Linking Grassroots Opinions to Changing Political Realities

By Denis Bright  

Renee Coffey MP triumphed in Brisbane’s Southside electorate in a tight contest with the sitting Green’s Member Max Chandler Mather. Both progressive candidates had their appeal in different parts of the Griffith electorate. (See summary of election results in Griffith, ABC News.)

The Greens were ahead on primary votes against Labor in western parts of the Griffith electorate. Labor was ahead in the eastern and southern districts of well-established inner suburbs.

This was one electorate where LNP preferences were directed to Labor’s Renee Coffey in a three-way contest between the major contenders.

Superficial statistics do not summarize the real complexity of the outcome.

Preference allocations from the LNP and minor parties need to be studied in more detail when they are available from the AEC website.

• The large swing in Griffith has been caused a change in the order candidates finished. In 2022 the Greens finished first, the LNP second and Labor third, Labor preferences boosting the margin of Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather. In 2025 Labor finished first on primary votes, the Greens second and LNP third, LNP preferences this time boosting the margin of the winning Labor candidate.
• Renee Coffey leads by 23,096 votes.
• Previously held by GRN with margin of 10.5%.
• Renee Coffey wins seat Labor lost in 2022.
• Max Chandler-Mather fails to secure second term.

Renee Coffey’s profile helped to produce that increase of 5.6 percent in Labor’s primary vote.

Renee has the experience and passion to deliver on the issues that matter to the people of Griffith.

Renee has extensive experience in both the public service and the non-profit sector. She was most recently the CEO of a national youth mental health charity that delivers services to young people impacted by family mental illness.

Renee has had a lifelong commitment to our First Nations people, establishing Young Australians for Anti Racism and Reconciliation whilst in high school, leading Reconciliation SA, and working for the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation for over 13 years.

Having been diagnosed with MS in 2014 and becoming a Goodbye to MS Ambassador, Renee has firsthand experience of the importance of our public health system. She’s proud to be part of a team dedicated to strengthening Medicare – something that Labor created and has always protected.

Renee has deep connections to our local community and is actively involved with community groups, sporting clubs and serves on the board of a local school.

She is committed to ensuring that everyone in the community has a home and that we address the climate crisis.

Residents and visitors were invited to a street party at 17 Forbes Street to renew the spirit of this convivial precinct.

Accommodating these grassroots energies is so important to the sustainability of mainstream politics across the precincts of the Griffith electorate.

This accommodation has been an ongoing feature of the Griffith electorate since its formation in 1934.

From a critical structuralist perspective, there is more to Brisbane’s southside than street parties. Still socially divided,South Brisbane and West End in Brisbane have stayed with progressive politics in the transition from the Green’s Chandler-Mather in Griffith to Labor’s Renee Chaffey. More than a half-century ago, support for All the Way with the USAduring the Vietnam war era brought over a decade of LNP representation in Griffith between 1966 and 1977 and for just one term in the post-1996 era until Kevin Rudd came on the scene in 1998.

Working with groups like Community Friends, Orange Sky, Micah and others are ready to offer a helping hand to disadvantage amid all this inner-city gentrification is so important for the sustainability of progressive politics in Griffith.

A quick search of the real estate columns shows up the extent of the social divide. Let’s take Cordeaux Street as an example (https://www.realestate.com.au/property/19-cordeaux-st-west-end-qld-4101/). This gentrification was in hearing range of the nearby street party in Forbes Street. Readers of the Murdoch press are of course encouraged to cheer on the growing class divide as a sign of modernity, opportunity and social progress. Academic research soon dismisses such appeals to self-interest:

• Schroeder, S. K., Rundle, K., & Jones, E. (Eds.). (2024). Captured: How neoliberalism transformed the Australian state. Sydney University Press.
• Spies-Butcher, B. (2024). Politics, Inequality and the Australian Welfare State After Liberalisation – Part I: Contesting Neoliberal Social Policy. Progress in Political Economy (PPE). (Retrieved from ppesydney.net).

Historically, federal Labor in Brisbane has steered local communities through the Depression years from Opposition in a strong two-party system which was more tolerant of diversity within Labor’s ranks. Premier Forgan Smith recruited the eminent British economist Colin Clark as Queensland Statistician in 1938 at a time when Labor was seeking new policy directions at all levels to apply Keynesian economic principles with support from John Curtin as federal Opposition Leader.  

Locally in Southside Brisbane, federal Labor benefitted from the talents of Francis Baker MP as Member for Oxley after 1931 and in the new electorate of Griffith after 1934. Francis was studying law while still serving in parliament. This dual career path was snuffed out by a car accident in South Brisbane on 28 March 1939.

Frank Senior lasted just one term as the Labor member for Maranoa to be defeated by the Country Party in 1943 despite John Curtin’s national landslide to Labor.

Retaining Griffith at the 1939 by-election was a difficult challenge. Labor retained the seat with a majority of eight votes after preferences.

