The eyes of Australia turn this week to the electorate of Dunkley in Victoria, historically the site of the Frankston riot and just down the road from where Harold Holt disappeared. Now it’s the location of an all important federal by-election.
The electorate was created in 1984. Named for the trade unionist and campaigner for equal pay for women, Louisa Dunkley, it’s since swung between Labor and Liberal, most recently being won by the courageous ALP member Peta Murphy, who took on the gambling industry and cancer before the disease claimed her at the age of 50 in 2023.
The Dunkley by-election is being seen as a test for the two federal leaders, as well as the high profile negative campaigning strategy of the right wing organisation Advance, which used American-style tactics of high octane disformation to such effect against the Voice proposal last year.
Apparently emboldened by that result, Advance is spending big on targeted social media advertising in Dunkley to swing the seat back in the Liberal direction, although their PR material has nothing useful or substantive to say about Liberal candidate Nathan Conroy – it’s all negative, and it’s all about attacking Labor, particularly over rising prices and asylum seekers.
Truth trucks
Dunkley residents who avoid social media aren’t safe from Advance’s onslaught, with the electorate constantly being circled by so-called ‘truth trucks’, large mobile billboards featuring a scowling Albo with scary block print saying ‘WE’VE ALL HAD ENOUGH. PUT LABOR LAST.’
This is the same approach which was used intensively against Dan Andrews, and is likely to be seen all over Australia at the next federal election if it achieves the desired result here. With 56 per cent of Dunkley voting No in the Voice referendum, Peter Dutton and friends will be hoping Anthony Albanese will be seen as out of touch by locals struggling with cost of living issues.
Advance is not openly stating its close connections with the Liberals, although these have been well documented elsewhere. Labor is more alive to the challenge than at the time of the referendum, with members being urged to donate to ‘fight Advance’ and Anthony Albanese telling Melbourne radio this week that the group spreads ‘a whole lot of misinformation’.
One Nation and Clive Palmer are not running candidates in Dunkley, which means anyone wishing to use their vote to put the boot into Labor over cost of living issues will likely be heading in the Liberal Party’s direction.
Their candidate is local mayor Nathan Conroy, who was born in Ireland and has since run an inner Melbourne bowls club he describes as a ‘multimillion-dollar business’. Labor’s state MP for Frankston Paul Edbrooke says Mr Conroy is gilding the lily. As he put it, ‘There’s a pretty big difference between answering to the board of a multimillion-dollar company and selling hot dogs and parmas.’
Two dogs and a mortgage
Labor’s candidate for Dunkley Jodie Belyea is a tertiary teacher and women’s health advocate who lives and works in Frankston, presenting herself on Instagram as a typical middle-class Australian with ‘two dogs and a mortgage’.
She has emphasised her links with the popular previous member, saying ‘Peta and I shared a passion for making a difference in our local community,’ which is backed up by her time working for TAFE and Anglicare.
Labor have a 6.3 per cent margin in Dunkley, very winnable for the Liberals based on previous by-election experience against a sitting government (Aston notwithstanding), which is why Peter Dutton is dog whistling louder than ever on asylum seekers and his other favourite issues. The Liberals simply have to be able to win outer suburban seats like Dunkley if they can no longer count on the wealthy inner suburban dwellers voting blue, and not teal.
The Dunkley by-election falls on Saturday 2 March, which is also Mr Albanese’s birthday. Will the changes to Stage 3 tax cuts keep the battlers’ baseball bats at home? Will Albo’s wedding announcement soften the hearts of voters? Will fear and PR money deliver another dark victory for Advance and the Liberals?
For both federal leaders, this by-election is likely to result in ripples which go way beyond the Mornington Peninsula, and indeed Victoria.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
Long ago, he did work experience in Parliament House with Mungo MacCallum.
If you believe the polls.. the coalition has just hit the front as the preferred party to run the country…
Albo still the preferred Prime Minister…!
how is it possible Peter Dutton
Could be our next Prime Minister
This would go against everything the Echo
Has been filling Article’s with would it not ?
A lbo L iberal-lite P arty on the skids.
Albo’s Stage 3.2 taxidermy cut change and his engagement to Jodie were just a temporary distraction.
The PM in waiting, Lord Dutton, can taste victory in Dunkley. Albo will be hoping that the Greens come to his rescue, again, with a stack of preferences to help him stagger over the line.
I can hear you salivating at the prospect Joachim. Greens to the rescue? As I wrote elsewhere, when the Coalition have enemies like the Greens, they don’t need friends.
