Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Kooyong
It's one of the safest Liberal seats in the country and in the past 50 years Kooyong has been represented by only three politicians - Menzies, Peacock and (Petro) Georgiou. In the preceding 50 years, the seat has been held by 3 members also. That's six members in 103 years. And it's the bluest of the blue.
On Monday night I attended a meet-the-candidates forum in Kew, and while we all know that Georgiou is going to get back in (and possibly be our representative in Canberra until he retires in 10-15 years), it was good to see four of the the other candidates campaigning hard to win our votes.
It is interesting to note that 3 of the 4 speakers at the forum ran last election, leaving Mary Dettman from the Democrats to fill Ari's shoes this time around. It also turned out that many of the organisers and the candidates themselves were Melbourne Uni political science graduates.
Petro spoke to us in a rather arrogant matter, praised the Howard government, and belittled the Opposition and the minor parties. However, this man could have slaughtered a bunny rabbit live on stage and still have received cheers from the audience.
I had hoped that Tom Wilson from the ALP would have spoken very profoundly about the differences between his party and the Liberals. I was a little disappointed. He got flustered way too often, said some things that made the audience laugh (including the ALP's education policy). Side note... Kooyong has the probably the biggest concentration of private schools in the whole of Australia. Overall it wasn't his best performance. His best performance may come on election night when he pleads with the ALP head-honchos to give him a better seat.
Mary Dettman was a little nervous but she spoke well and got her point across. I would have preferred her to push voting Democrat in the Senate more but overall she did well in representing my party to the blue-ribbon and rinse set. She's actually quite active in the local community and should use her profile at the next state or local election to win a seat.
The Greens candidate, Peter Campbell spoke well, didn't slag off the Democrats, directly challenged both the incumbent and his Labor counterpart and raised a lot of important points. Normally I cringe when I put the Greens second on my ballot paper but this year, in this electorate putting them second will actually be a pleasure. He also openly raised the prospect of a Greens member for Kooyong. A prospect this cynic of the Greens wouldn't be dreading.
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