Candidates bow out

WHILE the battle for Whitsunday is now between Bronwyn Taha (ALP) and Jason Costigan (LNP), the three other candidates know they have run their race.

Kylee Stanton, who stood for the Palmer United Party (PUP) and polled the highest out of the minor parties with 3523 primary votes (at Wednesday’s count), said she was proud of what she was able to achieve.

“The overall message is that there is a choice. It doesn’t have to be the two-party preferred all the time,” she said.

Ms Stanton said her major challenge was the shortness of the campaign.

“We just didn’t have the time to get out and see enough people but those that we did reach voted for us,” she said.

She also said that with the swing away from the LNP she believed the end result would be a better balance in government.

“And that needed to happen – there’s a saying that absolute power corrupts and corrupts absolutely – and that’s what it did,” she said.

“Now we’ll just have to wait and see and may the best candidate win.”

Tony Fontes, who ran the race for the Greens said he was disappointed that locally the result was so close, but happy the campaign had put the Great Barrier Reef on the agenda of every political party.

“We can certainly expect the State Government to take a completely different stance on the Abbot Point project and we’ll be pushing to see that they keep their promises not to dump spoil in the wetlands and not to fund Adani,” he said. Independent candidate Dan Van Blarcom said while he received the least number of primary votes, he was pretty pleased that right across the electorate he had achieved a result.

“And the good thing [about the lack of a final result] is it keeps Whitsunday in the national news,” he said.