Lizardbreath, the problem we have is that it doesn’t matter whether it is Lab or LibNat at the tiller, they just deliver there own brand of bollocks.
Not being Scott Morrison worked for Lab at Election22, even so Lab only just managed to fall over the line to form Govt with that once in generation gift – Lab should have romped it in.
But Scotty is leaving the stage, I guess Lab could run with not being Peter Dutton at Election25 but somehow I don’t think that’s going to cut it as a policy to get re-elected.
If you want better, then don’t keep voting Lab or LibNat.
‘Its Time’ for the Greens to have a go at the tiller.
You might think there’s no difference Joachim, but I happen to think we escaped three more years of the worst government in Australia’s history by the skin of our teeth.
Go ahead work to get them back cause you won’t get the Greens. If by some strange aberration of the Australian psyche you did, just how much of their grandstanding promises would they try to implement? How successful would they likely be? How long do you think they’d last.
Read my comment below about the difference a re-elected Coalition would mean. In addition, given the posturing of Barnaby, Dutton and Littleproud, how much of the current investment in renewable energy would we have been likely to see.
Time to get real my friend.
“It’s time for the Greens to have a go at the tiller”, seriously remember what happened to the Titanic old son , if you despise the Labor Party so much why don’t you just give that *(^(*^ Dutton and his corrupt mob your second preference, if you already don’t, you’re no better than them anyway.
Keith, we are on the Titanic, with captains Lab and LibNat at the helm.
Housing, Hospitals, Climate Science ignored, $’sbillions pa in subsidies for Fossil Fuel companies that pay little or no tax, Public Schooling underfunded as Private Schools creaming it, Medicare Bulk Billing withering away, to name a few.
What a rollcall of ‘success’ under the stewardship of Lab and LibNat.
Keep voting the same, Lab (and LibNat), you keep getting more of the same ‘success’.
Oh yes Labor did all that, and in just a little over 18 months. Yesterday’s Ross Gittins column:
“ He (Albanese) got himself elected by promising not to change much, but I doubt he expected to be handed quite such a cowpat sandwich from the smirking Scott Morrison.
“ As part of his efforts to prove he could keep taxes lower than Labor, Morrison avoided fixing anything much and allowed waiting lists to build up. Now everywhere Albo and his ministers look, they find problems.”
There’s that identity crisis again Joachim. Perhaps read a respected economist rather than listen to Sky After Dark then regurgitate the message here.
I think the Echo’s pro-Green editorialising would suggest there is no difference between them and it matters little who’s in government. I’m happy to be corrected though.
You are dead right Mr Lizardbreath, the Greens always do their level best to undermine Labor Govt’s, history is full of examples, they are worse backstabbers than the Coalition, if that’s possible. You have only to see old mate Joachim’s salivating procrastinations above ridiculing the Albanese Govt’s agenda at rectifying a decade of Coalition corruption and mismanagement, and openly cheering and clapping even the remotest possibility of that rightist arsehole Dutton could steal a seat off the Labor Govt in a bi-election, you should be ashamed to profess you are a progressive voter, just a common shit stirrer, thank heavens you are not from around here.
From the SMH 26/02
“With parliament returning this week, the Greens are aiming to put housing reform at the top of the government’s agenda …
“But in an interview with Greg Jennett on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, Chandler-Mathers had to instead answer for his party colleagues, many of whom own several investment properties.
“Jennett asked Chandler-Mathers if it was fair for him to call Anthony Albanese a ‘property investor prime minister’ given the significant investment property holdings of several Greens parliamentarians …
“‘ What I do begrudge is a political party stacked full of property investors in the form of the Labor and Liberal [parties] refusing to shift on those tax handouts … Every single member of [the] Greens’ party room would vote tomorrow to phase out the tax handouts for property’”
******************
It’s such a pity that the likes of Jennett don’t remind Max that Labor took negative gearing and capital gains tax reforms to two previous elections and lost spectacularly – not, I suspect that he needs reminding – and that this is indication enough that Labor pollies should be spared the snide featherbedding jibes.
Would the Greens have preferred that Labor lost again in ‘22? There would be no $10 billion housing future fund with its accompanying shovel ready projects, no increases to rent assistance, no reforms to renters rights etc. Now the Greens want to stand in the way of a shared equity measure to assist home ownership.
Very significantly, anyone who believes the stage 3 tax cuts would have been amended under Morrison’s return must live in a parallel universe.
