Balmain – NSW 2023

@ Political Nightwatchman, Regarding Kiama Labor held it in the past with Gareth Ward running as an independent i am not sure what will happen. South Coast i feel is an outside chance with no incumbent was held briefly by Labor in the Carr years. More favourable demographics for Labor than Balmain. I feel Oatley/Camden will stay with Libs so they need to aim higher up the pendulum. Regarding Balmain prior safe status the demographics have changed dramatically it is now among the wealthiest areas in NSW. Best case for Labor they win booths in Ultimo, Glebe but i cannot see Balmain East/Birchgrove ever going Red again.

Maybe there’s some internal polling showing Labor has a chance of winning Balmain. Albo campaigning here is more because of his local popularity and starpower. Minns and Albo were in Balmain, partly because it’s Albo’s neck of the woods, but also because it’s the birthplace of Labor. I think it’s also the first time they campaigned together on the streets.

I agree with the previous sentiments that this is easier to win than other Carr-era Labor seats e.g. Ryde, Oatley. I still see the Greens retaining but because of the extra campaigning by Labor and the departure of Jamie Parker, the 2PP will narrow.

About Liberal HTV cards – there’s two types: one is Vote 1 only and the other one asks you to number all boxes and with Labor last.

Public Education Party puts Labor 2nd, Greens 3rd.

The existence of Lib 1 Greens 2 HTVs are more likely to benefit Labor than Greens. . No doubt there will be some sort of late campaign media cycle (with campaign materials and ALP friendly independent media like FriendlyJordies) that the Liberals want Greens to beat Labor – it’s part of Labor’s playbook for winning seats like this. The Liberal instinct to just vote 1 will likely outweigh following the card, and it’s not clear how much it’s being distributed

I’m tipping a Green win – Shetty seems to have the momentum and be running the stronger campaign, and local leftie voters will notice things like AUKUS (even though it isn’t a state issue). There seems to have been a decent amount of backlash to earlier claims that voting Green in Balmain would help a Liberal government. Greens also be doing a lot to highlight her so her retaining can seem like a big win in the absence of other campaign goals.

But it’s not in the bag and there has to be something behind Labor’s decision to actively contest the seat and devote significant resources. From a rational strategy point of view, it’s only worth doing that if ALP have internal polling showing they’re definitely going to win, or definitely going to lose the election at large. Labor of course isn’t always rational when it comes to the Greens in seats Labor see as rightfully theirs.

“Firefox I think on balance the Greens will win it the only reason I am being cautious here is this is the first time in history that a Greens who won in a general election in a single member seat is retiring.”

***

Yeah it will be interesting to watch for that reason, how the vote transfers from one to another. Could drop due to the loss of Jamie’s personal vote or it could go up in spite of that. Hard to tell.

It isn’t the first time ever in history that a Greens MP has retired and handed it over, just the first time in NSW. I can think of at least one other – the electorate of Molonglo in the ACT. It was first won for the Greens by Kerri Tucker in 1995. She was re-elected twice before retiring in 2004 to run for the Senate. Deb Foskey then ran in the electorate and retained the seat for the Greens. She retired after one term, with the legendary Shane Rattenbury (current Greens super minister in the ACT gov) stepping up to replace her and again retain the seat for the Greens. Shane continued to hold it until it was renamed Kurrajong, which he still holds to this day after being re-elected at four consecutive elections.

There’s also been plenty of retirements in Tasmania, but the lower houses in Tasmania and the ACT aren’t single-member.

Firefox you have to remember that ACT is multi people electorates not single people electorates. Rattenbury is very good but the other new greens in ACTLegislative Assembly including the Ministers are really struggling.

I think that Balmain must be in play or the Prime Minister wouldn’t waste his time and would go to other electorates to fly the flag. Go back to my theory the seats in play are were the political celebrities go. E.g. johnny Howard out to Penrith. Would he even Know where the location was

Firefox, the example you quote is actually a multi-member district. Just like the Senate, multi-member districts have less of a ‘personal’ vote factor for the sitting member, so it is not really a good comparison. Balmain is the first time a single member district has a Green MP retiring.

