Since his pre-selection in June, the LNP candidate for Callide says he’s been to Chinchilla four times, attending the state polocrosse championships, a local race meeting, a Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enterprise function, and the One Long Table event, as well as walking the street and talking to businesses on most of those occasions.
Colin Boyce was responding to comments on the street in Chinchilla last week from electors struggling to identify with any of the candidates, after being shifted from the Warrego electorate by a boundary change in April.
People such as grazier Alan Gath said he hadn’t seen a lot of the candidates and was having trouble knowing what they might stand for, thanks to the electoral change.
The LNP’s Mr Boyce said he’d travelled 48,000 kilometres throughout the Callide electorate in the last five months and had posted a brochure introducing himself to every householder.
“There are 37 communities but I try and get everywhere, as often as I can,” he said, adding that it was up to people to attend events or read material to familiarise themselves with his platform.
“I’m a new candidate but I’m out there having a go,” he said.
In response to recent polling reported by Fairfax Media, showing Pauline Hanson’s One Nation could have 25 per cent support in Callide, Mr Boyce said he thought support for the party was going “off the boil” in recent days.
“People are starting to understand they can identify problems but delivering answers is a totally different situation, and they don’t have to say how they’ll fund anything.”
He was unsure what effect compulsory preferential voting would have on the final outcome.
As far as the perception that the major parties had failed to deliver for regional Queenslanders, Mr Boyce said that since 1998, there had been 17 years of Labor government, and only one term, led by Campbell Newman, when the LNP was in office.
“It’s hard to have things delivered from opposition,” he said.
Sally Gall
Based at Blackall, CW Qld, where I've raised a family, run Merino sheep and beef cattle, and helped develop a region - its history, tourism, education and communications. Get in touch at 0427 575 955 if you've got a story idea for me.
Based at Blackall, CW Qld, where I've raised a family, run Merino sheep and beef cattle, and helped develop a region - its history, tourism, education and communications. Get in touch at 0427 575 955 if you've got a story idea for me.
