Mackellar – Australia 2022

Kristina Keneally should run here. (I’m half-joking.)

Jason Falinski is not nearly as unpopular as Abbott was in Warringah, he’s unlikely to receive the same amount of anger from voters. The Liberal first preference vote in Mackellar has not dropped below 50% since 1972, the past 2 elections had fairly strong independent challengers who all failed. Likely Liberal hold although it is possible the independent could make it into the 2CP and narrow the margin.

@Nicholas – You mean the Member for Scotland Island?

@Hawkeye_au Yes, indeed!

i really wished the Scotland Island booth still existed it used to such an outlier booth with a very strong Green vote and was always interesting to analyse.

@Nimalan It did have an enormous Green vote, 55%+ from memory. This election that may not be the case though – there are many living there supporting the ‘progressive independent’. There seems to be a perception that she represents a more viable Green alternative, despite being a self-proclaimed economic conservative.

@ Evan, yep in a traditional ALP/LIB TPP it would be the only booth that is not not Lib held. A Zali Stegall like candidate would win it plus some booths on the Mainland.

Interesting observing what is happening on the ground. The Scamps Camp has bumper stickers going everywhere atm, with her base of operations appearing to be around Collaroy/Long Reef. There hasn’t been much action from her north of the Narrabeen Bridge.

Falinski, on the other hand, appears to be making as much a vapid attempt at campaigning as Tony Abbott did against Zali. His latest attempt is straight out of Abbott’s playbook, promising to upgrade Wakehurst Parkway to a Dual Carriageway the whole way. Noble, but it looks uber cynical, especially as local greens group keep protesting any upgrades due to the damage to the environment around Narrabeen Lake. This is despite the fact that the road is dangerous at night and regularly floods.

Fun moment: Falinski announced a day of meeting voters on Thursday with a bus stop booth at 7am followed by coffee at my cousin’s cafe, Cafe Eleven11 in Warriewood. Only problem: He emailed everyone in his database except my cousins, who own the cafe. They found out 2nd hand at 9pm the day before via email from another person and didn’t get confirmation from Falinski’s office until an hour before he was due to arrive.

Shambles. Honestly.

Goodness, after all these years i would have thought that improved public transport would be a winner in the Northern beaches. Thing is no matter how big and beautiful you make the Wakehurst parkway you still will get blockage as you come into the CBD, not to mention the Spit Bridge and Military Road bottle necks. Surely a train or light rail would make more sense (oe even a busway)- forget about green initiatives- they are there for sure but congestion and the problem of crossing the water, means road upgrades will always fail in their purpose. I left the area 50 years ago and still no train. absurd.

Hawkeye what’s your take on Sophie Scamp’s chances?

Maverick, are you Queensland based? In terms of its size, I found Brisbane has much better public transport than Sydney in terms of rapid buses (trains not so much) in more locations.

I am now but i have lived in quite a lot of electorates- enough to have a reasonable grasp of their needs. Grew up in Mackellar, lived in Warringah and Sydney, two ACT electorates, Kooyong and Ryan. Shorter times in Lilley, Kingsford Smith, Blaxland and Macquarie.

Totally agree about Brisbane buses. Sydney has good trains and ferries but where these are not available the public transport is terrible.

Well Brisbane trains have terrible coverage and are expensive as hell. Six in one etc.

Agree with you Furtive, Brisbane trains only reach the city as a main hub, other hubs like Chermside and Mt Gravatt/Garden City are only accessible by bus.

I found Sydney trains stop near almost all major shopping centres, which is not a feature that is used for Brisbane.

Yes but there is no train or light rail anywhere near Mackellar or Warringah

Sure. I wasn’t trying to start the bad public transport olympics. I was just agreeing with you about how absurd it is that it’s always lane widening and so forth that politicians invariably look to for easy votes while rail is perennially neglected, despite runaway overdevelopment and the congestion it inevitably brings. Decades of astonishing policy failure, from both major parties.

There was a plan for direct freeway connection and could also have been a rail inclusion – if they had thought about such things at the time. There was to be a freeway and bridge connection from Castlecrag to Seaforth. The land was bought but all cancelled by Neville Wran in 1976. The Burnt Creek deviation in the back Balgowlah was the only part built. It did keep Castlecrag pristine but the result has been 50 years of band aid solutions.

