Weird, wealthy Wentworth is not the real Australia, by Nick Cater.
A by-election in Sydney’s eastern suburbs is no place to test the national temperature …
Wentworth is a land removed from the daily struggles faced by other Australians, a place where rising electricity prices barely touch the hip-pocket nerve, where God’s own airconditioner blows gently off summer waters, and “action” on climate change, by which they mean “subsidies”, boosts the share portfolio.
Few Wentworth residents could tell you the price of petrol, just as few know the full horror of the word “commute”. Four out of five Wentworth workers live less than 10km from the office. In the seats where the tradies live, like Forde on the southern fringe of Brisbane, more than two-thirds of workers endure the tyranny of the long commute. …
We mean no disrespect to Sydney’s eastern suburbs, but let’s be honest, it is a little bit weird.
Double Bay, in the seat of Wentworth
Barristers outnumber plumbers by almost two to one in the seat of Wentworth. It is home to 210 surgeons but not a single animal slaughterer. If you live in Wentworth, your meat is boned elsewhere.
The issues that came to the fore in the Wentworth campaign — climate change, social justice, the rights of LGBTIQA+ schoolkids, children on Nauru, the future of the ABC etc — would barely nudge the dial in 90 per cent of the country. …
It’s a place where brows are untroubled by mass immigration, with glorious full employment. The biggest industries are legal and financial services. …
Global warming might swing votes in Wentworth, but just 4 per cent of the national electorate rated it as of prime importance. …
Wentworth is home to 731 [journalists], the third highest concentration in the country, beaten only by the neighbouring seats of Sydney (962) and Grayndler (837).
If ABC hosts seem more at ease interviewing Kerryn Phelps than, say, George Christensen, it is hardly surprising. More than twice as many journalists live in Phelps’s seat than the total number who live in the five Queensland seats north of Bundaberg.
Here at the Wentworth Report, we can confirm that Cater is correct.
A reader notes:
The most smug greenleft electorate in Australia was always going to vote for virtue signalling policies that would never impact them.
What was interesting to me was that they voted 4:1 for the smug greenleft candidate that WASN’T endorsed by the Greens!
It seems the policies of at-sea death and destruction of the power grid are wildly popular in such places, but Greens are not. Despite no Malcolmite candidate running, I saw them at 9%, no better than a Senate election.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
