Calwell – Australia 2022

Maria retiring puts open the real possibility of an independent gaining this. CALD communities in the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne are getting sick and tired of Labor but aren’t really going to the Liberals.

@Nether Portal like a reverse teal seat?

@SCart yes exactly. Like someone socially conservative with economically left policies in support of workers and trade unions. George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain comes to mind as a UK equivalent that could gain votes in Australia. Wikipedia describes the party as democratic socialist, left-wing populist and socially conservative. Galloway opposes wokeism and has described UK Labour as too woke but is economically very similar to the Labour Party and on Israel/Palestine he is very pro-Palestinian.

@nq can you show me Palestine on a map.

Peter Dutton’s comments about a Minority Labor government propped by Muslim candidates from Western Sydney offended Ed Husic as he literally was a Muslim candidate from Western Sydney. Usman Khawaja also attacked Dutton for his comments. After the recent state and federal elections in this area it was often suggested by many in the right flank of the Liberal party that areas such as this was their future interesting how one event on the other side of the world has changed this so quickly and now seats like this are hated by the same people who once praised this demography only 18 months ago.

@Nimalan I think the thing that kept the Coalition from losing Lindsay in 2022 was that they had an incumbent member who wasn’t particularly unpopular and the state Coalition government was popular and Stuart Ayres wasn’t particularly unpopular as an MP or as a minister. Penrith was only narrowly lost to Labor in 2023 (I predicted that Labor would’ve got Holsworthy not Penrith since Stuart Ayres was a Cabinet minister and he had worked hard for Penrith and I hope he comes back in 2027), so if the election were just a little bit earlier regardless of who formed government the Liberals would’ve narrowly retained Penrith. However Lindsay also includes parts of Badgerys Creek which the Liberals easily retained in 2023 with a swing to them despite the member being quite conservative (though Badgerys Creek overlaps even more with McMahon and Werriwa, both multicultural seats that are heartlands for Labor, than it does Lindsay, which is a working-class but less multicultural seat that’s usually a bellwether seat).

However in saying that the state Coalition was also very competitive in Parramatta and Riverstone in 2023 but not in Greenway in 2022 (they were, however, competitive in Parramatta).

@ NP
I agree Melissa McIntosh was a strong member but Labor did not really pick up traditional bellwethers like Petrie and Forde either (both of those seats are like Lindsay not diverse) while Badgerys Creek does overlap with Werriwa and McMahon it overlaps with the less diverse parts such as St Clair/Erksine Park or the semi-rural component. Holsworthy is interesting as i pointed this out before, the Libs have been improving around Casula, Lurnea areas with large Muslim communities. I think Ned Mannoun has something to do with this. This is one area where i think there has a trend for Libs to improve among Muslims. I dont know if that will continue now post October 7. I note that Ned Mannoun and Tina Ayad are more Pro-Palestine despite being Libs.

https://www.tallyroom.com.au/51379- comments on Holsworthy back in 2023

@nimalan i think hes been taken out of context and probably regretted phrasing it that way.

I suppose Dutton’s comments on Palestinian visas put to rest any possibilities of the Libs winning seats like this. Would likely trickle down to the state level and make it impossible for the Libs to pick up Greenvale

@Dan M State politics have little to do with the Middle East, and it’s probable that Dutton won’t be leading the Liberals by 2026.

@ Dan M
You have made an excellent point and i think it is a much wider point that the 2026 State election. It was often argued prior to October 7 that Muslims can be a demographic that could be converted and that anti-Muslim sentiment was reducing as geopolitics was shifting away from the Middle East. For a couple of years that seemed that maybe the case. Some have argued that society may have become post-racial and that it maybe like the Catholic/Protestant divide. Prior to the Aston by-election the only other time that a governing party as won a seat from the Opposition was the Kalgoorlie by-election which was for treason not because of anything Hugh Mahon did about Australia but comments made about the Irish War of Independence. The Irish conflict once divided Australian society but today it is a distant past and today an Australian of Catholic Irish background can be just as right-wing as those someone English Protestant background. It will be silly to say today that Anglo-Celtic Catholic who went to Xavier College is a minority group while his neighbor who is Protestant and went to Scotch College is part of a the cultural majority. It was often said by the right flank of the Liberal party once they lost all the Toff seats they could be seen as electable in Calwell what Labor will like to say is Dutton is not a Toff but he behaves like a Redneck.

@scart if he gets close in 2025 he will and all indications are that he will

I don’t think Dutton can really dispel the accusations of racism after this week, seeing as he wanted to roll out the red carpet to white South Africans who were not fleeing a war, but doesn’t want anyone coming from Gaza fleeing a large-scale massacre. I agree with Nimalan that he’s caused serious damage to the Liberal Party in seats like this for another generation.

That’s not to say the Coalition can’t win the next federal election. They can, but the task is harder as they’re increasingly narrowcasting not even to the outer suburbs as a whole, but specifically the less educated white voters in those outer suburbs. This isn’t the United States where rampant gerrymandering means a party can win elections through that demographic alone despite losing the popular vote.