Out the back of the Diddy sporting club in Lane Cove, the Bennelong MP, Jerome Laxale, is hyping up his volunteers to go door-knocking in the rain.
“Let’s make history!” he says to an enthusiastic group of about a dozen.
It’s 3pm on a Thursday afternoon, the club is fairly quiet and the volunteers – young and old – are not dressed for the weather. From a hot sweltering day, the rain has come unexpectedly.
Laxale knows he’s up against it, battling not only the elements but fighting history to become the first Labor member to retain the seat. A redistribution has made it even harder, giving the Liberals a tiny notional advantage of 0.04% compared with Laxale’s 2022 margin of 1% under the previous boundaries.
If there’s a word to describe Bennelong, which hugs the northern bank of the Parramatta River from redbrick homes of Eastwood to the sandstone manors of Greenwich, it’s aspirational – the Coalition’s traditional bread and butter. The Liberals had lost it only once before 2022, the famous defeat of John Howard by Maxine McKew in Labor’s 2007 landslide.
There are a few similar seats that the Liberals are desperate to claw back, including Chisholm in Melbourne. It’s also highly aspirational, and the Coalition is increasingly confident. Both seats have highly educated and very diverse populations, including significant Chinese communities.
Redbridge Polling Group’s Kos Samaras says they are at the “pointy end” of where the Coalition will need gains.
“They’re two seats that the Coalition would have squarely in their column as [hopeful] gains at the upcoming election, there’s no doubt about that,” he says.
‘You can feel it in the air’
In his gee-up to his volunteers, Laxale lays out the top issues to sell to locals, starting with healthcare. He’s got a petition to add an urgent care clinic for the area, and believes, as a key issue in a cost-of-living crisis, it’s a winner.
“It feeds into [the] cost of living … They’ve been really well received, so healthcare is really important and that’s what we’ll doorknock about today, to get people to sign our petition and get a second one open,” Laxale says.
When Labor later announces a further 50 clinics around the country, Bennelong misses out – although there is one for Chatswood, just across the electorate boundary in Bradfield.
On whether the public is buying the government’s message on economic management, Laxale points to the recent interest rate cut.
“It’s not going to fix every problem, but it shows our back-to-back budget surpluses, our economic management, that we’re on target to get the soft landing that our family budgets need.”
Lane Cove is a crucial new section of Bennelong, added after the abolition of North Sydney – formerly Liberal heartland but won in 2022 by the teal independent Kylea Tink.
Lane Cove’s mayor, independent Merri Southwood, tells us the two men vying to win the seat have been spending a lot of time trying to woo voters in the area.
“You can feel it in the air … the presence has been palpable. I think from weeks within the redistribution there was a constant wish of the two [major party] candidates to be at council events,” Southwood says.
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She says she “doesn’t blame them” for wanting to be present in the “great unknown area”, but the attention became so intense she had to propose a motion (successfully) to stop political campaigning at council events.
At Lane Cove plaza, we meet a mothers’ group, chatting and trying to stop their toddlers from running away. One says she’s “frustrated” there is no independent candidate in Bennelong, having previously supported Tink, and tells us her main priorities are health, disability support, childcare and climate.
“There’s no difference,” she says, between the two major parties on those issues, despite Labor’s focus on Medicare and the NDIS, but all the women seem somewhat reluctant to support Peter Dutton.
The key question for Laxale is whether traditional Liberal voters who voted for Tink in North Sydney will take a further step all the way to Labor in Bennelong. His campaign seems to think so. And his messaging here focuses more prominently on climate action, claiming the government has made “huge progress”.
‘You speak our language’
On the opposite side of the electorate the Liberal candidate, Scott Yung, is on the hustings in Eastwood Plaza.
Eastwood has a large population of Chinese Australians, and the main plaza is bustling with family-run restaurants, local grocers and cafes. Unsurprisingly, small business prosperity and the economy are key concerns.
A huge billboard of Yung looms at the Top Ryde overpass, near a popular shopping centre, and numerous posters dot the electorate. It’s clear Yung is putting plenty of money into making himself known.
