Wakehurst – NSW 2023

Latest modelling numbers from AEForecasts has Williams winning over Regan 56.6-43.4 and this margin has been growing from 50:50.
Latest activity has been Williams appearing at the Head Above Water Swimming event with Gotcha4Life (Gus Worland’s Charity) before being effectively endorsed by the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles.
For Regan, I have seen a couple of street stalls, with the one in Forestville doing ok, before a poor one in Narraweena on Saturday. Word on the ground seems to be consistent that Toby is gaining momentum, especially with the announcement that the Lizard Rock Development is now off the table.
Starting to become a bit more confident of a win to Williams

Have been monitoring the online activity and it appears as though the Regan camp is getting quite aggressive on Toby on Social Media. This wouldn’t normally happen unless they thought they were losing.

Toby currently has following and Likes coverage on Regan by a ration of 2:1. Haven’t looked at Twitter or IG yet but, if FB is anything to go by, I think Toby is winning the online battle at this point.

The liberal primary is far too high for them to win off the bat. They would need to get that primary down to at least 40% before even getting close. They won’t take 20% from them in one go. Not happening.

I don’t know if Regan is personally popular enough to win this and from memory the Libs did rather well in the Dee Why ward at the latest local election headed by a conservative candidate
The ticket he leads in the local council is a nice sensible alternative for the locals who can’t bring themselves to vote labor, however, it isn’t based around Regan himself and the mayor is not popularly elected

I have always been puzzled by Aef.. and I don’t think their aim.is to actually predict seats on an individual basis. What i.see here is a close contest.. who wins? But the liberals must be worried

@Mick While what AEF is trying to do is really cool, the methodology seems a bit disjointed at times. Some of it makes sense but others leaves you scratching your head, especially with their assumption around preference flows.

Agreed, it is close but you do get the sense that Toby is in front

@Bazza – Regan’s big strength was in the Frenches Forest Ward for NBC, where he managed to get 2 councillors up (one of them being himself). You are right with the Narrabeen Ward being weak for him and the Curl Curl Ward not being much better. What is going to be really fascinating is that Toby also hails from the Frenches Forest Ward section of the seat.

Ballot Order:
Labor (Wright)
SAP (Mawson)
AJP (Sorensen)
Greens (Hrnjak)
Liberal (Williams)
IND (Regan)

ballot order really has no effect because if a voter feels compelled to donkey vote they can easily jjust any box and leave the rest unlike other elections where you must number every box

Voices of Warringah and the Northern Beaches Climate Action Network hosted their Candidates Forum at Terrey Hills on Thursday Night. Overall reports are that it really turned into a nothing event. All candidates attended but no significant hits or mistakes from it. Apparently ended up being a bit boring.

Interesting numbers coming out at this stage:
AE Forecasts – LIB 2.4%
Sportsbet – LIB $1.75
TAB – LIB $1.53

The Margin over Regan on TPP had grown steadily from 50:50 early on to as high as 54:46 but has settled around 2.5% You get the sense that Williams is just in front but needs one final push to confirm the win.

The recent news going around is Regan making a final campaign push around the state of Public Transport (especially with the franchising of the bus service to Keolis Downer and the shortage of bus drivers), while he has been left exposed by representatives from the Indigenous Land Council calling him out for hypocrisy over his call that the ILC should be ignored over the re-development of Lizard Rock.

Should be fun to watch

This will be a toss-up and perhaps the only IND vs LNP tossup. I’m tipping Michael Regan to score the highest PV out of all independent challengers (non-incumbent) in the state. He isn’t a teal himself but he has the endorsements of Zali Steggall and Sophie Scamps.

he could be called “teal adjacent” as I believe his wife works for Zali Steggall

@Bazza, I believe this is correct. The Teals even said that they wouldn’t run a candidate so as to give Michael Regan the best chance.

Perhaps, he’s more of a Teal ally. As a mayor, he has stronger links with the federal teals than many of the state teal candidates do.

The strongest teal areas on the northern beaches at the federal election were outside the seat of Wakehurst i.e. east of Pittwater Road and Condamine Street in Manly, and north of Narrabeen Lagoon. Inland areas are more traditional Liberal and a lot of them are contained within Wakehurst. Despite the federal results, I think Michael Regan has a strong chance. It’s because of his local profile as the mayor and links to Zali Steggall and Sophie Scamps. Willoughby and Pittwater are less likely to flip to an independent.

Latest Shift from recent polling has the 2PP narrowing to 52:48 in favour of Liberal. However, it also has the Primary vote for Liberal increasing to 46.7%, which is now starting to match the worst result that Hazzard ever had as an MP (dating back to 2004, when Vincent De Luca ran against him). Everything is suggesting that Labor and the Greens are tanking their votes to get Regan over the line.

Are you sure there was a state election in 2004? Pretty sure it was 2003, unless you mean the federal election

My prediction is these teal contender seats will look compelling on the night, especially if NSWEC does the wrong 2CP, then postal votes and exhaust will get them back in the LNP column.

Daniel T – Apologies. It was 2003. Typo. Stat still applies.

