Malvern – Victoria 2022

This area has undergone significant change since the Liberals were winning this seat on 20%+ margins. More renters, more young people, and more people living in apartments, particularly in the southern parts of this electorate – this further explains how Higgins was won by Labor.
I’m not expecting this seat to be lost, but it’s foolish to expect it to bounce back to a double-digit ultra-safe margin. Over the next couple of elections, this seat will likely become more and more in play.

Ham, I still think it will be a single-digit margin given the indication from the seat of Higgins last election. Plus Matthew Guy is not well liked by the “Small Liberals” due to his past controversy. Although Guy seems to have policies with a mix of both conservative and moderate factions (Right in Covid Mandates and left in Climate change etc), his rhetoric is more populist making him more like Pierre Poilivre in Canada or Liz Truss in the UK

The fact that it can even. Be suggested as a Labor win point out lib problems

Personally I think as long as O’Brien is the candidate they should be fine here but tend to agree it will stay on the single digits. If he pulls out last minute and retires and especially if the Libs pick someone from the right-faction then this could become very interesting.

Bulleen will fall before this, This is the last eastern Melbourne seat that would fall from the Liberal house of cards. (unless you count places like Mornington,Narracan etc as part of Eastern Melbourne.

There is clearly demographic trends towards Labor here while on the other hand in seats like Narracan and Mornington which were won by Labor in 2002 have shown demographic trends to the Liberals.

Andrews is no Mark McGowan but Matthew Guy makes Zak Kirkup look like a saint. I personally think it was a mistake to dump O’Brien, I suspect he will become leader should Pesutto fail to retake his former seat of Hawthorn after the election. If O’Brien doesn’t run then it is anyones guess.

@ Daniel. In fact Mornington was not won by the Libs in 2002 while for Narracan it now does not include any of the La Trobe valley from 2022 election onwards. It is the La Trobe valley that has seen a decline in the Labor vote as the Coal industry has declined similar to around Lithgow in NSW. I think Rowville maybe one of the last seats to fall (not small L liberal territory although has a growing Chinese community).

I don’t think Malvern will swing much at all compared to its redistributed margin. Two opposing forces will probably cancel each other out and result in a roughly neutral swing.

On one hand, Labor being in government federally, having a federal Labor MP, Dan and state Labor being less popular than in 2018 and the Liberals going a bit less hardline in their campaign this year will all favour the Liberals.

But on the other hand, Peter Dutton as federal Lib leader, Guy replacing O’Brien as state leader, the total lack of talent within the state party, the constantly hypocritical Covid commentary, and importantly what appears to now be a confirmation of a permanent change in direction for the Liberal Party, will all favour Labor. So, I think it’ll stay similar overall.

On that last point I made, I’ll be really interested to see the impact of the Liberals now very publicly discussing (and some embracing) the idea of abandoning these constituents to replace Labor as the party of the “working class”.

Most voters are not that politically engaged and form their views based on discussions in their social circles, and whatever party they feel they identify more with culturally.

For example, I can imagine BBQs in Pakenham having conversations like “Bloody Dan this”, “Bloody Dan that”, “Bloody Dan made that earthquake happen”, whatever it may be. As a result, people who aren’t that engaged will go into the polling booth, not really know any of the candidates, but vote for “Anybody but bloody Labor, Dan’s gotta go”. That’s why I think the swings will be large in outer areas where UAP did well.

In Malvern, where people are probably more engaged with the Liberal Party in particular, the conversations are more likely to be “I can’t believe they went back to Guy as their leader”, “Well Dutton’s their federal leader now, the whole party has changed”, “Yeah did you hear that director of the party on TV saying they want to forget about wealthy seats like ours and focus on the working class areas?”, “If they’re just gonna try to replace Labor, we may as well just vote Labor because at least they know it’s the 21st century”.

Remember these are the kinds of areas where people will buy a new luxury car just because their neighbour has one. I have a cousin-in-law who lived in Toorak and did that. They care about their social identity, and the Liberal Party was a big part of that identity. So I’m curious about what impact all the very public commentary around the Liberal Party moving away from an affluent base, coupled with a lot of commentary that Labor have abandoned their working class base for inner city “elites” (usually intended as criticism), will have on voters who identify as inner city “elites” in the long term?

