Farrer – Australia 2022

Should go National when Ley retires or is defeated by an Independent and then the Nats can run when there is no Liberal Incumbent. Labor has no chance in this seat under it’s present form they would need to shift dramatically to have any remote chance here.

Methinks Ley potentially has leadership aspirations. out of the current caucus she is one of the most senior ones in the lower house, I don’t see Price having a chance considering she is from WA, Never before have they had a leader from WA unless they are worried about McGowan entering federal politics.

It is still surprising that Tim Fischer decided to retire in 2001, Was this because of the gun reforms and the Nationals were fearing backlash against backing the Howard changes? Or did the Nats run a poor candidate in 2001? I still don’t understand how a rural NSW seat could have a Liberal MP but not a National one.

Daniel
IIRC Fischer had a disabled child & he wanted to be there. IOW really GENUINE family reasons. vale Tim Fischer. John Howard often gets credit for gun law reform. Fischer deserves credit more, & for plenty else too.

Imagine if Ley was promised the Nat leadership to flip ?. She is no chance to go any higher otherwise. Ever heard her own excesses with her expenses ?. Resigning then was NOT enough.

Daniel
The Nets cannot stand against Ley under the Coalition agreement. Ley is a” protected species”. Because of all the embarrassing Covid nonsense Albury voters especially might be annoyed enough to elect Kevin Mack. Will he stand again ?

Did the shooters not run in 2019? I think their presence could alter this seat and on a really bad night for the coalition give the seat to shooters or an independent.

Iim Fischer was well respected

I know Kevin Mack really well and he is a hard working Mayor – basically full time in the office and remuneration is really poor due to the effort and hard work he puts in. He has stood up for his Albury community and all communities along the river and this may go well in his favour. He is also not standing for election at the next Council election. A good man is Kevin Mack

Its been reported in the Guardian Sussan Ley preselection is under serious threat from right faction and former Family First candidate Christian Ellis. It’s been reported sources suggest if a rank and file vote was held Ley would lose.

The Liberals apparently are proposing a deal to protect Ley, Trent Zimmerman, and immigration minister Alex Hawke from challenges its been reported.

Ley is a 99.9% certainty. the Liberal Party and the Media ran a vicious campaign against in the 2019 election by pressuring him into declaring he would support the Coalition in a hung parliament. I thought it was glaringly obvious but they still attacked him for even being anywhere near Labor or the Greens.

SFF won the seat of Murray with Helen Dalton which has very similar demographics and shares the town/city of Griffith. But I mainly put it down to the funding that SFF was able to give Dalton as she was unsuccessful as an Independent.

I would say this will be a safe Liberal/National seat for many years until we see a party like SFF grow or a similar grass roots party is created.

Simon, it’s interesting to hear your perspective on that. I appreciate that Ley has certain protections, but I am not so sure that Farrer can stay safe Nats territory once Ley goes.

Indi and Nicholls are just across the river and the industries are similar on both sides of the Murray, if not quite a mirror image. I don’t know much about electoral boundary changes, but I’d have thought over time as Albury grows in size that Farrer would need to shrink towards it, and for the M.I.A (Griffith, Leeton etc) to belong to Parkes together with Broken Hill.

If Indi can flip to an indie (pardon the pun), then I think it’s possible Farrer could do so in future too.

it’s time for a Voices for Farrer….. Come on!!! It is just across from Indi where things happen! We have had enough of an Environment minister who has no Duty of Care and then we have to pay for her appeal. Australia has lost so much under Sussan’s time with NO duty of care except her own. Can’t afford Sussan. We need a person who will represent the electorate

That’s what happens when you try and take the government to court your effectively suing yourself. This is the only division I wont be proposing changes for. It’s contained solely within LGAs and don’t see any need to change that.

I think this (Farrer) is also pretty much within SA3 borders too. I agree with @Potates that this is the one division I am not asking to change. Everything else is either far out of the 46 quota, or would be affected by a neighbouring seat’s knock-on effect. Even things that haven’t been changed for ages like Bennelong (esp. if Berowra is abolished) and Kingsford-Smith (since Wentworth has to expand real bad – I also dislike the jagged nature of tits northern boundary with Wentworth)

I was reading up on the Farrer results in 2022. Does anyone know how the Greens are polling 26% at the Albury Public School booth (which actually was higher than Labor’s vote)? And in general getting abover-average results in Albury and Lavington? I’m very curious about this.

@James some regional cities (especially those with big universities) have such low Labor votes that the Greens end up being the ones who finish second to the Liberals or the Nationals. However 26% is very high so I’m not entirely sure why they got that high of a primary vote there but I’m not surprised that they finished second there (though the Greens getting 26% in Albury is indeed extremely surprising).

For example the Greens get good primaries in Armidale because it’s a university city, basically the Australian equivalent of Oxford in the UK. The University of New England has its main campus in Armidale. Wagga Wagga is similar because the main Charles Sturt University campus is in Wagga.

There was a big swing against the Liberals in all the Albury booths in 2022 though. Farrer swing -3.48% against Liberal MP Sussan Ley on TPP, who was easily re-elected in Farrer with 66.35% of the TPP vote.

On the state figures you’ll notice that the state seat of Albury actually had a +0.1% to the Liberals in 2023.

@NP – That makes a lot of sense. From memory there is a university campus in Albury, I think Charles Sturt but I’m not sure, so I did feel it was going to be the case with Armidale as it has a university campus and a high Greens vote. Thanks for explaining.

