Latest news with #RussellBroadbent
Epoch Times
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
Ex-Liberal MP Takes 10 Percent in First Go, Stands Firm Against Mandates and Net Zero
Former Liberal MP-turned-independent, Russell Broadbent, says he does not regret breaking away from the Liberal Party, despite not retaining his seat of Monash, which covers eastern Victoria. New Liberal Party candidate Mary Aldred looks set to have secured the Lower House seat by the weekend, picking up 28,138 votes to the next-nearest Labor Party candidate Tully Fletcher, who had 17,809 votes. Broadbent managed to secure 10.1 percent of the vote in his first outing as an independent. The former draper and former small business owner held the seat for 25 years before he left the Liberals in November 2023. At the time, he said the federal government's COVID-19 vaccination mandates during the pandemic years made him break away and run a solo campaign. Related Stories 4/30/2025 5/1/2025 Speaking to The Epoch Times at his post-election gathering of supporters in Drouin, Broadbent said he held no reservations about his decision. 'The whole response to COVID over the past four years, as other people have responded in a different way, in regards to my position on COVID,' he said, when asked what policies resonated with voters. 'And I wouldn't take back a word. I actually challenged the narrative. ... They [Liberal Party] had probably had enough of me. They didn't like the position that I took on COVID.' Former Liberal Party senator, Gerard Rennick, also broke ranks from the centre-right party and ran separately, in response to the party's support of COVID-19 lockdowns. Liberal Party Should Have Fought Against Net Zero Broadbent warned the net zero energy policy, which has been adopted by both the victorious Albanese Labor government and the Liberal Party, would 'break the country.' Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison with then-Energy Minister Angus Taylor committed to reaching net zero by 2050. The Albanese government has bankrolled a swathe of net zero projects during its first term, and will continue this initiative. Broadbent has been a vocal critic of bipartisan support for this policy, believing that the gradual shutting down of coal-production sites will cause irreparable economic harm. 'The government hasn't prepared our economy. Labor has made decisions in subsequent budgets now which make it harder for the economy to function with international headwinds,' he said. He said the Liberal Party missed an opportunity to create a point of difference in opposing Labor on this policy. 'They [Liberal Party] didn't differentiate themselves by saying they did not support net zero,' Broadbent said. Many residents who have spoken to Broadbent say they struggle with higher energy bills, which he blames the energy transition for creating. Net zero has seen state and federal governments pressure major energy producers to close down coal-fired power stations and to instead, invest in renewable energy projects as a source of 'cleaner' energy. However, this transition does come at a cost to home owners, not only is it limiting energy supply (which drives up prices), there is a significant upfront investment in getting renewable projects off the ground, which has led to governments offering taxpayer-backed subsidies to make this happen. 'There are a number of people, not just here but around the place. They just talk electricity prices, electricity prices, electricity prices,' Broadbent said. 'And the more renewables there are, the more the prices will keep going up.'
ABC News
12-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Liberal Party predicted to retain Victorian seat of Monash
The Liberal Party has retained the seat of Monash, the ABC projects. Mary Aldred will be the next member for the Victorian seat, defeating Russell Broadbent, who became an independent after losing Liberal preselection. The seat has been in doubt because there are no candidates with more than a third of the first preference vote, and it had not been clear which two candidates would be the final two in the count. But ABC chief elections analyst Antony Green says further counting by the AEC has determined that the seat will be a Labor-Liberal contest, which Mary Aldred will go on to win. It is the 42nd seat won by the Coalition, with three seats still in doubt.
Perth Now
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Perth Now
Australia votes: who is going to win and by how much?
AUSTRALIA VOTES: STATE OF PLAY How do you win? * A political party needs 76 seats in the House of Representatives to form a majority government * A net loss of just three seats will leave Labor needing to negotiate with the crossbench to form a minority government * The coalition requires a net gain of 19 seats to govern in its own right, or a uniform swing of about 5.3 per cent * If neither party makes it to the requisite 76 seats, whichever has the most would enter into negotiations with the crossbench first * Published polls suggest Labor is most likely to win government but could fall short of a majority, while the coalition claims its internal data paints a vastly different picture * A minority parliament would be the first since 2010 and only the third since 1943 Where do things stand? * Labor - 78 seats (including seat redistributions) * Coalition - 57 seats (including vacant seats after retirement, former MPs who defected to the crossbench and seat redistributions) * Independents - nine seats * Greens - four seats * Katter's Australian Party - one seat * Centre Alliance - one seat What's changed since the last election? * The Victorian seat of Higgins and the NSW seat of North Sydney have been abolished after a redistribution * Western Australia has gained an electorate with the seat of Bullwinkel in Perth's outskirts * Nationals MP Andrew Gee left the party to become an independent, while coalition MPs Russell Broadbent and Ian Goodenough also defected to the crossbench * The former Liberal safe seat of Aston fell to Labor at a 2023 by-election
The Guardian
15-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
The Coalition has attacked the teals for voting with the Greens in parliament. What does the data show?
