Thanks everyone who participated in our New England poll. We’ve been researching New England since 2017, and have a deep appreciation for this most complex electorate. These results again demonstrate the variability of the electorate, although the political leanings and vote intention haven’t budged an inch in that time.
628 New Englanders participated in the poll (after we cleaned out all the non-locals) which gives a margin of error of 3.5%. Doesn’t really matter, Barnaby Joyce wins by a mile, and no MOE will put a shadow on that. Interestingly, Barnaby is polling stronger in Armidale than Tamworth. Armidale is usually the Labor stronghold – obviously living there for a while was good for him, even though he did have to put up with people telling him off at the supermarket (he’s now moved to a small village nearer to Walcha). Laura Hughes polling stronger in Tamworth is also possibly because that’s her home turf. The Greens candidate, former Glen Innes Mayor Carol Sparks, was announced during the polling window so her numbers will go up a bit from the ‘know local’ factor, but the couple of hundred votes that’s likely to get her in the north of the seat won’t change the result.
We had a few questions as to why we did the ‘someone like Tony Windsor’ and ‘not like Tony Windsor’ split. It’s pretty simple really, in earlier polls of New England people were always qualifying their independent vote with ‘only if it’s someone like Tony’ or vice versa – so it was easier to capture in the pick list.
General rule of thumb is that an independent who is like Tony – a would be National but screw those guys, grounded, rural, local, trusted – will poll clearly above the Labor candidate, and if they campaign well, take a significant chunk out of the National vote to give themselves a chance at winning. If they’re not like Tony, then they’ll get about the same as Labor or a bit less. Adam Blakester (the lead independent in 2019) was someone *not* like Tony, and accordingly got about the same as Labor (14.18% to Labor’s 12.75%), and never had a chance of winning. As you can see, the baseline support for an independent candidate ‘like Tony’ is 5 points higher than Blakester’s vote at 19%, without knowing their name or doing any campaigning – and there’s an additional 5% for a ‘not like Tony’ candidate up for grabs.
Most of the ‘I’m not sure’ vote – a whopping 8% of the vote just weeks away from election day – is in the two major centres, and will go Independent if the candidate is good, Barnaby if they’re not. Candidate quality is really important in rural seats generally, and New England is the same, with only 4% voting solely on party lines. 71% consider the candidate; 87% consider the issues.
As for Barnaby – the level of protection and ownership he was afforded around the 2019 election has softened considerably. Voters recognise he’s done a good job, but the emotive attachment to him, which was dialled up to 11 when he was under such constant attack and people were calling for him to quit, has dialled back to about a 7. Yeah, they might dump him for someone better. But someone better needs to be presented as an option on the ballot.
The high undecideds in Armidale’s vote intention are mirrored in the high undecided for best outcome for New England. Clearly most in the smaller centres want the Coalition Government re-elected.
There were three specific issues put to respondents – Health, Transport, and Housing. Let’s start with the big one: health.
I’m expecting some city people may have difficulty processing the above figures, although none were shocking to me. In summary: most people in New England are waiting more than a week to see a GP who doesn’t bulk bill, and are not satisfied with either GP or hospital services in their town. A little surprising that 45% see a bulk billing GP – I thought that number would be about 30%, although there were many comments that their doctor bulk bills people with concession cards or appointments for kids… and many people believed that *only* people with concession cards were ‘eligible’ for bulk billed GP appointments.
(Dear New England: as much as certain politicians may wish it to be the case, everyone with a Medicare card is entitled to see the doctor bulk billed, that is, with no out of pocket cost. If you lived in the city you would have your choice of clinics you could just walk into and pay nothing – including some run by companies like IPN that also run clinics in our communities with huge out of pocket costs. If your doctor isn’t bulk billing everyone it’s because they have made that choice. What they charge you is their choice. You may be happy paying the extra, but there is no ‘entitlement’ or ‘eligibility’.)
Access to health care is patchy, fragmented, and often comes down to sheer luck. There were some noticeable trends. For example, Tamworth people that were unhappy with GP access were unhappy about having to wait 3 weeks for a bulk billed GP appointment, but could get in to see a doctor same day if they wanted to; Armidale people can’t get bulk billed appointments at all, but were unhappy about waiting three weeks to get any appointment with their GP; Glen Innes people were unhappy about having to wait two years on a waiting list to get on to the local GP’s books, and travelling to Armidale or elsewhere in the meantime to see any GP or going to the hospital for simple things like a script – if there was a doctor on duty at the hospital that day.
Similarly, people in Tamworth were unhappy about the lack of resident specialists at their hospital and having to travel to Newcastle or Sydney for things like PET scans; people in Armidale were unhappy about needing to travel to Tamworth to see visiting specialists and lack of staff in the Armidale hospital; Glen Innes and Inverell people were unhappy about needing to travel to Armidale because there was no doctor on duty in their hospitals, which more than one respondent said had been down graded to first aid centres.
In other words, all pain is relative. The smaller your community, the more likely you are getting screwed on basic health care, even though your expectations and demands are lower than those who live in larger centres. There were some anomalies however, with those GPs operating in much smaller villages often providing great care, a higher rate of bulk billing, and a shorter wait for appointments. The GP in Guyra certainly seems to be beloved!
Mental Health care wasn’t directly asked about but certainly came up in the comments, with significant concerns about the lack of available mental health care professionals, and often telehealth being the only option. Child psychologists in particular seem to be in short supply, creating an issue with getting medication for ADHD kids that really does need a solution. (I don’t fully understand it, but from the survey responses and chatting with an ADHD mum, Ritalin can only be prescribed by the psychologist, not by the GP. Can take years to get in to a psych just to get a diagnosis, ongoing appointments need to be made months in advance… and if you miss one or the psych is sick, you’re screwed.)
