Having failed to win John Howard’s old seat of Bennelong in 2022, management consultant Simon Kennedy has been selected to contest Scott Morrison’s seat of Cook for the Liberals, which has been vacated now that the former prime minister has left parliament.
Calls for a female representative in the blue ribbon seat went unheeded, with Veteran Family Advocate Commissioner Gwen Cherne receiving only 35 votes to Mr Kennedy’s 158 in a ballot of local Liberal Party members.
The wealthy businessman and mayor of Sutherland Shire, Carmelo Pesce, gained the endorsement of Scott Morrison, but this didn’t translate to votes. He received 90 in the ballot.
Cook includes a large area of southern Sydney, including Cronulla. Simon Kennedy does not currently live in the electorate.
The ALP has said it is unlikely to run a candidate in the by-election, with Scott Morrison’s old seat sitting on a very safe twelve point margin. The date of the contest is yet to be announced by the Australian Electoral Commission.
So the “Preselected candidate” that doesn’t even live in the Cook electorate, nor in the previous electorate of Bennelong, he was also branch stacked into and failed to win. So which Liberal party branch stacking fundamentalist faction got him into this electorate? Will the media even inform the public?
If this bloke was a candidate in any other party the media would be going into total melt down? Remember the rabid 24/7 RWNJ media pile on of Kristina Keneally in Fowler?
Meanwhile Dutton in the middle of a “cost of living crises by-election”, jets off across the continent, to billionaire Singapore tax haven Gina Rhinehart’s million dollar plus plush birthday party. Rhinehart the LNP/Hanson/IPA/Advance group/Media billionaire bankroller, “Is there anything on the extreme right she’s not bankrolling”, where Dutton spent all of 40 minutes before jetting back across the continent to Brisbane and completely disappearing, “as he does every time he and the party flounder”, since the disastrous loss in Dunkley.
If Dutton was the leader of any other party the media would be in pile on meltdown? Which for the usual suspect reasons, the media has barely mentioned either?
Labor wondering if it’s really worth wasting its members money, in a “Cost of living crises” in such a seemingly completely detached from reality exclusive Liberal party electorate? This Cook electorate re-elected Morrison multiple times, with an unbelievable 12% margin, even when the entire country and his own party, had woken up to what was the complete catastrophe of his Govt?
All we can hope for is another LNP fundamentalist faction excluded female Teal Independent, to wrestle yet another deserving seat from these completely detached fundamentalist controlled Liberal party Sydney beachside electorate.
Tweed, that’s a decent summation of affairs.
No doubt Lord Dutton is looking forward to ‘winning’ something on his watch after the Simon coasts home to his guaranteed victory in the by-election.
You can just picture it, all the other parties will run dead, not wasting their time and money at by-election, as Lord Dutton claims The Liberals
are back with a ‘resounding’ victory vote.
The Cook electorate already has a nuclear reactor, so it’s logical that electorate gets the first Dutton large nuclear power station at Kurnell. Duttons going to test public opinion, that he believes is overwhelmingly behind him and take it to the Cook by-election and let the voters decide!