Greens, the friends of the battlers? I don’t think so – and I don’t like their MO
Keith, Keith, Keith, R U O K?
It didn’t last long, just when we thought that the lashing out ‘Bad Keith’ of 2023 was left behind and replaced by ‘Good Keith’ in 2024, we seeing the return of ‘Bad Keith’.
Keith we get it, the polls just awful reading for you and your ALP mob. It was only mid way through last year, you were such a fan of the polls… when Emperor Albo was soaring …but now you don’t want to hear anything about the polls with you ALP mob tanking and set to test that record low primary vote of 32.6%.
Where’s your man Don Farrell and his threats of Double Dissolution these days? Lol.
Keith, you really need to stop worrying so much about me – although it is sort of flattering that you care so much for me – or the Greens. You need to concentrate your energy on your ALP mob, Lord Dutton is killing youse.
The polls, they just can’t be right can they. There no reward for Emperor Albo breaking the promise made countless times about not changing the Stage 3 tax cuts and no reward for Albo finding love again and his public announcement of his engagement to Jodie. Keith its just all wrong.
Keith, I understand your distress at the situation with the ALP poll trajectory but lashing out at me isn’t going to save the situation. Maybe some more full page spreaders in the Echo from the Justine and that $’s40millions worth of ALP spin doctoring that the Katy has flagged will turn the ALP ship around.
You’re the one I think should be asked “RUOK” . You seem to be experiencing a severe identity crisis.
Joachim old son, now that was a spray and a half, I must have hit an exposed Green nerve there, or have you just been to a Greens propaganda love in or something similar? or consuming some hallucinating substance?; you as usual, are totally devoid of reality. My poor man, people in glass houses like the Greens should not throw stones and by now realize, that without those dreaded Labor preferences there would NOT be any Greens MP’s. I really have to LOL when Green’s extremists like you ridicule the ALP for at times having a primary vote in the low 30’s, and your pitiful mob of grandstanding backstabbers struggle to get a primary vote above 11%, seriously your illusions of grandeur are as usual, hilarious.
What is the point in voting for someone you know will not be a member of the government. Sounds stupid to me.
The wonderful people of this nation are waking up to the lier in the lodge, the imbecile energy minister, clueless Katy, hopeless Jiles. It’s just a matter of time.
What’s a lier?
Is it like an outlier, but one who isn’t out?
Gregrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr no desire of argument just more noalition name calling. That worked in the by election …yes?
Keith Duncan. The greens hand on the tiller. Mehreen Faruqi would get to pick her portfolio. Immigration. Home affairs. Defense maybe.
Mr Fitzgerald, I think Ms Faruqi might do better in Foreign Affairs, she already owns a home in Lahore and has a place to stay when visiting Pakistan, but please don’t frighten us with more of those comments about the Greens getting into Govt.
David and Keith, the Mehreen with her background can handle a whole lot more ontop of your lovely suggestions – Transport, Construction, Environment.
Vote 1 for the Mehreen!
Joachim. I think Keith is right. Foreign Affairs portfolio for Mehreen. Her first trip could be to the killing fields in Israel to see first hand how Islamist butchers treat innocent people in the name of freedom fighters with the support of 75% of Palestinians . She might come back with the ability to see both sides of issues which is a trait missing in most green zealots
Oh I forgot, it was Mehreen the great who continuously criticizes and publicly campaigns for the defunding of the ADF, and to relegate it into nothing more than a peace time police force, good luck with that. The irresponsibility of the crazy Greens knows no bounds.
O Keith. Surely you like a good horror movie occasionally.
Jeeze KD, you certainly are cranky. The pressure getting to you?, your vitriol towards other’s comments shows your frustration, I suggest you cool down, it’s not a good look. If the negative gearing advantages are withdrawn the investors will most likely down size their portfolio of property’s, the quantity of real estate for sale will increase, the rental property’s available will decrease significantly putting more pressure on government to supply more low cost housing. I suggest a very large percentage of renters are not in any position to borrow money to purchase the ex- rentals. Would it not be a better idea to leave things as they are?. No amount of bleeding heart green intervention will fix anything, they are fiscally bankrupt…..
Greg, if someone wants to put a large target on themselves I’ll respond accordingly, you should already know this.
Greggy, fiscally bankrupt you posit.
Who is it that has racked up some $’s800billions of national debt?
Greggy are trying to be funny or was that another accident?
Now we can add “not an economist” to the long list of things you ain’t…. like not a scientist, not an environmentalist, not an academic, not an historian, & not good with facts or empathy.