I think this trend has been evident for a while, and with it there has been a gradual leftward shift in these areas, but in the fallout of the May election was when it seemed to be confirmed, as many in the party itself were talking about and even embracing the idea of forgetting about the inner city seats. So that Liberal Party bond to many of these voters’ cultural & social identity may be severing.

@Trent, Vic Libs is still quite hardline in their campaign plus if Moira Deeming (a hardline conservative who is preselected number 1 in the Western Metropolitan) is used to wedge the Vic Libs, this would worsen the chance for them to win back the small liberals not to even mention their anti-vax stance

Trent, That comment about elites and working class is spot on, the way the Liberals talk down to these people has made it more acceptable to vote for the ALP, Greens or now the Teals. There’s always talk about young people in apartments, however, the Liberals attitude has been anti these people for a long time that it includes people up to Gen X and the late boomers that swung to Whitlam.

Totally agree Pencil.

It’s one thing to no longer feel represented by the party you traditionally identified with – and this has happened on both sides with working class Labor voters and affluent urban Liberal voters. But it’s another level altogether to actually have senior members of the party you once voted for, explicitly saying in the media that you are no longer their base, and that the party should “forget about” you and focus elsewhere.

That just has to have an impact, especially when it reinforces the feeling you already had of not being represented. And especially when the language is not only an abandonment, but often refers to your demographic in hostile terms – “inner city elites”, “latte sippers”, “doctors wives”, “woke elites”, etc – to the point where they are directly insulting you as if your values don’t matter.

It doesn’t surprise me that an increasing portion of the traditional Liberal “base” now find themselves in the unthinkable situation of coming to the conclusion that Labor represent them more than the Liberal Party.

On a larger scale, it seems we’re simply catching up with the more global realignment of the wealthy to the left and the working class to the right.

The Libs could pre-select Bob Brown and they would still lose. There are bigger demographic trends at play around the world and they can’t resist demography, nor can anyone else.

If a seat like this is trending away form the LNP they will struggle to get into office anytime in the near future.

Labor could do reasonably well in the far eastern areas near Holmesglen and the Chadstone Shopping Centre since it has some public housing but the bulk of the seat is the extremely affluent core in Toorak, Armadale and Malvern which although seems trending to the left is still very strong for them.

This is the perfect seat for a teal to run in.

It’s the right demographic, and the margin being over 6% means it’s extremely unlikely for Labor to have a chance in it so Labor & Greens voters have an incentive to vote strategically to remove a Liberal (which is not the case in the seats where Labor are within 1%).

And if a teals are challenging the Libs in seats like Malvern and Kew while Labor are threatening Sandringham, Brighton and Caulfield, then if you’re a moderate Liberal that’s a good thing because it will force the Libs to have to focus on not losing moderate seats, rather than lurch further right.

On overlapping federal numbers from May I still have the Liberals winning this by about 54-46.

That’s only about 2% worse than their 2018 state result, which is a very different situation to Prahran & Caulfield where the federal results in May were about 10% worse for them than the overlapping state seats in 2018.

This tells me the big 2018 swing against the Libs in Malvern may have already been close to their floor, or Labor’s ceiling, so they don’t have much more to lose here.

In the absence of a teal independent, I can’t imagine the Libs collapsing any further here but at the same time I don’t think they’ll recover any ground either, so I’d just expect another Lib retain somewhere between the 4-6% range.

I feel that Malvern especially around Toorak seems to be the old-money Libertarians so the teal won’t do so well there

If the libs cannot win Malvern.. then…. can you count to 10?

Higgins flipped to Labor at the federal election but it had South Yarra, Prahran and Windsor as well as Carnegie, all strong Labor-voting areas. A teal probably would’ve flipped Higgins too.

I agree that Toorak is old-money, old-school Liberal as well as Armadale and Malvern (to a lesser extent). Low Greens/Labor vote. Vic Labor may be too left-wing for their liking, whilst NSW Labor and QLD Labor are more towards the centre.

@ Votante, i agree Prahran/Windsor is a left wing stronghold and has been for sometime. However, Carnegie/Murrummbeena i would not describe has a strong labor area, it is generally Labor leaning and more middle class rather than affluent. Compared to when Peter Costello was the MP Higgins has more of Carnegie/Murrumbeena and less of Camberwell etc which is why boundaries today are more favourable to Labor although that does not explain everything on why Labor won. In 2016, with Turnbull, the Libs actually won some booths south of Dandenong Road while Labor did not get more than 54% TPP in these booths. I do wonder what % a teal would have got if one ran in Higgins.

