How a sense of betrayal brought a major complication to a battleground seat

Sydney Morning Herald

25-04-2025

It is a balmy mid-morning on the NSW south coast and, in the seat of Gilmore, Liberal candidate Andrew Constance is on very dangerous ground: a footy field under the gaze of TV cameras.
This was early in the campaign, days before Liberal leader Peter Dutton brained a cameraman with a Sherrin in Darwin ('Got him,' he said unhelpfully as the ball connected) and a full parliamentary term after then-prime minister Scott Morrison laid out a kid called Luca with a rugby tackle in the midst of a game of soccer.
Constance announces a bundle of money for improvements at the ground should the Coalition win government, and then engages in a kickaround with Liberal senator Andrew Bragg and members of the Batemans Bay Seahawks, who have been bounced from school for the event. The candidate, the kids and the media survive unscathed. Watching from the sideline, as she works a mobile phone, is Marise Payne, former foreign affairs minister, who is managing Constance's campaign. 'We've been close for 20 years,' he will later tell me.
Gilmore has become a key battleground. In the last election, Constance, a high-profile former state member for Bega, overcame Coalition infighting during preselection to secure a 2.5 per cent swing towards him, even as the Coalition suffered a 5.3 per cent drift the other way. He came within a hair's breadth of winning.
In the end, Labor's Fiona Phillips won by just 373 votes in a seat declared days after election day, securing the party's 77th seat and delighting Anthony Albanese, who was able to form a majority government as a result.
This time around there is another complication. Kate Dezarnaulds, a businesswoman from Berry who has won the support of Climate 200, has thrown her hat in the ring, making Gilmore one of the few seats in the nation where a teal independent is running against an incumbent Labor MP.
Should Dezarnaulds – her campaign website explains it is pronounced 'de-zar-know' – win, she would not only be knocking off a government member, she'd be depriving the Coalition of a crucial seat.
Her intrusion serves to highlight another intriguing factor, the evanescent role of climate change and the environment in this election. Both parties have been accused of being AWOL on both issues.