Labor has argued he is not a local, since he previously ran in the state seat of Kogarah, although he now lives in Bennelong. Having been endorsed as a candidate for more than a year, he is keen to stress local issues – even those that are not the responsibility of the federal government.
“For young Australians the opportunity to purchase their home is out of reach,” he says.
“Here traffic congestion, improving local infrastructure such as carparks and transport is a big challenge.”
Yung is sharply dressed in a suit, with a volunteer in a blue Liberal T-shirt, and surrounded by at least half a dozen of his posters. He’s met at first with a slightly frosty reception by busy passersby who are hoping to avoid a political pitch.
But as soon as he approaches a Chinese family speaking in Cantonese, you can see them physically relax and engage. Suddenly they are chuckling together and they take a few pamphlets from Yung and his volunteer. They mention Howard, the former prime minister who held the seat for more than three decades.
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He says the family told him, “we’re going to vote for you because you speak our language”.
The Liberal senator Maria Kovacic, who ran for the neighbouring seat of Paramatta in 2022 and has spent time campaigning with Yung, says cost of living is the message that has resonated most, but it will be up to Yung to personally appeal to voters.
“This will be won on the ground seat by seat, how they [candidates] engage on the ground with voters, it will be critical.”
Yung speaks Cantonese, Mandarin and Shanghainese – all pretty fluently. He acknowledges it helps connect with voters, particularly older members of the Chinese community.
“My grandma doesn’t speak much English even though she’s been here for 25 years now, so I think it’s always very helpful when you’re able to communicate in a different language. In saying that, the same message is being shared.”
It’s an advantage he needs, after the negative reaction among many in the diaspora community to the Morrison government’s approach to China, including bellicose rhetoric from Peter Dutton.
Hugh Lee, a long time resident, community leader and now head of the Australian Asian Association of Bennelong, says while some have forgiven or forgotten the Liberal party’s language, others will be watching the opposition leader closely.
“I think Peter Dutton learned from the last election … but we will see what he [does], rather than what he says.”
Yung says “we’ll see on polling day” how the Chinese community votes, but he believes Dutton is hoping to improve relations with China.
“A party should always recognise and always learn from where we can improve on.”
He points out that while foreign policy is important, like all other parts of the Bennelong community, there is not one singular issue on voters’ minds.
“A lot of people here who run their small businesses care about the trade relationship, and also care about a strong economy,” he says.
A senior Liberal source says about 60% of Chinese Australians in Bennelong voted Liberal before Covid. They believe that fell as low as 20% in 2022, but has returned to about 40%.
Courting Chisholm
The redistribution in Victoria that abolished the seat of Higgins cut Labor’s margin in Chisholm from 6.4% to a notional 3.3%. The Liberals are increasingly confident of being able to reclaim the seat and the sitting member, Carina Garland, knows the stakes are high.
She says she and her team doorknocked and called more than 10,000 constituents in a single week in February.
Garland is up against the former Higgins MP Katie Allen, who lost to Labor’s Michelle Ananda-Rajah in 2022.
Allen is a moderate and has some local recognition.
Garland says her constituents have been giving her positive feedback but concedes people are still frustrated by the cost-of-living crisis.
“I think health and education, as expressions of where people want to see more cost-of-living relief, are really clearly coming through,” Garland says.
Liberal members say frustrations with the Labor state government will play in their favour.
As in Bennelong, the Chinese community is a key focus of campaigning. Both Garland and Allen have been engaging heavily through WeChat, where Liberal colleagues say Allen has gained strong traction.
Both Dutton and Anthony Albanese visited Bennelong and Chisholm during lunar new year festivities earlier this year, illustrating how seriously the community is being courted by both sides.
In the eastern Melbourne suburb of Box Hill – which now moves over the border from Chisholm to Menzies after the redistribution – Dutton promised $250,000 to support lunar new year over the next five years. At the event, he said he wanted “to celebrate a connection between our two great nations” and that the future of the relationship between China and Australia was “brighter than it’s ever been”.
But Garland believes the community still harbours some apprehension over the Liberals’ language on China.
“I don’t think people have forgotten the way they were made to feel.”
