Moreton – Australia 2022

Could be interesting to watch. LNP candidate not known yet.

Graham Perrett has never exactly been a star Labor performer, and was likely helped by both the LNP’s preselection choice and an increase in the Greens’ primary vote last election (his personal vote fell). The south-eastern part of the electorate is the heart of Brisbane’s Chinese community, and while it used to be a reliable Labor constituency it’s since drifting to the LNP, presumably because of enduring cultural conservatism as well as increased affluence. The Northern part, particularly the suburbs overlapping the district of Miller is going the opposite direction, following the trend of most of the inner-city suburbs as a growing source of progressive strength, both for the ALP and the Greens. However, this time the Greens have preselected a trans-woman which is… well, it’s a risky choice, for a seat that’s overall not especially progressive, and particularly since she very obviously doesn’t ‘pass’, not to be indelicate. The Greens have never been strong around Sunnybank but there are a lot more casual Greens voters in the north, ‘tree-tories’, potentially, and I wonder how some of them are going to react, if they end up passing on the Greens’ HTV after seeing Claire on lawn signs and mailers. I’d like to think Australia isn’t yet in the throes of the kind of transphobic hysteria that’s increasingly gripping the UK, for instance, that the vast majority can look past the superficialities, but we’ll see. Having said all that I expect the seat to go the way of the prevailing winds, like Lilley. If the polls hold up then so will Perrett. If Labor end up having another bad year then I doubt he’ll survive it.

I agree, possible LNP gain and it won’t even be close if Scott Morrison gets his act together. (Look at the 2012 results I think you’ll find this was LNP 5%+ when the state voted something like 63-37 so a 58-42 is only 5% from that which was the result last time.

Tossup, if liberal do well in QLD this would be one of three seats for LNP to take off labor in this state.

I feel like every election we say this could fall. Labor has had some bad federal elections in the post 07 era….2010, 2013 and last one was a shocker in Qld, yet Labor managed to hold it. I’m not sure what it is but there must just be enough loyal Labor here to get them over the line. Also as lame as Albo is, he isn’t Shorten hated.

Any seat held in and out of government…by Labor is likely to remain . There was only a slight swing here despite this election being on par with 1996 and 1975 in qld for Labor.. I suspect there are pro alp demographic changes happening

Have you guys actually looked at the private polling of the parties in your many calculations. There is obviously a conservative bias in your predictions. city seats will swing to labor
in Queensland Moreton is a labor hold with Graham Perrett well known in the area.

It was confirmed on Senator Paul Scarr’s Facebook page that the LNP candidate is Steven Huang, currently the Brisbane City councillor for Macgregor Ward. Scott Morrison was travelling around with him yesterday. Huang has had pretty solid majorities in his ward in his decade in office, no doubt partly due to the high local Chinese population.

Feel the Bern
Couldn’t agree more. Moreton, & Boothby are the ultimate “gonna/gunna” seats. Every election “we’re gunna” yeah right !.
One thing is for sure this is the last chance for the libs, & that’s not much of a chance at all . The next redistribution will inject 10- 30000 new voters. If they come from Griffith that’s it.
Perrett has got to be the dumbest, & most ineffectual Labor MP in parliament . I can’t think of anything else that’s in any way remarkable about the man. He is like one of those sad kids, with a learning disability, that we all went to school with.Desperate for attention (or relevance) constantly disruptive, & in trouble He is actually proud of being the record holder for question time ejections. Perhaps he has little else to be proud of ?

Labor hold

He has a real hard-on for the Greens for some reason and has repeated this one particular lie about us spending ‘98%’ of our resources on fighting Labor politicians for *years*. I have no idea why he picked that number or why he’s so obsessed with it. Maybe he figures sticking with the one figure makes it more believable. Maybe he actually believes it because he’s a fucking imbecile. I dunno. He’s a real nasty piece of work whatever the case, and like I said months ago, he’s never exactly been a star performer anyway. Deselecting him would probably be in Labor’s best interests honestly.

