Monique Ryan no longer a 'one-hit wonder' as she claims victory in Kooyong
With 56.1 per cent of the vote counted, the former paediatric neurologist held an estimated lead of about four per cent in the Melbourne seat of Kooyong over Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer.
Dr Ryan took a swipe at members of a secretive Christian sect known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, campaigning for Ms Hamer.
'We're still waiting for some data to come in,' she told supporters at the Auburn Hotel late on Saturday night.
'But it seems pretty clear that despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, this band of brothers has overcome the Brethren.'
While Ms Hamer is yet to concede, Dr Ryan concluded her speech with 'let's have a party' as Tina Turner's River Deep Mountain High blared through the venue.
Kooyong was one of many former Liberal heartland seats to fall to teal independents in 2022.
Dr Ryan ousted senior Liberal Josh Frydenberg, the first sitting treasurer to lose his seat since Ted Theodore at the 1931 election.
Despite fears of the teals being a 'one-hit wonder', Dr Ryan was confident the crossbench could hold or even expand.
'Clearly the coalition has lost ground across the country,' she told reporters earlier in the night.
'So it seems quite likely ... that there might well be more seats on the crossbench.'
The campaign in Kooyong has been marred by various controversial moments, including a legal spat between the Liberals and a council over pre-poll signs.
Dr Ryan was also forced to apologise after her husband was caught pulling down a sign of her political opponent.
Meanwhile, Ms Hamer was criticised for failing to disclose she owned apartments in Canberra and London after pitching herself as a struggling renter.
The independent MP described the campaign as 'bruising' in comparison to her 'joyous' and 'fun' 2022 tilt.
'This has been tough and there's lots of reasons for that,' Dr Ryan said.
'We're a different country from where we were three years ago and we have some challenges, we have some bridges to rebuild and some things to mend.
'But I think we can do that as a country and I hope we can do that in the next three years.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
11 hours ago
- Telegraph
BBC's Thought for the Day shouldn't sell wokery
Radio Four's Today programme is the BBC's current affairs flagship, a three-hour set that seeks to establish the political agenda with interviews and discussions. Thought for the Day, broadcast at around 7.45 each morning, is supposed to offer some reflective relief from the normal cut and thrust. The slot, which began life in 1939 under the title Lift Up Your Hearts, was once almost exclusively Christian in its output but is now often occupied by representatives of other faiths. The BBC says it offers 'reflections from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news'. Clearly, it will be the opinion of the contributor but it must still conform to the non-partisan requirements of a public service broadcaster funded by licence-fee payers who don't have the luxury of getting their two minutes and 45 seconds on the air. Wednesday's Thought for the Day was given by a hitherto little-known refugee charity founder called Krish Kandiah. He proceeded to deliver a sustained attack on the Conservative front-bencher Robert Jenrick over a newspaper article about illegal immigration. He said the shadow justice secretary had fuelled 'fear of the stranger' by saying he did not want his children 'to share a neighbourhood with men from backward countries who broke into Britain illegally'. Mr Kandiah commented: 'The technical name for this is xenophobia.' Since the Government has asked a panel to produce a new definition of Islamophobia we can now see how it could be used by some to shut down legitimate points of view expressed in a newspaper. These segments on Today are scripted and screened in advance so how did this get through? It has subsequently been edited; but since no one who read it requested any changes we must infer they thought it contained nothing untoward. There is a set of assumptions that underpins far too much of the BBC's news output, ranging from welfare and the NHS to climate change and immigration. An in-built bias against anything that challenges lazy Left-of-centre nostrums suffocates broader debate on issues that matter to the great majority of listeners. The Thought for the Day fiasco is on a par with the failure to pull the live anti-Israeli ranting of rap group Bob Vylan during Glastonbury. Will the BBC ever learn, or is it simply incapable of doing so?