@Hawkeye_au

I’d contest the assertion that Scamps isn’t active north of the Narrabeen bridge. She’s from Newport herself, her campaign launch was in Avalon, and the membership of groups that preceded her candidacy (Mackellar Rising and Voices of Mackellar) was heavily concentrated in the northern suburbs of Mackellar. Anecdotally, there are far more Scamps volunteers from Mackellar’s northern suburbs, and more bumper stickers.

The perception you’ve given is an interesting one, because I think it represents Scamps’ acknowledgement of the challenges progressives face in the south and west of Mackellar (see above map ‘Election results in Mackellar at the 2019 federal election’ for more). Whilst I’m quite sure that Scamps’ volunteers and donors herald disproportionately from Mackellar’s northern suburbs, her PR efforts and physical advertising spend is clearly being skewed to the south and west of the electorate.

To @Furtive Lawngnome’s question, I think Scamps has a lot of money and some clever strategy. She certainly has a chance in Mackellar. Falinski is clearly scared (actually out in the community, taking every media opportunity he’s got) and will pull out everything he can. He’s a very average orator with shitful policies and an increasingly despised leader (plus an autocrat and a bully!). But Mackellar is a very affluent, and generally apathetic electorate. Falinski is not Tony Abbott. Scamps realises this, and is trying to win votes with a populist, emotionally activating campaign.

@Evan – I’ll thank you not to warp my words around. My line was “there hasn’t been much action”, implying that there is some but not a lot. Indeed, I have noticed a lot more of her campaign car and her rally groupings occuring around Collaroy. I didn’t say she was inactive but my observations suggests that she is probably leaving her campaign team to fill in the gaps more on the ground while she focuses on the southern section of the seat, especially given the track record for independents in the North of the seat (Alex McTaggart for council and Pittwater comes to mind). Funnily enough, Jason Falinski’s base is Mona Vale as well.

You are correct about Falinski’s personality though. He has an almost stand-over stature about himself and is incredibly duplicituous in his nature. I can tell you first hand that he has someone on the inside working away to bring down Bronwyn Bishop. Not the Helicopter scenario, but more the leaking of branch and member details, beyond what was normally allowed for a pre-selection.

@Maverick and @Yoh An – Redistributed is 100% correct. The opportunity for better roads and some rail being put into the Northern Beaches was a state plan by Bob Askin back in the 1970’s, which was centered around the Wakehurst Parkway and Burnt Bridge Creek Deviation. Neville Wran scrapped it as one of his first policies and sold the land that had been acquired to developers. With the exception of the B-Line (which has been a god-send) we have been screwed for Public Transport ever since.

The Wakehurst Parkway upgrade is much needed. The road floods if you so much as spit on it and is a death trap at night. I lost my cousin on the Parkway back in 2013. There are no safety features (apart from barriers on the lake side), no lighting or properly reflecting cat-eyes and the road is ridiculously narrow in some segments. It is massively over-due but local green groups have continually attempted to block this on the basis of the local environment.

The problem is that Falinski has taken this play straight out of the Abbott playbook, who attempted to twist the Northern Beaches Tunnell to his own campaign in a cynical nature and rightfully got run out of town for it.

My take on the campaign so far is a touch skewed, insofar as Dr Scamps has been very active online and the same on-the-ground campaign style we saw from Steggall, with a lot of people wearing her t-shirts casually and cars carrying her bumper stickers and some stick-on banners as well. She does appear to be going after the tech-savvy Gen-X voter into the Baby Boomer vote and has even recruited former NSW Fire Commissioner Greg Mullins to help on her campaign. Falinski looks a bit thread bare.

Falinski has been relying on community groups to sure up his support, especially with the MWFA (where he worked to grant $500k to upgrade the very ageing and flood-damaged club-house at Cromer Park) and the local SLSC. His attempts on the ground, though, haven’t been great.

TBH, based on these observations and with no polling, I wouldn’t be surprised if Scamps causes an upset, although it would have to be turnaround around two major stats:

1. The lowest the Liberal Party Primary vote has ever been was back in 1972 (The Whitlam Election), where Bill Wentworth only secured 48% of the Primary Vote and held up with a 55.2% TPP. This is the only time the Liberal Party failed to win the seat on Primary Votes. The next closest was Jim Carlton in 1990, who got 50.4% of the Primary Vote and still managed to get to 61.1% TPP. However, Falinski has the 3rd worst performance, being 2016 where he only got 51.17% of the Primary Vote. The difference was that he got a massive Preferential Vote movement to him that saw him achieve 65.74% TPP. Even Bronwyn’s worst performance was the 1994 By-Election against Bob Ellis, where she won 52.25% of the Primary Vote and went on to 60.27% TPP. But she kicked on, whereas Falinski has failed to do so.

