Nationals Senator Matt Canavan says despite the party’s win at the Upper Hunter by-election at the weekend the Coalition “can do better” and needs to ensure it actually represents the working-class voters in the region.
“There are still large parts of the electorate that are looking, are shopping for other parties,” he said.
“About half the electorate did not vote for either the Labor Party, or the Nationals, the Coalition candidate in this election”.
Mr Canavan said he “sensed a lot of frustration” among voters he talked to at the weekend over the “lack of action” surrounding coal fired power and concerns about net zero emissions targets being adopted “willy-nilly” and “what that means for their jobs”.
“If we’re serious about getting these working-class votes in the Hunter region … we’ve actually got to represent them," he said.
“We’ve got to do policies, we can’t just talk about it, we can’t just rely on the Labor Party being worse.
“Us as a Coalition need to deliver for working class people and that means bringing manufacturing jobs to this country, it means not signing up to international agreements which would sign away our sovereignty and just send more jobs to China."