#dai le

Here's a special election-night treat for you. But keep your pants on: although this is review XXX in my 2025 federal election series, a bonus to the 29 reviews I wrote before election day, you cannot get any electoral stimulation from these parties as you will not find them on any ballot nationwide. Nobody erected a corflute for these parties; nobody came to their rallies, nobody left flyers in letterboxes to arouse the attention of potential voters. They are on the AEC's register of parties but they did not or could not get up to the polls.

Back in 2013, at the end of the first edition of this blog, I did a review of the never-rans: parties that never achieved registration and did not endorse an independent candidate. Our never-rans this year are a bit different in that they are registered parties who are running nowhere. There are, amazingly, four of them. This review, then, is more like one I wrote in 2016 for 21st Century Australia, which was registered but ran no candidates (and is the reason why ever since I have not begun drafting reviews until the close of nominations). One of the four parties has a perfectly valid reason for not bothering to run this year, but as we'll see the rest are a bit odd.

Tammy Tyrrell for Tasmania (website)

A former staffer for Jacqui Lambie, Tyrrell won election to the Senate at the 2022 election as the lead candidate for Lambie's Network. But in March 2024, she quit the party for reasons that have never been explained adequately (see my JLN review for more on the party's implosion during 2024). She registered her own party in August 2024, and the website now covers her views on big issues in Tasmania (for starters, she doesn't like the new stadium for Hobart) and solicits constituent support for specific campaigns (it seems the most popular is, uh, bring Aldi to Tasmania).

Tyrrell's term runs through to 2028, so she is not up for re-election this year. Fatima Payman, after her acrimonious split from Labor, founded Australia's Voice as an attempt to seek a national supporter base even though she too is not up for re-election until 2028, so her party does have candidates this year, but the very name of Tyrrell's new party indicates that there are no aspirations for it beyond being a vehicle for Tyrrell herself. Hence, no Tammy Tyrrell for Tasmania on any ballot this election. Fair enough!

Dai Le & Frank Carbone W.S.C. (website for Dai Le)

I actually covered this one in a review as part of this year's series. You can read more on the background there, but basically: Dai Le appears on ballots today as an independent, and the party she registered is not named on ballots anywhere. In an interview with Leo Puglisi, Le kept using cliches to describe how the party registration was part of "planting a seed" for the future, but one struggles to see how that seed can grow when it is not being watered, i.e. voters are not seeing the name on ballots or corflutes or flyers. If she intends to use it in future for a cohort of candidates, building name recognition now would help.

I have 3 speculative theories why Le has not used the party name this time around, all of which are based on absolutely no insider knowledge nor any gossip:

Le thinks that running under the "independent" label is more valuable electorally because some voters have a negative perception of parties and an idealised view about independents (which I discussed in my review of the teals when I urged that group of indies to hurry up and form their own party already)

Maybe the relationship between her and Frank Carbone has cooled or their ambitions and views have diverged in consequential ways

Perhaps her and Carbone had plans that they have now postponed because they could not commit the time and resources necessary to do anything meaningful with the party

(or some mixture of "all of the above")

Kim for Canberra (outdated website)

I have not the first clue why Kim Rubenstein has maintained her party's registration rather than letting it lapse. I have a lot of time for Kim—she is a great scholar whom I know professionally, if fleetingly—and I reviewed her tilt in 2022 favourably. But if she had entertained ideas of running again in 2025, they were not aired publicly nor in any professional space to which I am privy, and she would have been wasting her time if she did try because Pocock has largely filled the electoral space that she would have occupied. I can only assume her party registration will lapse sooner or later.

Better Together (website)

Yeah OK this is the main reason I wanted to do this entry. This is the party of Lucy Bradlow and Bronwen Bock, and if those names sound familiar to you it is because in 2024 they got media attention for a proposed tilt at the now-abolished seat of Higgins as "job-sharing independent candidates". Their initial Bradlow+Bock branding made them look more like a real estate agency than aspirational politicians. After the AEC's redistribution wiped Higgins off the electoral map, they pivoted to standing for the Senate in Victoria and registered this party, still with the intention of being job-sharing candidates.

