By Phil Jarratt
If you’ve seen James Blevin standing by the side of the road alone, frantically waving his electioneering placard in front of oncoming drivers, you might be wondering, what drives this boyishly handsome man-mountain.
Sitting by the Noosa River the other morning, Blevin, 31, shares this sense of wonder. “I’m not a political animal, so people struggle a bit to work out who I am. It’s come up quite a bit since I started campaigning – James is not a politician, he’s just an aspiring one, will he know what to do? But to me that’s the issue. Right now, in politics we don’t have enough people with real life experience. I guess I’m trying to demonstrate that difference.”
For the record, the Zimbabwe-born LNP candidate is affable, intelligent, charming and deadly serious about winning Noosa back for the party that he believes will lead Queensland into a new dawn of post-Covid prosperity come November. Much of his pitch is built around the vision of James for Noosa, Deb Frecklington for Queensland and Scott Morrison for Australia – a powerful conservative trifecta.
And if he can quote verbatim the LNP value sets about the building blocks of a fair and robust society, he’s also done his homework enough to know that what we really care about is the traffic on Beckman’s Road.
James and his land-based family fled the tyranny of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe in 2003 and settled on a property on the Maroochy River. He says: “I probably always felt a connection to politics because of what happened to us in Africa, seeing everyday people let down by their leaders.” And although he was only 14 when they arrived and did his secondary and tertiary education on the Sunshine Coast, he has maintained a strong connection to his homeland, establishing a wildlife tour company (with wife Sammy) and funnelling its profits into a foundation that protects endangered species.
Noosa Today asked James the same core questions we are asking all candidates.
Can you tell us about your work, your family and where you live?
I finished my education at USC and qualified as a chartered accountant in 2013, initially working with KPMG. Sammy and I have been together since we were 16 and 17, at school. We just belonged together. You can see it in the businesses we’ve started together – the first in African tours and the second in wedding services. We publish wedding albums in the form of magazines. We rent a property at Yandina Creek, have done since 2014. We probably couldn’t afford to buy 70 acres ourselves at this stage. It’s a problem I know many young people have at this stage, but we love where we live.
Why have you decided to run for the seat of Noosa at this election?
Politically speaking I’ve come from the wilderness. In the middle of last year we were hosting a fundraiser for our wildlife foundation and some Liberal Party people there came up to me after my speech and asked if I’d consider running. Sammy and I thought about it for a while, but our overall feeling was that if there was ever a place you’d want to devote years of time and energy to, it’s Noosa. We started thinking, if we missed this opportunity, in 30 years or so we’d never forgive ourselves. So we accepted the opportunity.
What makes this election different?
Clearly the pandemic has made even the simplest things difficult. At the beginning you didn’t want to knock on doors because you were thinking about whether people wanted to engage with anyone. You have to gauge the mood of the community the whole time, and if you can’t engage with the electorate, I guess that favours the incumbent. But quite apart from the Covid situation, this is a very important election for Queensland, of that there can be no doubt. Looking at the candidates, I also think that it’s time for a generational change and I represent that, and for the first time in a generation we have the opportunity to return an LNP member as part of an LNP government with a Federal LNP government in power.
What are the important election issues for the people of Noosa?
I’ve done a lot of work to establish what the real issues are, and Beckman’s Road and Tewantin Bypass comes up a lot, especially since the works on Hilton Terrace saw people sitting stationary for an hour at times. So that’s a commitment. Another one is funding the nursing salaries at Katie Rose Cottage. Better management of our river. Then there is diversification of business. There are many stakeholders involved in this, and it needs someone who can network well in the business world to take it from being a token throwaway line. On the broader level our Queensland economy is very fragile, and we need to reduce the tax burden on families and on retirement incomes which are crucial in Noosa.
And the length of the lease on Noosa Hospital is very disappointing. Ten years is not long enough to plan a future that includes expanded emergency care and parking solutions. I would investigate the efficacy of that lease and the relationship between Queensland Health and Ramsay Health Care, and see if it’s rooted in some kind of commercial logic.
What would you do to resolve these issues?
I don’t want to engage in negativity, or even focus on any particular candidate, because I’m driven by outcomes for the community. We have issues to overcome. When I’m working the roadside, young kids wave at me, and I know that in five years’ time they won’t be here. There’s no chance for them to work here. I’m not saying we have to turn Noosa into Maroochydore, in fact that’s the last thing I’m saying, but there are projects like the Vitality Village in Birtinya that would have been very well suited to Noosa and created 400 jobs. We’ve been talking about diversification for 20 years but no one is taking it seriously.
Why should people vote for you?
Because for the first time in a generation we have the opportunity to return an LNP member for Noosa as part of an LNP government with an LNP member at Federal level too, so if ever we wanted to be in a position to get things done for Noosa residents, this is the opportunity, because there’ll be nowhere to hide. I doubt the effectiveness of an independent in a unicameral parliament because it relies on a set of circumstances that I don’t think will eventuate.
