Brisbane election shows us there’s not much joy chasing inner-city voters

That this highly successful public servant put her hand up, against the party in government, to run for a seat she could not win tells you a lot about her character, and also the dissatisfaction with the government amongst public servants.

Should the results of the by-elections carry through to the state election the new LNP government will need competent people like her to help them govern.

A voting booth for the Brisbane City Council election in Calamvale in the south of Brisbane, Australia, on March 16, 2024. (Daniel Teng/The Epoch Times) In Ipswich West, the state LNP candidate was Darren Zanow, an Ipswich resident who's made his money through quarrying.

He fits the seat, which reaches out into rural areas from the west of Ipswich, a former mining town, like a glove, having also started his business life working on the family farm.

Mr. Zanow succeeded when Ms. Trang didn't simply because the margin for the ALP in the seat wasn't as fat as it was in Inala.

Labor will try to represent the swing as being partly due to anger with the previous member for resigning. I don't think that holds up as Jim Madden, the former MLA, appears to have won a seat in the Ipswich City Council in exactly the same area.

It's possible that Labor can claw back and the LNP could lose. After all, the local AFL club, the Lions, was down 46 points against Carlton in their last match at the Gabba yet managed to lose by one point in the end. This is very much a mid-match score at the moment.

Focus on the main fight

These by-elections will change people's perceptions of Opposition Leader Crisafulli as well. He will start to look in their minds like a leader and less like a challenger, and that changes their focus from what they don't like about the government to what his policies might be.

I think these elections also have messages for federal leaders Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese. The inner-city electorate is concerned about conservation issues, and younger Australians are in thrall to the Greens, but you cannot win courting that vote.

The party that will do the best in Australian politics is the one that relates to suburban and regional voters and enunciates the matters that concern them directly, like the cost of living.

These can't be solved with Greens' solutions, and Greens voters are neither the friends of Australia's mainstream parties, nor mainstream Australia.

Nevertheless, the Greens are here to stay, but in their present form, they stay on the margins. The real fight is between Labor and Liberal, and currently, the electorate is actually more aligned to the Liberal Party values than Labor ones.