• Two comments on this site regarding the government’s Queensland council amalgamations gambit deserve wider exposure. Electoral law authority Associate Professor Graeme Orr anticipates legal hurdles for the proposal that the AEC conduct plebiscites over the head of the state government (UPDATE: Graeme clarifies this point in comments):
The Feds can appropriate money for broad purposes, so I assume they will try to package any legislation to enable this as purely a matter of bespoke expenditure (like the Hospital ‘intervention’). But legislate they must: the AEC currently has several functions under the Electoral Act, but none of them involves holding plebiscites, let alone on state issues. How the Feds will be able to override the clear State legislative prerogative to determine Council activities is unclear. Councils are created by State law, and can only act within that law. It may be Howard is just goading Beattie to go further and appear undemocratic, by restricting Councils abilities to co-operate with the AEC. Or it may be Howard will just pay the AEC to run some half-baked plebiscite across Qld on election day, that says ‘do you approve of council amalgamations’.
Anthony Llewellyn detects the influence of recent practice in the United States, where ballot initiatives have been used as a ploy to mobilise voters on polling day (also noted earlier by Optimist). The most famous example was a 2004 initiative providing for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, which was seen to have given the President a boost in the crucial swing state of Ohio.
• PortlandBet is running a blog noting developments in its comprehensive federal electorate betting market. Of particular interest is a shortening of odds on Labor’s Sid Sidebottom in Braddon after the government announced its Mersey Hospital intervention, famously described by indiscreet Tasmanian Liberal Senator Stephen Parry as “a disaster”. Taken in aggregate, the agency’s electorate-level odds point to a result of 75 Coalition, 73 Labor and two independents.
• Sydney residents of a particular political persuasion might like to note a free presentation from 6pm on Monday from US poll maven Vic Fingerhut, who boasts “four decades’ experience in polling for progressive political parties and unions”. Fingerhut will discuss “the anti-WorkChoices campaign in the context of other international campaigns, including the campaign against Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America” (not a successful campaign so far as the 1994 congressional elections were concerned, but you can’t win ’em all). Presented by the Walkley Foundation and the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (whose card-carrying members include me), those wishing to attend must RSVP by Friday. More info here.
Biggest swings against incumbent government: I think (without checking) the swing against Scullin in 1931 was the biggest ever federal swing. There were swings in state elections of the same scale at that time. In the 1933 SA election Labor won 6 of 46 seats, losing 24.
Howard does seem pretty desperate, the polling must be pretty bad for him to throw money to keep a hosptial in Devonport open, despite Devonport only has 25,000 people and Burine is not that far away and now the criticism of council mergers in Queensland.
Grooski, Strop – might Howard not be looking to maximise the Coalition’s senate vote in Queensland, as much as reinforcing their ‘fairly safe’ Reps seats?
Ruawke – which part of the Coast are you from? I’m a Nambourean – same sugary school that forged the Ruddler. But on these plebiscites, note Howard can probably call them regardless of whether the councils are involved or even still exist.
Roy Orbison – you’ve fingered me you falsetto voiced warbler. Les Rabbitohs will win this weekend, for they must. At least it’s a coin toss like all our games this year: and we have more to play for than the Dragqueens. I like the look of the team. Joey W has a final chance to shine.
Forgot to mention Capricornia. The Labor sitting member is well established and done well despite Labor getting booted in QLD in 2001 and 2004 (people really should read Adam’s seat by seat analysis) so logic says she should hold on (3.3) despite the protest vote she might cop.
I don’t think this is going to translate to the federal election. By the time the election happens most people would’ve moved on. Howard isn’t going to take amalgamated councils and split them up again, so he actually isn’t promising to do anything. He is doing what he accuses Rudd of doing.
Go Rabbits !!!
Graeme Says:
August 9th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Grooski, Strop – might Howard not be looking to maximise the Coalition’s senate vote in Queensland, as much as reinforcing their ‘fairly safe’ Reps seats?
Nearly all the election discourses I’m hearing/reading are saying 3 Labor, 3 Coalition senate seats at this election can be taken for granted, particularly after the ‘deal’ [Liberals not contesting Flynn etc] which put the Nationals candidate number 3 on their Senate ticket for 07.
The Coalition are using pretty controversial (if not desperate) strategies like the amalgamation issue and forcing the QLD National-Liberal ‘Coalition’ to agree to a senate/HOR ‘deal’ (the rumblings of discontent will continue right up to the election) because JWH put his foot down on it and wouldnt take no for an answer in order to ‘mamixise’ the Coalition’s senate vote if you theory is right.
This begs the question of whether or not the Coalition are worried more than they want to let on that the National candidate may be at risk of not getting up if Labor’s primary vote goes through the roof and they score 3 quotas *42.9%* and the GREEN machine starts to look plausible. Ha, no way- rediculous- I love the rediculous, implausible, mathematically illogical, at times . LOL.
Bed time, the Mrs has spoken. Night all.
Hope that police action against the Brisbane Three might be a pre election boost to the ALP has probably been scuppered by the Haneef affair. The AFP would have a backlog of non terrorist investigations building up and would be happy to use it as an excuse not to finalise controversial matters prior to the election.