2. Apart from that 1994 By-Election (especially given that there was no Labor Candidate), No Independent or 3rd party candidate, has ever finished 2nd in Mackellar, or made the TCP. The closest anyone has ever come. But there is a genuine chance of that happening now and the reason for that is Labor has started running dead in the seat. At the 2019 election, Declan Steele only managed 16.94% FPV, just ahead of Alice Thompson (IND) and Pru Wawn (GRN). If IND and GRN had preferenced each other, they would have jumped LAB into 2nd place. The combined pool of these votes (plus Sustainable Australia) was 44%. But this assumes 100% preference flow to one candidate, which means Dr Scamp would need to find another 6% on top of a 100% preference flow to knock Falinski off.

Unlike Warringah, which did have a solid Independent streak (thanks to the state seat of Manly), this is a much harder task for Dr Scamps.

Fun Moment – Falinski called me last week, asking me to help campaigning for him on last Sunday and This Sunday. The fact that he is ringing up people to help campaign locally shows that he is genuinely worried

UComms poll of 833 voters in Mackellar. Falinski (Liberal) is on 35% and Sophie Scamps (indy) on 24%. No 2 party preferred reported.

Thanks Blather. I found the article of that with the breakdown. Should point out that the poll was commissened by the Scamps Camp:
Falinski – 35%
Scamps – 24%
Goodman (Labor) – 18%
Other – 23%
From Other, let’s assume the Greens run dead so their FPV will drop to 10%, with 3% split amongst minor parties. This would mean we would be looking at this:

Falinski – 35%
Scamps – 24%
Goodman – 18%
Hrnjak – 10%
Others – 3%
Undecided – 10%

Of that undecided, 28% lean Falinski, 25% lean scamps, almost in line with the FPV (Liberal slightly down). That would make the FPV then look like this:

Falinski – 38%
Scamps – 27%
Goodman – 20%
Hrnjak – 11%
Minor Parties – 4%

Take the following preference breakdown:
Minor Parties – 50:50
Hrnjak – 80:20 to Scamps
Goodman – 70:30 to Scamps
That would leave 2CP looking like this:

Falinski – 48%
Scamps – 52%

This 2CP does come within the margin of Error from UComms and was commissioned by Scamps. Either way, it does show that Falinski is in trouble

Side observation. As stated before, the Scamps T-Shirts don’t appear as much around Mona Vale and Warriewood but they are definitely targetting Collaroy and Dee Why. Not sure north of Mona Vale

Scamps camp really campaigning hard, had corflutes and volunteers lining pittwater road today for the morning. Lots of horn honking in response. Will be interesting to watch

In all the cases to date, the Teal has eaten into both the Labor and Green vote and this poll shows Labor up and Greens level pegging. This poll does not show this. Methinks there were lots of leading questions when commissioned by the Climate 200 camp.

Hawkeye

There have been some regular Scamps walkers through Mona Vale in groups of 10 with shirts and placards during the day. There is also a surprising amount of Scamps corflutes along Barrenjoey Road from Avalon north.

In 2019, it would have been a reasonable assumption that many of Zali Steggall’s visible supporters would have been from outside the electorate. In this case it could all be new local energy or some who supported Steggall last time. How visible is the Steggall campaign on the ground?

Hi @Blather and @Redistributed,

Yep, yesterday really saw the campaign kick off from Scamps. It’s the first time I’d seen them really ramp up around Warriewood and Mona Vale. There are a few houses around the corner from me now showing Scamps Branding and Corflutes. Can confirm my parents and grandparents both got door-knocked up around Collaroy. Needless to say, there were apparently a few horrified responses from the Scamps Camp when they realised that they were dealing with my family :P. I haven’t even been active in politics at a Federal Level since Bronwyn’s departure. Word must get around 😛

Falinski has been very quiet and his attempts have been poor so far. He is getting desperate for support but I think the old Bronwyn Support has left him and is becoming reliant on supporters from the Liberal Left to help out.

In terms of the poll, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some leading questions involved. Either way, I find it fascinating that they would release a poll like that with that much detail involved. Generally speaking, if you were confident of a result from a poll, you wouldn’t release it like that.