I know full well that we don’t. Our resources for our best four seats in WA are going Perth>Swan>Freo>Curtin, half of which are Lib seats. Perrett, much like Butler next door, is simply miffed that the Greens keep eating away at the demographics Labor are supposed to win all the votes in.

Yeah I take it as a given that they’re shook. It’s just that it’s such a bizarre and implausible lie. If anything it’s even more ridiculous in Queensland considering we only have three target seats, two of which are LNP and only one ALP.

Furtive Lawngnome December 22, 2021 at 9:27 pm
Do you think that Perrett’s tumescence is ultimately to the advantage of the Greens, or not !? IOW is his obsessively hostile focus almost a validation of sorts ? I agree that he is a copulating imbecile.However i have never credited him with the intelligence for vindictiveness. Have i underestimated the lad ? Surely not…..!?
Perhaps you might supply examples (amusing preferably !).

I’m surprised that you want him gone. Surely he is the ideal incumbent to run against ? Or that you might be concerned with Labor’s interests.
Btw You accused me a while ago of voting for Zimmerman. That was a disgusting , & OFFENSIVE slur !!. I never have. Unfortunately this coming year i’m prevented from putting him LAST REPEAT LAST, AS I ALWAYS HAVE.
It will be second last for the FIRST time. Hope that clears up your misconceptions
cheers WD

The small population of Brisbane relative to the larger cities of Melbourne and Sydney means federal districts in the city tend to straddle two or more demographic areas. This district would be like one that stretches from Epping/Eastwood in the Sydney northern suburbs all the way to Strathfield/Burwood in the outer inner west.

Given that Bennelong and Reid (the two Sydney federal districts which most closely resemble Moreton) are already trending to the Coalition, the LNP could gain this seat in the future if Perrett retires and they nominate someone suitable (a moderate with Asian background, like Steven Huang).

In response to Ryan, sooner or later Labor and the Greens may end up having to form a coalition just like the LNP today. In fact the rise and now dominance of the Greens in certain areas (affluent inner suburban districts) is reflective of the Nationals (then Country Party) in the 1920s and 30s who ate away at the Liberal (then Nationalist Party) vote.

The early relationship between the two parties was quite rough at first (I recall Country Party leader Earle Page refused to back a coalition government led by former Labor defector Billy Hughes, and then Stanley Bruce was drafted in as Nationalist leader).

Yoh An
Apparently you don’t think much of my prediction of a voter influx from Griffith ? However i find your comparison of demographic areas interesting. Perhaps if parliament was expanded it might have more heft?

I have to say that any “marriage ” between Labor & the Greens would just be a precursor for the inevitable DIVORCE. Sadly many marriages between incompatible partners are just such partnerships that should never have been. In attempting such a union surely the Labor Party would literally tear itself in two ?
Jon-Luc Picard famously said “children demand. Adults communicate, negotiate, & accomodate” I,ve seldom seen much awareness of this in politics, & IIRC never from the Greens. Perfectionism is rarely a successful ingredient for relationship
cheers wd

Winediamond, I was referring to current boundaries of Moreton. However I agree with your view that Moreton will need to expand as it is currently under quota, and the most logical place for that expansion would be the edges of Griffith around Greenslopes. This would strengthen the Labor and Green vote in the district.

With regards to a Labor/Greens coalition, there are some parallels between the rise of the Nationals/Country Party in the early 20th century. In that case, Billy Hughes also led a group of rebel Nationalist MPs against Stanley Bruce/Earle Page in a manner not too much different to the offshoot faction led by Joel Fitzgibbon.

It also depends on how future vote trends unfold, if the Liberals continue to bleed support in affluent suburban areas then a Labor/Greens coalition may well work out alright with some conservative Labor MPs defecting and either become independents or possibly switch parties back to the LNP.

WD I didn’t accuse you of voting for Zimmerman. Anyone who cares (nobody, incidentally) can go back to that thread and check if they like.

