Beside a national highway on Sydney’s north shore, a coalition of volunteers in teal T-shirts, armed with badges and yard signs, wave energetically at morning traffic. It is just after 7am on a weekday morning and hundreds of them – from teenagers to octogenarians – will be out in force for the next two hours, braving petrol fumes.
The federal election campaign has been put on hold for a few weeks but, in the now-marginal seat of Bradfield, independent candidate Nicolette Boele has recruited more than 1,000 volunteers.
Bradfield has been held by the Liberals for the past 75 years but in 2022 the sitting member, Paul Fletcher, suffered a 15.28% primary vote swing against him – the largest in the country on first preferences.
Fletcher held on against Boele with a two-party-preferred vote of just over 54%.
Now Fletcher has stepped down and boundary changes that abolished the teal MP Kylea Tink’s neighbouring seat of North Sydney have cut the notional margin from 4.2% to 2.5%, according to the ABC’s election analyst, Antony Green. Boele believes it may be less than 2%. Either way, it is the Coalition seat thought most likely to fall to a teal independent at the 2025 election.
Since February the Climate 200-backed campaign calendar has been packed with flyers, election signs and dog walking – where volunteers are encouraged to “offer doggie bandanas to dog owners as a conversation starter”.
Maxine Baudish, a self-described boomer, stands by the traffic lights with a Boele badge pinned to her hat, cheerfully greeting passing cars.
She says the public’s reaction has been mostly positive. “I haven’t had any abuse,” she says. “We got one thumbs down but I put my thumb up and aimed higher, like Michelle Obama.”
Every few minutes a driver of a semi-trailer or an out-of-service bus honks a horn, to the volunteers’ delight. Passersby are handed pamphlets and stickers with QR codes. A bemused whippet on a morning walk wanders by.
Baudish did not take part in Boele’s 2022 campaign. Now retired, she’s braving early mornings alongside her husband.
“I just want to see a change, there’s got to be a better way,” she says. “You can’t do everything, you can’t do nothing, but you’ve just got to do something. This is my something.”
With double the volunteers she had in 2022, Boele is confident about her chances.
“When we ran in 2022 with quite a short runway, we were really surprised and heartened … but often it takes an independent two runs to actually get up,” she says.
“We’re taking nothing for granted and our work’s cut out for us but I’m thrilled about the pace with which I can see people joining the campaign.”
Carly Brown campaigned for Tink in 2022, largely due to the candidate’s environmental platform. Tink’s endorsement of Boele this year was enough for Brown to volunteer.
“I’ve got a young family so I have to juggle it around that – I’m hoping they’re getting on the bus right now,” she says as she stands by the roadside.
“Nobody wants to do this – why would you want to stand on the side of the road and wave a sign around for fun? But when you get here and see hundreds of other people do it as well, it’s just beautiful.”
In the afternoon, the volunteers gather outside a popular shopping plaza, handing out flyers to parents fresh from the school pickup, and to elderly couples with shopping trolleys.
Boele, beaming, stands among them. A woman slows down in her car and tells her she used to volunteer for Labor but wants to switch sides.
As it passes 4pm, the volunteers gather on an affluent, tree-lined street to prepare for door-knocking. They’re handed maps and pamphlets by an energetic man in an Akubra hat. “I want to hear a woo!” he cries, as the group moves aside to make room for children walking home from school.
A first-time voter, 19-year-old Natalie Jansezian, is among them. Donning a campaign cap and T-shirt, she has attended five campaign events as a volunteer since being door-knocked by Boele’s team a week ago.
Jansezian is part of a changing demographic in Bradfield, which was the only Liberal-held seat to vote yes for the voice in 2023.
The Liberal candidate, the tech executive Gisele Kapterian, was contacted for comment.
Kapterian told the Financial Review in January that it would be “unwise” to dismiss the concerns reflected in the 2022 result. But she said the Liberals’ campaigning on housing, energy and antisemitism would serve the party well.
Boele, who will spend the next hour knocking on doors, many of which will go unanswered, knows “this has been a conservative seat for very long time”.
“The people that make up our volunteer team, a lot of them always voted Liberal, but no longer see their values represented in the party as it is today,” she says.
“That’s exactly why I think there is so much support this time for an independent, because they see … [we] just want to work in the centre, across the aisle, to get things done.”