Finally, in regards to the support, 100% with Zali’s supporters. Zali has been targetting Dee Why more and more with Scamps in partnership, suggesting that they are sharing resources more and more. It was very much an out-of-town support base for Steggall, coming in to help (many were from the Eastern Suburbs) so I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them are at it again, along with disaffected Liberal Supporters angry that Jane Buncle wasn’t pre-selected.

Scamps supporters along Warringah Road this morning. Scamps also got a few seconds tv grab on 7 News last night

Noticed Falinski has dropped most of his Liberal/For the Beaches branding off his office this morning. A sign the Lib brand is bad or waiting for new materials? Ive also never seen Falinski run paid adverts on social media asking for volunteers/people to take his corflutes before. Can he actually campaign? – Hawkeye you might have an insight here?

Hi Blather,

Short answer – No. He hasn’t actively been involved in a campaign like this since the days when he was on Warringah Council. That was an abject failure. He lost his seat on council running as an independent.

Since then, he had been running off the personal vote from Bronwyn and has done nothing with it since.

Interesting few numbers I’ve just been able to extrapolate.

1. Falinski’s Personal vote in the seat is poor, for such a relatively “safe” seat. While his primary vote was 53% at the last election, the Senate Vote for the Coalition in Mackellar was 50.28%. 2.75% Personal Vote? It’s not good enough, although it was marginally higher than Abbott’s Personal Vote in 2016 (I think that was only 1%)

2. Dr Scamps is starting from further back than Zali did in this seat. While you could make a points that Zali started from a hard base of around 17%, Scamps is starting from 14.5%, already a 2.5% deficit. On top of that, Falinski was 1.5% ahead of where Abbott was in the election before his demise, pushing that deficit up to 4%. Add onto that an extra 1.75% in Personal Vote and it means that Scamps has to pull an extra 5.75% over what Zali was able to achieve.

Scamps will need 2 things to happens:
1. See Falinski’s Personal Vote enter negative territory, to a level similar to Abbott. Let’s be honest here. Falinski is no Tony Abbott. Even the most ardent of Anti-Liberal Voters would acknowledge that Falinski and Abbott are Chalk and Cheese.
2. Scamps would need an even stronger flow of tactical voting from Labor and the Greens. Zali achieved around 14% in tactical voting, which would take Scamps up to 31%. Scamps needs a further 5%.

It’s possible but would require further re-writing of history of Federal Election Voting.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/23/coalition-scrimps-on-mps-as-climate-200-backed-independents-outspend-them-in-key-seats?CMP=share_btn_tw

More evidence that the moderate Libs are really facing an existential crisis this election, and that their factional rivals seem happy enough to leave them to their fate. Also a really bizarre argument Falinski’s running with here- it essentially boils down to ‘how dare you spend campaign money on a campaign when there are desperate people our government is ignoring that need it so much more!’ I mean the guy isn’t very bright

@FL – he really isn’t. The bloke is a horrible campaigner and has a terrible team with him as well.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that he lost his Council Seat on the old Warringah Council. Even though endorsed Liberals weren’t a thing back then, him and Pat Daley ran as Liberal Independents. Losing a Council seat in the way he did, when the Liberal Brand was on the ascendancy in NSW should have been the end of his political career because it completely exposed is terrible campaigning strategies and inability to connect effectively.

But no. Instead he managed to get one of his insiders into Bronwyn’s office (with thanks to Peta Credlin) and the guy leaked all the numbers and strategies around branch management to Falinski, who used it against Bronwyn.

If he loses this, he has no-one to blame but himself.

The electorates of Warringah,Mackellar and North Sydney should be Liberal Party territory.However the level of internal bickering which has been exposed to voters will be felt in the lower Liberal vote in these seats which could mean Liberal losses here particularly in regard to a seat like North Sydney.Zali Steggall should be safe in Warringah.

Falinski.. supported Deves and her secret public meeting.. cannot help him

He just makes one bad campaigning decision after another. If I was him, I’d abandon ship on Warringah and focus on Mackellar, distancing as much as possible from Deves.

Provisional Booth listing has been released and the two significant changes for Mackellar are Mona Vale Beach (Not actually at the beach but in the middle of the Mona Vale Industrial Area) and Narrabeen South (aka the War Vets Home) have been abolished, with no new booths added.

