Incumbent David Southwick is well-liked, his party not so much

JULIE SZEGO: The Liberal incumbent for Caulfield has the ease of a man who suspects that his fate lies in forces beyond his control. It’ll be personal if he wins, less so if he loses.

Sometime after digesting the Albanese Government’s badly executed reversal of the Morrison government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, I thought: “This’ll be good for David Southwick.” 

It’s hard not to think such things during election season.

Southwick is Caulfield’s incumbent MP of 12 years. The seat has been safely conservative for most of its nearly 100-year existence. The past 20 years saw volatility creeping in, and at the last Victorian election Southwick prevailed by only 204 votes.

This time he’s also up against an electoral redistribution that flips the seat by a whisker to Labor, which, if we’re to believe the polls, seems to be defying gravity despite eight years in office, the punishing lockdowns of the past two, enduring corruption within the party and deteriorating ambulance response times. The polls likely reflect the government’s decisive leadership during Covid and momentum on critical infrastructure projects. They almost certainly reflect a floundering opposition under Matthew Guy’s recycled leadership.

Adding to Southwick’s woes in Caulfield is a teal challenger, lawyer and journalist Nomi Kaltmann. The disaffected Liberal voter is spoilt for choice, with Kaltmann in the mix alongside Labor’s Lior Harel, whose CV includes a senior role at top commercial law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler, and the Greens’ Rachel Iampolski, an urban researcher. 

In figuring the Jerusalem blunder might help Southwick, I was entertaining the idea of Caulfield exceptionalism.

While foreign policy is a federal matter, the Jerusalem reversal might damage the Labor brand in confirming suspicions that the party harbours Middle East ideologues and will never match the Liberals’ full-throated — some might say obsequious — support for Israel.

I’m open to the possibility that the candidate for the heavily Christian Family First is also Jewish, but either way, and this is no criticism, the slate is ethnically unrepresentative. The theory of Caulfield exceptionalism rests in some part on a lack of perspective.

Nearly 30 per cent of the electorate reportedly “identifies” as Jewish— meaning less than 30 per cent of the electorate does so. Unless proximity breeds affinity, a commanding majority of voting-age Caulfielders are unlikely to vote Jewishly come poll day.

 We might also question the theory of Caulfield exceptionalism through the example of the Morrison government’s original decision in the lead-up to the 2018 Wentworth byelection to ape Donald Trump and recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. This blatant pitch for Jewish voters showed the Liberals believed in a theory of Wentworth exceptionalism. Might Labor’s stuff-up be more potent in Caulfield than the Coalition’s failed stunt was in Wentworth?

Unlikely. 

Also, since Labor’s Jerusalem blunder, Israel has held its own election with an outcome that focuses the mind. Bibi Netanyahu’s bloc appears to have won convincingly. The potential inclusion of the openly racist Religious Zionist party in a future government prompted several local Zionist organisations to take the unprecedented step of publicly voicing their concerns.

The Israeli Right’s agenda extends to hobbling Israel’s Supreme Court and rigging legislation so as to allow Netanyahu to evade justice for alleged corruption. One political scientist from Hebrew University warned Israel was in danger of becoming an “electoral autocracy” akin to Viktor Orban’s Hungary.

The point being: the Zionist voter might likewise be jolted into a sense of perspective. Israel confronts serious threats to its democratic character. How big a problem is the pro-Palestine automatons at the Department of Foreign Affairs compared to Israel’s own fundamental political shift?  

A fundamental political shift is also at work in Caulfield. Some of this shift is about demographics; the new high-rises around Caulfield racecourse that Southwick rails against chip away at the once solid conservative vote. But more fundamentally, where once people voted according to class interests, university education is emerging as the new political divide.

Across the West, the less educated are drifting rightward towards populism, and the better-educated, imbibing Marxist-feminist-queer-post-colonial theories at university, drifting leftward. The fall of Victorian and NSW blue-ribbon seats to the teals at the federal election was a repudiation of Scott Morrison, but as political theorists pointed out, also indicative of a global realignment in political allegiance.

An interesting vignette, perhaps: Daniel Andrews’ wooing of Caulfield voters saw him visit a Caulfield dog park for an announcement about a $20 million animal welfare package, including new dog parks. Dog ownership rose during the pandemic especially in the affluent, working-from-home suburbs.

It just so happens that at the same time Andrews was pitching inner-city dog parks, Matthew Guy was pledging a $160m boost to bus services in outer suburbs.

At a debate I recently moderated with Southwick, his Labor, Greens and independent opponents, each candidate emerged as articulate, intelligent and passionate. Each stressed they were pro-climate, pro-health and public school funding, pro-LGBTQI rights. It is possible to wedge Southwick between his party and his electorate on issues such as religious freedom or pandering to anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists, so unsurprisingly this was his opponents’ chief MO. “We know you’re a mensch David,” went the general line of attack, “but your party on the other hand …”

Amid all this heated agreement on bedrock principles, the local member was conspicuous that night for enjoying himself. He's an experienced politician, to be sure. I was always going to suggest the Liberal logo on his campaign material is microscopic because the party’s brand is “toxic” in these parts; he was always going to say people know who is and what he stands for.  

He has the ease of a man who suspects that whatever his missteps, his fate’s largely down to forces beyond his control. It’s the truth, I think. I mean no disrespect to his talented and highly qualified challengers, but if you’ll excuse the Trumpian reference, it'll be personal if he wins, less so if he loses. 

Photo: David Southwick (left) on the hustings with Elsternwick Mainstreet Committee president Evan Crabtree and Victorian Liberal Leader Matthew Guy (Elsternwick Village)