New South Wales election minus five weeks

Labor chooses a candidate for its safe seat of Cabramatta, as unanticipated vacancies emerge for the Liberals in the upper house and Labor in the seat of Monaro.

Three recent developments on the preselection and disendorsement front as the official campaign period comes into view:

• Canley Heights lawyer Tri Vo will be Labor’s candidate for Cabramatta, which will be vacated at the election with the retirement of Nick Lalich. Vo won a preselection vote on Saturday from a field that included Tu Le, whose earlier bid for the federal seat of Fowler was thwarted when the party’s national executive installed the ultimately unsuccessful Kristina Keneally. Alexi Demetriadi of the Daily Telegraph reports Vo won on the first round with 39 votes out of 61, against ten votes for Adrian Wong, staffer to former federal MP Chris Hayes, and six each for Le and Kate Hoang, state president of the Vietnamese Community in Australia.

• Liberal MLC Peter Poulos has been dropped from the party’s ticket after admitting to sharing nude images of party colleague Robyn Preston, who posed for Penthouse magazine in the 1980s. The incident occurred while Poulos was working as a political staffer before entering parliament in 2021. Michael Koziol of the Sydney Morning Herald reports the two leading to candidates to replace him on the ticket are incumbents who had hitherto been denied preselection: Melanie Gibbons, who lost the ballot for her existing seat of Holsworthy to Tina Ayyad, and Shayne Mallard, who was among those cast aside when the party addressed its gender equity issue by making room for three women to the ticket. Both share Poulos’s factional alignment with the moderates.

• Former NRL player Terry Campese announced his withdrawal as Labor’s candidate for Monaro on Friday, making unspecific complaints about media intrusiveness. This presumably referred to reports that he was “filmed at a raunchy sex-themed party dressed as a scantily clad police officer”, as reported by the Daily Telegraph.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

82 comments on “New South Wales election minus five weeks”

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  1. Greg Rudd: Labor’s to blame if they lose Cabramatta and Fairfield to Carbone and another independent, they’ve messed around with those preselections, in the case of Fairfield they still haven’t got a candidate. Have any lessons been learnt since the Fowler debacle last year? You wonder about that.
    You never know, it could be the difference between Minns winning a small majority or having to negotiate with a gang of independents and Greens.

  2. Based on voting figures from the 2022 federal election, Labor’s best chance of gains would seem to be the following: Leppingdon, Kiama, Riverstone, Winston Hills, Parramatta, Ryde, and South Coast,whereas the Liberals would retain East Hills and Oatley and Penrith based on 2022 federal election results transposed into March 2023.

  3. Evan @ #51 Tuesday, February 21st, 2023 – 5:24 pm

    Greg Rudd: Labor’s to blame if they lose Cabramatta and Fairfield to Carbone and another independent, they’ve messed around with those preselections, in the case of Fairfield they still haven’t got a candidate. Have any lessons been learnt since the Fowler debacle last year? You wonder about that.
    You never know, it could be the difference between Minns winning a small majority or having to negotiate with a gang of independents and Greens.

    The Fairfield issue is about the quality of the candidates themselves. We can blame Sussex St all we like, of course the standard solution for both Labor and the Liberal’s to an electorate that has a poor branch structure and poor candidates is to do a parachute. But the way all the local Liberal and Labor clans joined forces to get Dai Le over the line has sort have shut the gate. People in those areas are not seeing these so-called independents like Carbone and Dai Le as opportunists.

    You have to ask yourself why in the last LGA elections Fairfield effectively kicked Labor to the curb and voted for opportunists while in the Blue Mountains LGA Labor kicked the Liberal’s/Indies and Greens to the curb.

    I know demographics on the Blue Mountains is much different to Fairfield but still.

  4. Evan @ #52 Tuesday, February 21st, 2023 – 5:27 pm

    Based on voting figures from the 2022 federal election, Labor’s best chance of gains would seem to be the following: Leppingdon, Kiama, Riverstone, Winston Hills, Parramatta, Ryde, and South Coast,whereas the Liberals would retain East Hills and Oatley and Penrith based on 2022 federal election results transposed into March 2023.

    I think the issue of “Toll Relief” speaks to Penrith and Holdsworthy in much the same way “Toll relief” spoke to those electorates and demographics in 1995. Put it this way, the electorates of Penrith and Mulgoa if given the choice between a metro that has -ve ROI and -ve NPV v’s “Toll Relief” they will take “Toll Relief” every day of the week despite what the latte sipping Inner-City/North Shore Metro sprokers say.

  5. i ddont think that will happin liberals control liverpool and isnt carbone close to hayes carbone dislikes outgoing mp lalick as his partner beat him in labor mayor race

  6. aaron newton @ #59 Tuesday, February 21st, 2023 – 7:59 pm

    i ddont think that will happin liberals control liverpool and isnt carbone close to hayes carbone dislikes outgoing mp lalick as his partner beat him in labor mayor race

    Frank beat Dai Bennett for the mayor.

