CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
With the 2025 Federal Election around the corner, one of the surprising Federal Electorate’s tipped to change hands is the sunny Gold Coast.
According to the bookies, the odds are now rapidly shortening for an Independent challenger by the name of Erchana Murray-Bartlett.
While the Independents in the waterfront suburbs of Melbourne, Sydney and Perth are usually neurosurgeons or barristers that appeal to their professional voters – on the Gold Coast, they are equally authentic to the locals.
In Burleigh, their local Independent also ticks all the boxes. A young female surfer with a subtly hippy first name who has run multiple ultra-marathons.
But as it’s as certain as death and taxes that very few of community-backed Independent candidates will receive any media coverage from Channel Nine or the NewsCorp papers.
However, on the streets, at a grassroots level, where the Independents make the most ground with door knocking and community events.
On top of that, it probably doesn’t help the current local MP Karen Andrews that just months out from an election, McPherson is currently covered in mud and debris after a tropical cyclone hit the coast last week.
While many locals will argue over whether or not Alfred was aided by Climate Change, voters know that in the Liberal Party room, the argument still being made is that climate change isn’t even real.
And with surfing communities, comes the assumed understanding that we need to protect the planet. Like most of the succesful Independents around Australia, Erchana Murray-Bartlett wants action on this.
Her environmental efforts cannot be denied, in 2023 she raised $100,000 to help protect native wildlife by running the length of Australia.
Once a Liberal Party stronghold, the Gold Coast electorate of McPherson is now under siege from a tidal wave of yellow-shirt volunteers, campaigning day-in and day-out to install this local Independent candidate as their representative in Parliament House.
In fact, McPherson has traditionally been considered so safe for the Liberal Party that – in 2009 – Peter Dutton attempted to ditch his marginal North Brisbane electorate and relocate to the Goldie.
However, the local members of the Liberal Party branch didn’t like the idea of a blow-in treating their hometown as a career stepping stone – regardless of how many high-rise investment properties he owned in the region.
But with localism at the heart of Gold Coast politics, voters are now questioning whether Karen Andrews, the Liberal MP that beat Peter Dutton to pre-selection in McPherson in 2009, is doing enough about the things that matter to her voters?
Aside from trying to stop the light rail project being built next to her investment properties – did anyone even see her filling up sandbags last week?
And at the end of the day, would the people of McPherson prefer an Erchana over a Karen?