For anyone doing modelling, that is less than 1000 votes that will need to be re-allocated by booth. Likely, there will be a small increase in Mona Vale North (aka Pittwater High School) or Mona Vale Central (Mona Vale Memorial Hall, along with Collaroy Plateau North (aka Collaroy Plateau YC) and Wheeler Heights (Wheeler Heights Public School)

Scamps and Falinski interviewed on 7.30 tonight.

Scamps has also organised a concert in Avalon with two local well known bands Lime Cordiale and Angus + Julia Stone.

Falinskis forgettability could be a help or a hindrance. As in, he hasn’t got some sort of political issue that people can rally around and mobilise a base (like abbot at least had, and people like Dutton have). Make sit hard to campaign against, however, people could be asked “well why vote him in” and willing to give independent a go

@Blather, I just popped down to Election Beats in Dunbar Park, Av this arvo. Very good event, Angus and Julia Stone were great. Missed Lime Cordiale which is a shame 🙁 Event didn’t feel political, was just positive vibes everywhere. Really looking forward to election day and following all the commentary here with great interest.

The concert in Avalon was a success, with over 1000 people atrending. At the same time, Falinski was talking to a half empty golf course. Is this the sign that change is gaining momentum, or will the apathy of the Mackellar electorate keep Falinski on?
I see Sophie popping up a bit everywhere with billboards, t-shirts and stickers. No sight of Falinski. It even seems the few bilboards he had around Mona Vale and Warriewood were pulled off. Like their supporters are ashamed of being seen.
Any comments on the recent trends?

On the ground I can tell you that it feels like the old Liberal Guard has abandoned Falinski (aka those who supported Bronwyn way back when). I can confirm that the campaign launch at Cromer Golf Club was a struggle.

One interesting trend is that the people turning out in the Scamps T-Shirts are the same people every time. They are highly energized but it’s the same 50+ semi-retirees trotting out. Probably a sign of who is regularly available to help campaign in the local area and also the same people who turn out to campaign for YNB in the local elections.

Scamps definitely has an energized base and it does feel like she is outstanding Falinski, I’d say 5-6:1.

I get the feeling that this Wednesday, with the teacher strike, that there could be further capital made by Scamps as well. Watch this space

It seems to me that the LNP are facing the same dilemma that the ALP faced back in 2010. The most Green focused ALP members were most under threat from the greens, because this was the demographic of the seats. Thus Melbourne, Sydney and Grayndler were most at risk, along with Freemantle. Left leaning ALP electorates with Right wing ALP members were also at risk eg Batman. At the federal level the ALP seems to have mostly stemmed this tide, but being in opposition helps. By putting Ged Kearney into their most vulnerable seats they dammed the wall.

So now the LNP’s most moderate members are under threat from the Teales, because that is their demographic ie moderate, youngish, green leaning. My gut feeling is that the LNP will take a big hit this year with 2-5 seats falling teale (or green) – Higgins, Mackellar, and possibly North Sydney, Goldstein, and even Ryan falling.

So, do people reckon Falinski is funding the fake signs that say Scamps is secretly a Green?

Police have to act on this either way. If it’s traced back to him, what’s the penalty?

Although ones saying the same about Pocock showed up at the same time. Could be further the Lib foodchain.

Looks like an Advance Australia thing imo.

I’ve heard on the ground the Liberal Party are not funding it (although that is not to say that they aren’t involved somehow) but I’ve heard it is Advance Australia getting involved again, in a similar way that GetUp! has been getting involved from time to time.

This is my biggest worry with these activist groups, regardless of what side of politics they sit. They can operate outside the realm of political parties, without that much regulation and can also shadow the source and spend of money.

If it were up to me, I’d have all activist groups banned from any involvement like this. I’d also ban Industry Groups and Unions doing the same thing. But then, they would whinge about their implied right to freedom of speech on the political process.

In the end, we, as voters, lose because of this barrage of BS.

If can be traces back to Falinski then he will lose the seat

I doubt there’ll be a smoking gun with his name on it. The point of using astroturf dirt squads in the first place is deniability.

I’m new to the Mackellar electorate & finding it fascinating watching what’s happening on the ground here. I get the feeling that Dr Scamps has a real chance, which would be a major upset with the previous margin in 2019. Looking forward to May 21st.

I was robopolled by Advance Australia the other day – I found that out at the end. Interesting poll as it gradually ratchets up the atmosphere throughout the push poll – starts at Labor or Greens – then goes to Labor AND Greens – then Labor Green Coalition – then Labor Green Extremists. I think I was a disappointmnet to them …. !!!