Liberals's preselected candidate for Morrison's former seat vows to move into area within days
Liberals's preselected candidate for Morrison's former seat vows to move into area within days
After a meeting lasting almost two and a half hours, Simon Kennedy defeats three other Liberal Party candidates to win preselection in former prime minister Scott Morrison's old seat of Cook.
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!
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 think the whole "local representative" thing is lost on today's voters, who likely identify more with a particular party than policy and due to a desired Prime Minister (probably from watching too much of US elections). I wouldn't be surprised if a large proportion of Australian voters don't know the name of their local member but just the party and that is all they care about.
Personally, I do but that's probably just because I pay attention to politics.
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.
I've been pondering the idea of proportional representation, I think it would mean more representation of parties like the Greens due to how they certainly reach a lot of people, however, are unable to claim many victories because of the sparsity of their supporters. Most of the people in my region are idiots unfortunately who fail to critically analyse the bias of their news sources and believe whatever shit they read on Facebook or see on TikTok.
The regional representation may have made more sense before the internet and fast transport exposed people to more ideas leading to greater diversity of opinion. Electorate boundaries are completely arbitrary and in some cases drawing them around different areas would probably lead to different election results
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.
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