Yeah that’s true, the ACT and Tassie seats are contested under the Hare-Clark system, but they’re still lower house seats. Has happened plenty of times in the Senate but I deliberately didn’t mention those as they are completely different – state wide vote as opposed to local divisions. Hare-Clark may be multi-member but they are still local divisions, which shows how the Greens can retain the support of a local constituency when changing candidates after a retirement. Certainly a first for NSW and for single member 🙂

“johnny Howard out to Penrith. Would he even Know where the location was”

***

Johnny the war crim also turned up to campaign in Ryan for the LNP at the Federal Election… Not sure he’s the great asset that the Coalition seem to think he is. Sure, ultra conservatives would love him, but that’s kind of preaching to the converted. Not sure he would attract too many new voters for them these days.

Actually Firefox, the level of vote needed to win in a local district like the ACT is actually pretty close to that needed to win a Seante seat. The Senate has 6 seats up for election for a standard cycle, so you need 1/7 or 14% vote to achieve a quota. For a 5-member district like ACT/Tasmania, you need 1/6 or 17% vote, which is pretty similar.

Only for a single member district do you need an absolute majority (50%) after preferences to get elected, so the level of vote or support a candidate needs to win for a single member district is more than double that needed for a multi member 5+ district.

“Actually Firefox, the level of vote needed to win in a local district like the ACT is actually pretty close to that needed to win a Seante seat.”

***

In percentages sure but not in raw numbers of voters. It’s not even close.

For example, lets compare ACT Greens Leader Share Rattenbury’s result in Kurrajong to Greens NSW Senator David Shoebridge, who was elected at the recent fed election.

Shane Rattenbury received 11,635 votes at the 2020 ACT Election, which is 23.0% and equals 1.4 quotas in the ACT Hare-Clark system.

David Shoebridge (as first on the Greens NSW senate ticket) received 550,069 votes, which is 11.46% and equals 0.8021 of a quota.

The candidate with far more votes as a result of having a larger constituency (the entire state of NSW) has a smaller percentage and quota than the candidate with the smaller local constituency, who has less actual constituents but a higher percentage and quota. State constituency vs local division. Big difference.

ACT: https://www.elections.act.gov.au/elections_and_voting/past_act_legislative_assembly_elections/2020-election/2020-election-results

Senate: https://results.aec.gov.au/27966/Website/SenateStateFirstPrefsByGroup-27966-NSW.htm

@James only reason why I would argue that it wasn’t too big of a waste of time for the Prime Minister is because it’s a short hop, skip and a jump away from his private residence. And federal parliament wasn’t sitting last week so he wasn’t obligated to be over in Canberra. For Minns, it wasn’t too far out of their way en route to the seats out west that are definitely in play.

I wonder if there is a bit of 3D chess going on here. Labor have no chance in Balmain, but need to be seen to be making an effort and causing a stir in opposing the Greens, which gets flagged up in the media and especially social media flagging that they are not the Greens, thereby flagging to their their potential voters in the outer suburbs, where the Greens are a bit toxic, that they are separate from the Greens and it is OK to vote for us.
Or am I overthinking this?

I would concur that I find the likelihood of Labor winning the seat to be quite unlikely. But there’s a lot of symbolic value in being seen as competing with the Greens and getting the media attention for it as opposed to ceding territory to them, and those are good enough reasons for Labor.

As for Albanese, the seat is literally inside of his own electorate. Him being actively involved is a given even if there might be closer and more crucial seats elsewhere.

Yes but I really do think they want to win this seat. Since the 2022 post mortem the ALP are focused on halting the Greens march in the inner city, and this is their test case for whether Labor are immediately competitive in ex-Greens seats. They’ve focused on Balmain and not the other Greens seats for a reason. And it’s not just Albo campaigning in Balmain, it’s Minns as well.

Sure, of course they want to win the seat. And they’re throwing resources at it because it’s the first time a Greens MP has vacated a seat and thus opens up a perceived opportunity. I’m just saying that those factors don’t actually imply the result will be close, and that Labor has multiple reasons to invest resources and vocally compete with the Greens beyond a pure calculation of their chance to win a seat back.

I find it hard to buy the argument that the Green vote will fall because voters will go straight to Labor seeing Labor as the best chance to oust the Liberal government.

We didn’t see this happen in Albanese’s seat of Grayndler at the federal election where the Green vote held up pretty well (-0.51%) and Albanese’s vote improved modestly (+2.77%). This shows that voters didn’t desert the Greens to back in Albanese at the federal election. Since the Green vote didn’t fall massively in Grayndler and we didn’t see voters flocking to Labor and the Greens’ expense (and note that federal Labor was advantaged by running on a more left-wing platform than Chris Minns, and that Albanese was probably one of few MPs in parliament next to Tanya Plibersek in the best position to make something like that happen), I can’t really see it happening here.

