NSW has its first teal MP – and that should give the federal Coalition plenty to worry about in the lead-up to next year’s election.
On Sydney’s insular peninsula, which has always voted blue except for a dalliance with an independent in 2005, the NSW Liberals were not prepared to accept that an opponent quite similar to their own – albeit with a tinge of green – would claim their prized seat ofSurely, the Liberals told themselves, the teal wave that helped oust their federal colleagues from power in 2022 was a shortlived experiment? After all, the party had staved off the teals at the last state election.
Byelections rarely favour the government, but in Pittwater’s case they did not favour the Liberals, either. The last time an opposition lost a seat in a byelection was 2005. It was Pittwater, when the Liberals surrendered it to independent Alex McTaggart after the resignation of the then leader John Brogden.
The one-time Pittwater mayor McTaggart only served as an MP for two years before the Liberals seized the seat back. Now it is gone again, but the seat’s flirtation with an independent is unlikely to be as brief. And as much as the Liberals might wish the teals to have been nothing more than a protest vote against an unpopular prime minister in Scott Morrison, the Pittwater result should give the federal Coalition plenty to worry about ahead of next year’s election.
Ryburn and Scruby are decidedly similar: intelligent, educated women with young children. Scruby’s camp seized on the fact that Ryburn lives outside Pittwater’s boundaries, in Frenchs Forest. Ryburn kept acknowledging Scruby’s attack, as if voters would be incensed by such petty warfare . To return serve, Ryburn’s campaign focused on an independent MP’s supposed inability to deliver for voters.
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