If you spend time with Parikshith Jolly, you quickly learn he's a man who lives up to his name.
"My name is Jolly. I'm always laughing," he says.
But the events of the last few years have left Jolly — as he likes his customers to call him – feeling despondent. Facing growing losses, the restaurant owner was forced to sell his home and another Indian grocery business to stay afloat.
Jolly's Indian restaurant is in one of Melbourne's fastest-growing areas, the south-eastern suburb of Pakenham. About 55 kilometres from the CBD, it's a place where old farming land is being swallowed up by residential estates.
The population boom should be good for business, but Jolly says the benefits haven't materialised.
"There's no infrastructure being put in," he says. "There's nothing for families to do here after five in the evening. You'd think it's a ghost town. It's unreal."
Jolly says some of Pakenham's shortcomings can be attributed to politicians who have failed to listen to locals at the council, state and federal level.
After years of paying tax, he feels even more disillusioned with political leaders and says he missed out on financial support during the pandemic.
Jolly, a former Labor member, quit the party after the last election and is undecided about his vote at the May election.
Trust in major political parties declines
In Jolly's seat of La Trobe, Labor and Liberal party support has dropped in recent decades, mirroring a national trend where an increasing percentage of voters are turning to minor parties, independent candidates or deciding not to vote at all.
Roy Morgan research published in March showed trust in government declined in the second half of 2021 — a period that included the Delta and Omicron outbreaks, vaccine mandates and shifting lockdown and border rules.
Data from the ABC's Vote Compass survey also turned up damning results — almost half of Australians think corruption is "very much a problem".
Research from the Australian Election Study paints a gloomy picture over a 50-year period. Only an estimated 25 per cent of respondents agreed that "people in government can be trusted" in 2019. That figure was at 51 per cent in 1969.
Liberal MP Jason Wood held La Trobe in the last election with a margin of 4.5 per cent. At the same time, the Greens, One Nation, Justice Party and Clive Palmer-backed United Australia Party (UAP) pulled nearly 20 per cent of first-preference votes in 2019.
With the UAP spending far more than their rivals in 2022, pollster Simon Welsh believes they could secure enough primary votes to come third in the La Trobe race.
Welsh says similar themes of discontent towards the major parties have emerged in focus groups his company Redbridge has run in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
"For the UAP mob, they sort of look at it and go, 'There's no political solution here. Both the major parties, they're the same, so I'm going to use my vote to sabotage," Welsh says.
Status of formerly safe Labor seat in flux
About 1,000km away from Pakenham, Kamilaroi man Steven Fordham is also uncertain about his future and that of the 800 people he employs. More than half are Indigenous.
Steven's business, based out of Muswellbrook in the NSW Hunter region, relies on mining contracts.
Steven acknowledges there needs to be an eventual shift away from coal, but feels none of the major parties have a genuine plan for the region's future. He's not even sure they care.
"The only time we see politicians come to the area is when there is an election. We feel like sometimes that the politicians are fighting for the people in the city," he says.
"I think we need someone who is going to go to Canberra and put them on their toes and not be frightened to either step over the party line if it means what is good for the valley."
The Hunter is a regional powerhouse, contributing more than $40 billion to the economy. It's also NSW's most populated regional area.
Rising house prices, poor access to health services and a sense of being undervalued by the major parties has been reflected at the polls.
Hunter has been in Labor hands since 1910, but in 2019, One Nation candidate Stuart Bond picked up 21.6 per cent first preference votes. It caused a massive swing away from Labor's Joel Fitzgibbon, who clung on after preference flows.
Kos Samaras, another analyst with RedBridge, expects a tight battle between Labor, One Nation and the Nationals in the Hunter on May 21. It is a seat Labor "cannot afford to lose" if they are to govern again, he says.
Samaras agrees many residents in mining towns have been turned off the major parties because no viable plans have been put forward about a future away from coal.
"They can't identify with the Liberal Party or the Labor Party or the National Party. They have a very strong view that these political parties are not part of the community or the community's mindset."
Loss of faith pinned on false promises, no action
Samaras believes successfully selling an economic vision at a time of global uncertainty will be key to victory at the election in five weeks' time.
But, he says, it could take the major parties decades to build back trust with disenchanted voters, who are increasingly turning their attention elsewhere.
In the Hunter town of Singleton, real estate agent Peter Dunn says the local One Nation candidate appealed to the community in 2019.
"Things change in the Labor Party and their opinion [changes], and again, what has traditionally been an exceptionally strong seat, is now in the balance and I just think Stuart [Bonds] looked familiar and people got in behind him," he says.
Disability services worker Anita White says she feels people have generally lost faith in the major parties.
Anita says there is also a layer of uncertainty around the NDIS and local health services, which are riddled with problems.
"No one is talking about it and where the funding is going to come from to pay for this," she says.
"The Hunter has been a safe seat and we don't see the reward for that at all."
Interest in independents, small parties picks up
Back at Jolly's Pakenham restaurant, young mother and science teacher Lucy Anders says the sight of politicians yelling at each other during question time is a major turn-off.
"There is like a pantomime kind of feel to it in terms of the personalities and the larger than life characters. That's not a real person representing real people," she says.
"The second you try to manipulate the truth, it's obvious. Then that's an instant breakdown of trust, and it takes 10 times longer to rebuild that trust than it does to break it".
Lucy, who moved to the neighbouring suburb of Officer about a year ago, says a lack of amenities in the area and long travel times to work has left her family wondering whether they should move back to the inner suburbs.
But more than infrastructure improvements, she says her vote will be swayed by the party with the best environmental policies.
Rebecca Bishop, a local construction company owner, hopes to see an increase in funding for mental health programs after the difficulties of the pandemic.
She also has concerns about a "crisis" in housing, with the dual problem of prices soaring out of reach for buyers and building costs skyrocketing.
Amid lockdowns, vaccine mandates and changing COVID rules for her industry, Rebecca says she was forced to pay more attention to politics.
She began writing to local Victorian politicians and trying to meet them at events, but so far she isn't sure whether her concerns have been taken seriously.
"I got pushed from person to person to person," she says.
All three La Trobe residents want to see more candidates hitting the streets and talking to people during the campaign. They like the idea of more minor parties and independents being introduced to the federal parliament to ensure the government of the day is held more accountable.
Lucy used to wonder whether voting for minor parties was a waste of a vote, but now she feels it can make a difference.
"It seems they have agency, the freedom to respond to each issue based on their values, rather than being forced to go a particular way," she says.
"We are passionate, and we do have opinions, and we just need to be heard."
