As a first time candidate in a volatile election, with a member retiring after 43 years, I was keen to leave nothing to chance. I knocked on doors, met voters at shopping centres, bus stops and railway stations and attended as many community events as possible. Voters repeatedly told me ‘You will be the next member’ to which I replied ‘I take nothing for granted.’ Voter complacency began to concern me and I mentioned it to former prime minister John Howard who remarked ‘Julian, if we lose Berowra we may as well pack up the Liberal Party!’ We didn’t take Berowra for granted. At the time of writing the Liberal Party is on track to have the second best result ever with a margin of around 17 per cent.

Although I have worked on many election campaigns as a volunteer, as a candidate the experience is different. It is very humbling to see people give up their time to campaign because they believe in you and your cause – particularly during the arctic conditions of a winter campaign. Over 500 personal friends and party members got involved in the campaign in some way, many for the first time.

Muck ink has been spilt on the future of the Liberal Party. The success of the Liberal Party in Berowra is that, at its best, it is a political community where members can meet like-minded people, hear interesting speakers, learn to campaign and have their ideas listened to. But the real success is a concern for the welfare of individual members and an interest in their lives beyond the political. Political parties can be more successful if they help play an important role in fulfilling a deeper need for community that exists in our country today.

The Liberal Party must be a broad church –a home for both liberals and conservatives. Menzies wanted to create a party that represented all that was ‘sane, free, enterprising and generous in the Australian spirit.’ I have always tried to encourage this. It was perhaps evidenced by the range of people who came to campaign for me including Lucy Turnbull (whose father Tom Hughes QC had been the first member for Berowra), Tony Abbott (who drew a 250 plus person crowd on a Saturated Sunday), Mitch Fifield (who made some important announcements about mobile black spots) and Peter Dutton.

Both from my own extra-political activities and inheriting the mantle of Philip Ruddock I have developed many friendships with people of different faiths and ethnic backgrounds. I was therefore keen to have Immigration Minister Peter Dutton visit the electorate. His visit was a great success. The event was even greeted by protestors – surely a good sign for any neophyte candidate. Not only did Dutton speak very well, making the case for the re-election of the Government both on the basis of economic management and border security, but he did something else. The usual procedure for political functions is that the Minister makes a speech and tries to extract themselves as quickly as possible. But Peter Dutton was keen to meet people: posing for photographs and hearing personal stories. He was almost the last to leave the function.

My campaign office was a former tattoo parlour – no doubt a step down the social ladder. Uniquely, we had an opening and blessing of the campaign office. Rabbi Roni Cohavi from the Parramatta and District Synagogue affixed a mezuzah (a small box containing passages from Deuteronomy reminding us to love God and keep His commandments) to the door of the campaign office. The event was largely attended by people who were not of the Jewish faith. At a time when the Left has an agenda to hurry faith off the public stage it is important to strike a blow for the other side.

With the major contest between Labor and the Coalition, the Greens escape with too little scrutiny. Greens policy is to shut down all mining, bring public housing to every suburb and remove all controls on our immigration program. Often the Greens substitute sanctimony for policy. At one of the candidate debates my Greens opponent suggested that there should be a ban on political donations from mining companies and tried to make an argument that such donations influence policy. She was less comfortable when I pointed out that the Greens took $600,000 from the union movement including $125,000 from the CFMEU. With such donations is it any wonder that they consistently voted against the re-introduction of the ABCC.

Not since the anti-Workchoices campaign has there been anything as dishonest as Labor’s Medi-scare campaign. Labor made up this lie because they had run out of ideas, their campaign was failing and they would say and do anything to get elected. Medi-scare clearly had an effect. I had to keep telling voters that we had no plan to privatise Medicare. Perhaps we should have countered with the announcement of Labor’s secret plan for a defence treaty with North Korea!

The new Senate voting system was confusing and played some part in the election of so many minor party senators. The NSW Senate ballot paper was enormous. It must become harder for candidates to get onto the Senate ballot paper.

Courtesy is such an undervalued commodity that it always surprises people. Since the election, I have stood at train stations around the electorate, morning and evening, with a placard which says ‘Thank you Berowra’. It is nice to see commuters smile at me as they recognised me and stopped to applaud the rare gesture.