Cooper – Queensland 2024

This will be an interesting race. Very much like McConnel or Macnamara in 2022.

Cooper will either re-elect Bush or it will go to the Greens. Just as with McConnel, the LNP haemorrhaged votes in this area at the last federal election. The ‘tough on crime’ race to the bottom between the major parties isn’t going to play well here or in any other inner Brisbane electorates. No doubt this factored into Bush’s decision to break ranks with the rest of the party on the issue of youth crime. She knows full well who her real threat to victory is.

I suspect the Greens chances just went up here with the suspension of the QLD human rights act by Labor. Jonty Bush has criticised her party for the proposal but saying “children don’t belong in watch houses” but “there is a worse place you can visit a child, and that’s in a morgue,” isn’t going to help her chances. It’s pretty rough for inner city Labor MPs who have to defend against Green threats when the state Labor party has to compete in the regions and the suburbs to win.

as far as i can tell, Jonty Bush voted for the human rights override with the rest of the labor party. In any case I doubt it’ll be as damaging to her, or indeed any other inner Brisbane MP as their refusal to support rent freezes.

She had to vote with the party. Labor doesn’t allow conscience votes. Their MPs either follow the party room or they get disendorsed.

right but putting any particular issue aside, voters don’t want to hear a politician wringing their hands at the state of affairs on one hand while whinging that they couldn’t vote their conscience because their career within the party was more important to them. luckily for JB i suspect there are enough credulous channel 7 viewers in cooper who’ll be pleased with the backflip anyway

@Wilson is that true? Can’t Labor MPs cross the floor? If not then that’s really stupid and unfair. The LNP allows it, the Liberals allow it, the Nationals allow it, why doesn’t Labor?

I believe Labor does allow conscience votes, but only explicitly for certain legislation (like the recent Territory rights bill federally, where some Labor members voted no).

For all other legislation, party members must follow the official line and cannot deviate unlike the Coalition whose members are free to conscience vote any time.

Nether
It’s called the Pledge. Been there since 1891 – qalways central to the Labor Party. It to me always seems to be a lack of trust in their MPs. Even though it is there Lib and Nat MPs don’t cross the floor very often – indeed quite rare.

@Yoh An
@Redistributed
I’m pretty sure conscience voting in the Liberals and Nationals isn’t allowed for appropriation bills. I think it should be law for any politician regardless of affiliation to be allowed to vote based on conscience except on money matters. Australia should be more like the US in this regard and conscience voting allows for a more healthy democracy.

Fair point Ian about financial matters (appropriation) being restricted and cannot be voted on conscience.

I do agree having a conscience vote for all other matters does make sense, although even with that arrangement some conservatives (both Coalition MP’s locally and Republicans in USA) were shunned when they crossed the floor to vote against their party line on particular matters.

this is unnecessarily elongated and the national park can be shed making a more compace district

It makes no difference, though.

Dear Mr QEC,
There are too many reservoirs in Cooper nowadays. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot

The Greens are running Katinka Winston-Allom again here. This is unsurprising given they picked up a 9% primary swing last time with the same candidate. Continuity should give her a little name recognition to build on.

The Greens have been bringing Katinka along to local events as a “community advocate” for a few months now. Jonty Bush is very popular local member and has good name recognition in the area, I reckon she should get through.

There seems to be consensus that either Labor or Greens will win it. LNP might just run dead.

If Jonty Bush has a “local member’s effect” or gets a sophomore surge, plus is ahead or not too far behind the Greens (and benefits from LNP and maybe One Nation preferences), then she’s safe.

@Votante I think the LNP will finish first, Greens second and Labor third. This would allow the Greens to win it and it would be a Greens vs LNP contest. The LNP actually almost finished first in 2020.

Somehow the TPP swing ended up being +0.16% to the LNP in 2020, not sure how given the Greens vote rose over 9% and One Nation got less than 2% of the vote (first time contesting though). However, the Labor vote dropped more than 6% while the LNP vote dropped more than 2%.

