trail as it is, is that bicycles speed down here, and people who are walking or pushing prams share it. So what we’re gonna have is two separated lanes: one dedicated for bikes and one for pedestrians,” he said. Asked if it was an appropriate way to spend money, given it was already a well-functioning bike lane, Jolly said: “They’re spending $360 billion on nuclear submarines we will probably never get anyway, so a few million dollars on something people will actually use seems money well spent.
” “As mayor, I love elections. Any politician, no matter what their political colour is, if they want to come into Yarra and get votes, they’re gonna have to show the color of their money to the locals.” Well, it was all go in the east over the unseasonably sunny weekend that was.
Amelia Hamer had a jam-packed Saturday morning, hosting three supermarket meet-and-greets in Camberwell, Balwyn and Balwyn North. She wasn’t alone with shadow treasurer Angus Taylor along for the ride, as was a very peppy Easter bunny rocking an Amelia-branded T-shirt and badge. Even the bunny’s on message.
Taylor’s been a regular fixture in Hamer’s campaign – you may remember the telephone town hall she joined with him instead of attending that candidates forum run by local environmental group Lighter Footprints a few weeks ago . Meanwhile, Hamer’s new HQ at Camberwell Junction (a former Country Road store, no less) is up and running, wrapped in more than 200 metres of window signage. On Saturday, more than 50 volunteers and supporters turned out for a big group photo with Hamer, the bunny, and some heavyweight Liberals: Jeff Kennett and former Hawthorn MP John Pesutto.
According to Hamer’s team, she had 170 volunteers out across 43 locations on Saturday, but it hasn’t all been smiles. Hamer’s advisers say that Hamer’s campaign signs were defaced on Friday night, slashed and graffitied across multiple suburbs including Malvern, Armadale and Toorak. One home in Toorak hosting a Liberal sign was even egged.
Her Malvern campaign office window was also hit with black spray-painted graffiti, including a hammer and sickle symbol—something campaign volunteers called “frightening” and “a disgrace”. Private CCTV footage captured between 2am and 3am Saturday shows more signs being tagged with slogans like “Capitalists will die”, “I get off on poor suffering” and “communism will win”. One of the vandalised signs had the Liberal slogan “Get Australia back on track” altered to read: “Get land back to natives.
” This latest incident follows earlier reports of slashed Liberal signs in Toorak back in March . Over in teal territory, Monique Ryan’s campaign was on a doorknock blitz: 300 volunteers out and about, knocking on 4000 doors across the electorate over the weekend, according to her advisers. Ryan herself gave a pep talk at Lumley Gardens in Prahran on Saturday, before making appearing on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday morning.
(More on that later.) It wasn’t just the frontrunners pounding the pavement in the sun. Labor’s 22-year-old candidate, Clive Crosby, launched his campaign on Sunday at the Camberwell Community Centre on Fairholm Grove.
On the guest list were state upper house MPs Ryan Batchelor and John Berger, plus former Higgins MP Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah, whose old seat has been partially absorbed into Kooyong. She’s now running for the Senate. Crosby also spent part of Saturday out and about at local shopping strips, chatting to voters.
Greens candidate Jackie Carter was doorknocking on Sunday too. In Kooyong, the campaigning never sleeps. Hello and welcome to week three of our hot seats blog where we’re taking a close look at the ground campaign in key Victorian seats in the federal election.
This week we have Cara Waters looking at Goldstein, Clay Lucas in Wills, Charlotte Grieve in Bruce and Rachael Dexter in Kooyong. As we have in the first fortnight, we will also keep an eye out on other seats for interesting snippets. We have had some terrific feedback from readers so please do get in touch with the reporters with anything you’ve seen out on the streets.
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