I don’t want Labor to suck. I especially don’t want Labor to continue stacking itself with internet-brained hyper partisans and career sociopaths for whom politics is The West Wing, with themselves as the protagonists of reality and their stupid little water cooler rivalries being the most important stakes in the universe. If that somehow results in Labor winning elections they’d otherwise lose to the Greens then so be it. I’d rather they win against us because they had decent candidates who are actually motivated to be there for the policy, not because they lied and cried about a Mean Girls reference a secretary made on Twitter. Besides, we need a serious, functional Labor party to work with to achieve our own policy goals in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately it’s pretty clear to me that the ALP is moving in exactly the opposite direction, just like UK Labour.

I suppose hypothetically I could be lying. Maybe Perrett is a really great politician after all for reasons no one else seems forthcoming about. Of course anyone who bothers reading my posts – already vanishingly few and all the more critically endangered the longer I bother engaging you on bullshit like this – has likely worked out that I’m too sanctimonious not to share my genuine opinions about him. But feel free to decide that for yourselves.

Yoh An – I don’t see an LNP type coalition between ALP and the Greens working out long-term. The main differences between the Liberals and Nationals is the brand and the constituencies. There’s generally more policy disagreement within each party than there is between them (and there isn’t an awful lot of dissent within either).

Labor and the Greens are fundamentally different, The ALP is basically a centrist establishment party that at most wants to nibble around the margins of neoliberalism. The Greens want everything from the replacement of carbon intensive industry in the economy at the most centrist end, to a radical restructuring of capitalism at the other. The parties can work together temporarily to achieve mutual policy goals (ACT being the most successful model atm), but ultimately they’re ideologically opposed.

Furtive Lawngnome

Also just going to point out the 3 QLD seats (Griffith, Ryan, Brisbane) are national target seats while no WA seats are for the Greens, I assume because the primary votes were too low.
I think (if I remember correctly) the target seats are Melbourne, Cooper, Macnamara, Wills, Grayndler, Ryan, Richmond, Griffith and Brisbane. And obviously Canberra, but I’m not sure whether that’s a tenth or one of the others isn’t a thing on the target list.

Few things to note:
1. Mandy Nolan (Richmond) is one of the coolest people who’ve ever run for office in my mind; she’s hilarious (given she’s a stand-up comedian) and given her experience as an MC she’ll be a great public speaker.
2. The ALP and the Greens can only have a proverbial stable marriage if the interests of both parties are the same, which is why it’s only ever going to work in the ACT, partly because the ACT ALP seem to be the only branch aiming for net zero, while the WA branch frack the Kimberley, the Vics log the forests, and good ol’ Palaszczuk keeps repping for all the poor coal miners out there.
3. Obviously they’re scared of losing their seats, but all the Green-vote-reliant Labor MPs are so scared of us. Terri Butler had a conniption on Insiders because Trad inevitably lost, Perrett keeps bagging us, and the less said about the pathetic lies of Justine Elliot, the better. While others, like former Freo member Melissa Parke, called for her party (back in 2012 no less) to stop bagging the Greens publicly, mainly because it made their power-sharing agreement way less stable, hence benefitting the LNP.

It has been really strange over the years to see LNP run Chinese heritage candidates in Rankin and Oxley yet not here where it’s a bigger advantage. I think the hope was to have Malcolm Cole win OT yet he proved to be a pretty average candidate despite his Canberra and LNP HQ credentials.

On top of his heritage, Huang is an an experienced and popular local Councillor. I expect he will do well here and outperform candidates in nearby seats. They probably should have run him in Mansfield after the first Palaszcuk term though.

@Ryan Spencer Greens aren’t targeting Grayndler and are definitely targeting Canberra. They also talk about Higgins and Kooyong but neither of their 2019 star candidates are recontesting.

The Greens candidate in Perth is highly active and seems well funded, and often talks about winning the seat in her messaging. However I haven’t seen any national level messaging implying it’s winnable, and it would be a hard case to make.

Not sure why Perrett strongly dislikes Greens, as they aren’t really a threat here. They might be a threat in overlapping state seat Miller (and Mark Bailey is also strongly anti-Green), and Perrett and Terri Butler are factionally aligned and in neighbouring seats.

