WA election 2017: 'I am voter, hear me roar'

When Sally McManus is formally elected as secretary of the ACTU on Wednesday, in the same week that Labor wins power in WA, it will be an appropriate tribute to the way she and her team have sharpened political organising in Australia.

McManus, noted for her digital mobilising skills, worked that intense focus in preparation for the last federal election. But she and her team built a secret army of thousands of volunteers who talked and knocked and rang bells; an approach that led to a swing to Labor. That style of campaigning was apparent in Labor's juggernaut win in Western Australian over the weekend.

Take Christine Jauncey, 59, of Bunbury, who told me she was "just a housewife". She stopped doing paid work 20 years ago to look after her sick dad. She's married to Allan, an Australian Services Union delegate. And in all the time the two of them have been together (their youngest of five children is in his mid-20s), Jauncey was never involved with politics. This time was different.

"Hubby is in the union and he was going off to meetings and I thought 'here we go again, more meetings' and then the penny dropped.

"I'd never been involved in anything but I was sick of how things were going. I thought: 'Hey, I've got to do something, because we have got to save jobs for our guys, there will be no jobs for the kids or for the future, and I'd like to get on-board and help these guys out.' "

I'm a born sceptic so, when Jauncey told me her story, I thought she may have been bossed into it by her husband.

"I'd soon tell him where to go if he tried that," she said.

So a woman who has never once wanted to be political or to campaign spent the entire period before the election doing just that in Bunbury, for 12 years a safe Liberal seat.

Jauncey stood for hours at prepolling booths. She handed out how-to-vote cards. She explained the problems with privatisation. Here she was with first-hand experience of the problems of the elderly because of her dad, so she reckoned she could easily discuss the effect of electricity price rises. And with five kids (all employed, mind you), she could also explain her fears about an unpredictable job market in a state hit hard by job losses.

Fierce. Implacable. And bloody pissed off about penalty rates because her youngest's partner will be hard hit by the income cut.

There were, of course, two statements that sent a clear message to her and to other West Australians: one was from the then premier, Colin Barnett; and the other a throwaway line on national breakfast television from Pauline Hanson in 2014.

The Electrical Trades Union posted a Hanson clip on its Facebook page. In just a couple of weeks reached, it clocked 300,000 views and the video was played more than 132,000 times. Australian Unions posted a similar clip and said it had huge cut-through in Hanson's other nest, Queensland.

Barnett and Hanson both said they support the abolition of penalty rates. Barnett came out applauding wildly, as if he wanted to lose. Hanson, right in the middle of what was, even for One Nation, a chaotic election campaign, made a huge mistake on this crucial issue for her constituency. What's worse, she looked as if she didn't know her own mind. On March 1, she told The Australian's Rosie Lewis that it looked like she would backtrack and consider a Labor push to block changes to penalty rates. A few days later, she hardened up. Meanwhile, the alliance between One Nation and the Liberals poisoned the well for both.

The timing of the Fair Work Commission's decision on penalty rates could hardly have been worse for the Liberals. It's hard to believe the timing wasn't deliberate.

William Bowe, The author of one of Australia's longest-running political blogs, Pollbludger, says: "The penalty rates decision was absolutely terrible for the Liberals."

Of course, Barnett's position was entirely in line with Liberal values so it's hardly surprising he came out in support of the decision. But this kind of political mismessaging in such a fiercely fought campaign always plays badly a few days out from an election. It was the penalty rates decision that spurred Christine Jauncey on to hit the streets and outside the prepoll booths. And there were many more like her.

Would she do it again?

"If they ever asked me again, I enjoyed it. I'm a new woman ... and they can hear me roar."

Jenna Price is a columnist for The Canberra Times and Daily Life, and a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Twitter: @JennaPrice

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