Blaxland – Australia 2022

The Milperra booth looks odd in this electorate

Is the liberal booth…… part of what boundary was chosen m4 I think.. instead I’d say canterbury/ Milperra rd

Milperra in the past was in Banks. I feel that it will be better fit with suburbs such as East Hills, Picnic Point etc instead the Rest of Lidcombe and areas East of Woodville Road would fit better in Blaxland. At a state level Milperra is in East Hills. I am not sure about the demographics of Milperra.

Milperra is the odd suburb out of Blaxland. It has a clear majority of English only speakers, and is very Anglo compared to the rest of the electorate, which has a high migrant population. It is also wealthier than the rest of the electorate, and I think the booth there has consistently voted Liberal, again unlike the rest of Blaxland. It would be a better fit with the suburbs along the Georges River than with Bankstown and Auburn, as Nimalan points out.

Milperra was in Blaxland during the eighties, it was in the state seat of Bass Hill then as well.
It usually votes Labor when govts change thou.

You can see what they use as the boundary for this, being the M5. But I agree that Milperra is the odd-one-out here. You could make a case for Milperra to move to Banks and for Blaxland to extend up along Woodville Road all the way up to the intersection with the M4.

3% Informal vote for the voice, highest in the nation. Does anyone have any theories as to why? I suspect it has something to do with the demographics but correct me if I’m wrong.

Interesting, some of the recent commentary about this seat as the right flank in Sky News has been attacking Jason Clare for his position on the university Palestine protests they have repeatedly stated that this seat is more than 30% Muslim and suggesting that his the reason for his stance. It seems this issue has galvanized right wing across the western world. At the University of Mississippi we saw Counter protests doing monkey chants at a Black Pro-Palestine protester. Previously, it was suggested that the Libs could target seats such as Blaxland by focusing on social conservatism on LGBT issues etc as this seat had the highest vote against SSM. However, it does not seem the Libs see it that way after the UN vote on Palestine last night senator James Paterson posted on twitter “Before the election Labor told Australians, including the Jewish community, that there was no difference between the major parties on Israel. Our shameful vote at the UN last night is yet further evidence this was a lie. Only the Coalition stands with Israel.”

Any goodwill towards the Libs due to the lockdowns and vaccine mandate (really only applicable in Victoria), SSM or the hawkish stance towards China among Muslim voters would be gone now with the Libs emphasising a significantly more pro-Israel stance than Labor. Doesn’t bode well for the Libs in seats like Werriwa but would help in seats like Higgins.

@ Dan M
I actually think the Hawkish stance on China will backfire among Muslim voters as it is viewed through the prism of the US Alliance. This will lead to greater skepticism of AUKUS etc. I wrote in the Wills thread that in the Muslim Countries of ASEAN that the majority of people support China over US link below.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Majority-of-ASEAN-people-favor-China-over-U.S.-survey-finds

i think Jason Clare might be in trouble as the combination of Frank Carbone, the muslim block seeking to oust sitting mps and the fact that 46% of the redistributed division are new voters to blaxland that could be enough to unseat him to the Carbone network

Frank Carbone is not Dai Le. She connects with the Vietnamese community in Fowler, plus most of Fowler overlaps with Fairfield LGA so at least she had a strong local profile. From memory, Labor won the 2PP in Liverpool, outside Fairfield. She also ran against a parachuted Labor candidate so there was this perfect storm.

Most of the proposed Blaxland will cover Cumberland and CB LGAs, not Fairfield where Carbone has a local profile. I sense Jason Clare will cop a big swing but will retain. This is despite the huge redistribution shift.

@Daniel T, “3% Informal vote for the voice, highest in the nation.”
A bit late answering. I remember watching an SBS news clip. Scutineers or election officials said some people wrote “Free Palestine” on the ballot paper.

@Nimalan overall the survey says it was almost 50/50. I’d like to see a similar survey done between China and Australia, in that case I’d say Australia would be more popular since Australia has very close ties with ASEAN.

@ NP
The survey overall is 50-50 but i am talking about the only 3 majority Muslim countries in SE Asia (Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia) where China is much more popular than US. In countries like Vietnam obviously Palestine is not important which is why in the seat of Fraser which has a large Vietnamese community, the Palestine issue will not hurt Labor.

@Nimalan another interesting survey by the Pew Research Centre: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/07/27/chinas-approach-to-foreign-policy-gets-largely-negative-reviews-in-24-country-survey/

24 countries with major global importance and big economies were surveyed. The results found that, in general, the countries that had the most favourable views of China were the poorer ones on the list (under 30% of respondents in Indonesia (25%), Kenya (23%) and Nigeria (15%) had unfavourable views of China, and in Argentina (34%) and Mexico (33%) it was under 35%).

The countries with the most unfavourable views of China are Australia and Japan, with a massive 87% of respondents in both countries holding an unfavourable view of the People’s Republic of China. In Sweden it was 85% and in the US it was 83%, also very high percentages. It was also quite high in the Netherlands (77%), Germany (76%) and France (72%).

So in that survey, Indonesians had the third-most positive views towards China (only 25% had a negative view, compared to 23% in Kenya and just 15% in Nigeria).

Also, about Vietnamese people: they tend to have quite unfavourable views of China because of China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea amongst other issues. Some American kids movies were even banned in Vietnam because they had maps that showed the nine-dash line, which is essentially China’s territorial claim of the waters in the South China Sea which is the only body of water that touches the Vietnamese coastline.

