Jock Webb writes: The ALP certainly deserved to lose Fowler (“‘Perfect storm’: what Labor got wrong in its historic defeat in Fowler”). Kristina Keneally is about as far away from reality as you could get in this seat. I’m not knocking Keneally who was an effective senator. It is a serious indictment of the miserable factions in both major parties that sees effective members lose preselection to dimwits. The ALP should be doubly damned for failing to keep Keneally in her Senate spot. Bloody idiocy.
Dennis Pratt writes: The ALP got away with imposing another silvertail, Andrew Charlton, on Parramatta, so maybe it won’t learn the lesson. The factions are resistant to learning. If only there were more Dai Le independents who really represent their communities, we could break the stitched-up deals the factions impose on the ALP candidate selections. The teals are doing it to the Liberals; we need the equivalent wake-up calls to the ALP.
Alan Robertson writes: The results in Fowler showed the grassroots Labor movement that the party has little or no regard for the normal person. Labor stands for government by the connected but without “U” — the labourer or normal worker. It governs from afar which does not help the local community other than the “entitled”. Dai Le has shown that the “U” factor is the most important and should never be dismissed. We are free.
Roy Ramage writes: Dai Le is entirely correct. Locals don’t like outsiders dropped in so political parties can benefit. Labor should have noted that when Liberal Alexander Downer tried to drop his Victorian-based daughter into the South Australian seat of Mayo. South Australians immediately chose one of their own. Australian communities prefer locals. Both parties have been taught a salutary lesson. I doubt the number-counters will learn.
Richard Creswick writes: Yes, Labor deserved to lose Fowler. It had an acceptable local Vietnamese candidate who would probably have won the safe Labor seat. The Keneally parachute move has lost Labor two good candidates and the seat. Lose lose lose.
Dai Le’s abstention on the Morrison censure and her reasoning indicate she remains a closet Lib.
Gary Gibbon writes: Yes, losing Fowler served Labor right. The blatant parachuting thing doesn’t work. But in Dai Le, did Fowler voters get a halfway decent politician? Well, judged on the basis of Anton Nilsson’s story, I’m not so sure. She abstained from censuring Scott Morrison because it was “too political”, but at the same time doesn’t want to be linked to the Liberal Party anymore. Yeah, right. Doesn’t she realise she is now a federal politician and gets paid from the public purse to make decisions not fence-sit over telling a hugely dishonest former prime minister how badly his unethical behaviour affected the Australian community and public perceptions of politicians? Sorry, Fowler voters, but I think you still may be missing out.
James Parker writes: The morning after the federal election I was at my local shop and bumped into Duncan Kerr, a former Labor justice minister and briefly attorney-general. (He lives near me.) I asked why Keneally — a genuine star in the political firmament — was running for a lower house seat when she had no ambition to be PM and was such a useful person on committees etc. She was also an obvious candidate for a ministry.
Duncan said that it was a simple problem of internal factional politics. Keneally had been dropped to an unwinnable position on the Senate ticket so, in desperation, she had been put into a lower house seat which a very likeable candidate, Tu Le, had a very good chance of winning. She had a margin of 18%. The fact that Keneally lost is very, very important. The Labor Party played it all wrong, but please, look at the idea of ethnic voting.
Dai Le won because she was Asian, and her Asian electorate identified with her. This, surely, is a failure of our supposedly wonderfully integrated society. We have not yet divorced ourselves from our origins. We still have ethnic tribes. And I suppose that is the way of the world. But if we are to become an integrated society, we should try to look at one another with clear eyes and try to see what we all need. And how to make that happen. Not in “silos” of ethnicity.
This is not to excuse the Labor Party in NSW — it got it all wrong. Both in putting Keneally, a real star of the Parliament, into an unwinnable position and thus denigrating a genuinely good (and appropriate) candidate. Forget the conservatives; the Labor Party is its own worst enemy. It’s about time it cleaned up its act.