@Nimalan, I think Skyrail played the factor in 2016 around Carnegie/Murrumbeena. Skyrail was initially heavily opposed by the local there but it seems once Skyrail was completed opposition dropped significantly possibly since all the fears never came.

Carnegie seems to be a lot stronger for Labor than Murrumbeena. The booths in Murrumbeena tend to be pretty marginal/bellwether type of territory, they’ll go high-50s for Labor when the Libs are on the nose but will vote Liberal when they’re electable/palatable (eg. The Turnbull election).

Carnegie on the other hand tends to be more multicultural, has a larger student population due to its proximity to Monash Uni, and has more apartment development around Koornang Road and the train station. It’s more common for Labor’s 2PP to be in the 60s around Carnegie and I rarely (if ever) see the Libs win a booth.

In May, Armadale was the strongest for Labor out of all the suburbs within the state boundaries of Malvern.

The “Armadale North” booth was very strong for the Liberals (67%) but that’s right up in the northeast corner where Armadale, Toorak & Malvern all meet. The other two Armadale booths were won by Labor, Armadale Central actually had a 60% Labor 2PP. So that seems to be a suburb that’s happier to swing.

Malvern & Malvern East ranged from 52% Labor to 54% Liberal so was a bit more 50/50, but Toorak as expected was strongly Liberal.

@ Marh, good point i forgot about the Sky rail issue in 2016 Liberals campaigned strongly against this including Kelly O’Dwyer and most of the campaign against was lead by Murrumbeena residents. The loss of Chisholm in 2016 was also in part blamed on the Sky rail issue.
@Trent, good point of comparing Carnegie versus Murumbeena. It is true that Carnegie has high density and maybe more socially mixed for this reason. However, i do feel both suburbs are quite desirable it is only beyond Oakleigh on this rail line that it becomes industrial and working class until Fountain Gate and then middle class again. It was a big shock to me that Labor won TPP in booths in Armadale, Malvern and Glen Iris as they tend to be among the wealthiest suburbs in Melbourne and is probably prime Teal territory

Interestingly, I think that if a teal had run in Higgins, it may have actually helped Katie Allen’s chances to retain.

Here’s why.

We saw in all the Teal gains that while the Liberals lost the IND v LIB 2CP, they won the LIB v ALP 2PP. What this tells me, is that voters who in the absence of a teal candidate may have swung to Labor in Higgins as a protest vote against the Liberals & Morrison, may still have preferenced the Liberals over Labor if they had a teal option to vote for.

Now, in seats like Goldstein & Kooyong, there are really no “solid left” areas and only a few middle class areas (like Bentleigh). This meant that teal support came from all sources – LIB, ALP & GRN – consistently across those seats which comfortably made them IND v LIB contests.

In Higgins, being a more diverse seat, I don’t the wealthy suburbs you mean – Malvern, Armadale, Toorak, Glen Iris – would have behaved exactly like Goldstein and Kooyong. However, genuine ALP/GRN support in South Yarra, Prahran, Windsor, Carnegie, Glenhuntly etc would likely have held up and probably not bled many votes to the teal.

Therefore, Katie Allen would probably have had more chance of it being a 3-way contest, and as long as the ALP stayed ahead of the IND, then she probably would have won the ALP v LIB runoff because if those voters in Malvern, Armadale & Glen Iris who swung to Labor as a protest vote had a teal option instead, they very well may have preferenced the Libs over Labor after expressing their protest by voting #1 IND.

This is what I fear could happen if a teal were to run in seats like Caulfield, Brighton & Sandringham in November. They wouldn’t win because they wouldn’t make the 2CP; they would actually just help the Liberals by filtering preferences back that may otherwise have been a Labor vote.

Whereas Malvern I think is ripe teal territory because Labor don’t actually have a chance, and if a teal ran it would most likely be an IND v LIB count.

Weird typing error in that 5th paragraph. It’s meant to start:

“In Higgins, being a more diverse seat, I think the wealthy suburbs you mention – Malvern, Armadale, Toorak, Glen Iris – would have behaved exactly like Goldstein and Kooyong.”