@ NP
Interesting survey it shows % more negative in those countries that have disputes such as Vietnam or Japan as well as more economically developed western countries. It would have been good if countries like Malaysia, Turkey, Egypt, Bangladesh etc were surveyed. Indonesia is the only Muslim majority country survyed on Pew Reseach you shared while Nigeria is about half Christian and half Muslim.

@votatnte t wont be frank carbone but one of his candidates i think carbone is gonna go up against Bowen in Mcmhaon as Bowens energy policies are hurting those people particuarly hard

@Nimalan this Pew Research Centre survey covers 19 countries, including Malaysia:

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/29/negative-views-of-china-tied-to-critical-views-of-its-policies-on-human-rights/

It too shows the richer countries have more unfavourable views of China than the poorer ones. It also has a percentage of people who think relations with China are bad.

Australia was at 86% for unfavourable views of China, the second-highest in the world. The highest was Japan at 87%. The US was at 82% and South Korea was at 80%.

In terms of relations with China, however, 83% of Australians said they were bad, the highest in the world. Japan was at 81%, South Korea was at 74% and the US was at 70%.

In Malaysia, 60% of respondents had a favourable view of China, while in Singapore it was 67% which is a surprise.

The first survey I linked was from 2023, while this one is from 2022, so some things would’ve changed since then I assume.

This 2022 survey, in contrast, shows the US. 54% of Australians had a favourable view of the US (which is lower than expected but for the US it really matters how the question is worded). 57% of Malaysians had an unfavourable view while 51% of Singaporeans had a favourable view. (Note that Singapore is not a Muslim country, but it is part of ASEAN.)

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/29/negative-views-of-china-tied-to-critical-views-of-its-policies-on-human-rights/

@ NP
Thanks for that, Malaysia is an interesting example as it is fairly economically developed and like Australia is a Federal Constitutional Monarchy that has single member districts and uses the Westminister system. It is interesting because how Muslim Australian perceive AUKUS may impact the result. I did not believe that a Hawkish stance on China is a vote winner among Muslim Australians as they have been unfavourable view of the US for sometime such as the Iraq War etc. As mentioned Peter Khalil is very Pro AUKUS so i think the Greens will use that in Wills.

@NP:Aa lot of older generation Singaporeans and Malaysians, particularly those who are ethnically Chinese would view China favourably as they likely have relatives living there, maybe even some who migrated from there, and would also more likely view China through the lens of someone like Deng Xiaopeng – someone who brought millions of Chinese out of poverty after the economic disasters led by Mao Zedong, rather than Xi Jinping.

It would be the younger generation who has much less attachment to China and consumes more Western, Korean and Japanese media who would have either a neutral or negative view of China.

@ WL
However, only 25% of Malaysians are ethnically Chinese and in Indonesia it is less than 5%, the vast majority of the population in both Indonesia and Malaysia are Muslim. I agree it may explain in Singapore but not sure if that is the explanation for Malaysia

@Nimalan it’s odd that Malaysia has Sunni Islam as its official religion even though only 63% of Malaysians are actually Muslim, while 87% of Indonesians are Muslim yet Indonesia is officially a secular nation.

@ NP
It is interesting. I think it is more to do with the Monarchy a bit like how England has the Anglican church as it state church while the US which is more religious is strictly secular. Indonesia is really a post colonial construct. However, in practical terms it makes no real difference i have been to Malaysia before and during Christmas time you often see the Shopping centres have Christmas Trees as big as in Australia, Chinese New Year/Diwali is a public holiday there as well and pork and alcohol are widely available.

Nimalan, surprisingly I have visited Malaysia albeit a few years ago and there were several places where pork is banned. Although that may have been because I travelled to one of the smaller towns with a higher Muslim population so I guess Malaysia can be seen as similar to the US in that rural areas are generally more religious compared to the major cities which are generally secular in nature.

Good Point Yoh An, i only stayed in KL which is quite cosmopolitan and has a large Chinese and Indian community as well so it is more socially liberal.

I remember eating pork and drinking alcohol in Indonesia and Malaysia. It’s also a thing in Lebanon and in the touristy parts of the UAE.

As for Kuala Lumpur, the centre-left Alliance of Hope (Pakatan Harban; PH) holds all but one federal seat in the city. The other seat is held by the centre-right to right-wing National Alliance (Barisan Nasional; BN).

Agree Nimalan/NP, as the largest city KL would be akin to either Sydney or New York having a high migrant population and overall is generally progressive leaning (favouring left wing and centre left parties) vs the rural areas which are more conservative leaning (I travelled to a part of southern Sabah where the conservative BN is dominant, similar to how the Republican Party dominates all rural areas of the USA).

I think Malaysia is based on co-existance rather than one nationality inherited from both British Colonial policies and Malay Monarchy (which would unappeal to the Chinese and Indian population) hence this creates examples like they get dedicated Chinese-Language schools (explains why ethnic Chinese retained their culture and language)

Why is there always a high informal vote in these parts of Sydney?

@Daniel T (sorry for the late response and I know you’re not on here anymore) it’s because lots of people here don’t speak English at home and may not understand how to vote.

Top five least-English speaking seats in NSW:

1. Blaxland (Labor): 24.3%
2. Fowler (DLFCN): 24.9%
3. Watson (Labor): 30.0%
4. Parramatta (Labor): 31.9%
5. Barton (Labor): 37.1%