Charles Klassen writes: Keneally is a former premier of NSW, and a confident and assertive parliamentary performer. Some colleagues say her confrontational political style is more suited to the dynamics of the House of Representatives than the Senate. When Keneally said she would seek preselection to run in the safe Labor seat of Fowler, she claimed she had been touched by the “enthusiasm and support” of local members who encouraged her to run.
The move sparked criticism from HSU NSW secretary, Gerard Hayes, Labor MP Anne Aly and Osmond Chiu, who has led a grassroots push to improve diversity in NSW Labor, on the grounds it would harm multicultural representation in politics. Hayes said the HSU would “stand alone”, separate from the left and right factions, as a result of a backroom deal to install Keneally: “We can’t in good faith go down this line that irrespective of where the candidate lives, they get put into seats where there are many candidates that can represent what is a culturally diverse community. Was there a democratic process? I don’t think so.”
Hayes strongly promoted a young lawyer, Tu Le, daughter of Vietnamese refugees, to succeed him. She ticked boxes on gender, diversity and local grounds. Keneally pushing her aside has caused outrage in some Labor circles. Aly told the ABC: “Diversity and equality and multiculturalism can’t just be a trope that Labor pulls out and parades while wearing a sari and eating some kung pao chicken to make ourselves look good”.
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I simply don’t understand how readers on this forum think KK is an effective performer. One who takes a contrary view put in beautifully when he/she said that she was a failed Premier who led Labor to a record defeat of 20 seats in a 99 seat chamber, didn’t win a by-election in Bennelong and now couldn’t win an ostensibly safe federal seat and she achieved diddly squat in her career and her career is a mystery for the ages. I can not but agree.
Tu Le would have won quite comfortably. Andrew Charlton, the non-champion swimmer person, won Parramatta because there was no viable candidate available. Parramatta is ethnically diverse, I would say riven and divided, that one ethnic candidate would upset another. Most ethnic groups are so childish they would vote for the other side out of spite. The presence of many from India and the sub-Continent (South Asia) was a factor in choosing Charlton. Parramatta needs an Anglo for this reason I am sorry to report. Not so Fowler which is very different as most groups are spread out and only the Indo-Chinese, mainly Vietnamese, predominate. Therefore it makes sense for a major party to go for a person of Vietnamese or Indo-Chinese background. So in Fowler, not only was there an effective candidate for Labor in Tu Le but there was also stiff opposition to KK from other Labor or former Labor people, some of whom are now Independents like Frank Carbone who, as a Mayor of Fairfield, wields an enormous power base. He wouldn’t have mounted a challenge against Tu Le or much of one and if he did it would have fallen flat.
I still don’t get it. Dai Le, a former Liberal, just as right wing as she ever was, representing the Vietnamese community on the basis of what…? That she fought against the Communists in Vietnam? That she is fighting for her community in this part of western Sydney who are the poorest in Sydney, many of them social security recipients, poorly educated, in low or insecure paying jobs and rental accommodation and they want a far right neo-Liberal to represent them?? I would wager that there are many in poorer ethnic communities who are self employed because they cannot get ordinary jobs on their own initiative and it is either open or shop or drive an Uber. What a hole!!
I think Dai Le was the mayor of Fairfield, so her political leanings may not have been so evident when she was representing local community interests. This was a community who was locked down and treated badly so she may have appeared a hero at the time.
Married to Liberal Party Cabramatta branch president – Marcus Lambert.
2008 and 2011 – ran as the Liberal candidate for Cabramatta in the NSW state elections.
Elected as an “independent candidate” to Fairfield City Council’s Cabravale Ward in 2012.
‘Not enough’.
In 2016 she wanted to run for Cabramatta mayor – as the Liberal Party candidate – but the party pulled that pin on her, so she ran as an “independent” – resulting on that Liberal Party suspension : up in 2026.
A Liberal Party politician in Independent clothing.
“Dawn Media Productions”?
It’s just another example of the entitlement attitude – that Sydney decides who is suitable to stand in line for leadership of political parties likely to form government.
It’s a Sydney prerogative ……… and nobody does corruption as efficiently.
