Lake Macquarie – NSW 2023

In a minority government, Who is Mr Piper most likely to support? If he retires this should be a Labor seat with a margin of around 10%, however this seat like some areas in the Hunter/Central, trending away from Labor. 5% swing against Labor on TPP basis here last election but I expect it to bounce back a bit.

I think Greg Piper is a left leaning independent, which would suggest he may prefer to back Labor in the event of a hung parliament. Then again, I also believe that he could be a Labor defector who hails from the right/conservative faction because he successfully challenged a sitting Labor MP.

With the NSW Coalition being more moderate than its federal counterpart, this fact could mean he would also be open to supporting the LNP in the even neither side gets a majority.

Greg Piper has always listed as an independent, from his time on Lake Macquarie Council to the present day. While he has always leaned left-of-centre, he developed a very solid reputation as a genuine independent, in what is normally a Labor Stronghold.

Reckon Piper sides with coalition. Some very strong relationships have developed over 12 years and as 2023-2027 is likely his last term he really won’t care about perceived electoral consequences.

If there’s a minority govt scenario without the SFF independents winning, if McGirr supports the Coalition I can see Piper joining him. Greenwich is a bigger question mark.

Whoever Piper supports in a Minority Government will depend on how pragmatic he is about his long term career as a local MP versus his loyalty to relationships built with Coalition figures over the last decade. The 2PP count suggests locals would rather he back Labor and might judge him poorly if he becomes a kingmaker for the other side ala Oakeshott & Windsor.

I suspect he and Alex Grenwich have already made commitments to the current Government, but Alex sits in a very different part of the state.

I think any cross-bencher should support whoever has more seats out of LNP and Labor+Green (Assuming that Labor and Greens are willing to work together)

If the numbers are even or within 1 then it will be interesting to see how things work out

Some commentators have clearly failed to grasp the fact, despite his record over the past 16 years that Greg votes according what he believes to be the best interests of his constituents, and by his conscience. He does not favour one party over another and never has.

Always was, always will be a true Independent.

As correctly predicted by many, Piper indeed has been chosen as speaker by Minns. He will almost certainly get unanimous support in the chamber.

He deserves the roll, he has served his community honorably for the past 16 years, and considering he may retire at the next election (Like Peter Wellington did when he was speaker in QLD) being gifted the job as speaker is perhaps better than being the leader of the opposition or premier.

This will be a key seat when Greg Piper retires. Some suburbs seem to be trending Liberal and the Liberals got 58% notional TPP in 2019. 2023 on the other hand saw a big swing agains the Liberals in Newcastle.

*Labor got 58% notional TPP which is significantly less than every other Newcastle seat besides Port Stephens

By the way I’ll be in Newcastle this weekend. I will also be in all three federal Newcastle seats in the coming months.

@np il be in Sydney,grayndler and reid next weekend

Wow I just looked at the booth results here and they differ vastly from the election day results, at least when we’re talking about the notional TPP between Labor and the Liberals.

While Labor got 66.0% of the election day notional TPP, they only got 59.8% of the prepoll notional TPP. Overall Labor got 62.8% of the notional TPP here, making it the most Liberal seat in Newcastle as of the 2023 state election.

@Nether Portal Antony Green has mentioned it before in his election guide but the difference in the early vote and on the day vote is not really surprising. Lake Macquarie contains the town of Cooranbong which is the heartland of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Australia. Because the members all observe the Sabbath on the Saturday all of them vote early which is also why the electorate has such a big early vote and those votes do skew conservative for reasons we’re all too familiar with. It explains the gap in the early and on the day poll and is one of the reasons why Lake Macquarie is more conservative than the other lower Hunter seats.

@Tommo9 yeah the Cooranbong PPVC is one of the more conservative booths. Interestingly 23.5% of Cooranbong is Seventh Day Adventist (more than every other religious denomination except no religion at 33.2%). However, in nearby Morisset, only 5.3% of the population is Seventh Day Adventist.

I guess it’s similar to how in Caulfield there is a huge prepoll because of the Jewish Sabbath.

@Nether Portal Pretty much. Cooranbong is the site of the first SDA (not the union lol) Church in Australia and is the hub of all things SDA, even Sanitarium which is owned by the SDA Church. A sizeable proportion of the population there are Seventh-Day Adventists, but that whole region in the lower Hunter (Newcastle, Wallsend, Raymond Terrace) have a big SDA population, moreso in Cooranbong for obvious reasons.

That alone skews the more conservative vote up in Lake Macquarie than the other electorates like Newcastle, Wallsend, Swansea, Charlestown etc. Though I do wonder how many of those would vote Greg Piper given he’s not Labor but he’s a centre-left independent.

@Tommo9 while it’s a marginal booth it still voted Labor over Liberal on the state level (and independent over both).

When Greg Piper retires this will be more competitive than ever before.