Cooper – Queensland 2024

This will be an interesting race. Very much like McConnel or Macnamara in 2022.

Cooper will either re-elect Bush or it will go to the Greens. Just as with McConnel, the LNP haemorrhaged votes in this area at the last federal election. The ‘tough on crime’ race to the bottom between the major parties isn’t going to play well here or in any other inner Brisbane electorates. No doubt this factored into Bush’s decision to break ranks with the rest of the party on the issue of youth crime. She knows full well who her real threat to victory is.

I suspect the Greens chances just went up here with the suspension of the QLD human rights act by Labor. Jonty Bush has criticised her party for the proposal but saying “children don’t belong in watch houses” but “there is a worse place you can visit a child, and that’s in a morgue,” isn’t going to help her chances. It’s pretty rough for inner city Labor MPs who have to defend against Green threats when the state Labor party has to compete in the regions and the suburbs to win.

as far as i can tell, Jonty Bush voted for the human rights override with the rest of the labor party. In any case I doubt it’ll be as damaging to her, or indeed any other inner Brisbane MP as their refusal to support rent freezes.

She had to vote with the party. Labor doesn’t allow conscience votes. Their MPs either follow the party room or they get disendorsed.

right but putting any particular issue aside, voters don’t want to hear a politician wringing their hands at the state of affairs on one hand while whinging that they couldn’t vote their conscience because their career within the party was more important to them. luckily for JB i suspect there are enough credulous channel 7 viewers in cooper who’ll be pleased with the backflip anyway

@Wilson is that true? Can’t Labor MPs cross the floor? If not then that’s really stupid and unfair. The LNP allows it, the Liberals allow it, the Nationals allow it, why doesn’t Labor?

I believe Labor does allow conscience votes, but only explicitly for certain legislation (like the recent Territory rights bill federally, where some Labor members voted no).

For all other legislation, party members must follow the official line and cannot deviate unlike the Coalition whose members are free to conscience vote any time.

Nether
It’s called the Pledge. Been there since 1891 – qalways central to the Labor Party. It to me always seems to be a lack of trust in their MPs. Even though it is there Lib and Nat MPs don’t cross the floor very often – indeed quite rare.

@Yoh An
@Redistributed
I’m pretty sure conscience voting in the Liberals and Nationals isn’t allowed for appropriation bills. I think it should be law for any politician regardless of affiliation to be allowed to vote based on conscience except on money matters. Australia should be more like the US in this regard and conscience voting allows for a more healthy democracy.

Fair point Ian about financial matters (appropriation) being restricted and cannot be voted on conscience.

I do agree having a conscience vote for all other matters does make sense, although even with that arrangement some conservatives (both Coalition MP’s locally and Republicans in USA) were shunned when they crossed the floor to vote against their party line on particular matters.

this is unnecessarily elongated and the national park can be shed making a more compace district

It makes no difference, though.

Dear Mr QEC,
There are too many reservoirs in Cooper nowadays. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot

The Greens are running Katinka Winston-Allom again here. This is unsurprising given they picked up a 9% primary swing last time with the same candidate. Continuity should give her a little name recognition to build on.

The Greens have been bringing Katinka along to local events as a “community advocate” for a few months now. Jonty Bush is very popular local member and has good name recognition in the area, I reckon she should get through.

There seems to be consensus that either Labor or Greens will win it. LNP might just run dead.

If Jonty Bush has a “local member’s effect” or gets a sophomore surge, plus is ahead or not too far behind the Greens (and benefits from LNP and maybe One Nation preferences), then she’s safe.

@Votante I think the LNP will finish first, Greens second and Labor third. This would allow the Greens to win it and it would be a Greens vs LNP contest. The LNP actually almost finished first in 2020.

Somehow the TPP swing ended up being +0.16% to the LNP in 2020, not sure how given the Greens vote rose over 9% and One Nation got less than 2% of the vote (first time contesting though). However, the Labor vote dropped more than 6% while the LNP vote dropped more than 2%.

Jonty Bush is a good local member but I don’t think that will save her given that only a ~2% Labor-to-Greens swing is needed.

Predictions:

Primaries:
LNP: 36.6% (+3.2%)
Greens: 34.5% (+4.9%)
Labor: 24.8% (–9.8%)

TCP:
Greens: 54.5% (+54.5%)
LNP: 39.5% (+6.0%)

The LNP will finish first, with the Greens winning on Labor preferences. As for booths in each suburb, the LNP will do well in Ashgrove, Enoggera Reservoir and The Gap, while the Greens will do well in Bardon Milton, Paddington and Red Hill.

*Bardon, Milton (two separate suburbs)

Swing away from Labor will not be that big. Especially given Jonty’s personal vote – taking votes from the LNP and Greens. Plus the LNP can’t find a candidate and aren’t putting anything into campaigning for this seat.

Enoggera Reservoir doesn’t have a booth. In fact it only has 33 people living there according to the census. It’s completely irrelevant and I don’t really understand why it was mentioned.

This looks to me like the Macnamara of QLD. LNP win the primary vote but clearly aren’t well positioned to win the seat (unless they’re winning most seats) so what’s to say they won’t run dud candidates. The result being that people used to choosing between blue and red choose red and Greens stay in 3rd.

I think NP has the swing away from Labor on the high side but within range this far out. Of course this can change rapidly between now and election day. I do qquestion where it goes. I think the Greens will do well in some seats but are overstating their chances in Cooper. A bit like thinking they’d win Enoggera and a few other council wards but failed. I think LNP get more of the swing.

There are differences between Enoggera and Cooper though- OPV for one, which might well have been dispositive on its own, Andrew Wines already coming in from a much higher PV (~10% higher than the 2020 LNP Cooper candidate) and Labor actually having an incentive to spend any resources whatsoever in the seat. At this stage I’m not ruling out a 2012 statewide landslide, but like I said for Ferny Grove and Stafford, that’s basically what it’s going to take for the LNP to win this one.

Like even if the LNP candidate gets 40% of the vote share in Cooper (or Ferny Grove, or Stafford) it’s still probably not going to be enough to win.