I am deeply curious about whether Mandy Nolan can unseat Labor’s Justine Elliot and win Richmond for the Greens in Saturday’s election.
Prediction might be a low form of journalism, but I believe the Morrison government will be turfed out.
Labor could form government in its own right but a Labor minority government would be far more interesting. A crossbench of Greens, ‘Teals’ and garden variety Independents could tame Labor’s worst instincts and push for actual change, like in 2010 when the Gillard government was forced by the Greens to enact meaningful climate legislation.
But can Mandy win? My assumption was that Richmond was not yet ready to go Green, despite the star candidate. Demography is driving the progressive trend in our electorate and this cycle seemed too soon.
Labor’s Justine Elliot holds Richmond on the back of Green’s preferences: in 2019 she received 31,807 first preference votes, the Greens 20,384, the Nationals 36,979, the various Independents 11,150. There were 8,061 informal votes. After preferences, the result was Labor 54 per cent; Nationals 46 per cent (the 2016 numbers were very similar).
The Nationals have fielded a new smiling female candidate and will likely benefit from the flow of Independents’ preferences. But the Coalition is on the nose – especially here where a well-established progressive trend has been amplified by covid refugees fleeing the cities, and we’ve just been whacked by a disaster most associate with climate change.
To win in Saturday’s three-way contest, Mandy must out-poll Justine. The Greens vote would need to rise from around 20,000 to 26,000. A big task. And if the swing came purely from the Nationals, the seat would remain Labor’s, all other things being equal.
But all things are not equal. Candidates matter. As does mood. Our region is rattled by the floods, and Mandy is not your average candidate. Her name recognition, according to Greens campaign manager, Bec Talbot, is ‘off the chart’. In Ballina, where many people mistakenly believe their local member is Kevin Hogan, Mandy is known by four times as many people as Justine Elliot, their member of 17 years.
In 2019, the Greens put forward Michael Lyon, then a Byron councillor, as their candidate. Michael was pedestrian, at best, compared to Mandy, and certainly no harbinger of change. Mandy is a loved local brand. An actual activist. Her profile is stratospheres above that of Tamara Smith, who won the State seat of Ballina from the Nationals in 2015 with a 30 per cent swing when the key issue was coal seam gas and she was a quiet school teacher.
Mandy and her team have had conversations with 6,000 people in the community and believe there’s a real chance of victory. Housing and climate are the dominant concerns out there and the Greens think they can deliver solutions from the crossbench.
When I ask Mandy how she’s faring a week out from polling day, she says she’s been at it for 14 months, working really long hours, noting how the challenger ‘must work twenty times as hard’. But the incumbent is clearly worried. Justine Elliot is mimicking Mandy by wearing pink clothes and sporting blonde hair while accusing the Greens of being ‘as untrustworthy as Scott Morrison’.
I know Mandy well from her writing, performance, and by osmosis, but before speaking on Saturday, our most meaningful interaction was years ago when I nearly got between her and a glass of free champagne at an art launch. This time we had a good chat. I was left with the impression of someone pretty committed to the cause. Her desire to ‘break things’ involves breaking the two-party system, overcoming climate inaction and ‘cleaning up what’s happening in politics’.
When I reference another comedian turned politician, President Zelensky of the Ukraine, whose leadership has captivated the world, I get this reply: ‘Well I’m not Zelensky, but I appreciate the question because it’s about a style of leadership that is missing, and I think when you look towards the arts you start to see bravery and courage and collaboration and vision… We need new ways of doing politics and if that means having comedians, well, so be it’.
If I were a betting man, Sportsbet’s odds of 5:1 for Mandy winning Richmond would be tempting.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
