Provest ‘will be worried’

SITTING Tweed MP Geoff Provest will be “checking his underpants” along with all other LNP politicians following the flogging the Coalition received in the Victorian state election, according to political lecturer Mark Rolfe.

Mr Rolfe, a lecturer University of NSW, said the results sent a strong message to the Coalition that the idea their supporter base was conservative climate change deniers and xenophobes was “delusional”.

He said Mr Provest, who held the Tweed seat at the 2015 election with a 6.4 per cent margin, needed an ideological shake-up within the party before he heads to the State election in March next year.

“He will be nervous because he has an influx of people with a range of views, those from Sydney who moved there with socially liberal attitudes and obviously a range of National Party voters too,” he said.

“All Coalition members will be checking their undies after the election in Victoria.

“Then there are people in National Party electorates who actually turned out to be socially liberal on same-sex marriage yet we still get the right wing saying they are the core of the party.”

Mr Provest said he had faced hard elections in the past. “Three weeks before the last election Campbell Newman got a serve and that time they had me behind again,” he said. “I won’t be checking my undies this time.”