Looks like the seat of Mulgrave will remain Labor following todayâs by-election with 13% counted and Labor candidate Eden Foster receiving 39% primary vote.
Thatâs going to piss the Melbourne media off. They were all set for anti Jacinta rhetoric.
And the best part of this is that most of the swing against Labor was to the Greens and the Socialists instead of Ian Cook and the Liberals. If thereâs any vitriol towards Victoria Labor, itâs at least swinging to the left who will preference Labor anyways as opposed to Pesutto and his nobody party.
Thatâs not entirely factual. The Libs picked up an additional 4.4% and Cook 0.9%. The Greens only had an additional 0.8%. You canât read anything into the VS swing given they didnât contest at 2022.
4.6% swing to the left, 4.4% to the Libs and a miniscule amount to Cook and the other minors. Sounds about right for a by-election caused by the departure of a popular local member.
Thatâs what I was thinking. Sounds pretty normal.
Sky must just be exhausted trying to put a bad spin on Andrews over the last few years to no avail.
A bit of a Tasmanian politics update with some reasonably big developments here.
The next state election isnât due until 2025 however rumours are growing stronger about it now happening in the first half of 2024 instead (the one due for 2022 was nearly a year earlier in 2021 for Peter Gutwein off the back of the COVID handling).
Despite so much going against the Liberals and weekly stories in the national media all with headlines like âLast Liberal Government Limping AlongâŚâ etc⌠new polling was released the other day showing that Liberals have increased on 2PP and Labor has decreased and in full polling Greens have gone down while independents and others have also increased.
Rebecca White, the Labor leader was leading as preferred Premier in May 40%-38% but now in November is trailing Jeremy Rockliff 42%-35%.
Further Labor news however, they have just released their list of candidates for the next election and there has been one very big omission.
David OâByrne who has been a Labor man all his life and was party leader for two weeks after the last election and then ex-communicated by the party has offically been dropped.
After the last 2021 election defeat Rebecca White was defiant she would not step down and then after a couple of days of closed door meetings with David OâByrne she stepped down and a vote was held within the party and then with rank and file members to elect a new leader in David OâByrne after several months of waiting.
Two weeks after this, allegations surfaced about Mr OâByrneâs conduct when he was head of one of the state unions and while he was eventually cleared by the party of any wrongdoing he stepped down from the leadership and Ms White returned to the top job. He was however kicked out of the caucus and has not been a part of anything with the party since then however refused to quit the party because he is the most Labor person ever.
So, the party has disendorsed him and it means that if Labor loses the unloseable next election which is a strong possibility now they will have lost what would have been their best chance at a leader as David is extremely popular.
One of the other reasons for David being thrown out apart from being a massive threat to the leadership and well liked is he is the President of the SFL (Southern Football League) in Tasmania and is pro-stadium and the AFL team which state Labor has decided to not support and do everything in their power to stop despite past Labor premiers being supportive and federal Labor being very supportive and providing funding for the project.
I really do feel sorry for David, this is something that is genuinely going to hurt him, he said heâs taking a few days to work out his next moves but many are calling for him to run independent and I think he would get in very easily. It also does raise other family drama where his sister, Michelle, has been re-endorsed for Bass in Launceston, a seat she has held for quite a few years.
So, early 2024 is looking quite interesting down here and I know the whole mantra seems to be âLabor good, Liberal badâ across the country but itâs a very different story down here and we canât go with Labor with their current leadership down here so unless something changes, it could be a record breaking fourth term for a Liberal government down here which was already a new record at 3 in a row.
Thatâs certainly no trade secret. We all know how Andrews and his team operated. Will the factions let Jacinta dismantle that? Unlikely.
The Andrews-Allan playbook is the same.
Nothing will change. She is a bit more open when it comes to interviews with the media and certain broadcasters, but she spins the same spin that he did, but the way she drifts off topic and avoids questions, or âre questions the questionâ and then answers it her own way, well she is worse than him IMHO
UmmmâŚthis is an independent report from the ombudsman, not an opinion piece by a journalist or anything like that. You canât really disagree with her findings.
The Victorian Labor party can and continue to do so. Jacinta was asked about it today and fobbed it off as per usual.
Findings mean nothing in Victoria and nobody is ever held to account.
The independence of the report doesnât mean its immune from disagreement
An emotional Annastacia Palaszczuk announces she is stepping down as Premier. She will serve out the week. She says she thought about it while on holiday and made the decision at national cabinet. @9NewsQueensland pic.twitter.com/pBsVT0llZP
â Cam Inglis (@inglis_cam) December 10, 2023
I suspected this would happen given that Queensland ALP is a titanic waiting to sink come next election (not that the LNP is any better). Better to jump the sinking ship than to lose out completely.
They really donât have anyone else better to go to, maybe Cameron Dick at a stretch. Steven Miles would lead them to a landslide of Bligh proportions, and I donât know much about the likes of Fentiman or DâAth etc but the fact that they had to swap roles midway last year probably suggests theyâre not up to the task either.
Her press conference was really emotional. Agree or disagree with her governance, you can tell she really cared.