Bridie Jabour theguardian.com, Tuesday 27 August 2013

Bridie Jabour speaks to the man who – if the polls are correct – may kick Kevin Rudd out of his seat of Griffith on 7 September

Bill Glasson (left) on a morning run with Tony Abbott and Queensland premier Campbell Newman. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP

The man who may cost the prime minister his seat on 7 September only joined the Liberal National party last year.

Dr Bill Glasson was preselected for Kevin Rudd’s seat of Griffith last September, not long after joining the LNP. An ophthalmologist, he is the son of a minister in Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s government and has served as national president of the Australian Medical Association as well as sitting on the taskforce which helped implement the Northern Territory intervention.

He was acknowledged as a formidable candidate when his preselection was announced last September but a Guardian poll last week still sent shockwaves through political and media circles when it showed Griffith was well within reach for Glasson. A subsequent Newspoll found the same result.

Will competition for the seat get as tight as the polls are suggesting? “Well, the answer is no,” Glasson tells Guardian Australia.

“I obviously thought from the outset it was going to be a very tough job to even make a dent in the numbers but obviously given the way we’re going it’s quite welcome but can I suggest the polling we have at the moment doesn’t really reflect the true result? I think the reality is we’re still up against it quite significantly.”

Glasson believes preferences are working directly against him and uses the politician’s favourite phrase of faux self-deprecation when summing up his feelings on the polls – “I remain the underdog.”

He may be an underdog but the full force of the LNP is being thrown behind him with 500 volunteers working for him and Malcolm Turnbull, deputy opposition Julie Bishop, shadow treasurer Joe Hockey and opposition leader Tony Abbott all visiting Griffith to join Glasson on the hustings.

He tells Guardian Australia over the phone while campaigning in Brisbane that he joined the LNP “about 12 months ago” and had worked for both sides of government in a “very productive way”. Before his preselection Glasson was a voluntary “champion” of the National Broadband Network before resigning a few months into his campaign saying the cost had grown too high.

This week he argued for gay marriage, saying: "[Rudd] had an epiphany one morning and obviously had a change of mind ... but I've had this view for a long time.”

Despite his support for these Labor policies, Glasson’s admiration for Abbott is long-held; in a 2010 Fairfax profile he said: ''This is a man you can look in the eye, you can trust. He is probably too honest. He says what he feels. It gets him into trouble.''

Glasson told Guardian Australia that Abbott had become ''more disciplined in what he says'' in the lead-up to the last election, and he follows the Coalition chief’s lead, never straying far from the party line.

When asked about his personal passion and what he could do particularly for his electorate, Glasson lists the repeal of the carbon tax, getting the debt under control, reducing red tape and “making Australia’s borders secure”. He says the economy is the issue the voters of Griffith most often raise with him.

“I’m a great believer in small government that facilitates business, get out of the road of business. Governments don’t create wealth, governments don’t create jobs; they do but they put them in the public service. The true job creation comes from the business sector and so it’s a matter of letting the business sector generate wealth for the country, not governments,” he says.

He calls his army of volunteers - and it is an army by normal campaigning standards - Glasson’s Gladiators, and they are the key to his back-to-basics campaign. When asked about the strengths of his campaign Gleeson does not mention media, traditional or social, but his grassroots work.

“Many of them are out every weekend on street corners and on bridges and on roads; that is a sea of blue and my portrait is on many, many street frontages, and people hang them out in the yard so the face recognition has been good,” he says.

“I’ve been door-knocking day in, day out. We’ve been letterbox dropping, so that’s what I think has contributed to the polls. We have resources in terms of man- and woman-power but not much in terms of money.”

Since Glasson won preselection, his opponent has morphed from backbencher into prime minister and that has, counterintuitively, made Rudd more vulnerable in this seat.

Can Glasson think of one positive about Rudd? Like a good politician he seems to answer the question but actually uses his answer to reinforce the image he wants to place in voters’ minds about the PM.

“I think he had an immense passion for the electorate initially and he had lots of good ideas, don’t get me wrong, but unfortunately I can’t name too many that’s actually been implemented properly and that’s been focussed on an outcome,” he said.

“So, great ideas 10 out of 10. Implementation zero out of 10. Wasted money 10 out of 10 because the wastage across the system could make you cry.”

Kevin Rudd's opponent in Griffith: who is Bill Glasson? | World news | theguardian.com