Trent, agree with your analysis. Just some further points.
1. A lot of people who voted Teal as first preference would give the Libs their second preference. We can see that in the Notional Lib/Lab TPP (AEC Calculated) for Kooyong and Goldstein which had among the smallest TPP swings to Labor in metro melbourne (excluding outer Melbourne due to “freedom parties and lockdown politics” it is now more Liberal than Aston and Menzies again. The same can be said in Sydney compare the notional TPP swing in Mackellar versus Mitchell or Berowa. Much of the teal vote was tactical.
2. Agree, Goldstein, Kooyong do not have any solid left-wing areas like Prahran/Windsor. This makes the state seat of Brighton quite different to Goldstein due to presence of Elwood. By contrast Sandringham does not have solid Labor areas only marginal areas like Cheltenham, Mentone etc (similar to Bentleigh). If a Teal runs in Hawthorn then Labor’s primary vote my fall more than Liberal.
3. One thing that interests me is how much Labor’s primary vote will fall in Higgins if a Teal ran. In 2016 they only got 16% I am thinking if a Teal ran then the Greens may hold up better and Labor may fall to 3rd or 4th place on primaries.
4. The Greens probably have more of a core vote in Higgins than Labor in Windsor/Prahran. The Teal could even take some more vote in South Yarra and Murrumbeena etc from Labor for voters who are socially progressive/Economically conservative. It may be only a little bit but can change the ordering of the canadiates on primaries. or teal. Labor’s core vote may be limited to Social housing residents and some renters around Carnegie. While the greens maybe broader.
5. If a Teal ran in Macmamara it may attract some Turnbull Liberal voters in Albert Park/Middle Park, Port Melbourne etc and Labor’s primary may drop to around 25% and become a Lib/Green contest or a teal/green contest

LNP hold O’brien is not a controversial member so I expect him to hold here

In hindsight, would the Libs be better off with O’Brien as their leader? Could he return as leader?
(I’m predicting a Lib hold)

I still don’t understand why they gambled on Matthew Guy last year. Mark McGowan was also a first-term opposition leader whose party seat count and 2PP went down at his first run for premier but at least he didn’t lose as badly as Matthew Guy did in 2018.

Michael O’Brien wasn’t exactly the most effective opposition leader though that’s not to say Matthew Guy is any better. The main reason why the Libs changed leaders back to Guy is that Michael O’Brien is in the moderate faction while Matthew Guy is in the hard right. With the direction the state Libs are going towards, they would prefer a like-minded hard right leader, especially as the party membership and many of the state MPs remaining lurch further to the right.

Whenever Michael O’Brien appeared on the news while my family were watching, we couldn’t help but laugh. In any Victorian politics piece, the ABC would always have a short clip of him delivering the cheapest, most unimaginative attack on the government. I miss him, he was good comedy.

Mainly Malvern and Toorak should be safe liberal retain. But looking at this more liberal vote 51.2% all else left of centre… so the libs did well to get to 56% of the vote… still what ever the reason 6% is a reasonable margin…expect liberal retain unless Mr O’Brien is a net negative to the libs

On Dan M’s point. If the Liberal Party is lurching to the right, then it’s ironic that John Pesutto is touted as a future Liberal leader. First of all, he needs to win back his old seat. If not, would Michael O’Brien stage a comeback?

I listened to Alan Kohler’s podcast after the federal election and they talked about a Josh Frydenberg’s career prospects. One of them was that he could become the next Campbell Newman – become an Opposition Leader from outside parliament, resecue the Liberal Party and become the Premier. I thought it was funny.

Agree Votante about Josh Frydenberg’s state leadership prospects. At least Campbell Newman was considered popular when he was Mayor of Brisbane city council, I don’t think Frydenberg was as popular when serving as Federal Treasurer or as a senior cabinet member during his time as MP for Kooyong.

I can’t see Frydenberg becoming the next Campbell Newman. He wasn’t nearly as popular as Newman was and he’s too closely linked to Morrison in the eyes of many Victorians especially during his time as treasurer where he criticised Dan Andrews and the lockdowns consistently. He’s probably just waiting around to win back Kooyong or get parachuted into another safe Lib seat just how John Pesutto is waiting around to try and win back Hawthorn, with a notable chance that both of them would be unsuccessful. Of course Frydenberg would still be a better leader than basically any of the current Lib MPs in the state parliament but even then there is no way he would defeat state Labor in the current environment and I don’t think he would want to stick around to be state opposition leader when he could be the federal Lib leader.

