No candidate comes close to have the background of Leila Abukar, the Liberal National Party candidate for Yeerongpilly on Brisbane, Australia

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QUEENSLAND is full of blow-ins, people who’ve arrived from somewhere else in Australia or overseas, but no candidate in this election comes close to have the background of Leila Abukar, the Liberal National Party candidate for Yeerongpilly on Brisbane’s southside.Thirty years ago, at the age of 12, she and some family members were taken from their home in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and piled into a Land Cruiser while bullets rained around them and her father and eldest brother were shot dead.After a week’s walk, she and her mother found a UN truck and started the long process of resettlement until she arrived in Australia in 1997; since then, she has worked as an interpreter, social worker and political staffer.“When I first came to Brisbane I was very active socially, I got out a lot and met a lot of people, and the Liberal Party were very welcoming and respectful, so I joined them,” she said.“Since then I have worked with a lot of organisations doing community work. I believe very strongly in grassroots work, helping young people get jobs, things like that.“But I am a very proud Queenslander — my birthday is Queensland Day, June 6, so I have a double celebration then for this place which has given me so much.”Ms Abukar was settled in Moorooka in the electorate of Yeerongpilly when she arrived, and while she may be unique as a political candidate, she’s not unique in the area.Yeerongpilly is probably the most multicultural electorate in Queensland, with people from Somalia and places such as Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Congo, Sierra Leone and Liberia.Moorooka Shopping Centre, one of the most “whitebread” of shopping centres 10 years ago, has a substantial Sudanese presence in particular.Whether all this will give Ms Abukar a big advantage is debatable.While she is the LNP candidate, she was not the candidate when it was won by the LNP at the last election, the man elected as the LNP member at that time being Carl Judge.Mr Judge resigned from the LNP in protest over the mass sackings in the public service and joined the Palmer United Party, indicating he would be standing for the PUP on the Sunshine Coast against Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie in this election.He changed his mind again, resigned from the PUP and is back standing as an independent in this election.This sort of track record is hardly going to endear him to his constituents and, notwithstanding Ms Akubar’s grip on the ethnic vote, the seat looks as though it will be a difficult one for the LNP to hold, given its margin is 1.5 per cent.The ALP candidate is Mark Bailey, who previously represented the area in the Brisbane City Council.He said there had been a change “in the ethnic make-up of the area in the past five years … but it’s not that big a factor. Everywhere I go there are people unhappy with Campbell Newman and his program of slashing ser­vices and public servants and I’ve been getting a positive response from all across the electorate, including ethnic groups”.The Greens, who won 16 per cent of the primary vote in 2012, are running community development worker Gillian Marshall-Pierce, while the PUP is running social worker Georgina Walton.Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

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