I think this will be the 4th seat Greens can win in Queensland, the next frontier after R/G/B, unless the party can win back tree tories and sea changers in the Sunshine Coast area. I think Greens used to have some pull there locally (especially in Noosa) but blew it over infighting.

@LNP Insider
Ian Walker was the outstanding incumbent to defend Mansfield for LNP after the 1st Annastacia term. After the 2nd term a new candidate was required.

If Moreton becomes a Greens seat it’ll be very far in the future. Miller is the only part of the seat that’s all that strongly progressive. In contrast, Griffith has the South Brisbane stronghold and a soft progressive vote throughout, Ryan has Maiwar and strong foundations throughout the west side, and Brisbane has fertile ground throughout, but hasn’t been capitalised on due to a series of disappointing campaigns.

Some parts of the north coast are friendly to the Greens, but not nearly enough, and they’re atomised across Fairfax and Wide Bay anyway. Both seats have a strong conservative following- the Coasts are basically Australia’s Florida without the cultural diversity. *If* – and it’s a massive if – the LNP were ever to lose them, it’d probably be to a Voices style candidate.

Agree with your assessment Furtive, and the seat of Griffith north of Moreton is probably one of the top tier Green targets for Brisbane/Queensland. It covers a lot of ‘hipster’ territory based on South Brisbane and West End; in fact West End is probably like Balmain in Sydney (once strongly working class but now populated by young, tertiary educated professionals who are more inclined to vote for the Greens).

Whereas the suburbs that make up the ‘edge’ of the Inner South like Yeronga and Fairfield are not so strong for the Greens. These places are akin to the outer Inner West suburbs of Ashfield and Summer Hill in Sydney, more favorable for Labor rather than the Greens.

Moreton generally is a middle class ethnic seat like Bennelong, Chisholm or Reid. The riverside suburbs of Chelmer, Graceville are very affluent but most of the rest of the seat is middle class. The Liberals made a wise decision to preselect a Chinese Australian candidate. I would be watching the area around Sunnybank, this part of the seat is diverse, suburban and weak for the Greens.

Good point BJA I forgot he recontested. Maybe I am mixing up with the second Labor term.

Point is for the LNP to constantly win state elections they need another 5-8 Brisbane seats to naturally lean their way. They need to convert some marginals or even safer Labor seats with otherwise other Liberal friendly demographics into that.

If they don’t do that they will continue on the current path of needing to win nearly everything outside Brisbane just to be in the contest and then hope to stumble over the line by maybe grabbing a couple Brisbane seats. If they start with a few more additional Brisbane seats in their column it’s an easier job.

Having five or less of the 40 seats in the Brisbane, Moreton, Ipswich, Logan basin is a horrible indictment on them.

Mansfield should be one of these seats.

LNP Insider, being from Sydney I have also wondered why the LNP in Queensland aren’t more competitive in Brisbane area seats.

Based on rough demographics, I see that the state seats of Toohey and Stretton should be LNP leaning as they cover some of the middle class ethnic areas around Runcorn and Calamvale, which are like the NSW state seats of Ryde and Epping. Some northern Brisbane seats like Kallangur, Pine Rivers and Aspley should also be LNP leaning.

Yoh An, I’d be wary of drawing too many parallels between areas in Sydney and Brisbane (or any other city, for that matter). They may have similar demographics, but they are different places with different values and different attitudes to life. They’re even voting for different parties in state elections, since the Queensland LNP and NSW Liberal and National Parties have entirely separate personnel, policies and perceived competence. This is largely true of the respective state Labor Parties also.

My view is that most voters in the places you mentioned aren’t ideologues, but vote based on how competent they think the incumbent government has been at issues that matter to them (most obviously healthcare in general and Covid management in particular).