Jonty Bush is a good local member but I don’t think that will save her given that only a ~2% Labor-to-Greens swing is needed.

Predictions:

Primaries:
LNP: 36.6% (+3.2%)
Greens: 34.5% (+4.9%)
Labor: 24.8% (–9.8%)

TCP:
Greens: 54.5% (+54.5%)
LNP: 39.5% (+6.0%)

The LNP will finish first, with the Greens winning on Labor preferences. As for booths in each suburb, the LNP will do well in Ashgrove, Enoggera Reservoir and The Gap, while the Greens will do well in Bardon Milton, Paddington and Red Hill.

*Bardon, Milton (two separate suburbs)

Swing away from Labor will not be that big. Especially given Jonty’s personal vote – taking votes from the LNP and Greens. Plus the LNP can’t find a candidate and aren’t putting anything into campaigning for this seat.

Enoggera Reservoir doesn’t have a booth. In fact it only has 33 people living there according to the census. It’s completely irrelevant and I don’t really understand why it was mentioned.

This looks to me like the Macnamara of QLD. LNP win the primary vote but clearly aren’t well positioned to win the seat (unless they’re winning most seats) so what’s to say they won’t run dud candidates. The result being that people used to choosing between blue and red choose red and Greens stay in 3rd.

I think NP has the swing away from Labor on the high side but within range this far out. Of course this can change rapidly between now and election day. I do qquestion where it goes. I think the Greens will do well in some seats but are overstating their chances in Cooper. A bit like thinking they’d win Enoggera and a few other council wards but failed. I think LNP get more of the swing.

There are differences between Enoggera and Cooper though- OPV for one, which might well have been dispositive on its own, Andrew Wines already coming in from a much higher PV (~10% higher than the 2020 LNP Cooper candidate) and Labor actually having an incentive to spend any resources whatsoever in the seat. At this stage I’m not ruling out a 2012 statewide landslide, but like I said for Ferny Grove and Stafford, that’s basically what it’s going to take for the LNP to win this one.

Like even if the LNP candidate gets 40% of the vote share in Cooper (or Ferny Grove, or Stafford) it’s still probably not going to be enough to win.

It might be easy to overstate the Green vote simply because they won Brisbane and Ryan at the federal election. The dynamics at the federal election were different. The collapse in the LNP vote was due to a local grassroots campaign on aircraft noise and more broadly, Morrison’s response to floods and bushfires. Climate change was a bigger issue as floods were fresher in voter minds. Both seats also had LNP incumbents. Those factors are no longer present in this seat.

I do agree that inner city electorates are trending Green whilst Labor and LNP are slipping more broadly but it was local issues and resentment of Morrison that brought the Greens over the line in Ryan, Brisbane and Griffith.

The Greens Candidate for Cooper definitely has the most campaign donations so far.

@Caleb the candidate for the state seat, right?

@Nether Portal obviously

@Caleb just checking since I would’ve thought McConnell would’ve had more.

@Nether Portal

I would presume the big difference maker there is that the Cooper Greens candidate is a repeat attempt whereas the other Green targets (including McConnel) are first time candidates, as far as I recall.

I would imagine a 2nd time candidate already has experience getting their campaign going quick and already has some dedicated supporters ready to donate early.

Mostly agree with @Nether Portal’s primary vote and TPP predictions. I think Greens and LNP primary votes are spot on, but Labor’s might be on the higher end of the 20s. Either way, Greens win imo with LNP finishing second.

@Caleb where did you get that from? I can’t find any campaign donations to Katinka yet

@A A you have to go the greens candidate website.

Controversial but I have a lot of faith that Jonty Bush and Grace Grace (McConnel) should hang on. Katinka Winston-Allom (Greens Candidate for Cooper) will have been known to the community, and Holstein Wong (Greens Candidate for McConnel) seems like a very strong candidate.