Also I think if Labor were really serious about taking the seat, they would have gone to a lot more effort to emphasise Albanese’s connection to the local area. It seems that there are a lot of voters who vote for Labor at a federal level but Greens at a state level. Albanese could have acted as a common denominator for these voters but I feel NSW Labor left it too late, only making this connection a week before election day in the face of the Greens running an intensive campaign for some months. I feel NSW Labor should have done a lot more of what Jordan Lane has been doing in Ryde, where the Liberals have made every effort to positively associate Jordan Lane with retiring MP Victor Dominello.

Albo isn’t the only big name to show up in Balmain. Australia’s most well known environmentalist and champion of the Greens, Bob Brown, is also on the ground!

“Kobi Shetty here is going to be the next Greens member for Balmain – following in Jamie’s great footsteps over the last 12 years,” he said.

“I was there with Jamie 12 years ago when he won Balmain for the Greens and it’s great to be back here with Kobi.

“The Greens are offering the people of Balmain what no other major party is – no new coal mines, no more gas fracking, an end to the destruction of NSW forests as well as the best social justice platform for the people of NSW,” he said.

Quotes: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8128222/greens-roll-out-big-gun-bob-in-battle-for-balmain/

The Resolve Strategic polling released this morning had the Greens on 8%. Their NSW polling never really dips below 8% – a bit of a floor for them. A low result for them even when compared to historical polling going back the last couple of elections in NSW. Perhaps Labor are seeing similar numbers for the Greens in their internal polling and surmise that this is close to the threshold which puts a seat like Balmain in play. Of course, state polling usually involves small sample sizes and margin of error is quite large.

@Greens Political Party Supporter I would argue that Albanese didn’t see much shift in the vote in Grayndler because he already had such an elated base of support. His seat going into the election had a margin of more than 16% – the 6th safest Labor seat in the country (now 2nd). And prior to standing as the Prime Ministerial candidate, he already had a huge profile as a political figure (despite the national press who were pretending they didn’t know who he was). He was especially well-known locally in the Inner-West of Sydney.

Albanese can be attributed to holding off the Greens in perhaps one of the most progressive parts of the country for close to 20 years now. The Greens’ best shot against Albanese was mounted in 2010 with gradually declining margins since. And thus he is one of Labor’s most proven assets at contesting the Greens.

Conversely, balancing my other post pointing to the Resolve Strategic Polling… Roy Morgan has the Greens at 13% in their most recent polling. Amongst their best numbers compared to historical polling and at least 3% higher than the 2019 NSW Election. So Roy Morgan paints a much nicer picture of the Greens’ likelihood of success in the election and suggests that their might be a chance of at least one surprise pick up.

I wouldn’t be reading too much into that one poll, especially as far as Balmain is concerned. The Greens results in polls are known to jump around a bit, exactly the same thing happened during the fed election. Pollsters have a hard time getting accurate results when it comes to both the Greens and inner city electorates. Labor are also unchanged in that poll, so they are suggesting the change has happened elsewhere. 3% of Greens haven’t just up and switched to the Libs overnight. That result either points to an error in their previous polling or to it being a rogue poll (I’d say it’s the latter).

TLDR; The only poll that counts is the one on election day 😉

I don’t think statewide polling can provide any indication of the level of support for the Greens in Balmain specifically. The demographics of this seat are just too different from the rest of the state. Kind of like how the 2020 QLD election had a statewide drop in support for the Greens and yet they made headway in their target seats, including picking up South Brisbane and turning Maiwar safer.

On the Resolve Poll, Kos Samaras cautions, “Reporting of these numbers mistakenly attempts to apply them evenly across the state. If there is one place in this country where nuance does matter, it’s Sydney.” I believe that would especially hold true for a seat like Balmain.

I agree with Adda, The Greens are good at concentrating their vote in the right locations they can theoretically see their vote drop but consolidate their seats.

im thinnking greens retain but reduced margin mybe 54%

Greens hold by 3% to 6%. The AJP and KSO aren’t running and so there’s less vote-splitting on the left.