For the LNP to win this seat, they have to be able to achieve a significant swing in the south-east corner of the seat around the Sunnybank area to offset likely swings against them in the northern parts of the seat as well as along the riverside suburbs. Queensland is likely to swing back to the ALP this election and Graham Perrett has held the seat for quite a while so it won’t be easy for the LNP win this. Steven Huang will already have name recognition around the Sunnybank/Macgregor area where his ward is located and holds with a large margin but the question is to what extent can he blunt a state-wide pro-ALP swing across the entire seat as a whole and how much of a swing towards him he can achieve in his Sunnybank base.

Graham Perrett is a very nifty MP who held on to his seat when everyone predicted he was gone in 2013. Everyone says it was the return to Kevin Rudd to the leadership that helped save his seat and that is true. But what gets missed is that Perrett ran hard against the Newman’s government decision to close the Nyanda State High School which certainty also would have got alot of traction in the community.

If Perrett doesn’t like the Greens then so what. He’s a Labor MP and the Greens are rival party like any other. If Greens MP/Senator attack Labor then nothing is said. But when a Labor MP returns serve to them it’s acted like the Greens are a protected species.

You would think Labor would be favored to retain here and the Scott Morrison result in Queensland in 2019 has peaked. And there would be some kind of correction swing back. But Queensland can be volatile so its not a certainty.

Yeah would have to agree with you Wilson regarding differing vote patterns between cities and states within Australia. I have noticed that there is a lot more ‘uniqueness’ when comparing the major parties for each state, unlike the USA where the major parties function almost identically across the country.

In addition, the Covid outbreak over the past two years has highlighted the fact that residents of each state within Australia have their own views, behaving more like individual countries within the EU and that it can be quite hard to obtain a cohesive national position.

Political Nightwatchman, I suspect you’ve only seen certain types of political discussions if you think nothing is said when Greens figures criticise the Labor Party. I’ve seen numerous occasions where Greens parliamentarians like Larissa Waters, and even mere candidates like Max Chandler-Mather, criticise Labor and receive a barrage of replies from Labor diehards criticising them in return and asking “why don’t you attack the Liberals instead?”. It’s far from one-sided.

Yoh An, I agree with that analysis. There’s division even within states though, between inner city and suburbs and country. This is most obvious in Queensland where the very different political environments of Brisbane and the rest of the state each make up 50% of the population.

I think if any strong likenesses are to be drawn between electorates, they’re most valid in the same state and at a similar distance from the capital. Moreton might be best compared to Lilley and the suburban parts of Ryan and Dickson.

Labor paying $1.04 to win on Sportsbet, Coalition $9.00. Clearly they see a Labor tide sweeping the Brisbane suburbs, stronger than any personal vote Steven Huang might carry.

When are guys like Perrett, Burke and Bowen going to step aside for candidates who more reflect the demographics of their electorates?
Say what you want about the LNP but at least they are willing to nominate a candidate who represents the diversity of the area.
A reckoning for both major parties will come when they realise they can’t use the various minority groups as cash cows and volunteers come election time, when all they get in return is a photo op and empty promises.

LJ Davidson, even worse is the district of Fowler, where retiring MP Chris Hayes endorsed Vietnamese lawyer Tu Le as Labor candidate. She was forced to step aside for Kristina Kenneally, who was demoted on the Senate ticket.

In my view Tu Le would have been a better ‘local’ candidate rather than Kenneally.

@Yoh An it seems like Tu Le has bent the knee, and despite being quite vocal about Keneally being gifted the seat, Le will be given the green light for Cabramatta at the next state election, with the pending retirement of sitting member Nick Lalich

But back to Moreton, looking at the demos on Poll Bludger
https://www.pollbludger.net/fed2022/HR.htm?s=Moreton

Labor is crazy not to lean into the multicultural aspects of the seat. How all these old white union guys end up with some of the safest seats in Parliament is beyond me. I guess it’s who you know in Head Office.
And the old trope of them being “local” is becoming worn. Most may have gone to school briefly in the electorate but move out for years, and end up sending their kids to exclusive private schools well out of the Electorate and some don’t even live in the electorate.
I think politicians need to move away from the tired and exhausted “I’m raising my family in the area”, like it’s some medal of achievement- big deal- every parent/carer/guardian/grandparent is raising their family in the area. Such a nonsense argument.

