It’s curious, given how much ink has been spilled over the rise of the “teals”, how little attention has been paid to Fowler MP Dai Le, the charismatic local politician who won the formerly safe Labor seat at the 2022 federal election.
It’s often assumed Labor only lost the Western Sydney seat because it parachuted in the worst possible candidate, former NSW premier Kristina Keneally, from the Northern Beaches, overlooking a locally preferred candidate.
But that only goes some of the way to explaining Le’s massive 15.6% swing, with what was believed to be a minuscule campaign budget, in a seat held by Labor since its inception.
Le, who declares herself the “opposite” of a teal, is sometimes dismissed as a closeted Liberal: she was previously a party member, having run as a state candidate in 2008 and 2011, before becoming an independent local councillor in 2012.
But that may underestimate the Vietnamese-Australian refugee’s deep connection to the community, a working-class area that feels left behind and taken for granted. Along with independent Fairfield mayor Frank Carbone, a close ally with whom she now shares a self-titled party, Le is a local powerbroker. And it’s a power the pair reportedly intend to harness in future federal elections.
Le’s personal politics are anything but predictable, and her role in Australian politics is underestimated: all key reasons I was keen to interview the member for Fowler. That, and the fact she’s the only independent to take a seat off Labor at the last election — the first since Andrew Wilkie — and the only person of colour on Parliament’s new expanded crossbench*.
However, Le’s office cancelled our arranged meeting at the eleventh hour and thus far has declined additional opportunities to respond.
There’s lots to talk about: how and why she got into politics, whether she still holds the values that led her to run as a Liberal in ’08, plans for her new party with Carbone, and how she would seek to use a potential balance of power in the next Parliament.
Perhaps Le’s advisers preferred she go to ground this week. In recent days, Le has attracted mockery for suggesting the Lucas Heights research facility — cited by the Coalition as proof Australia can do nuclear — generates leftover nuclear energy that could be used for electricity. Experts say Lucas Heights, a medical facility, is the “opposite” of a power reactor.
Le, a former journalist, has long been a key player in Fowler, having first run as a Liberal at the 2008 Cabramatta byelection — securing a 21.8% swing and within 7.2% of beating her Labor opponent — with no previous political experience.
The centre-right had seemed a logical fit, Le told a reporter in 2022, as someone who’d fled communism (she later used her maiden speech to compare Western Sydney’s harsh lockdown to a “communist dictatorship”). In 2016, however, the then Fairfield councillor was suspended from the Liberal Party for a decade, for running against the party’s endorsed candidate for mayor, Joe Molluso. Le went on to team up with Mayor Carbone, who was expelled from the ALP for similar reasons, creating a team of indies that have since sidelined the major parties in Fairfield — a result replicated by Le in the Fowler.
In other words, it’s hard to fathom how Labor failed to see it coming.
Speaking to Crikey in late 2022, Le rejected suggestions she was still aligned with the Liberal Party, putting such claims down to “Labor Party supporters”. She has nevertheless raised eyebrows with some of the positions she has taken this term, including abstaining from the historic censure motion against former prime minister Scott Morrison. Le, who spent much of her childhood in refugee camps, angered progressives when she argued against the repatriation of family members of Islamic State fighters from Syria, prompting many to suggest she was still a Liberal after all.
She also seems obstinately disinterested, if not openly hostile, to climate action, despite Western Sydney being set to face among the worst climate impacts. In one of her first acts as an MP, she abstained from voting on Labor’s Climate Change Bill, citing a lack of detail regarding its impacts on Fowler.
Since entering Parliament, Le’s comments have been mostly focused on cost-of-living pressures, which are acutely felt in Fowler. And while she often lacks concrete solutions, her positions aren’t necessarily Liberal-aligned. Le was among the crossbenchers urging Labor to amend the stage three tax cuts, calling on them to “consider their roots” as a party of working people; unlike the opposition, Le “welcomed” the changes, arguing it was okay to break a promise under the circumstances. She has also repeatedly argued that $368 billion on AUKUS submarines is a waste, with the money better spent on hospitals, education and housing.
Le has become something of a Sky News darling, as one can see from her media appearances — no doubt due to her willingness to attack the Albanese government over cost of living. Speaking with Andrew Bolt recently, Le said Labor was “disconnected from the community and the people they used to represent”.
It would be foolish of Labor to dismiss such comments — even if they did occur in conversation with Bolt. She’s also no stranger to sharing soundbites regularly on the public broadcaster, though as last week’s Lucas Heights comments show, she’s not always completely across her subject matter.
As Redbridge research officer Alex Fein tells me, Le is representative of a phenomenon in which “loyalty to the major parties is just tanking”. While Fein hasn’t run any Fowler focus groups of late, she’s spoken to many demographically comparable participants, people who increasingly see outsiders as more trustworthy.
“In places like that, people see the major parties as increasingly indistinguishable from one another and in the pocket of big business,” says Fein. “Even disengaged people are saying, yeah, I’d vote for an independent, because both majors are just revolting.”
Le and her ally Carbone seem well aware of these potent conditions; they may be better placed to speak to the working-class communities turning away from Labor than the Coalition. The pair last year registered the “Dai Le and Frank Carbone Network”, a party aimed at challenging the majors in Western Sydney — although experts are sceptical Le’s unique success can be replicated.
Nevertheless, Le’s election should stand as a warning to the ALP not to take its working-class heartland for granted. Le’s personal politics remain something of a mystery, and it seems she won’t be drawn on further details any time soon. But there’s no doubt this local powerbroker understands the politics of Fowler much better than the ALP’s puppeteers.
*Bob Katter occasionally identifies as an Aboriginal Australian.
This is an instalment of Forget the Frontbench, a column interrogating politicians who wield power beyond the major parties.