Reuters
3 days ago
- Reuters
Japan's deepening political woes cloud budget, rate hike timing
TOKYO, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Japan's deepening political uncertainty risks prolonging policy paralysis that could affect the drafting of next year's budget and the timing of the central bank's next interest rate hike, analysts say, clouding the outlook for the fragile economy. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is facing increased calls from within his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to step down and take responsibility for the party's huge defeat in an upper house election in July and a lower house poll last year. While Ishiba has denied he has any plans to resign, his fading support has triggered inevitable questions about his political future and analysts say a leadership change would likely have implications for the outlook for fiscal and monetary policy. In a meeting on Friday, lawmakers decided to consider holding a rare leadership race even with the party head Ishiba still presiding. Under LDP rules, such a race would take place if the majority of the party's lawmakers and regional heads agreed to hold one. But it is uncertain how long it would take for the party to decide, according to lawmakers and government officials familiar with the procedure told Reuters. That contest could happen in September at the earliest, they say, which would allow the new administration to compile a spending package to cushion the economic blow from U.S. tariffs. But if the race does not take place in September, it may have to wait until early next year to avoid disrupting the government's drafting of next fiscal year's budget, they say. "We would not be surprised if the LDP calls for a leadership election in September," UBS analysts said in a research note. "It seems that uncertainties regarding politics are unlikely to resolve soon." In Japan, the Ministry of Finance collects spending requests from ministries in August and finalises the government's draft budget in late December. The budget must pass parliament in time to take effect from the April start of a new fiscal year. Failure to pass the budget through parliament would force the government to compile a stop-gap budget, which could hurt the economy by causing delays in expenditure. Some ruling party lawmakers say there is no choice but for Ishiba to step down to resolve the deadlock. Having lost control in both houses of parliament, the LDP-led ruling coalition needs opposition party support to pass legislation and budget through parliament. Opposition parties have ruled out forming a coalition unless Ishiba steps down. "Japan needs a stable coalition government. Otherwise, it's impossible to pursue consistent policies," LDP heavyweight Ken Saito told Reuters last week. "It's best for the LDP to seek a coalition partner under a new leader." Ishiba's weak political standing and prolonged political uncertainty also complicate the Bank of Japan's decision on how soon to resume interest rate hikes. While few analysts expect the BOJ to hike rates at its next policy meeting in September, some see a good chance of action in October, December or January next year when more data becomes available on the impact of U.S. tariffs on the economy. Known as a fiscal hawk, Ishiba has endorsed the central bank's efforts to gradually wean the economy off a decade-long, massive stimulus as inflation remains above its 2% target for well over three years. But his bitter election defeat has made his administration vulnerable to calls for big spending and loose monetary policy. Many opposition parties have urged the BOJ to hold off, or go slow, in raising rates and focus on supporting the economy. If the LDP were to hold a leadership race, the event could put the spotlight on the views of candidates like Sanae Takaichi, a reflationist-minded lawmaker who in the past blasted the idea of interest rate hikes as "stupid." All this could discourage the BOJ from raising rates in coming months to avoid drawing unwanted political attention. "All we can say is that we would continue to take appropriate policies to sustainably and stably achieve our 2% inflation target," Governor Kazuo Ueda told a news briefing earlier this month, when asked how the BOJ would respond if political changes lead to fresh demands on monetary policy. "It's impossible to predict how politics will unfold, which means for the BOJ it's best to take a wait-and-see stance," said a source familiar with the bank's thinking.
