General News
13 November, 2024
‘Ready, set, go’
WHILE Cook remains close and will be decided on preferences and postal votes, LNP’s David Kempton (right) is projected to win the large electorate from incumbent Cynthia Lui who has been the Labor MP for Cook for three terms.
This is only the second time the conservatives have held Cook since the 1970s and Mr Kempton has won it both times. He won the seat in 2012 as part of the Campbell Newman government but was ousted in the rout of the LNP at the 2015 election.
Mr Kempton was straight into work on Monday last week.
Feeling buoyed by his victory in Cook, Mr Kempton acknowledged the seat was hard to win due to its diversity of communities and its geographical size.
He said he was not surprised that the Far North and North Queensland had shown their support for a new path with the LNP after years of failure by Labor to invest in the north of the state.
“I think the fact that so much going on up here has not been addressed across a number of issues – crime, cost-of-living, health, roads and housing – was the reason people wanted change,” Mr Kempton said.
“The really big win was here in Mareeba, people really had had enough and that was indicative in the votes.
“It’s a really difficult electorate, it’s logistically difficult to get around, it’s hard to man booths during elections, there’s a diametrically opposed demographic. There’s a strong farming community, there’s the Torres Strait, all the indigenous communities, there’s mining, we have an international border, half the state’s coastline and half of the Great Barrier Reef.
“You need to understand it and build relationships. The type of campaign you would run in the city doesn’t work up here. It’s very much a personal one-to-one approach. People need to know you and they need to trust what you’re saying.
“You need to earn this seat and you need to work to keep it, you cannot take it for granted.”
Mr Kempton is keen to get on with the job and is expected to be sworn in in the next week so the LNP can action changes to legislation before the Christmas break.
One of his first priorities will be to establish a regional roads advisory group to tackle the region’s neglected road network.
“It won’t be just a community advisory group though – it will actually be developing policy and set priorities with the minister who will direct TMR (Department of Transport and Main Roads),” he said.
In addition to action being needed on the Kuranda Range road and the Barron River bridge, Mr Kempton said there were a host of other issues plaguing the region’s transport industry that needed to be tackled.
“From Ootan Rd to the Chillagoe road, to break down pads, to road classifications, to the Mareeba bypass, the bridges this end of the PDR, and the other end of the PDR – all have to be looked at,” he said.
Mr Kempton said they needed to be prioritised and funded “in a way that brings the best benefit to the transport network here because we are being flogged with transport costs.”