Not much noise on the ground in Malvern. Expect Libs to hold.

Interestingly, as the “teals” never ran in Higgins at the federal election they don’t have the “infrastructure” on the ground that they do in Hawthorne and Kew (broadly within Kooyong).

The other thing is that MOB got a bit of a fright last election and is running a “marginal” seat campaign in Malvern.

Greens and labour were very late nominating candidates so it is difficult to see a 2018 Hawthorne like upset in Malvern.

Best

Pollster

I don’t see any chance of Labor or Greens gaining Malvern, at best they might swipe 1-2% off the Liberal 2PP. But the big swing already happened there in 2018 and I don’t think there’s much potential left for Labor and/or Greens to improve much.

I find it really interesting that there’s no teal though.

I understand why a teal didn’t run in Higgins – a large part of Higgins’ population is comprised of the South Yarra, Prahran & Windsor end which is not really “teal” turf and was ripe for huge Greens/Labor swings; while the eastern end is middle class marginal territory where Labor could get big swings, and did.

However, Malvern is comprised entirely of the prime “teal” demographic in Higgins’ Liberal heartland, Labor & Greens are generally uncompetitive, and I’m sure a LOT of very successful women with a high profile live in the area and could run as an independent.

So with only a ~6% Liberal margin and O’Brien having had a failed attempt at leadership (in contrast to Pesutto being a future leader), Malvern would have been ripe for the picking for the right teal.

Trent, I believe it isn’t worth it for a ‘teal’ like independent to run anywhere in Victoria, given that Labor is already in power and advancing with quite a progressive agenda. The only reason Teals were strong federally is because the Coalition had lost touch with affluent voters by abandoning focus on integrity and climate change.

Yoh An, I completely agree with that.

However, to me that makes it even more baffling that they have decided to run in seats like Hawthorn (Labor held), Caulfield (notional Labor), Brighton (LIB 0.5%) and Sandringham (LIB 0.4%) but then not run in Malvern, which along with Kew is probably the only seat that bears some resemblance to the federal situation!

Agree Trent, I am wondering if the intention of the teal group this time is to ‘disrupt’ Labor and prevent them gaining more seats. If Teals end up preferencing Liberals in these marginal seats, it could add to the Liberal gains in North/West Melbourne and make a hung parliament more likely.

The Climate 200 website for the Victorian elections lists Climate Action and ‘integrity’ as the major issues. The ALP has upped the ante during the campaign on climate action to a possibly unattainable level. However, as a government that has been in power for 8 years and the ALP in office for 19 of the 23 years, any integrity issues can only be sheeted home to an Andrews Government that is looking decidedly murky on the integrity front. If the so called ‘Teals’ – and in the state election (with the exception of Felicity Federico) they are looking more like a Labor/ Greens front organisation – are genuine they would direct preferences aginst Labor or at best leave open tickets.

Redistributed, are the Teal candidates directing preferences to Labor/Greens or have they lodged open tickets?

I believe federally Monique Ryan in Kooyong lodged an open preference ticket, and teal candidates federally had preferences that mostly flowed to Liberals instead of Labor, given that alternative 2PP counts for many of these seats at the Federal election were ‘won’ by Liberals instead of Labor.

Yoh An
Not sure at this stage. We will need to wait and see

@Yoh An I agree that particularly in the case of the Brighton & Sandringham independents, the intention appears to be more to disrupt Labor’s chances by providing an alternate avenue for the first preference ‘protest vote’ hoping it then flows back to the Liberal incumbents.

It’s harder to make that claim with Caulfield & Hawthorn where the independents both have a Labor history (a very recent one in Caulfield). But then you have to wonder, if they are a “front” for Labor, why bother running? Labor would be the red hot favourites to win Caulfield if there was no independent, her presence really just throws a spanner in the works. They’d do better without her on the ballot.

So I find it hard to categorise them as a “front” for Labor either. You could really only argue that if they were running in seats Labor couldn’t win. Like Malvern.

Yoh An and Trent makes some great points. in Kooyong and Goldstein where the Teals ran had the smallest swing to Labor in TPP terms it is now the case that they are notionally more Liberal than Aston and Menzies again. Some Teal voters did preference Liberal. I would look at Boothby where a Teal came 4th to see what the preference flow was. In a sense Boothby is a mixed seat as it has Elite areas such like Glenelg (similar to Brighton) and some other elite areas closer to the Adelaide Hills (Such as Netherby) which are similar to Kooyong.