Whoever made the decision to preference KK ahead of Tu Le should be sacked immediately after being named and shamed. I agree with one of the readers comments about ethnic voting, I will never vote for someone who looks like me on that basis instead of what they say and stand for, but how to weed this out. It plays to primordial characteristics or simply poor education.
I find it even more extraordinary that so many people think KK is good because she is ostensibly good and effective in Parliament, particularly in committees. If she is so good at it she should have joined the administrative branch of the ALP because I just don’t see that she is effective in Parliament at all. I still remember her denying she is a creation of the factions when it is obvious she was. She was put in by the dodgiest people in the ALP. She is definitely Joe’s Girl. She couldn’t sell ice cream in a desert. She couldn’t sell radiators to the Eskimos. She completely stuffed up the sale of the electricity generators in NSW and ended up with almost one fifth of SFA! She sold the electricity generators and would have sold the poles and wires (transmission grid) if given the chance or the mandate. I prefer WA’s Labor – they are much smarter and haven’t drunk the neo-Liberal, free market Kool-Aid like their colleagues in NSW. She led Labor to a record loss in 2011. How the hell can this be effective people??!!! if she was so damned good in the Senate why was she dropped to an unwinnable spot on the ticket? Did her comments on population cruel her chances like it did the hapless last Labor leader Michael Daley?? And she is trying to win an ethnically based seat who belief systems are predicted on having as many children as possible, who see children as a blessing or a form of social security if not cheap labour??
I think the actions of her equally hapless son will keep her busy for some time.
Many migrants come from societies where having many children was the only form of old age pension. Once here, if they’re at all ambitious, they want fewer children to give them educational advantages.
Yeah, as I understand it, the lots of kids thing is pretty much down to circumstances. Doesn’t make sense here.
Guru, you never know, Nobody’s Girl might just have been stitched up by her own side. Remember May 2020, when she committed the unforgivable sin, for an Australian Labor member? She spoke up for Australian labour.
Since that conspicuous abstention, most of us agree that although Labor definitely deserved this poke in the eye, the residents of Fowler haven’t done democracy any favours.
As mentioned, Dai Le may be Vietnamese, but sharing an ethnicity with your constituents counts for stuff-all next to not having it in for the poor… Anyone who doesn’t despise Mr Robodebt is plainly an enemy of the people.
It sure would be nice to have a system that wasn’t so vulnerable to the petty whims of random well-placed scumbags.
I’m a long term resident of Liverpool (within the Fowler electorate) and I confidently predict Dai Le will be a one-term Federal MP. And, given her pro-LNP voting patterns thus far, that will be one term too many. I look forward to the seat returning to the Labor fold when Dai Le is exposed for what she is and always has been, a Liberal party apologist.
You say about Keneally … “But to lose an effective player like Kristina Keneally.” Where in the world did you ever get the idea that she was effective at anything!!!
Agree.
Three time loser, an incurious & leaden (if not ‘lead‘) Chair of the Senate Estimates Committee (Enquiry) into the NSW Plague Princess fiasco (March 2020) which allowed 2,700 passengers to spread covid throughout the nation and cost an unknown number of lives.
She refused to use hard copies, provided at great risk by more than one w/b, of the exchanges between the ABF Duty Officer (Boarding Officer) and the Canberra HQ that fateful morning.
Of course, no-one at the ‘nerve centre’ was on duty pre 6am on that chilly day so the officer sought advice from the only senior officer then on duty (at Sydney airport) who had zero experience with Shipping & Boarding but knew enough of the Customs Act to confirm the junior office’s decision to withhold the pratique (permission to disembark passengers) until the vessel’s health status had been confirmed bu the relevant authority.
The seat polisher called in early in Canberra (fun fact – half of ALL Customs officers are stationed in Canberra, resumably because of its busy international airport & harbour) quickly ordered the Boarding Officer to issue the authorisation and destroy early records regarding the matter.
All well and good, but drawing a long bow to blame a Senate estimates committee for the quarantine fiasco round the Princess, but who was in fact the responsible Minister in the state LNP coalition government and federally at the time?