In those far-off days economic and strategic policies were strongly influenced by prevailing British conservative policies under the guidance of Stanley Baldwin (1935-37) and Neville Chamberlain (1937-40).

Australian leaders would routinely offer support to Britain as shown by this news clipping (Sydney Sun 31 January 1939 from Trove):

Only John Curtin as Opposition leader (1935-41) dared to steer Australia in a more independent direction against the conformity of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons.

Almost a century later, Trump tariffs have replaced British imperial tariffs on centre stage and accommodation with dictatorship in Germany has been replaced by new arms agreements with Saudi Arabia and Israel where illegal settlements extend to the West Bank to challenge an emergent Palestinian state.

As neoliberalism fuels the local social divide, community groups like OrangeSky strive to provide emergency relief in Brisbane’s southside:

Meanwhile, gentrification is fuelled by the corporate sector in the construction of new housing units and the refurbishment of heritage houses:

Hopefully, a refurbished federal Labor Government will do more to lessen the social divide which has been fuelled by generations of tax concessions to wealthy householders and investors as the new edition of the annual zero tax list is being prepared by the ATO for 2025.

More than 1,200 large companies paid no tax in 2022-23, an Australian Taxation Office (ATO) report reveals.

The ATO’s tenth corporate tax transparency report, which covers 3,985 entities that lodged tax returns in 2022–23, found that while the amount of tax collected increased due to higher mining and oil and gas company profits, there were still 1,253 entities (31 per cent) that did not pay tax.

The report attributes no tax being paid to various reasons, including companies making an accounting loss or claiming tax offsets that reduced their tax bill to zero.

ATO Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Saint said there were “legitimate reasons” why a company may pay no income tax, and that the agency plays close attention to ensure that companies “are not trying to game the system”.

“We’re obviously very keen to ensure that any companies that are not making a profit or not paying tax – that it is truly driven by genuine commercial reasons, and it’s not through some sort of tax planning or tax structuring,” Ms Saint said.

Locally, the Crusafulli LNP Government will welcome every cent available in grants and GST allocations from the federal government while bemoaning Labor Government spending as budget day approaches on 24 June 2025. The latest ruse is to demand more federal funding to keep the Story Bridge in working order (From Queensland Budget Papers in 2024-25):

In the 2024–25 Queensland Budget delivered in June 2024, Commonwealth payments to Queensland were estimated to be $39.811 billion in 2024–25, comprising:

· $19.923 billion in payments for specific purposes, including towards key policy areas of Health, Education, Housing, Skills and Infrastructure.

· $1.364 billion in other Australian Government grants including payments to Queensland Government agencies for Australian Government own-purpose expenditure.

· $18.525 billion in payments for general purposes, primarily through the distribution of goods and services tax (GST) revenue.

In total, Commonwealth payments make up around 45 per cent of Queensland’s revenue.

In the adjacent NT, Commonwealth financial support accounts for over 70 percent of all expenditure in the already delivered 2025-26 budget from 13 May 2025 as proclaimed by the NT Department of Treasury and Finance:

NT Budget 2025-26: action, certainty and security

This year’s budget is investing in what matters most to Territorians:

· reducing crime

· rebuilding the economy

· restoring our lifestyle.

For readers open to fact-checking, ABC News (14 March 2025) offered details of the extraordinary rates of incarceration in the NT:

When ranked among the world’s countries, the NT’s incarceration rate of 1,238 per 100,000 people is second only to El Salvador, where the rate is 1,659.

The data cements the Northern Territory as Australia’s most imprisoned jurisdiction, with an incarceration rate three times greater than next-placed Western Australia.

It also has the highest recidivism rate in the country, according to the Productivity Commission, with six out of ten prisoners returning to jail two years after being released.

The NT government has said it made “no apologies” for the booming prison numbers and stood by its tough-on-crime policies.

“As I’ve said many times before, if you commit a crime in the Northern Territory, we are going to find a bed for you,” Deputy Chief Minister and Corrections Minister Gerard Maley said this week.

“The CLP (Country Liberal Party) was elected on a mandate for community safety.”

Progressive change is indeed the hope of Australian politics at all levels of government. Parts of Griffith have a quite radical spirit. Mainstream parties need to tune into this community asset. As a conservative Labor figure Francis Baker was subjected to a challenging start when the seat of Griffith was formed in 1934. It is of course best to have this political diversity within the ranks of the Labor Movement to avoid contemporary political fracturing which contributed to the divide between the Greens and Labor in Griffith or between Labor and Social Credit in 1934.

After lots of gloomy weather in Brisbane during the autumn, let’s look for sunny breaks with Renee Coffey as the Labor representative for Griffith.

 

Denis Bright (pictured) is a financial member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to consensus-building in these difficult times. Your feedback from readers advances the cause of citizens’ journalism. Full names are not required when making comments. However, a valid email must be submitted if you decide to hit the Replies Button.

 

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