High-profile backing: Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce with Nationals candidate for Nicholls Sam Birrell and Liberal candidate Steve Brooks in Shepparton.
Photo by
Anna McGuinness
Nationals candidate Sam Birrell is feeling good about his campaign but knows it will be a long week ahead as more and more voters make up their mind.
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After a week coming face to face with voters at pre-poll he’s buoyant but still campaigning hard.
“It has been very positive, the community reaction to me has been positive,” he said.
“They (voters) are positive about what the Nationals have achieved and positive about me as a candidate.”
While many of the issues he entered the campaign fighting on such as water, services and infrastructure remain central to the campaign, cost of living has emerged as a big issue for voters.
“The cost of living concern is something that has happened since the campaign started, it wasn’t there at the start,” he said.
“There’s been an appreciation of what the coalition has done about it and what we are planning to do.”
Team: Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie and Sam Birrell.
Photo by
Murray Silby
“I’ve learned if you connect with people, listen and show understanding of their issues then that gets a really good response from people.”
Mr Birrell said the tight political contest for the seat of Nicholls had been unfairly framed as the result of an independent candidate, but he said the Nationals were always going to fight hard to retain the seat.
“Because the Nationals have delivered a lot there is a heightened expectation, and that is expected, they want me to keep fighting hard for projects,” he said.
Mr Birrell said funding promises for sports stadiums in Shepparton and Yarrawonga, the new Rural Clinical Health School in Shepparton and a wellness hub in Seymour had strengthened his view that delivery was easier as part of a political party.
His campaign has been built around being a “different” kind of National, and he bristles at the notion that honesty and integrity was the sole domain of independents.
“You don’t have to wear an orange shirt to be a paragon of virtue,” he said.
“I’m a community person, I have integrity and honesty and I want to work within a party because I think I can get more things done.
“If the Nationals team comes together to do things that help people’s lives then that helps, it is about delivery and the projects we develop.”
Mr Birrell also argues against the concept that Nicholls needed to be marginal to get better outcomes.
“I don’t see the marginal seat thing being as important as people make out,” he said.
“I see a really good local member as fighting for their community and delivering the message to Canberra — that is more important than being marginal.”
Getting out and about: Sam Birrell in Seymour.
Photo by
Evan Wallace
He has a dim view of the treatment of retiring Nationals MP Damian Drum, especially the depiction of Nicholls as having been neglected.
“I think it has been a good campaign, there have been good ideas put forward by candidates and that is a positive thing, but the denigration of Damian Drum’s achievements and legacy has been disappointing to me personally, but that is politics,” he said.
“I don’t believe the people of Nicholls buy that.”
Mr Birrell acknowledges the prospect of entering parliament in opposition, but it isn’t something he’s contemplating.
“I am working extremely hard to make sure it doesn’t happen because that would be a disaster for the region, and a disaster for the nation,” he said.
“I’ll be standing on pre-poll a lot over the next week talking to voters.”
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