By Cloe Read
Greens Senate candidate Penny Allman-Payne set to take on regional Queensland.
Red is the soil and blue the endless sky over the heart of Queensland’s coal country, but a change of colour could be on the wind.
It’s a region, politicians say, that holds elections in a vice-like grip, firm as the handshakes among its stolid industrial workforce and conservative voting base.
Queensland Greens Senate candidate Penny Allman-Payne.
But what about progressive voices in the north?
At a federal level, there are none.
And Penny Allman-Payne doesn’t bat an eye when she says no one stands up for northern Queenslanders disenfranchised by distance, left disillusioned and downtrodden.
The workers. The disadvantaged children. Teachers at the brink.
As a public school teacher of 30 years, now based in Gladstone, the lead Senate candidate for the Greens talks of children living out of sheds with no power and electricity.
Day after day, depressed children arrive at school hungry, anxiety weighing more heavily than schoolbags.
Allman-Payne’s daughter couldn’t get the maternity care she needed in Gladstone, so had to fly to Brisbane every month.
The disparity is clear, the political aspirant says, shaking her head as she sits at a wooden table outside the Greens office in the inner Brisbane suburb of Milton.
Days earlier, Allman-Payne quit her job.
“Smashing the status quo has always been tough but it’s worth doing.”
With Prime Minister Scott Morrison expected to call the federal election any day now, Allman-Payne has flown to Brisbane as the party machines ready themselves to roll into motion.
But the idea of a Greens senator elected in a resource-reliant region raises eyebrows.
Traditionalist working-class populaces typically relate to people like the brash Pauline Hanson, long since removed from her humble days of cooking fish and chips yet still “calling it how it is”, her One Nation party promising a “commonsense” approach to government.
There’s also the Katter’s Australian Party, with father-and-son leaders Bob and Robbie Katter respected for their support of regional workers and tough stances on issues such as youth crime.
A United Australia Party billboard on the Bruce Highway near Mackay.Credit:Dominic Lorrimer
And who could overlook the colourful, cashed-up Clive Palmer, whose United Australia Party already dominates advertising online and on TV, his yellow billboards ever-present the further one travels north on the Bruce Highway.
Palmer took credit for helping the Coalition retain government at the 2019 federal poll; this time around he says Australians cannot trust the Liberals, Labor or the Greens, and UAP will preference the major parties last.
Whether it’s Hanson, Katter or Palmer, their policies are often carefully considered nods to national polling over recent years that show Australians don’t trust politicians.
But the Greens are pushing hard for a second Senate seat in Queensland, joining the state’s sole senator from the party, Larissa Waters.
They believe they need a 1.5 per cent swing to win the seat.
“It’s going to be a hard slog, but that’s how its always been, yeah?” Allman-Payne says. “Smashing the status quo has always been tough but it’s worth doing.”
Representation will be one of the biggest issues, she concedes, admitting many Queenslanders are yet to see what a Greens politician looks like in their area.
Griffith University political expert Paul Williams says voters are typically more conservative in the regions but being based outside of Brisbane might help Allman-Payne.
“People from regional Queensland hate Brisbane and they hate Canberra even more.”
“The further north you go, where we’ve got eco-tourism [in places such as Cairns], the Greens tend to do well.
“But environmental progressive candidates don’t do very well in conservative, provincial Queensland.”
However, he says it’s a foregone conclusion that the Greens will pick up that second spot.
“I reckon it will be two Labor, two LNP, one Pauline, one Green.
“Really, the race is between Hanson, Palmer and Campbell Newman of the Liberal Democrats Party.
“I think it would be very hard to see Pauline missing out. She’s a Queensland icon and they love her in regional Queensland.
“Although, Clive is spending big and he’s polling well in other states. Campbell is apparently polling well on the Gold Coast because that’s about ‘freedom’ and individual responsibility and state government regulation.”
Speaking with an assured sensibility and practicality befitting a teacher at the whiteboard, Allman-Payne is arguably as straightforward – perhaps even as blunt – as Hanson.
“After the state election, we polled around double what One Nation got after the state election. Based on those numbers we’ve calculated, we need about a 1.5 per cent swing to get me in,” she says.
Lead Greens Queensland Senate candidare Penny Allman-Payne previously said she has an easier run than her lower-house counterparts.
“I think that would be really good for Queensland because whilst Pauline Hanson talks up a big game and says that she’s for the battler, and she’s with every person, she votes with the LNP 99 per cent of the time.”
Policies promising free childcare, free TAFE and university courses, dental included in Medicare, affordable housing, 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030 and a plan to reskill miners will be at the forefront of the national Green campaign.
“There was a lot of talk after the last federal election where Labor blamed their election loss on conservative people in the regions, particularly Queensland,” Allman-Payne says.
“I don’t think that’s actually the case.
“My perception, as someone who has lived regionally for a lot more of my career than most people, is that people in the regions want the same thing as people in the city.”
They want affordable housing, she says, a good education for their children, access to childcare.
Allman-Payne says workers from Gladstone’s power station and mining and resources stalwarts such as Rio Tinto have told her while they know it is the “end of coal and gas”, they struggle to see any government with a plan for them.
“They’re not actually anti-renewable energy. They’re anti-government without a plan,” she says.
“I think the Liberals and Labor have essentially abandoned coal workers. It’s going to fall off a cliff soon.
“I certainly find it very frustrating … when people like [LNP Senator] Matt Canavan and [Resources and Northern Australia Minister] Keith Pitt keep saying that people in regional Queensland just want to keep digging up coal because I don’t think they’re really speaking for people in that region.”
Allman-Payne is unwavering when she says Gladstone and other regional areas would benefit from investing in secure, renewable energy manufacturing jobs that create a new economy.
“[It] means that young people, like the people I teach at school, have a future,” she says.
She says the Morrison government should be kicked out, but the best outcome would be a change of government with the Greens holding the balance of power.
“I’m not going to lie to you. I think that both parties are increasingly looking more like each other.”
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