John – entirely possible. At this stage, regan will need an almighty preference flow to win the seat.

saw tony williams looking nervous at the early voting station this morning

Things are getting very nasty here now, with a number of Regan Supporters now going around online and claiming that Toby Williams was directly responsible for the gentleman who took his own life following his gambling issues, which mostly occurred at Dee Why RSL. The most damning thing about these lies is that the suicide took place well before Toby Williams even joined the board.

These accusations were originally levelled by Climate 200 on Rory Amon and Jacquie Scruby was forced onto the defensive for these accusations and now the Regan Supporters are latching onto it, to their detriment

I think it is showing that the idea of the Climate 200 Supporters “doing politics differently” is a load of BS.

I love how everyone has basically no idea…. Although Hawkeye seems very slanted to Liberal, credit to him/her he did say A LONG way back Regan would be a formidable opponent (even before he announced he was running)

A demolition job… a dominant win for common sense

Going through the fall-out of this result. The Primary vote performance was bad, a combination of that late swing away from the Coalition and a poor showing in a stretch of booths from Beacon Hill to Collaroy.

The clincher for this was one final twist in the tale. AJP, Greens and Labor were all intending on not running preferences and simply exhausting. The wife of Regan then went to the leaders of each of the parties (yes, Chris Minns included) and demanded that they preference Regan, which they ended up doing. The people handing out for AJP and the Greens were then found at several booths telling their voters not to follow the preferences given on the HTC. Labor didn’t. End result: 50% of Labor votes ended up preferencing Regan.

Hi – my name’s Bronwen Regan and I’m the wife of Michael Regan. I understand it’s common practice on this site to hide behind a persona but I’m happy to own my comments.

I feel the need for a right of reply to Hawkeye’s comments above about me which are entirely untrue. I haven’t spoken to a single “leader” about anything, let alone preferences. I’m prepared to sign a Stat Dec to say I’ve never even met Chris Minns. Is “Hawkeye” prepared to similarly sign documentation to back up his/her ridiculous claims?

In particular I take exception to Hawkeyes claims that our supporters accused Toby of complicity in the suicide of the DY RSL patron. If he has evidence, the team would like to see it as that is not how they were running their positive, community based campaign.

Hawkeye is clearly Liberal aligned – which is fine. But lying and defaming people is not. Anytime he/she wishes to apologise, that would be grand.

Hawkeye_au. I generally like very much like your informed and normally objective views on here. But I am in a unique position to tell you that what you have written above about Labor intending on not running preferences and simply exhausting is 100% crap. NEVER going to happen. Better not say how I know this but if you want to know why, leave a way for me to contact you on here.

So I don’t know who did or didn’t do what, but if that part of the your story if so off, I don’t have great confidence in the rest of it

HI my name is Sue Wright and I stood as the Labor Candidate for Wakehurst. We were always going to preference and we did. The statement that Hawkeye made is not true about Labor not going to preference. I think it also may be untrue that Chris Minns rang Regan personally about preferences as was told to me by Regan. There was a lot of dirty politics played in this election. Jacqui Scruby the Teal for Pittwater took credit for the $13 million funding for the Parkway I worked on for 6 months with our Roads Minister John Graham to get for Wakehurst. Very disappointing for someone running on “inegrity”. and then wouldn’t put a correction on the social media posts falsely stating what she had achieved when I confronted her about it. Beyond happy we won with a majority. In solidarity with all the mainland Labor states.

@Bazza – Toby never caught a bus to school, he was not eligible for a pass. He was either driven by me or he walked. I have nothing more to say about the awful things that people make up about people they don’t know. There are a lot of horrible people out there and I’m not sure how they sleep at night. I’ll leave it at that.

Hawkeye_au I’m Sue Wright the Labor Candidate for Wakehurst. What you wrote about preferencing is untrue. Labor always intended to preference and we did preference Regan. I’m not sure the statement made by Regan that Chris Minns rang him personally about preferences (as told to me by Regan) is true or not though. Hope that clears that up for your readers.

Also happy to confirm comments in reference by Hawkeye are total bullshit.

Greens NSW don’t even have a party leader.

Would have to disagree with those who say Hawkeye’s comments are normally astute. I’ve frequently seen them make totally false and/or unevidenced assertions here, although in fairness Hawkeye often has some interesting analysis.

This comment thread has taken an odd little turn lol. In the end, the independent and the Liberal candidates ended up with around the same primary vote so the end result was pretty straightforward. Preference flows were always going to favour the independent, regardless of whatever else has been discussed in this thread.

What is going on here, I didn’t expect several candidates and relatives of candidates to comment on here, I certainly hope they are who they say they are. But no accusations should be thrown at any candidate or party without any evidence.

The “Bullying” claims, regardless if true or not were when the candidate was still a teenager, It isn’t relevant now, people learn from their mistakes.

Geoff Regen has won this seat, Space should be given to the candidates and their families while they reflect on the results, personal attacks are not needed whatsoever.

At the end of the day it is up to the VOTER, not the parties on how a voter preferences on election day, if they choose to number 1 box even if it exhausts that is their democratic right. The parties are more than entitled to try to convince voters to number all the boxes but at the end of the day it is the voters call.