Call me crazy but I did think Labor had a chance because of Albo’s local popularity and Jamie Parker’s retirement and NSW Labor shaking off the electoral horrors of the 2010s.

I met up with some family friends in Glebe today, both Labor for life basically until Parker got elected, one of the stuck to their guns but the other decided they wanted Labor to have a stronger mandate. Knowing that greens voters can be tactical and tend to be quite engaged with politics I wonder how many others have done the same. Labor have posters up on booths tonight with Albo and Tanya as well as these strange posters that suggest voting greens somehow increases the chance of the Liberals forming government.

Finally the Labor campaign made an effort to target the Albo-Parker voters. Letter from Albo mid week pumping Scott’s candidacy. And oversized corflutes at Town Hall (I assume elsewhere too) with Scott, Albo, Plibersek as the “local Labor team”. It’s smart politics but, I’m afraid, too little too late. They should have been hammering this over the last few weeks.

I voted at Birchgrove Public School today, middle of the day – it was quite busy. First time in a while there were Liberal workers handing out HTVs! Also Labor, Green and an old bloke sitting in a chair with a Sustainable Party sign. Like other commenters here, I am assuming Greens will hold, and also a bit surprised at the size of the Labor effort. We shall soon know!

Huuuge result for the Greens if this goes the way it’s projected to and they hang onto it.

Most of the Labor gain has come from Others while Greens are only down less than 3% after retirement of Jamie Parker. Seems that the enormous campaign from Labor was a massive waste of time and failed to win over the voters they needed to win over (Greens voters).

The small loss of primary for the Greens can be entirely attributed to the loss of Jamie Parker’s personal vote, which they probably would have lost even without such a big campaign from Labor. A bit of counting to be done but the Greens would be thrilled if it stays with them as it’s projected to.

ABC un-called the seat. As far as I can tell Labor hasn’t conceded and Greens haven’t declared victory. Plenty more votes left to count.

I don’t see how Greens lose in OPV if they’re winning the primary vote, but it’s quite tense.

One thing’s for sure – Labor will be keeping an eye out for all future Greens retirements.

@firefox even if the Greens hang on I don’t think there’s any way you can spin a 7.8% swing against them as good for them

“even if the Greens hang on I don’t think there’s any way you can spin a 7.8% swing against them as good for them”

***

The Greens are only down -2.9% on primary in Balmain as things stand right now. Most of Labor’s gains came from other parties and indies, not the Greens. The Greens vote held up really well (41.5%). No need for spin here, just facts 🙂

Seems that the enormous campaign from Labor was a massive waste of time

@Firefox

Labor narrowly missed out on this seat. I suppose by your logic the Greens contesting Northcote in the Victorian state election ‘was a massive waste of time’. And they shouldn’t have bothered having a crack. It’s a pretty dumb comment. Also some of the comments on here that suggested Labor were absolute no chance obviously were incorrect. The party wouldn’t have bothered visiting the electorate if their internal polling didn’t show it wasn’t in play.

Nightwatchman, as things stand right now, the Greens are only down -1.2% on primary vote in Balmain. Almost all of the swing to Labor in the seat has come from “Others” and not the Greens. The Labor campaign doesn’t seem like it has won over the people it needed to win over, ie Greens voters. They’ve barely moved the Greens vote – in fact that 1% drop can be entirely attributed to the loss of Jamie Parker’s personal vote as he was a popular 12 year MP.

If you are only looking to the swing to Labor it only tells you a small part of the story. You need to look at where the swing is coming from, and it ain’t coming from the Greens: https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/nsw/2023/guide/balm

Fantastic result for the Greens if it stays like this. More counting to go though so we will see how it turns out 🙂

I agree that the seat was winnable for Labor, albeit a difficult prospect. Their efforts are clearly vindicated, however, in this result, and it’s proof of concept that Greens rely heavily on personal votes from the sitting MP and their voters otherwise do not have party loyalty. Labor now can be assured of future openings when Greens MPs retire in other constituencies.

That said, I believe they would make a considerable push even in the absence of internal polling indicating closeness – for testing the degree of personal vote in sitting Greens MPs and other reasons in the previous discussion.