LJ Davidson, I agree with you on Labor’s puzzling choices. Perrett has been around for 14 years without building any sort of national profile. This is a good seat for Labor to inject some new blood in, particularly from the East Asian community.

@Wilson

Nah, dispatching a incumbent member when the margin is so paltry is dumb politics. Liberals would have an easier job if Graham Perrett was not contesting the seat then re-contesting. Also Perrett being parliament for 14 years is nothing in comparison to Kevin Andrews 31 years.

Actually, I find the comments on here are very selective. The Liberals have white males representing seats with multicultural community’s and its only the Labor one’s that get called out that should be moved on. I think its unfair and selective to just bring up with Graham.

Labor has selected multicultural candidates in Robertson, Reid, and La Trobe just to name a few.

Perrett also was never ‘given a safe seat’. He had to take a marginal seat off a Liberal when he defeated Gary Hargraves in 2007 and it was on his second attempt. Which he lived in the electorate and was a local might I add. Perrett was written off by most political commentators as being in the political dustbin in 2013. So much for being a handed a safe seat.

Also it was reported Tu Le only moved into Fowler electorate the previous year before the Fowler preselection. And one Labor member suggested she attended her first branch meeting in 2021 in Fowler. The narrative built up by the media that Tu Le was a true local who grew up in the area and had been robbed of the preselection was very misleading.

Political Nightwatchman, Kevin Andrews built up a profile and became immigration minister. Perrett on the other hand hasn’t done anything of note.

Wilson, there are many MP’s who would rather not take on a challenging ministerial or shadow ministerial portfolio. For example, retiring Bennelong MP John Alexander (who was first elected in 2010) never sought any ministerial or cabinet portfolio, instead preferring to take on more committee work and focus on being a ‘local’ representative.

Maybe Graham Perrett is in the same boat, he doesn’t feel that he wants to take on a senior role. IIRC, someone on this site mentioned that Perrett was active in trying to prevent the closure of a local state school. I believe that is a good example of truly representing the community.

@Wilson – Kevin Andrews had to be the most ineffective Minister ever. All he was, was a puppet and a number of people of pulling the strings.

@Political Nightwatchman re: your point about the Liberals vs Labor nominating more diverse candidates in marginal to winnable seats, I believe the Libs do have Labor’s number slightly.
Case and point Gladys Liu in Chisholm, Ian Goodenough in Moore and Craig Chung who will most certainly be the odds on favourite to replace John Alexander in Bennelong.
At a state level, you have Scott Yung who could very well unseat Labor leader Chris Minns in Kogarah due to the reduced margin, post redistribution. Gurmesh Singh and Wes Fang were also put in winnable spots by the Nationals and are now both in Macquarie Street.
Sally Sitou in Reid, Zhi Soon in Banks and Gordon Reid in Robertson are all tough asks. I don’t know about La Trobe, so can’t really speak to that.
Gordon Reid might squeak out a win in Robertson but Sitou and Soon, I don’t believe will be successful for a multitude of reasons, primarily what I think is the artificial and exaggerated decreased margin that has been assigned to both Reid and Banks.
The issue becomes more stark for Labor, as they are the supposed party of social justice and inclusion but more often than not overlook non-white candidates to run in winnable seats in place of hacks who are often the beneficiaries of nepotism and cronyism within the party.

Perrett may well have been a good local member but after MPs are getting to the 10 year mark and haven’t really accelerated their own profile (and by virtue electorate) they probably have overstayed their welcome and should move on. John Murphy in Reid and Julie Owens in Parramatta for example.
I often wonder, how much of this so called political appeal and overcoming being written-off is due to the dedicated volunteers and local members, who do the handing out, pre-poll, etc.. rather than the MP themselves. In particular the community outreach afforded to someone like Perrett with the various Asian and African communities.
He has been fortunate and the beneficiary of having, what I would describe as some of the most ardent supporters in non-Anglo segments of the electorate- it would be fitting to perhaps pass this on to someone from one of these communities before the seat is lost. Especially due to the fact that the reason the margin is dwindling, like so many across metro Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne is due to many new Australians feeling overlooked by the Labor party especially in the realm of small business assistance and political representation.
As I said before, you can’t keep taking these groups for granted and thinking that you can deliver nothing in return. Transactional politics doesn’t work that way.