However just because the Greens won Ryan and Brisbane does not mean in any way that these two candidates are locks. Jonty Bush was well-known as a former Young Australian of the Year, and has an extensive background in Criminology and Justice. She has strong popularity in Cooper like Kate Jones and Campbell Newman (well, in 2012). Grace Grace is very popular as well. She has built strong ties to the gay community in New Farm and Fortitude Valley. She has enormous personal vote across the electorate, and the fact she recontested in 2015 after losing Brisbane Central (McConnel’s former name)in 2012, shows a lot of dedication.

I don’t want Labor to be re-elected to government whatsoever in Queensland, but Jonty and Grace are 2 MPs which I thoroughly support but it will be challenging. I predict they should retain but this is a basic opinion so on election night it might not be right.

I agree with @James

I’m in Cooper, and Katinka isn’t very well known. She doesn’t go to community events unless she wants a photo op, and isn’t involved with many local organisations. Jonty, on the other hand, is very well known in the community, and has long-running ties with local schools, businesses and organisations. She’s very active in the community and has a positive reputation, even with typically Green or LNP voters. I think this personal vote will push her over the line, especially because the LNP are running dead in Cooper and haven’t even selected a candidate.

People have been saying that The Greens will win McConnel for the past few elections, but it hasn’t happened. And I don’t think it will happen until Grace Grace retires. She has an enormous personal vote that inflates the Labor margin. And the problem with McConnel is that it is near impossible door knock or letterbox the entire electorate, because there are a lot of international students and non-voters. There are also a lot of apartments that can’t be reached by non-residents. So doorknocking or letterboxing is a waste of time and money, and a community presence is key to winning.

Grace should’ve been premier instead of lackluster Miles. She could have argued she knows how to beat the Greens and that she has been around for ages like Dick has.

Miles and Fentiman have only been around since like 2015 (although Miles contested Ryan in 2010)

If the Greens don’t win this they’ll have trouble in Ryan. Big trouble. And they won’t ever gain Enoggera or The Gap if they can’t win this.

Part of me hates the Greens with a passion because they are too ambitious. I’ve been studying Macbeth this term in English and when Macbeth is given the prophecies, he becomes full of ambition. Adam Bandt is someone I see as a metaphor of Macbeth. He’s full of pure ambition and believes that because his party holds 4 seats in the HoR, then apparently the Greens are a major party and will win the next federal election some. They always choose some 23-year old uni student/renter as a candidate in an unwinnable seat and act like they can win it.

They are of course here in Queensland, under the impression that they will win lots of seats. They have chances in McConnel, Cooper, Greenslopes, Miller and more, but the MPs in former two are very popular and well-known. They also need to remember that they only gained one ward in BCC this year, yet their LM candidate kept saying they could win up to a dozen wards for some reason?

The Greens’ lord mayor candidate was under the impression that they could win over 10 wards. Including Hamilton and Pullenvale, the safest two LNP wards in the Council. And they put up a last minute 20-something year old ghost candidate in the former. Their arrogance really cost them there – even Jonno quite his job as a councillor in an extremely safe Greens ward, because he thought he could become mayor (which is realistically impossible, given how unpopular he is in everywhere but the inner-city).

@Daniel T Grace is from the Unity (formerly Old Guard) faction, which only has a handful of seats, so she’s very unlikely to become premier.

James, as someone who also studied Macbeth in high school English, let me give you some knowledge I learned during my studies: Shakespeare wrote Macbeth as a propaganda piece to please the monarch of the day, James I of England. Now James I was not only fairly new to the throne in 1606, he was also the first English monarch from the Scottish House of Stuart, so he was fearful that the people of England would see him as a foreign interloper and overthrow him. So Shakespeare wrote a play about respecting the divine right of kings, which is the idea that monarchs were chosen by God to rule, and therefore anyone seeking to contest the rule of God’s chosen ones were was a minion of Satan. Not only that, Shakespeare wrote it using James I’s own ancestors, Banquo and Fleance, and depicting them as the good guys to compound the message that people shouldn’t rebel against James I.