I cannot emphasise strongly enough how absolutely ridiculous this job-sharing proposal is because it is not legal, it cannot happen, and it will not happen unless and until parliament changes the Electoral Act to permit it. Only one person can be nominated for any one seat in either house of parliament; the states are multi-member electorates for the Senate but each seat must be filled by one and only one person. The job-sharing concept raises serious electoral and parliamentary difficulties that cannot be addressed easily and it is impossible to imagine parliament amending the Electoral Act to allow Bradlow and Bock to do what they want to do. It can't happen, it won't happen, and their persistence in pushing the idea became so tenacious that the AEC had to issue a press release pointing out that it would be compelled to reject any such application.

Getting a public rebuke from the AEC was not enough to stop Bradlow and Bock, who launched a Federal Court case against the Commonwealth in February. They insist that what they want is to make parliament "like any other workplace, where there are options for people who are unable or unwilling to work 24-7 and be always available". Unfortunately, legislating and running the country is not like an ordinary job. In much the same way as a national budget cannot and should not be considered equivalent to a household budget or that running the government cannot and should not be considered equivalent to running a business (despite what some pundits and politicians try to say), parliament cannot be "like any other workplace".

But, in the end, it was all moot. As well as not doing their homework about parliament, governance, or electoral law, Bradlow and Bock did not do their homework about whether they met constitutional eligibility requirements—at least not until they had got months of media attention, wasted the AEC's energy, and gone all the way to the courts. It turns out one of them is a South African citizen and ineligible for election under section 44(i) of the Australian constitution. Aaaand that was that, their tilt at the 2025 election was over.

Running where: Division of Fowler (NSW), sort of. See below.

Prior reviews: none, this is a new party

I reviewed the Centre Alliance despite the fact it is now a shell of a party that de facto independent Rebekah Sharkie retains because disestablishing it would be more effort than keeping it. So, why not review a registered party that is not fielding any candidates this election even though one of the two people in its registered name is seeking re-election! Yes, this is odd, but indulge me: let’s discuss what’s going on in Fowler and then talk about Dai Le and Frank Carbone W.S.C., or as their ballot abbreviation says, Frank Carbone Western Sydney Community. No, you’re not having a stroke, the abbreviation they provided for the AEC party register is longer than the official name. But we’ll get to the party in a moment.

In 2022, for some mind-numbingly stupid reason, Labor parachuted in former NSW state premier Kristina Keneally to contest the Division of Fowler in Western Sydney. Fowler was one of the safest Labor seats in the country, one which the party had held since its creation in 1984: Labor almost always got over 60% of the two-candidate-preferred vote, often over 70%, with their only sub-60% result being 58.76% in 2010. This electorate had literally never been in play. The incumbent, Chris Hayes, decided to retire in 2021 and endorsed as his successor a popular local migration lawyer, Tu Le, the daughter of Vietnamese refugees. Instead, the party halted the local preselection process and Keneally imposed as candidate.

Now, what you need to know about Fowler is that it encompasses some of Sydney’s most culturally diverse working-class suburbs. At the 2021 census, fewer than 40% of the population were born in Australia, with Vietnamese forming the largest migrant community and Chinese also having a sizeable presence. And what you need to know about Keneally is that although she might dubiously be considered Labor royalty—she was state premier for a little over a year but led the party to a devastating landslide loss in 2011—she is an American who lives on a literal island, Scotland Island, beyond Sydney’s posh Northern Beaches.

So, another Vietnamese woman, Dai Le, who came with her family as refugees to Australia when she was a child after the fall of Saigon, ran a successful independent campaign against Keneally. Labor won the notional two-party-preferred vote over Liberal (55.72%), but lost the two-candidate-preferred vote, the measure that actually matters: Le won 51.63%. Le had been a journalist and a Liberal Party member who had contested the state seat of Cabramatta for the party, but in 2016 she stood against the endorsed Liberal candidate for mayor of Fairfeld and was suspended from the party.