I think it may have something to do with city size though I don’t know if the appropriate measure is just Albury or the combined Albury-Wodonga.
My argument assumes the latter.
Albury in itself is about thew size of Wagga^2 but the combined Albury-Wodonga is about the size of Bendigo or Ballarat.

Albury booth results in 2022 (Liberal TPP):

* Albury: 48.0% (-9.0%)
* Albury Central: 50.5% (-9.1%)
* Albury East: 55.1% (-6.5%)
* Albury PPVC: 60.8% (-7.3%)
* Albury North: 55.1% (-3.7%)
* Albury West: 55.2% (-11.0%)
* Glenroy: 58.2% (-3.2%)
* Lavington: 55.8% (-7.2%)
* Lavington East: 54.0% (-3.0%)
* Lavington PPVC: 60.9% (-4.4%)
* Springdale Heights: 53.5% (-3.4%)
* Table Top: 70.8% (-4.9%)
* Thurgoona: 56.9% (-6.0%)
* Thurgoona West: 60.1% (-3.4%)

So the Liberals did best in the outer suburbs of Albury where the swing was average but not as well in the inner suburbs such as Lavington where the swings were bigger for some reason.

There was a bit of a novelty factor about the Greens candidate Eli Davern who was only 18 and still at high school during the election. He is well known in Albury.

The Albury High School vote is even higher for the Greens at 28%. The areas in the central suburbs of these types of regional cities have undergone their own forms of gentrification and are quite progressive. The Charles Sturt Uni campus in Albury is probably as big as Waggas plus you have La Trobe Uni across the border in Wodonga. The two most Central booths in Wagga both had Greens primaries in the mid-high teens i think.

@Witness the second part isn’t true. It varies by city. The Greens don’t do well in any part of Port Macquarie (near where I grew up from ages five to 18) for example. I don’t think any of the Port Macquarie booths had Greens primaries of over 15% and none voted Yes in the Voice referendum either:

In fact even in many cities like Townsville and Toowoomba which are quite large the Greens vote is still under 15% even in the CBD.

@NP maybe it’s a phenomenon only seen in southern regional cities. Bendigo shows the same pattern, Greens votes in the centre of town around 20% and in the outer suburbs only 10%. From experience the older central suburbs with houses generally covered by heritage protection seem to attract well educated professional types, and younger voters especially uni students are attracted to the central suburbs due to proximity to night life and transport options.

That seems to be the same with Launceston which has some booths that voted Yes

@Witness @Marh it definitely could be a southeastern phenomenon in major regional cities, note the “major” since cities like Devonport and Burnie aren’t like this.

Though it could just be a university thing which is why it happens in Armidale which is further north than Port Macquarie and Taree where it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t seem to happen in Coffs Harbour but the inner part of Coffs does seem to be more tealish, but Coffs is a city bigger than Hervey Bay and it’s nearly as big as Bundaberg.

It happens in Ballarat, Bendigo, Launceston and Wollongong though but those are all large regional cities. Newcastle is similar but I don’t consider it to be regional given that more people live there than in all of Tasmania.

It doesn’t really occur on the Central Coast though which is interesting, though the Central Coast is a very atypical city in that although Gosford is the CBD it and the Blue Mountains are the closest things we get to American metropolitan areas since they’re made up of multiple suburbs that are like their own cities or towns, like how they have different “cities” in Los Angeles.

Albury and Wodonga are like an American metropolitan area – two cities in different states, but one de facto metropolitan area.

@Ian yeah but I was talking about like big metro areas like Miami or the San Francisco Bay Area.

SEQ is similar given that it has multiple cities, and Brisbane itself has Brisbane, Logan, Moreton Bay and the Redlands.

Gold Coast and north-east Tweed Shire would be another big metro area.

Here is what the American Census area would equivalents to for the Australian Bureau of Statistics
– Combined Statistical Area (CSA) is the equivalent to Greater Capital City Statistical Areas
– Metropolitan Statistical Area would be equivalent to Significant Urban Area

@Ian, its true that Albury/Wodonga would be classified as One Metropolitan Area based on the US Census as this is the case for metro areas along state borders (e.g. NYC metro area)

I don’t think CSU‘s presence was responsible for 26% for the Greens at Albury PS. CSU is several miles away. Across Albury, and even in Table Top, the Greens got double digit primary votes. They scored some really big swings. The Greens did draw number 1 on the ballot so that would’ve helped a bit. Or maybe people were upset or inconvenienced by the hard border during COVID.

There is a strong greens group in Albury. One of the NSW Green upper house members is from Albury and she was the deputy mayor and there is at least one greens member on the Council. So they must do some work there. But then to.put up an 18 year old kid is a joke.

Albury High School was the only booth in Farrer that voted Yes in the Voice referendum. I recall like two booths in Armidale also voted Yes. One booth each in Albury and Wagga also only marginally voted No.

The Voices for Farrer have chosen Michelle Milthorpe, a survivor advocate, as its independent candidate for Farrer in 2025. I still predict a Liberal retain, especially how Sussan Ley is Deputy Liberal Leader.

@james easily. in fact im so certain of it il be helping out across the border in Indi because thats where the real fight will be

@John do you think Helen Haines will retain her seat easily?

@dragons hard to say but im gonna say yes because i dont think people are that dissatisfied with her yet. im sure if she backs a labor minority govt then she will probably be in trouble in 2028 but she may choose retire rather then face the voters