The activist lobby group GetUp was quite a player in the 2019 election campaign. But as the 2022 campaign accelerates, a casual observer might wonder whether this slayer of the right has lost some of its oomph.
To be fair, GetUp (or GetUp! if you must) is still living and breathing and getting organised about causes dear to the heart of its million-strong membership. As for the 2022 election, it is making a push in the north Queensland electorate of Leichhardt, which if successful would unseat the Coalition’s Warren Entsch. There is also a campaign against the sitting Liberal in Goldstein, Victoria.
”During this election GetUp will be building electoral power for First Nations people and growing our movement for First Nations justice. We will win stronger policies on our issues, including cultural heritage, housing and health equity, elect candidates who are the most progressive on our issues and increase representation of First Nations people in Parliament,” its site states.
But it appears that GetUp, which is unashamedly on the progressive side, is finding it harder to get clear air now that the independents standing under the banners of Climate 200 or the Voices Of movement are getting the better media coverage. Those candidates will smash Morrison while leaving some of the nice perks of conservative government intact. That’s likely to make GetUp a bit het up, eventually.
A search into Google Trends reveals that Australians’ interest in GetUp has significantly wained since the 2019 election. This is just one measure of how interested people are in a subject.
Mark Sawyer is a journalist with extensive experience in print and digital media in Sydney, Melbourne and rural Australia.