The Coalition has run a wave of attack ads against the teal independents. Since January it has spent $137,000 on Facebook ads via its 'teals revealed' page. Elsewhere, billboards in key electorates promote its anti-teal campaign website, and ads are also running on YouTube. Many ads zero in on the teals' voting record in parliament, and some highlight this News Corp article, headlined 'Teals ally with 'radical, extremist' Greens', which cites Parliamentary Library research to claim that seven teal MPs voted with the Greens 'between 73 and 81 per cent of the time' over a period of more than two years. But the Coalition campaign is based on only a portion of the parliamentary voting data and does not show the complete picture. It does not answer key questions, including: are teals more or less likely to vote with the Coalition than other independents? What is their voting record on votes that a Coalition MP has called for? And do Coalition MPs vote with the teals on teal-introduced motions? These are the kind of questions voters living in teal-held or tightly contested seats may want answered. So Guardian Australia has carried out a comprehensive analysis of how the crossbench voted in the 47th parliament. First, let's get some things clear. The term 'teal' refers to the independents who ran in previously Liberal-voting seats in 2022 but who differ from the Liberals on climate change and the need for a strong federal anti-corruption agency. The teals have some commonality with community independents or independents involved with 'voices-of' type campaigns. The teals are not a party. If you're interested in whether or not they vote like a party, this analysis by Patrick Leslie, a political scientist at the Australian National University, is excellent. For this analysis, two independents who were formerly in the Liberal party – Russell Broadbent and Ian Goodenough – will be excluded, as both were Liberals for the majority of the 47th parliament. I've compared the votes on every division (a division is a vote on legislation or procedural matters) held in the House of Representatives during the 47th parliament. On each vote I assigned the major parties (including the Greens) a single position – aye or no – depending on the majority position of party members. I then take each of the crossbenchers, including Bob Katter from Katter's Australia party and Rebekha Sharkie from the Centre Alliance, and checked the agreement between each politician and party on votes where each pair were present. Finally, a total agreement percentage was calculated. You can see the results in the following heatmap. Darker shades indicate lower agreement and lighter shades indicate greater agreement. The heatmap is sorted by voting agreement with the Coalition (but you can re-sort for any of the other parties and politicians by clicking their headings). So yes, it's true that the teals mostly don't vote with the Coalition and have a higher voting agreement score with the Greens. However, at least some teals are likely to be better allies for the Coalition in the parliament than for Labor. If we take Labor's voting agreement score with the Coalition of 36% as a benchmark, there are two teals who are above this or tied. Allegra Spender, in the Sydney seat of Wentworth, has a higher voting agreement score with the Coalition at 39%; and Kate Chaney, from the seat of Curtin in Western Australia, is tied with Labor at 36%. But what if we look only at votes on divisions moved by Coalition politicians? There are five teal independents who voted with the Coalition 50% of the time or more. And all the crossbenchers voted with the Coalition on Coalition-moved divisions much more frequently than Labor did. So, despite Peter Dutton only naming one teal in his list of potential allies in a hung parliament scenario, the evidence shows teal independents vote with the Coalition's divisions at a decent rate – they just don't vote with the Coalition so much overall. While the independent crossbenchers support divisions moved by major party MPs a decent amount of the time, the data shows the major parties do not return the favour. A stark divide can be seen when you look at the voting pattern on divisions moved by independents. The agreement score between Labor and the Coalition, which is at 36% for all votes, shoots up to 83%, and the parliament becomes divided, with the two major parties on one side and the Greens and independents on the other. That is to say, the two major parties often vote together against motions from the crossbenchers. You can explore voting agreement between the parties and crossbenchers in this next chart, including filters for division types and, when the division relates to legislation, the portfolio of the legislation it relates to. My analysis uses vote records sourced from the Australian Parliament House's (APH) divisions API and website. I merged information from several APH sources to combine the division with the mover of the division, the mover's party, whether or not the division related to a bill, or was otherwise classified as procedural, and, if it related to a bill, the portfolio of the bill. You can see and reuse the data here. I also cross-checked with data from the API and Pat Leslie's data here (also from the APH API).