It’s an interesting result, which illustrates the quirks of our OPV system. Using current figures, Greens have lost only 1.2% on the PV, but they’re facing a 7.8% TPP swing against them. The explanation lies in the 8.1% improvement in the Labor PV (which surprised me). Lib PV also only dropped slightly, Labor gains involved picking up 2019 AJP/KSO votes (OR – those votes went to Greens, and other 2019 Greens went to Labor? No way of telling). Once again we see an illustration of the importance of leading on the PV in an OPV system – too many exhausted votes and it starts to resemble first-past-the-post!

ABC has this ‘in doubt’ and both Philippa Scott and Kobi Shetty say it’s too close to call. It’s up to prepoll votes and postal votes (normally not very Green-friendly). In 2022, Albo did better at prepolls in Grayndler than on election day.

In 2019, AJP and KSO’s votes strongly flowed to the Greens but with their absence, Labor could get more preferences than the Greens and close the 2PP gap.

@firefox
I don’t know why you’re focusing solely on the Greens primary vote, the Greens have always relied on preferences to win this seat. If the Greens lose too many preferences they lose this seat. It’s not complicated.

Kronos, the Greens primary has barely moved from the last election, which shows that Labor’s massive campaign in the seat targeting Greens voters was not very appealing to them at all. The Greens vote has held up really well in the face of a huge attempt by Labor to bring it down. The higher the Greens primary the fewer preferences they need, while the lower the Labor primary the more they need.

In an optional preferential voting system like NSW’s, primary votes matter even more than they normally do, and they normally matter a hell of a lot anyway. No, it really isn’t that complicated.

@Firefox

You keep saying ‘Labor’s massive campaign’. Its kind of hypocritical and nothing compared to the Greens that saturate a couple seats every election contest. Labor having to form government can’t afford to do that and need to spread their resources around a whole state.

I doubt you bring up that Labor got a higher primary vote then Adam Bandt in the federal election in 2010. And the only reason Bandt got into parliament because of Liberal preferences. I doubt you would have banged on about primary votes. If the Greens had won Northcote last year. Which the Labor canidate outpolled the Greens by 10%. The Greens generally do rely on preferences to gain seats.

Labor canidate Philippa Scott posted today on Facebook she’s conceded.

I would argue there are two ways of analysing the result in Balmain. One is that the Greens retained most of their support in terms of primary vote which is what Firefox indicates. The other point is that the left-wing vote overall fell because without minor party candidates (Animal Justice and Keep Sydney Open, who are considered progressive/left leaning parties) the vote for the Greens would be expected to rise slightly even with a popular incumbent departing.

The fact that most or all of the residual left-wing vote went to Labor suggests that Labor’s campaign was quite successful/effective in winning over undecided voters, because the Greens only managed to retain their core supporters and failed to pick up the vote captured by the minor left-wing parties.

Nightwatchman, that makes Labor’s huge campaign in Balmain against the left even more bizarre as they spent so much time focused on a Greens, energy which could and should have been directed elsewhere. Balmain wasn’t a seat held by the Coalition and thus wasn’t a seat that was going to prevent them forming government. Had the Coalition not continued their recent trend of tanking, Labor’s apparently wasted efforts in Balmain would be even more of an indictment on them.

Needing preferences to win seats isn’t the point here. The point is that Labor’s campaign in Balmain has seemingly failed to win over many Greens voters at all, the evidence of which is the Greens almost unchanged primary vote from last time. Most of Labor’s gains seem to have come from parties that didn’t even contest this election.

How Bandt got into parliament – the Greens increased their primary vote in Melbourne over many years until it became high enough for them to win the seat after preferences – is totally irreverent to Balmain and the NSW Election. Besides, Bandt’s primary in Melbourne is now 49.62%, so high that he doesn’t need preferences from either of the duopoly.

But if we’re going off on that wild tangent, why stop there? At the recent federal election in my local seat of Richmond, the Labor candidate Justine Elliot only held onto the seat thanks to preferences from the far-right Nationals! In previous elections it has been Greens preferences which have helped Labor defeat the Nats but this time Labor needed Nats preferences to hold on against the left. If the continued surge of the Greens primary in Ballina (as of now a +9.1% swing) is anything to go by, which it is, then Labor are going to be needing a lot more help from the Nats in the future if they are any hope of holding off the rise of the Greens.

“The other point is that the left-wing vote overall fell because without minor party candidates (Animal Justice and Keep Sydney Open, who are considered progressive/left leaning parties) the vote for the Greens would be expected to rise slightly even with a popular incumbent departing.”

