The mystery independent contender for Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson (Qld) is solved with the announcement Climate 200-backed environmental consultant Ellie Smith to contest the seat. Andrew Gardiner reports.
She is not a “Teal,” Smith insists, but a “Maroon” independent.
“I know that any independent who is elected in Queensland (will) be representing our communities, and Queensland is different,” she said. It’s a clever line, putting distance between Smith and the increasingly pejorative “Teal” label tossed at nine federal community independents by Dutton and his LNP colleagues.
However, with that statement out of the way, Smith pivoted back to familiar, Teal-hued themes in an online statement: “Too often we see decisions being swayed by vested interests over expert opinion and community views and values. Too often we’re taken for granted and our needs ignored,” she wrote.
After graduating with Honours in Environmental Management from the University of Queensland, Smith has since pursued a career in policy, government and stakeholder relations. She finds herself in what promises to be a bitter, three-cornered contest against Opposition Leader Dutton (LNP) and former journalist and para-athlete Ali France (Labor).
France came within a little over 3,000 votes of victory, two-party preferred, in Dickson at the 2022 federal election. The seat’s marginal status renders Smith and France, both women, as real threats to Dutton’s 24-year parliamentary career, the independent potentially siphoning a sizeable chunk of LNP voting women (and moderates) away from him.
Many see women as Dutton’s ‘Achilles heel,’ recalling his ‘she said, he said’ comments regarding Brittany Higgins, his description of journalist Samantha Maiden (above) as a “mad f___ing witch,” and his claim that refugee women were “trying it on” with rape claims as part of a ploy to get to Australia.
Dutton can expect staunch support in Dickson from billionaire Gina Rinehart in what shapes as a big-budget, high-stakes contest. The federal election is expected to be held in April or May.
Peter Dutton has a women problem as Teals gear up for Election
An Adelaide-based graduate in Media Studies, with a Masters in Social Policy, I was an editor who covered current affairs, local government and sports for various publications before deciding on a change-of-vocation in 2002.