“I believe it isn’t worth it for a ‘teal’ like independent to run anywhere in Victoria, given that Labor is already in power and advancing with quite a progressive agenda.”

I would go so far as to say the Teals are right-of-centre, but barring that, I think it certainly can be said that the Teals are not left-wing in the sense or to the extent that Labor and the Greens are. There is room for the Teals when Labor is in power. I want a representative who is centre-to-centre-right but who isn’t affiliated with a party that is drifting to the far-right. That’s what a Teal candidate offers me. Labor has a progressive agenda, but they’re also spending a lot of money, and they have had some issues with integrity too.

Fair point Nicholas, the Teals would appeal to someone who is more centre-right in the mould of the former Australian Democrats or Lib Dems in UK. These voters would be fiscally conservative but socially progressive, which explains the teal dominance in affluent inner suburban areas.

A good comparison might be to some Republicans who either lost preselection or are seen as critical of Trump such as Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney, they still support the fiscal control measures seen as standard for a conservative party but are also critical of things like integrity which have been abandoned by the main party.

Nicholas/Yoh An
Not everyone might like what i am about to say but i hope people hear me out. With respect to Teal, there is Blue and Green in it but there is no Red at all. I don’t believe the Teal movement is about giving Labor a free pass in inner city seats or enabling a realignment between of the working class to the right and the affluent to the left it is in essence about reclaiming the Core of Liberalism that has been lost in the last 25 years or so. IMV the people of Kooyong, Goldstein, North Sydney and Mackellar did not leave the Liberal party the party has left them. It has been said possibly correctly that had a Teal run in Higgins then Katie Allen may have survived and that Teals should not run in seats such as Brighton, Hawthorn, Sandringham etc so Labor can take it of them. I do feel that it is Sad in a way that in May that people in suburbs such as Glen Iris, Malvern, Albert Park, the Domain part of South Yarra were forced to hold their noses at the ballot box and vote for the least worst option in Ananda-Rajah. Lets remember that on Primary votes Labor actually did better in Menzies and Aston two seats that they did not campaign it than they did in Higgins or Macnamara (even in the absence of a Teal). In fact even at the 2018 state election the primary vote for Labor was actually higher in Croydon Evelyn, Rowville, Bulleen, Gembrook (now Berwick) and Warrandyte than it was in Hawthorn, Brighton, Sandringham, Caulfield. Many of these people still believe in free markets, enterprise, rewards for success, aspiration and less government intervention. Liberalism based on the philosophy of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Alfred Deakin should be a choice that people should be entailed to and not be forced to choose between Social Democracy or Far Right Populism. I think Albert Park and Eltham should longer term see a Teal run as well.

@Nimalan

I’m going to disagree with you there. Labor have just been caught spamming voters with push polls in hawthorn trying to push Labor voters to vote teal and speaking negatively about John Pesutto.

Labor themselves see teals as a way to stop liberals, whether teals actually have that aim or not.

@Nimalan

Very, very well put. I 100% agree with you. I am one of the people who you are talking about – I really should be a Liberal voter, but I cannot bring myself to vote for the contemporary Liberal Party. At the same time, it doesn’t feel great to be voting for Labor or the Greens. A lot of the commentary around the Teals is very much centred on the perspective of the major parties, that sees voters like me as a means to – as you aptly put – “give Labor a free pass” in areas that have traditionally voted Liberal.

@Nimalan I agree that it’s the Lib party that’s abandoning its base rather than the other way around. It’s really just the hard right of the party that’s arguing that it’s affluent inner city base is abandoning them which is really an excuse to shift the party even further to the right in Trump right wing populist fashion. The teals should serve as a wake up call to them to pull back to the centre-right not as an excuse to double down on lurching to the right since most of the moderates are now gone from the parliamentary party.

@Mark

I understand your point, but Labor’s strategy in relation to the Teal vote or how Labor views the Teals has no bearing on what Teal candidates actually stand for. This is exactly what I mean in my previous comment on the commentary around the Teals. It views Teal voters as nothing more than a means to an end.

Agree Nicholas, even the teals have various views as I saw in Federal Parliament the teals don’t often vote as one single bloc, some may agree with the Labor government’s views whilst others won’t.