So the message of Macbeth should be viewed with a very skeptical mind, especially as we don’t live in a feudal monarchy, we live in a modern democracy where nobody should have the uncontested right to rule. We also live in a capitalist society, where growth and progress is often reliant on upstarts with the ambition to become something greater, to innovate in ways that the established power players aren’t interested in.

So there’s nothing wrong with showing ambition. It’s the ambition to grow their vote that led the Greens to realise that renters were a demographic that the major parties had ignored in favour of property investors, so they grew to 4 lower house seats by appealing to renters. I think democracy is stronger when more groups find a party that appeals to their concerns, don’t you?

I also think you’re exaggerating Bandt’s thought process quite a lot. He’s certainly intelligent enough to know that the Greens can’t win the election, but they can hold (or share) the balance of power in a hung parliament and force the major parties to the negotiating table, which happened previously in 2010. That’s his goal.

I’m unsure which unwinnable seat you’re referring to, but if they truly believed it was winnable then I’m sure they’d put up a more relatable candidate than a 23 year old uni student. Note that this doesn’t fit the description of any of their 2022 victories – Bates and Chandler-Mather were 30, Watson-Brown in her 60s, and all were full time workers. If they are indeed talking big about a clearly unwinnable seat then it’s probably a tactic to motivate their volunteers. After all, both the Greens and Teals won seats in 2022 by having a lot of motivated volunteers. And even if they don’t win, getting a swing in their favour in an election can be useful for building on it in subsequent elections to make it an actually winnable seat.

Lastly, with BCC wards, the Greens were hamstrung in their efforts to win wards by the optional preferential voting system. They also lost in the areas you’ve mentioned to LNP incumbents from a reasonably popular LNP administration. None of these things are common in the state election, which uses the more advantageous compulsory preferential voting and in Cooper and McConnel they’re against Labor MPs from a very unpopular Labor government. The fact that the same areas are LNP at one level of government and Labor at another tells you that people in Brisbane often vote differently in different elections. So I wouldn’t write the Greens off in those seats.

A A, you’re quite clearly reading your own motivation into the actions of other people. I’ve spoken to Sriranganathan since the election and he knew full well that he wasn’t going to win the mayoralty. He quit his ward because he was tired of being a politician, and ran for mayor so that he could use his public profile before it faded away, to give the Greens a boost in media attention. And he did get more interviews and debate invitations than I can remember seeing the Greens get in 2020, so he succeeded in his aim.

As for Pullenvale and Hamilton, you can call it arrogance if you like, but as I said to James above, it was likely for the purpose of inspiring his party’s volunteers to assist with those campaigns. After all, both are contained within federal seats that voted for the Greens in 2022, so getting more votes in those wards might help them maintain those seats in the next federal election.

@Wilson that explanation is a lot more understandable, but I’m just stating what Sriranganathan and The Greens said and did at a public level. And I know a lot of greens members and supporters, and they echoed this to me. He repeatedly said that he could win over 10 wards plus the mayoralty, and form a council with Labor. He was very confident when saying this, so it came off as very arrogant. It would be like Bandt saying he’s running to be the next prime minister.

Also I reckon he’s not tired of politics yet, and he’ll try to run the next time around. I’ve been told that he was elected for preselection without opposition, but he’s unpopular in a lot of more “moderate” branches. So if someone challenges, then he could be thwarted.

A A, that’s great that you’ve talked to a lot of Greens members and supporters, but I’ve talked to the man himself, so I know what I’m talking about. You’re going by idle speculation.

The Greens have always talked themselves up. Bob Brown would come out with some ridiculous prediction every election. They are probably now where he used to claim they would be.

Saw Labor volunteers campaigning for Jonty Bush on the western corner of Waterworks Road and Ashgrove Avenue this morning.

He may as well start looking for a new job