    This makes interesting reading of how the game is played.
    https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/frank-carbone-expelled-from-alp-for-running-against-endorsed-candidate/news-story/0efb9d34c9c3fe397fb6150de47128f0

  7. Latest Morgan poll has the Coalition on 35% and Labor on 32.5% which they say translates to 52/48 2PP.

    Given OPV I don’t accept that on the primary numbers, I’d suggest that’s not far off 50/50.

    Only one poll of course but it’s a tightening from last time.

  8. You have to give it to Carbone , played the pokies issue perfectly today in his comments. It could very well be the Dai Le/Carbone machine lock down Fowler and Cabramatta.

    Interesting to see if the Libs preference the Greens in Summer Hill – could be another roughie.

  9. if perottit has droped the pockies ishue judged no body was to interested whiy would carbobne like christou he is clearly anti labor and basickly a liberal suporter given he was labor until lalichs partner defeated him suprised nobody has bothered to point out he used to be close to tripodi

  10. what is happining with jackqui munro in nsw upper house the liberals have mor e problims perottits brothers avoiding a parliament inquiry yet poasts here are triying to damage labor in fairfield buy using a x labor liberal linked mayor in carbone he is popular on 2gb and sky

  11. Carbone in particular would have to be a massive chance in Cabramatta assuming the Libs preference him.

    Not sure if he can a second candidate up in Fairfield though without his name recognition.

    Even still, one less seat in the Labor column would make it more difficult to get to 43 which is the minimum they need.

  12. Desie @ #66 Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023 – 9:38 am

    Carbone in particular would have to be a massive chance in Cabramatta assuming the Libs preference him.

    Not sure if he can a second candidate up in Fairfield though without his name recognition.

    Even still, one less seat in the Labor column would make it more difficult to get to 43 which is the minimum they need.

    This certainly makes for interesting reading. Look at who is connected to who!!!
    https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/pulling-the-strings-joe-tripodi-at-the-centre-of-unholy-alliances-at-fairfield-council-20170127-gu03ni.html

  13. Aaron newton @ #65 Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023 – 7:51 am

    what is happining with jackqui munro in nsw upper house the liberals have mor e problims perottits brothers avoiding a parliament inquiry yet poasts here are triying to damage labor in fairfield buy using a x labor liberal linked mayor in carbone he is popular on 2gb and sky

    Any Labor Candidate that doesn’t have Carbone’s support was always going to be subject to an MSM backed campaign against them. Effectively Carbone has set himself up as “the boss” of Fairfield-Cabramatta politics. Don’t expect the Liberals to shut that thing down! It is in their interests to keep that thing going. Note the Liberals have never disowned Dai Le and see her as one of their own in Canberra.

  14. the herald are not happy that there pro liberal spin is not buying labor need to sort out fairfield candadate but carbone is basickly abnti labor like the teels to liberals

  15. how do we think the upper house results will be suprisingly latham has made little impact in the nsw elections so far and will struggle toget re elected him self let alone get his second candadate up plus shows lack of tallent in the party that they have to recruit from outside to have any prospect of winning im sure the long term members arnt happy they will not get a winnable seatplus wonder how shooters and greens will go at least no moore niles in nsw parliament

  16. Aaron @ #77 Friday, February 24th, 2023 – 3:25 pm

    how do we think the upper house results will be suprisingly latham has made little impact in the nsw elections so far and will struggle toget re elected him self let alone get his second candadate up plus shows lack of tallent in the party that they have to recruit from outside to have any prospect of winning im sure the long term members arnt happy they will not get a winnable seatplus wonder how shooters and greens will go at least no moore niles in nsw parliament

    Latho might be the darling of Super Radio Network and 2GB but he is considered a tool everywhere else and has been “de-platformed”

  17. Mick Quinlivan @ #80 Saturday, February 25th, 2023 – 8:17 am

    Do long term members exist within onp.?

    When you get down to it the cooker/nutter/religious vote is disjointed.
    Where you have Family First/Fred Nile’s Christian Democrats and NSW One Nation under Latho fighting for the same voter base.

    What Latho has done is move the voter base of One Nation from being white angry working class Liberal voters into being a social values party that some how attracts Middle Eastern Christians who were once part of Fred Nile’s voter base. Believe it or not NSW One Nation’s vote is at its strongest in SW Sydney. (I knew a middle eastern Christian who voted for Nile and I told him that since Nile is a Calvinist he hates your type Christianity with an equal passion as he does for the Roman Church. He went all colours and said no that is not possible he’s Christian. Of which I said in the Anglosphere to call yourself “Christian” means you are “Free Protestant and Proud” and then he said oh, I now see)

    As to Carbone thing he is a Fairfield thing and will go away if both Liverpool and Fairfield councils are sacked and abolished.

  18. have to be careful but all the imformation i can found about charles perottit who is refusing to partisipate including his profile says he is based in sydney so how could he live in victoria untill the end of last yyear he was deputy chair of the liberals nsw local government comitty

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