The National
3 days ago
- The National
Black and white thinking takes us closer to fascism
Both of those things are enough to remind me that while communication in black and white is possible, it quite often seeks to create contrast where none is appropriate or desirable. We do not, for example, live in a world where the people of Israel are wholly good or wholly bad. Likewise, we do not live in a world where the same could be said of Palestinians, or the US government, or even – and perhaps this is the most difficult to admit these days – the Parliamentary Labour Party. READ MORE: Trust selling Highland clan's land for £6.8m under investigation There are good and bad people in every one of the groups I have mentioned. The numbers of those who are good and those who are bad might vary within them but to pretend everything is a simple question of groups being good or evil, or right and wrong, is mistaken. The reality of human life is that such simplistic claims can never be justified. In every group, every society, among people of every ethnicity or race, and in every state, and every organisation, we have to recognise good and bad can coexist, and sometimes simultaneously even in the same people. I know this makes life much harder. But, if we succumb to the temptation to subscribe to generalisms about any group, anywhere, at any time, and believe blanket descriptions can apply to them without taking into account the diverse nature of humanity, then we succumb to something that is best called fascism. Fascists have one political goal, which is all too easily seen among some politicians in both the UK and the United States at present. They seek to describe some group in society as the 'other'. They then ascribe to that group a range of characteristics which can, in truth, be found in any group in any society, anywhere, but which they claim are commonplace or universal within the group they deem to be the 'other'. They then blame all the ills in a society upon that 'other'. The extermination of that group becomes their political focus, all the while disguising the fact that what they are really doing is pursuing an agenda that, almost without exception in the case of fascism, is intended to advance the interest of some (but not all) among the wealthiest in their society, at cost to everyone else. This is most easily seen in the US, where the support of some (but I stress, not all) within the tech community for the agenda pursued by Donald Trump and far-right think tanks is resulting in the 'othering' of those they describe as illegal immigrants. US president Donald Trump They are then indifferent to the suffering of all those who might share ethnicity with those they 'other'. All of this is being done to advance the interests of a white, male, evangelical Christian anti-feminist elite within that society over the interests of all others. In the UK, we see a similar exploitation of so-called illegal immigrants, even though no-one is an illegal immigrant in the UK until their application to be resident here has been formally declined. It is easy to identify far-right politicians from Reform UK and the Conservative Party who are undertaking this activity but, as Keir Starmer has reminded us, not least with his 'island of strangers' speech, this is something Labour are also all too keen to do. Division is now a political strategy when not so long ago our whole focus was upon the creation of integrated communities so that people might live in harmony. READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon says she should have paused gender reform legislation The change has been dramatic and appears to have been quite sudden but in practice it can be fairly easily traced as having begun in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. Then, it became apparent to many that our economy was being systemically structured to ensure some got all the advantages of the actions the state undertook as a consequence of the banking collapse. The majority, and most definitely those on median incomes or less, enjoyed no gain at all, and quite probably suffered losses. People were told there was growth, that there was no such thing as austerity, and that government services were being maintained by additional government spending. But what they experienced was something entirely different. They were not better off. Services were worse. The society in which they lived was very definitely suffering, and they were angry about that. Then, despite the fact that this was actually because of the exploitation created by some bankers and others in a wealthy elite (and again, I stress, this was not universal), some politicians, acting with the outright support of those who were benefiting the most, chose to blame those they call illegal migrants for the situation the majority of people found themselves in. The anger and disillusion people quite reasonably felt as a consequence of the deliberate failure of the Tories to meet need was redirected for the political advantage of the elite that was actually exploiting people and, in the process, something once described by the German historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt occurred. As she explained, the constant lying of our politicians is not intended to make people believe the lies that they are told. Instead, its goal is to ensure no-one believes anything any more. The intention is to ensure no-one can, with any degree of certainty, distinguish between truth and lies, and so between right and wrong. People deprived of that power are, in Arendt's opinion, also deprived of the power to think and judge and, as a consequence, are then unwittingly subject to the rule of lies. This then means politicians who wish to manipulate a population for their own advantage are free to do so. That is what happens when we give up on nuance. That is what happens when we give up on believing we have more in common with others than that which divides us. That is what happens when we forget there is right and wrong, but that there is no-one, or any group, that is at all times and in all places possessed of either quality on every occasion. That is, in effect, what happens when we give up on judgment. We become exposed to manipulation and so to abuse. And this is where we are. This is why politicians think they can lie to us, on Gaza, on the state of the UK, on Scottish independence, and on almost anything else. It's because they believe we have forgotten how to determine the truth in among the noise that those who wish to distract us deliberately create. It is our job to work out what is really happening and to form a judgment upon it. That is what politics and political economy demand of us. It's hard and it sometimes leaves us confused and feeling alienated, but that is the price we have to pay if we are to continue to believe in humanity and decency, and to believe there are things we must do because they are simply right.