Re: Tu Le that is half true, and was spread by the Keneally camp to smear her candidacy. She lived on the border of Fowler and Blaxland- however she and her family attended the Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Cabramatta (in Fowler).
She also was working in Chris Hayes’ office (the current member of Fowler) prior to her nomination. Which is a lot better than someone travelling all the way from Scotland Island via Hunters Hill. I could not think of a worse candidate for that area than Kristina Keneally. Usually when an American occupies a largely Vietnamese area it doesn’t end well.

That a minister must be a member of the legislature is one of the backwards features of the Westminster system. Not only does it blatantly violate separation of powers, it also undermines representation. If I ever were to be elected to the House of Representatives, I would not want to become a minister. Because a member’s sole duty and sole purpose in parliament should be to represent their constituents.

Nicholas, it is a good discussion point you made about the fact that the executive and legislature being one and the same in the Westminster system. The Presidential system in the US and most of Latin America allows for the separation of powers and full time representation. The flip side is that it does not allow for responsible government and can lead to divided Government. IMV the worst system is the French semi-presidential system where there can be a PM and President from different parties and so there is Dual Mandate.

LJ Davidson, i think on this occasion La Trobe probably will not be won as it includes a lot of rural areas but i still think Labor did make a wise decision to field a South Asian candidate in a seat with a rapidly growing South Asian population and a booming population where Labor may do better longer term with rapid urbanisation. Reid and Banks are showing long term drift to the Libs as the waterfront areas become more affluent although the Libs may have lost support from Chinese Australians due to the tensions with Beijing ” Usually when an American occupies a largely Vietnamese area it doesn’t end well.” agreed LJ Labor showed they took the people of Fowler for granted. KK may look like a colonial Governor in the seat with the highest number of people who speak a non-english language.

La trobe now includes Pakenham which is continually trending Labor…which will balance other parts of the electorate

MQ, Agreed about Pakenham trending Labor as it changes from a country town to mortgage belt outer suburb which is ethnically diverse. I just think on this occasion the margin maybe a bit big to change hands. Back in 2007 the Libs won all booths in Pakenham (then in McMillan) at an election when Labor swept the mortgage belt nationwide. There is also a new East Pakenham suburb which will be built in the next few years. The next redistribution could mean that Conservative rural areas such as Bunyip, Nar Nar Goon, Koo Wee Rup etc will be shed.

Nicholas
A minister in the Westminster system does not necessarily need to be a member of parliament – but does need to be to be responsible to parliament. The responsibility of a minister to parliament is a key aspect of the Westminster system – though it has become debased as ministers hold on and are allowed to misbehave in a manner which in earlier times would have seen them rubbed out (so to speak). In the US system no one has a responsibility to anyone – with the result that the system has become gridlocked and the country has become almost ungovernable. The Westminster system does allow electoral dictatorships (as seen in the UK when governments have big majorities, NZ before MMP and Queensland for decades). In the latter two cases the parliament is unicameral whilst the Lords can only delay but not reject legislation. In Oz, the senate acts as a check – as it is rare for a governing party to have a majority. One of the issues in this country is thst we have always had strict party discipline – probably arising from the Labor ‘pledge’ but largely extending to all parties now. Reasoned dissent would aid the democratic process.
And remember that MPs in safe seats sometimes lose so the voters have the ultimate say. The worst outcome would be PR with long party lists where the MP effectively represents no one except a limited party interest. Upper House hacks here are no different.

Why would PR be the worst case? The system as it is now is basically that, only massively skewed in the same way the US Senate is (although not to the same extent). It’s PR without the P. Worst of both worlds imo