Far away from the staid, stage-managed leader's campaign, local candidates often feel a little freer to speak their minds.
Peter Garrett was sent to Coventry yesterday for offering something approximating his own opinion about how future climate change agreements should work. Malcolm Turnbull has been pilloried since it emerged that he failed to convince Cabinet that Kyoto be signed.
In these cases, "A-team" politicians have been punished for not following the party line closely enough, or for providing evidence that Governments occasionally debate issues among themselves before makiing policy. It's a poor reflection on contemporary politics and the mainstream media that in a campaign, front-benchers' minds are not their own.
But at the Sustainable Jamboree community forum - organised in Brisbane for candidates in Ryan and Oxley and for the Senate - Labor candidate for Ryan, Ross Daniels, offered some principles and prescriptions that certainly don't match his leader's public caution.
Daniels suggested (among other things) that Australian society was unhealthily obsessed by economic growth, that in future building codes might include compulsory "green" provisions, and indicated that his support for the ALP's uranium mines policy was at best grudging.
This is music to the ears of many in this classic "small l" Liberal seat, but had any members of the mainstream media been at the forum, there's no doubt that by now we would have been hearing about a triple "gaffe".
In an atmosphere where Rudd is trying to present himself as an "economic conservative", where housing affordability is an issue, and where a resources boom is seen as the major factor underwriting prosperity, ideas like these could have repercussions for the campaign as a whole.
Daniels was just one of a number of candidates who attended the forum. Apart from the Lib's Michael Johnson (who attended and departed before question time) there was a fair amount of agreement between Labor, Greens, Democrats and Independents about what should be done on sustainability issues.
House of Reps candidates like Charles Worrington (Ind., Ryan), Evan Jones (Grn., Ryan), Austin Lind (Grn., Oxley), Murray Henman (Dems, Oxley) and Jim Page (Dem., Ryan) all agreed - along with Daniels - that public transport should be favoured over private transport, that clean, renewable energy should be favoured over fossil fuels or nuclear power, and that innovations like hybrid cars should be pushed forward.
Senators Andrew Bartlett (Dems) and Claire Moore (ALP), and Greens senate candidate Larissa Waters all talked up the future for sustainable practices, as well as arguing for the importance of the Senate as a house of review that could - if people voted the right way - have a positive effect on nasty legislation. The Senators' had such broad agreement across the issues that at one point Waters appeared to endorse a vote for Bartlett, saying that he had "done a good job", then hastily adding "but please put me first".
The forum had a winning format, and a colour-coded voting system . Candidates only had a few minutes to answer issues developed by the forum, or questions sourced from the audience, at which time the squeak of a plastic duck would remind them that their time was up.
Audience members help up cards at the conclusion of a particular discussion, letting candidates know how their views were going over. Red meant the audience thought the answers were poor, green good, and yellow indicated that they thought that the question was being avoided. The sea of red that greeted Johnson's every pronouncement may have contributed to him taking an early mark.
These kinds of events really remind us - as this site hopes to - that Australia is still a representative democracy, and that politicians are still in part judged on how they respond to local issues. It's wonderful to see community activists organising events like this in order to help their fellow citizens make important choices.
It's a less pleasant surprise that in the suburbs of a capital city, with candidates from two electorates (including one that may yet swing) on show, not a single professional journalist was on duty to catch a story that is perfectly in synch with the campaign news cycle.
VIDEO AND PHOTOS FROM THE SUSTAINABLE JAMBOREE FORUM WILL BE ADDED TO YOUDECIDE2007 IN COMING DAYS.
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