The day after the Labor landslide that led the party to a historic victory at the polls – and the Coalition to its worst ever result – the newly re-elected Member for Cunningham, Alison Byrnes, is back at work.
“Today I am just on the phones calling our volunteers to thank them and doing some thank you letters, talking to some of my colleagues and looking at my post-election ‘if reelected’ folder,” Ms Byrnes said on Sunday morning. “So getting straight back to work.
“I am incredibly honoured to be reelected as the member for Cunningham and certainly the trust that people have put in me for another term I'm really, really grateful for.
"Over the past three years, I've been really pleased to secure almost a billion dollars in funding [for the Illawarra] and I really am looking forward to building on that and working across three levels of Labor government… to really progress some great things for our city and our region.”
3 women to lead the Illawarra
It’s another triumph for Labor in all three Illawarra electorates, with Fiona Phillips beating Liberal Andrew Constance in Gilmore, and Carol Berry securing the seat of Whitlam, where she replaces retiring MP Stephen Jones.
“I am so excited that we've got Fiona Phillips back in Gilmore and we've got Carol Berry as the new member for Whitlam,” Ms Byrnes said today.
“We've got three fabulous women across the Illawarra that care about their communities, that care about people, and care about regional jobs as well. So, we're also in a really good position where we've got a state Labor government, we’ve got our city's first female Lord Mayor as well in Tania Brown.
“I'm really looking forward to progressing lots of ideas, lots of projects across the three levels of Labor governments.”
On her immediate to-do list are: “Progressing the Southern Suburbs Community Centre and Library in Warrawong, which I secured a $10 million commitment for; the $5 million for the regional multicultural centre for the Illawarra; and also progressing some of the things I want to do around aged care; working with the new minister for the NDIS on making sure that that gets back to being fit for purpose. We've come a long way, but there's still a long way to go.
“And also looking at opportunities for future jobs in the Illawarra as well.”
Voters chose renewables
It's now possible that some of these future jobs will be in renewables, with the Illawarra’s offshore wind zone tipped to create 1740 jobs during construction and 870 ongoing jobs.
Former Opposition Leader Peter Dutton had promised to cancel the zone if elected and the project has been on pause in 2025.
“There was one licence application for a feasibility licence,” Ms Byrnes said. “That was from BlueFloat, they asked the minister to pause that while the election was on, pending the outcome.”
Candidates running on a “no offshore wind” platform were routed across the region and the project’s future now awaits appointments in the second-term Albanese Government.
“We'll be obviously going through the process of the new ministry appointments and then progressing that when that's decided,” Ms Byrnes said.
What triggered the Labor landslide
Up to about 400 volunteers were involved in Labor's five-week campaign for Cunningham, delivering a 2.75 percent swing and a second term for Ms Byrnes.
Across the country, Labor currently holds 82 seats, more than double the Liberal National Coalition's 38, with media headlines today ranging from the ABC's “Labor landslide” to The Sunday Telegraph's “It’s so Alban-easy”.
Asked what triggered the national triumph, Ms Byrnes said, “I think people were pleased to see a positive plan for the future.
“We spoke a lot about the reinvestment in Medicare, reinvestment in TAFE, committing to projects for our region, also addressing cost of living. We’ve got $43 billion on the table for housing and I think that's what people wanted to see.
“What we saw from the Liberals was a lot of negativity and trying to engage culture wars, which I think people have said no to, which is a really good thing for our community.”
More help for women fleeing violence
At a candidates forum in Port Kembla on Tuesday, Ms Byrnes spoke about how the Labor Government has helped local women, including recently providing $4.6m in funding for Supported Accommodation & Homelessness Services Shoalhaven Illawarra (SAHSSI).
“I think we need to do a lot more around housing,” she said today, “and one of the things that I've done since we finally got the Housing Australia Future Fund through the Senate … so what we did then was I organised a forum with the RDA Illawarra for all of our local organisations to get a briefing. So moving forward, what we will be doing is looking at future rounds of that and making sure we get more of that social and affordable housing, more places for women to go if they are fleeing family and domestic violence.
“So that's certainly a strong focus for me moving forward.”
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