1y ago

Liberals's preselected candidate for Morrison's former seat vows to move into area within days

www.abc.net.au

That's right Cronulla, your likely next local member isn't actually local. But, he promises he will be real soon!

Good luck with that!

Having lived in super safe-seats and marginal seats, I promise it's far better to live in a seat that flips every election!

5 comments

Another bloke.
That's right. They're sticking with the "Best candidate" approach.
When about 80% of the "Best candidates" are male (source), you may as well just say "Males are superior".
- I honestly don't know. There's more women represented in states as members than federally for the LNP. Is it significant? Why? How?
  But it's also a bit weird that by bringing someone in from outside, they are effectively saying that there is nobody -male or female- in the Shire that is good enough to run for the LNP....
  Not. One. Person.
  It just feels wrong.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Liberal Party has chosen former McKinsey consultant Simon Kennedy to contest the federal seat of Cook, following former prime minister Scott Morrison's resignation.
Mr Kennedy, who tried and failed to win the seat of Bennelong in 2022, beat three other candidates in a ballot of local party members on Monday night.
The mayor of Sutherland Shire, Carmelo Pesce, who came second with 90 votes, was considered a strong chance to win the party's nomination, however support for the millionaire businessman began falling away in recent days.
Veteran Family Advocate Commissioner Gwen Cherne was also considered an outside chance heading into the ballot, having won the endorsement of former prime minister John Howard.
Mr Kennedy is no stranger to political contests, having won the Liberal nomination for the northern Sydney seat of Bennelong in the 2022 federal election.
After failing to win the Victorian seat of Dunkley at the weekend, the upcoming Cook by-election will be a much easier contest for Peter Dutton's party.
The original article contains 763 words, the summary contains 164 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
- I think you're mostly right, although there definitely is some incumbency bias, which shows that at least some voters do vote because they like "their guy".
  However, to the extent that it is true, I don't blame voters. I blame parties. When your local member is going to vote the party line every single time, it just makes sense to vote for them based not on who they are, but on what their party's policies are. I think that's unfortunate, because frankly it does mean you get worse local representation, unless you happen to be locally represented by an independent or maybe a minor party. In a non-proportional system like our House of Representatives, I think it's actually really important, for it to function as intended, for party discipline to be quite weak.
  Or you can do away with the local representatives, use proportional representation, and then people are well-represented not via their local region, but via a better fit politically-speaking. Or both (MMP!). But the way we do it right now is entirely encouraging people to ignore who their local MP is, and just look at the letters next to their name. It's kinda the worst of both worlds.