Fowler – Australia 2025

Running Kristina Keneally here was a massive blunder and despite running the other candidate here I think Labor is going to have to accept that they aren’t going to pick this up while Dai Le is the member here.

@ Spacfish
On the Fowler 2022 thread, a commentator mentioned that KK won the Sophie Mirabella Memorial prize for most embarrassing loss for the winning team. i think it sums it up perfectly

Spacefish
With a margin of 1.4% who knows but it is often hard to shift independents should the liberal party vote improve then her preferences could be distributed

The only risk to Dai Le is if there is a stronger Green vote due to the Muslim Community which is about 7%. The other thing excluding Muslims, it is possible that Green preferences will flow better this time to Labor with a better candidate. Also Dai Le abstained from Climate Legislation and the voice so the Green voters have greater incentive for preference discipline.

If Dai Le supports a Dutton government a backlash is possible. For this election, though, Labor is facing headwinds and she has had a term to embed herself as the member. Maybe they make a contest with the right candidate but winning appears a tough proposition.

To clarify the above, I mean that supporting a Dutton government in a hypothetical hung parliament result could bring a backlash the following election. Pre-election, she obviously won’t be stating who she supports.

Dai Le will retain. Her side got a swing at the local elections. There’s also disdain for Labor in the outer working-class suburbs and this will carry over.

I think Tu Le is a great candidate with her community links and CV but the timing isn’t good. It seems like Labor is vested here as they preselected her in October, many months ahead.

@Nimalan, if I recall, the Sophie Mirabella award was for losing a safe seat whilst on the winning team. I’d say Sophie Mirabella’s loss was worse as she was the incumbent MP and her side had a much larger nationwide swing.

Dai Le could be the beneficiary of the pro-Palestine vote as she has called for a ceasefire and spoke in support of Gazan refugees. There is also brewing anti-Labor sentiment owing to the Gaza conflict. The Greens vote was small and their voters mostly preferenced Labor in 2022.

Fowler was really an own goal by Labor because they couldn’t resolve the issue between Keneally and O’Neill for the Senate. If they really wanted Keneally in cabinet they should’ve put her in an electable position over O’Neill on the Senate ticket than parachuted to battler Fowler.

If Labor had Tu Le to run as intended in 2022 they’d hold that seat comfortably rather than scrambling to try and reclaim it this time.

I reckon Keneally should’ve run in Robertson. At least it’s much closer to home and losing in a marginal Liberal seat isn’t as embarrassing as losing in a safe Labor seat.

I think she should’ve run in Mackellar, not that she would’ve won but at least it’s in her electorate. Throwing her from affluent Scotland Island to the working-class suburbs of Cabramatta and Liverpool was always going to throw people off with the impression of ‘bureaucracy’ encroaching upon the populace.

Or, if they did the right thing and put Keneally in the Senate, then Deb O’Neill would’ve been a natural fit to run in Robertson, given she held the seat before and actually defied the trends by increasing her margin in 2010 when everywhere else went backwards for Labor.

When Chris Hayes (the former member) endorsed Tu Le, you know you should endorse her too. There’s no one better to know the electorate than a local, something that the NSW Labor committee completely ignored because they wanted appease Keneally and O’Neill simultaneously.

Or they could’ve just not ran the Premier that got voted out in a historic landslide in 2011?

I think KK is not blamed for the 2011 defeat she was just the sacrifical lamb that the powerbrokers put in place knowing she would loose in a landslide but hoping she could keep some furniture, the house was lot.

Dai Le did call for a ceasefire but she has been quiet since. Unlike the Greens she does not have the freedom to say what ever she wants if matches the Greens in the Pro-Palestine rhetoric then there will be anger amongst the Liberal party.

@Nimalan I think Dai Le has been, at best, matching Labor’s sort-of-neutral response rather than the Liberals’ hyper-partisan support for Israel or the Greens’ unabashed support for Palestine. She called for a ceasefire but then again most people did (as did most countries), so on this issue it might not give her any advantages over Labor. It might not have a huge impact on the electoral status for her anyway as Fowler is mostly Chinese or Vietnamese people compared to the likes of Werriwa, Watson, Blaxland and McMahon that are all Muslim-skewing.

The things that will play in favour of Dai Le is cost of living and infrastructure given she’s been vocal about how Labor should be listening and supporting cost of living in the electorate and building infrastructure and transport access, something that Labor hasn’t really been paying attention, perhaps out of spite for Dai Le winning in 2022 even though it was their fault that they parachuted Keneally into the seat instead of endorsing Tu Le who was already favoured heavily to win.

I think Dao Le will hold here given the CoL crisis and the middle East issues hurting labor. Labor would and should have won in 2022 but in their attempt to parachute KK into a lower house seat they screwed up big time.

@ Tommo9
Agree Dai Le has been cautious on the conflict. Fowler is less Muslim than neighboring seats, even if some Muslims in Fowler prefer Greens to her in the primary vote, its is probably not enough for her to win. Apart from calling for an earlier ceasefire there is nothing more she did. Labor also supported Gaza refugees so that is not really a point of difference. At the same time, Dai Le does not really get into culture wars she is not a cooker for example when Cumberland Council banned a book on LGBT parenting she said it was absurd unless the book was put in a toddler section. She tends to only focus on bread and butter issues.

Dai Le will retain in my eyes. The sophomore surge, combined with Labor’s unpopularity in outer suburbs should get her over the line

i wonder is there any reason Vietnamese Australians tends to heavily vote Labor instead of the Liberal Party given their anti-communism? Vietnamese Americans whereas mainly vote Republicans (especially among the first-generation refugees) evidence from the Westminster, California (within the Vietnamese heavy suburbs of Orange County) where they voted Republican except for 2012 and 2016.

Fowler is uncertain… in theory she won a safe alp seat as the liberals polled poorly and alp candidate was unpopular.
In practice I don’t know… it is often hard to unseat independents.