How to take a seat off an incumbent: knock on 90,000 doors

Eight months ago, before election fever stole every headline, a voter in the Brisbane seat of Griffith answered a knock on the door. It was Greens candidate Max Chandler-Mather asking for support. 

That door-knock points to the story that unfolded in Griffith last weekend. The Greens’ stellar success in Griffith and two other seats — Ryan and Brisbane — wasn’t just part of a green hue colouring inner-city seats. In Griffith, where the ALP’s Terri Butler conceded defeat on Sunday, it came down to damn hard work.

Almost 90,000 homes were door-knocked by Chandler-Mather and his huge crew of young volunteers; more than 30,000 conversations were held with voters in their own homes.

This is a seat that hugs Brisbane’s inner south, held by ALP luminary Ben Humphreys for almost 20 years and more recently by former prime minister Kevin Rudd. In recent years it’s become flash, with million-dollar homes up for sale each weekend. 

The Liberals were never a show. And Labor’s Terri Butler, despite being opposition environment spokeswoman, was just not as visible as her young Green opponent.

This is a seat Labor never expected to lose. It was as safe as houses, their strategists told journalists. Terri Butler is safe. Look elsewhere. Pollsters thought the same — and Griffith remained firmly slotted in the “safe Labor” column.

But that never washed with locals, who tell a different story. It’s just that no one was listening to them, or noticing the front yards where Greens bunting dwarfed that of the bigger parties.

A couple of weeks ago, one voter received her first correspondence from Terri Butler — a text to her mobile phone but addressed to the woman’s husband. That changed her vote from Labor to the Greens.
Another tells of her 18-year-old, a first-time voter who was almost “harassed” by the Greens, desperate for her vote. She never heard a peep from either Labor or Liberal and rewarded that on election day too.
Labor wasn’t working hard enough — at least visibly — for their vote. “I’ve never, ever seen Terri Butler,” one local says. “Few can say that about that Max guy.”

The Greens may end up with the seats of Griffith, Ryan and Brisbane, but even if the party fails to take that hat-trick, its vote across those three Brisbane electorates will be one of the big takeaways from the election.

It would be easy but lazy to nominate the “greening” of our inner-city suburbs as the reason. That’s helped, but there’s more to the story than that. 

In Ryan, Elizabeth Watson-Brown knocked LNP incumbent Julian Simmonds off his parliamentary perch. Ask voters there, before and after the election, and they’ll tell you about the LNP using community endorsements as part of a political campaign. Don’t take us for granted, they say.

In the seat of Brisbane, the story only varies slightly. Labor thought its candidate, Deloitte director Madonna Jarrett, had this seat in the bag. Indeed, as Labor strategists tried to dampen expectations of big wins in Queensland this seat was nominated as the first — and perhaps only — scalp the party would take from the LNP. But that too underestimated hard-working and savvy young Greens opponent Stephen Bates, who promised simply that he would fight like hell for those he served.

The lesson here is for pollsters and politicians alike. Local views count, perhaps more than they ever have. And communities shouldn’t be seen as cookie-cutter versions of each other. 

Yes, these suburbs have developed a green hue in recent years. But that wasn’t enough to explain the historic numbers the Greens achieved on Saturday night.

That came down to working hard, and remembering that the job of politicians isn’t just about dressing up in Parliament. It’s about visibly serving the voters back home.