Many respondents told heart breaking personal stories of family members who have died or become seriously ill, they believe, due to the lack of staffing or inexperience of visiting or temporarily assigned doctors. Other stories told of elderly parents forced to travel for basic medical care. Or people (like myself) who are chronically ill having to routinely travel to Newcastle or Sydney for their ongoing care at huge expense. I want to acknowledge those stories, although I won’t be sharing any so as not to identify respondents.
Speaking of travelling…
Rural people *travel*. Not just going to work commuting, three quarters travel between towns at least once a month, often because they have to in order to access services, like health care. It’s one of the reasons rural people were so damn scared about COVID-19, because they knew once it made it to the hubs like Tamworth or Armidale, it would be impossible to protect the smaller villages, and those villages couldn’t look after their people. Would be nice if various health departments understood that, but I’ll focus.
Roads are awful. Just bloody awful. Some have decent roads in parts of town but the highway near them is in need of maintenance, or vice versa. The most commonly condemned road mentioned by name was Bundarra Road, which for the uninitiated is a particularly crap bit of road that goes from Armidale to Saumerez Ponds and Invergowrie before connecting up with Thunderbolts Way. Being in two different council areas doesn’t help matters, but locals have been screaming about how bad that road is for at least 30 years (probably longer but I’m not old enough to say). Other roads named are Tingha Road, Bald Knob Road north of Glen Innes, the old MR 105 Nundle to Scone road, Old Armidale Road, and almost everyone who made a roads comment had things to say about the New England Highway. There was some belief that repairs by contractors are intentionally dodgy so they’ll have to go fix them again – whether that’s true or not I don’t know, but I certainly understand the patch job of the patch job of the patch job kinds of maintenance they’re talking about.
Public transport is pretty much non-existent, but many people said they really didn’t know what was available because they just drive. Lots of little towns would really like a taxi. Just one, please.
Links to the coast, and transport north to Brisbane were also raised as huge concerns: both are top of mind at the moment because the roads to Coffs were cut by landslides and flooding during the polling window, and the bus service north to Brisbane (and Toowoomba, which is also a major service town for much of the northern New England) hasn’t run since COVID lockdowns started. The train hasn’t run north of Armidale for a very long time, and this is also rumbling in a number of the comments as a need for the community, arguably higher in the mix than usual given the withdrawal of the bus service, the coastal routes being cut, and the proposal to rip out 103 km’s of track to make into a rail trail tourist attraction between Armidale and Glen Innes. One optimistic fellow wanted not only the rail returned north to Brisbane, but a rail link to Inverell too. Many people wished for daily return bus services between towns.
So health sucks, transport sucks, how about housing? Yep it sucks too.
The one thing going for rural communities is that most people own their homes and they don’t move as often as city folk. (Those who followed the Voter Choice Project last election may recall that home ownership and length of time in the home is significantly correlated with voting conservative – add ‘liking where you live’ to those two and the likelihood of voting independent skyrockets.) But there’s a significant shortage in most areas of available of housing, particularly rental housing, creating inflated prices and challenges for finding a new home.
The question about public housing through a few curve balls, and there is no consensus. The overwhelming feeling is that there is not enough public housing, but where those public housing properties are, and who gets to live in them, seems to be a bit of a nerve. So that 60% figure for not enough housing is split into three groups: spread out, not spread out, and don’t care. Some respondents wanted public housing properties not to be lumped together because of the associated social problems, “creating slums”, or not feeling safe in those areas, so they want more public housing but they want it spread out. Conversely, people with public housing tenants in their street, where every other house is owned, don’t want ‘those people’ in their street, or expressed concern about the damage done to the houses, and so want more public housing gathered in one place with strict rules. At the same time, others were simply concerned that the rental market is so tight and overpriced that homelessness and overcrowding is a real and serious issue, so please give us more social and affordable housing NOW. Murky, challenging stuff… so I’m sure no local candidate will mention it between now and election day.
At the end of the survey we allowed everyone to say whatever they wanted about anything. Many reiterated concerns about health, transport and housing raised earlier, but a number of new issues were raised. Here’s the highlights:
- There is a deep-seated worry about water security in many parts of the electorate, including very divided opinions about the proposed works on Dungowan Dam and Malpas Dam.
- Lots of people affected by the tornados (plural) 6 months ago are still struggling and didn’t really get any support.
- Rates being high relative to both city rates and to services provided was a common complaint and from almost every LGA in the New England electorate. This was linked about concerns of mismanagement by councils, anger at the amalgamation process, and anger at lack of outside funding.
- Crime popped up a few times, but it was mostly ‘those youth’ problems and gossip than any real significant issue being identified.
- Lack of aged care was identified by some as a significant concern, with a few heartbreaking stories of couples being split up or having to leave their home town.
- Environmental concerns were wide and varied, although very few mentioned climate change by name. Water and air pollution were common concerns.
- Need for greater support for small business, including making it easier for new businesses to start up or move to our communities, was noted across the electorate.
- Mobile phone reception is (STILL) a concern, particularly in smaller communities.
- There were a number of comments about the Nationals taking the seat for granted, and wanting to make New England marginal.
Thanks again to all who took part. Despite the rather dire report card on these three issues, many respondents were still quite positive about the area and demonstrated a real love for New England which is one of the reasons it is a very special electorate to research.