***

Neither AJP or KSO contested Balmain this time. Their combined vote last time was roughly 6.8% – the same amount given for “Others” on the ABC’s summary of Balmain’s vote count: https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/nsw/2023/guide/balm

The Greens (+5.34), AJP (+0.29) and KSO (+4.60) all gained positive swings to them in Balmain in 2019, which is important because it shows that the Greens vote didn’t suffer due to the presence of AJP and KSO in the seat. It’s not like the Greens went backwards by 6.8% to AJP and KSO last time and then didn’t get it back this time. This adds wight to the theory that the small drop in Greens primary this time is entirely attributable to the loss of the popular Jamie Parker and his personal vote. He was Balmain’s MP for 12 long years, which has to count for something.

What do people think was the effect of Labor’s (pathetic) lies about “Vote Greens Risk Perrottet” messaging in terms of psephological values? I earlier found a clip of Tim Ayres saying this lie in the Senate chamber (Which Ben Raue and Andrew Bartlett called out).

Would it have weakened Green -> Labor Preference flows (and let it exhaust) in the key marginals like Winston Hills and Riverstone? I (Green Voter) personally was seriously considering NOT preferencing Labor in my seat (Willoughby, so it wouldn’t have meant much) and let it exhaust after the Independent (although I ended up putting Labor above the Ind because I found that the Ind was socially conservative). It still doesn’t take away from the fact that I became more distrustful of Albanese, Minns, and basically all of Federal and State Labor.

Would the Green voters in Balmain remember what Labor tried to pull this time in 2027? Labor got a swing this time, but did that just solidify whatever remained with the Greens at 52% in 2pp and 41% in primaries? Marginality doesn’t necessarily mean it is easy to flip – just look at Federal Dickson (Where it is semi-eternally marginal on paper) – no matter what the 49% think, the 51% that always stick with Dutton is VERY solid.

I expect it would have no impact outside of Balmain. Those who pay attention to such messaging outside of their electorate are vanishingly few, let alone having it influence their vote. And if anything, antagonism between Greens and Labor is to Labor’s benefit as the majority of Labor voters in outer suburban and regional areas are not fond of the Greens. For this and a variety of other reasons, tension between Greens and Labor has always existed and will continue to exist.

Labor’s huge campaign in Balmain against the left even more bizarre as they spent so much time focused on a Greens, energy which could and should have been directed elsewhere

@Firefox

Bizarre? It was listed on the ABC website as seats in doubt yesterday. Labor’s objective is to win seats for Labor what’s so bizarre about that? Its funny you don’t use the same argument when Greens go after Labor seats. Lets call this for what it is are one eyed Greens supporter who doesn’t like Labor taking Greens seats. Of course your happy for it to happen vice versa which shows how hypocritical your argument is. Greens cannibalize the Labor vote. Its likely costed Labor majority government with the amount Greens votes that have exhausted with optional preferential voting. Which those seats have gone to the Liberals.

Labor never really talks about which Green policies they don’t like, especially in seats like Balmain just that they need a majority for some reason, or misrepresentations of the electoral system, or some kind of internal party issue.

Whereas the Greens narrative for winning seats off Labor is always policy based. That’s the difference. Labor didn’t campaign in Balmain on stopping the Greens so Labor can continue fossil fuel exports or anything like that. It was not a contest of ideas.

I don’t think misinformation, which Labor deployed in this campaign, should be taken lightly. That crosses a line and it should not be a feature of our democracy.

@Adda

TBH I expected the younger crop of Greens Voters from outside Balmain (not an insignificant amount given Greens voters are overwhelmingly young) would have noticed this because they are more likely to follow their unofficial meme page on Facebook.
Even among those that don’t follow the page, the Greens official FB page shares a lot of their posts anyway.
The page in question called out the Labor misinformation campaign first in Griffith and this time Balmain so I predicted some awareness among voters about that.

These article says a bit about the fact they have decent influence on voters:
https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/05/10/australian-greens-social-media-federal-election/
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2022/05/28/adam-bandt-how-the-greens-triumphed#hrd

Also, I do want to mention that a few people (Labor hacks, sounds like they are in Griffith or Balmain) were trying to argue with the meme page by commenting some misinformation. One even went as far as doing personal attacks on Bob Brown. Scott apparently also spread misinformation herself (correct me if I am wrong).