But I have always been of a supporter of NSW switching to CPV next time and they should conduct a referendum on the question.

@Sue Wright – am I correct in reading your posts in that Mr Reagan hasn’t been honest in claiming that Mr Minns contacted him personally?

I find it interesting that there has been a coordinated personal attack on myself here. Rather disappointing, given that the information I have on this is quite strong, in terms of preferencing. Clearly, from the posts above, Julie Williams would appear to be a parent or a close relative of Toby so there is some personal attacks going here that should be taken down.

I think that there has been a clear conflict of story between Browyn Regan (wife of Michael Regan) and Sue Wright, which means one of these two is not telling the whole truth here, which further suggests that the story I received is largely on the money. I’ll leave it to everyone else to discuss.

Finally, the comments around individuals from Regan’s Camp and the Teal attempting to implicate Toby on the DY RSL situation is definitely correct and I personally witnessed a number of these comments.

As Daniel said, the election is over. Mike Regan is the next member for Wakehurst. Move on.

Hawkeye_au,

In the above comments you’ve got the person you stated spoke to Chris Minns about Labor preferencing, denying that she did and the Labor candidate stating that they were always going to preference. So it would be good if you could expand on why you think the information you have is quite strong.

I’m missing where the conflict of story between Bronwen Regan (wife of Michael Regan) and Sue Wright, is – Sue Wright clarified that maybe it happened maybe it didn’t – the point is, it didn’t make a difference. The PLP can often talk to other candidates without looping in the Labor candidate – happens all the time if the PLP thinks that the other candidate might seem be an MP.

It seems to be this apparent conflict is what you are holding onto in order to maintain the view the story you received is on the money.

I can tell you that a IND who seems anywhere near the centre that has a chance of beating a Liberal, is always getting Labor preferences.

The source I do have was based at one of the booths in dee why who had discussions with the labor supporter there. Without wanting to reveal names (which is clearly what some people want), let’s just say that the source wouldn’t surprise those that did post here.

In terms of the conflict, the conflict is that Bronwen regan saying that no conversation happened, while the labor candidate has said that some conversations may have happened.

Strategically speaking, Labor did the right thing to maximize damage to the Liberal Party. It’s just interesting that there is conflicting comments about whether they wanted to make it so explicit in the first place.

As for the comments around insinuation, these definitely happened to Rory Amon and Scurby and Scamps are on the record for apologizing, while comments were made by Regan Supporters to Toby Williams on Social media for his role. They are all on the record there so there should be no debate that it happened. As I stated previously, the source of these accusations were from Climate 200 and all Teal Candidates and MPs acknowledged and apologized for it (for which they should be commended).

Hawkeye, you’ve misread or misunderstood my comments. I hope not deliberately. There is no conflict between my statement and Sue Wright’s statement. In my right of reply, I said that I did not have any conversations with party leaders, as per your original allegations. You made it sound like I had personally contacted party leaders and “demanded” preferences. That is simply not true and you should retract and/or apologise. Ball’s in your court. As for other conversations that might have been had, I can’t vouch for others. I remain a very proud wife but also a very proud member of the Wakehurst community.

I choose to believe the people who have the guts to post here over anonymous sources, especially when basic errors are being made in account like suggesting the NSW Greens have a leader when they don’t.

“The source I do have was based at one of the booths in dee why who had discussions with the labor supporter there”

Ah, good old ‘I heard this from a friend of a friend’. Yeah, I don’t think you’re on solid ground here. You should verify and check such information before posting it.

Bronwen, I have posted here with intel in good faith and the source that I have has always been a reliable source. Furthermore, the comments given above confirm that there is an element of truth as to discussions around thos preferences. So no, I won’t apologise.

I also have witnessed, first hand, the insinuations that your camp has made about Toby’s role at Dee Why RSL, especially with regards to the suicide. I suggest your take your conversation elsewhere because those accusations were disgraceful.

This conversation is over. Move on and stop making veiled threats on boards.

Hey “Hawkeye”! . No veiled threats. Just defending myself against your complete untruths. Totally understand why you want to shut he conversation down – you’ve been rumbled for peddling untruths. All good. I’ve worked with Toby (Williams) for years and consider him a friend. I suspect he would be similarly appalled at the untruths posted above. In future, best we all stick to the facts rather than “I heard from my best friend’s, ex boyfriend’s dentist” kind of intel….

You call it “rumbled”, I call it you are in denial that you have been caught out and that there is a certain candidate who has posted here who has actually divulged this information to other people. The vague response by them seems to indicate that there is truth in it. BTW, if you are “such a friend”, why did you offend what appears to be a direct relative of Toby?

No-one is getting anywhere with this but you seem to want to sit here and argue the toss. No-one here is talking about it except you. Take a hint. Michael won. Move on.

Clarification about this comment ….”I think it also may be untrue that Chris Minns rang Regan personally about preferences as was told to me by Regan.” I have a text message from Regan that says Chris Minns rang him personally about preferences. I don’t know if this is true or not…nor do I care.