This led her to team up with ex-Labor councillor and Western Sydney political personality Frank Carbone. He is mayor of Fairfield, and has been since 2012. He is enormously popular with his community, winning a stonking 81.39% in a two-person contest at the mayoral election last year. Fairfield’s a funny old council, often going its own way to try to save money—it is one of the very few that contracts a private company to run its elections rather than the NSW Electoral Commission, which is a pain in the arse for election nerds because the NSWEC does a much better job. Anyway, Carbone and Le have an alliance on council that covers 9 out of 12 of the councillors plus Carbone as mayor (and Le is still a councillor as well as an MP).

So, Carbone and Le registered this political party in the belief they have a voting base to win federal seats in Western Sydney. And yet… they are not running any candidates and Dai Le’s officially contesting Fowler as an independent! I suppose it would have looked pretty odd on the ballot if it said:

LE, Dai Frank Carbone Western Sydney Community

Leo Puglisi asked Le about this in an interview on 6 News before the election was called (from 19:57). She explains that she formed the party for “the future” and “I want to make sure that I have laid the foundation. I need to get re-elected … to continue to build that foundation … no point rushing running candidates”. She wants to consolidate her hold on Fowler before seeking to grow and says that she prefers the label of independent this time around. Hence, this campaign is an independent one rather than part of a broader tilt for Western Sydney Community. It’s a bit odd that she describes the party registration repeatedly as “planting a seed” (among other cliches that she repeats) when she hasn’t gone on to use the branding at all such that this seed might grow and gain recognition.

Labor has seen sense and their candidate this year is the woman they should have endorsed in 2022, Tu Le, but is it too little too late and does Dai Le have the local profile to secure re-election? She has the advantage of incumbency but this is a very classically Labor seat and Tu Le will fancy her chances of winning it back. Dai Le’s voting record is closer to the Liberals than to Labor, and is very similar to that of Rebekah Sharkie of the Centre Alliance (see figure 1 here). Unlike many other city-based crossbenchers, she is not part of the “teal” movement and does not receive Climate 200 financial backing.

So, what are Fowler voters getting this time around? Dai Le is pitching directly to working-class constituents in the hope they don’t swing back to Labor, underscoring cost-of-living challenges, particularly with energy, groceries, and insurance. Her take on the current government is that a lot of policies lack substance. She believes her local constituents don’t trust the major parties and seems optimistic that she has established her reputation locally as someone who asks the hard questions in parliament. We will see in a few weeks if that belief is well-placed.

Last, is Dai Le likely to support the Liberals if no party has a majority after the election? She says that nobody should assume who she would support, noting in the aforementioned interview with Puglisi that the Liberals “threw me out … why would I be loyal to a party that didn’t want me in the first place?” It seems that although she is ambivalent about the Labor government, the Liberals also aren’t her favourite people these days. She emphasises a preference to assess each bill individually in terms of how she sees it as delivering for Fowler rather than picking sides. Given how many independents are likely to be returned, the major parties likely will have a range of paths to build confidence and supply or to pass legislation, so she might not even be forced to choose.

Recommendation: If you are a Fowler voter, I recommend you put Dai Le below the Greens and Labor candidates but above the Liberal candidate, and definitely above those who are standing for the Libertarians, Family First, and One Nation. For my recommendation categories, let's call this a "weak to middlimg preference" (even if it would be 3rd of 7! I'm more lukewarm on Dai Le than on Rebekah Sharkie)

Nearly 50 years ago, Dai Le was a small, frightened child aboard a boat, her father vanished, her life up-ended by the war in Vietnam. Her long journey to Australia was Homeric in scale. There were pirates. Flying fish. Terrible storms. Long stretches in refugee camps with her mother and sisters. But in 2022, when she took her seat in the House of Representatives clad in an Australian flag áo…

Dai Le RTW Fall 2013