“Bream, flathead, on the right day, the fishing’s great here.”
Todd Boorer feels a world away from Canberra.
“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it? The water, the beach, the view and all that. Just magic.”
The second-youngest of 15 kids – “10 girls and five boys. Come on, make the joke … nothing on TV?” – family is the golden thread that runs through Boorer’s life.
He is a known quantity in these parts, on the shores of Lake Macquarie: in a half-hour discussion at least four people (none of them siblings) stop to say hello as they walk past.
On the eastern bank is the electorate of Shortland; the green hills across the water are those of Hunter. Somewhere in the middle lies the dividing line but both have been long-time Labor strongholds.
Tell us about an average week for you
I run a mowing and yardcare business. It’s busy now. I’m working six days a week and they are big days. When it’s hot and then it rains, everything just grows and grows. You can’t keep it down. We are flat out.
My partner runs the Alfresco outdoor furniture factory down at Warners Bay and also does the night fill-up here at Woolies of a night. So we’re flat out.
I’m sore today, that’s why I’m sitting here in the shade. I worked all weekend. We’ve just been busting out.
What do you do outside work?
If you get out and knuckle in, you just don’t get much time for anything else. But I’m a surfer by nature. The best is my local, Frenchmans, at the back of Swansea Heads where I grew up. It goes unreal, I shouldn’t be telling you, I’m breaking the code.
What are the major stressors for you right now?
The cost of living stuff and all that. Yeah, we’ve noticed the prices at the supermarket and all that go up. But you just have to adjust for it. Takeaway food, that’s hitting everyone hard, especially for the people that live on that sort of thing. It must be costing them a fortune. We stay away from those fast-food joints because it’s getting really pricey and it’s crap. It’s no good.
What are your hopes for the next year?
We want to go overseas in the next year or two – Indonesia – so we’re saving every penny we can.
Do you think life was better for your parents than it is for you?
Dad was … stern at everything he believed in. Everyone had to chip in, everyone had to work, everyone had to do this and that. So I followed that my whole life.
[All our family] see the world pretty similar I reckon, it was something that was ingrained in all of us from a very young age: you’ll survive if you work. You’ve got to make your own way in the world.
Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic about the future?
If everyone puts in and does their bit then everyone benefits from it, but it starts with you doing your bit. The kids are running round but I reckon they get that, they understand. Sometimes they need a bomb under ’em, but I reckon they’re more switched on than I was.
I wish I had thought it out a bit more, what I was going to do, that I had a bit more of a plan of attack. I walked out of Swansea High with my certificate in my hand and said, “you beauty!”
Who will you vote for at the election?
I think … one of the things that bugs people a lot [is] when politicians try to kind of be one of us, pretend they are just like the man on the street, because they’re not. They’ve spent their life hidden away from us. So don’t try to pretend to know what’s going on at our level.
They lie a lot. I never understood how they can promise to do something, say this is their policy, and then don’t follow through. How are they allowed to do that? That frustrates a lot of people.
We can’t do that. If I’ve told Mrs Jones I’m going to come round and work on her yard, then that’s what I’m going to do, and I’ll do a good job. How can they say they’ll give this much to schools or to nurses but then never do it?
[But] Dad was a Labor man through and through, I’ve been on to that my whole life, because that’s what he was into.
Albo. What do you reckon? Is he going to get back in? Let’s give him another go. Let’s give him another go because he’s not a bully. That’s one thing about him that I don’t mind, that he’s not a bully.