Nothing I have seen of Commissioner Keelty makes me think he wants to cloud his prospects in any fashion.
Antony,
It’s still called the Progressive Conservative party at a provincial level in Canada, although the Federal equivalent is now just the Conservative Party (and, I imagine, not as bi-polar as its provincial counterparts).
I don’t think Commissioner Keelty understood when he backed down to the massive and improper Howard Junta pressure, regarding the obviously correct conclusion he drew that Iraq increased terrorist risk in Australia, exactly how badly he was damaging himself, and the AFP.
Now he has nothing to lose he might as well continued to act to protect Howard and if Rudd pulls it off then toady up to PM Rudd and convince Rudd the AFP can be a poltical tool for bothsides and will move obediently with the political breeze.
Someone (Adam?) asked why Beattie didn’t wait till 2008 to force through controversial amalgamations. My understanding is he is set to retire, with plenty of time for Anna Bligh to build her profile as Premier. For all the disagreements I have with Beattie, he seems to have a masochistic (or egoistic) joy in taking personal responsibility for hard policy and even crises. Also, he’d want to pilot his LG Minister, Andrew Fraser, a bright-and-coming-thing, through a baptism of fire.
But it’s still electoral poison. Many hundreds of communities, large and small. Councillors all have networks of supporters; local papers feast on local politics. In short, however rational the policy, and however good Beattie and Fraser are, they and a pile of bureaucrats have no chance of turning this around in a short-medium political term.
Will wait for Qld level polling, but ironically Beattie may be handing Bligh a very tainted chalice.
Graeme, I read somewhere, the amalgamations are going through now is because council elections are to be held in March next year and they want the new system in place before then.
Funniest speech of Council Amalgamation Bill was from Peter Lawlor using the full Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast rivalry to cutting effect. Page 2525 from Hansard 9/08/07.
http://parliament.qld.gov.au/view/legislativeAssembly/legislativeAssembly.asp?area=hansard&LIndex=3&SubArea=latest&Bindex=1
The rather odd name of the Progressive Conservatives in Canada came about because of a 1940s merger between the Conservative Party and parts of the Progressive Party.
The remarkable thing about the 1993 Canadian election (which I remember well, having been in North America for most of the campaign) was the astonishing loss of support for the PCs during the campaign. They went from averaging 35% in the polls over the first week of the campaign to getting 16% on polling day (the other 19% being split fairly evenly between the Liberals, Reform and the Bloc Quebecois). There have been governments that have entered a campaign at rock-bottom and stayed there, but I can’t think of any precedent for a mid-campaign collapse of that type.
The other oddity of the election was that the PCs were going into the election with a Prime Minister who was highly likely to lose her seat regardless of the overall election result – her seat (Vancouver Centre) was a four-way marginal which she had won by about 100 votes at the previous election, largely because an unusually good performance by the New Democrats in 1988 had split the left-of-centre vote (Canada uses first-past-the-post).
Peter Andren has cancer and will not be contesting the Senate election.
Thanks blair-the insight helps me believe that the Libs have already had their mid-campaign collapse of that type and now the elctorate are waiting to deliver their verdict.
Was the GST an issue .
From what ive been told/read the pollsters were nowhere near the final result-150 odd seats lost i recall-truly rooster one day,featherduster the next.
well thats sad
It’s very difficult to know what, if any, impact this issue will have on Queensland voters in the Federal Election. Others have given good accounts of the potential impact and as I have no better knowledge, I have nothing to add. Three things we can be certain of though:
1. no-one knows what impact it will have in QLD
2. it will not help Howard in the rest of Australia and may actually work against him
3. if the Liberal party thinks this issue will save them from defeat in the Federal Election, then the term desperate doesn’t quite apply; delusional would be more accurate.
Now it would have made more sense politically, to have deferred this issue until after the election, and I’m sure that’s what Rudd was pushing for, but for whatever reason Beattie insisted on doing it now. ALP supporters would hope it’s not a mistake, because the Qld ALP has stuffed up before, notably the 1996 state election.
According to Tom Burns,” we were seen as arrogant, there’s no doubt about it…….we forgot where we came from. By the end, we’d started to think we knew better. Well, when they got to the ballot box, some people thought they knew better. That’s why we lost in ’96.”
Reading this quote, initially I thought of Beattie and the amalgamations, but then I thought that quote actually applied to the Keating Govt, the Kennett Govt, and in 2007 to the Howard Govt.
The Queensland State election was in 1995, not 1996, although the Goss government did not fall until after the Mundingburra by-election in 1996.
I don’t think you should underestimate Beattie. You may remember that in the lead up to the 2001 election Labor had many problems with its own parliamentary members taking bribes. Beattie kicked out the corrupt members, and went to the election promising to fix things up. The Tories were really bad in the campaign, and suburban Liberal voters were offended by their preference deal with One Nation. Election result (one of my three best political memories):
Labor: 48.93%, 66 seats
Lib-Nats: 28.48%, 14 seats
Labor won 66 of 89 seats, for a 43 seat majority. The Libs were completely shellacked in the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, and were reduced to 3, yes 3, seats. Over the next two elections, Labor has only dropped 7 seats and still has a huge majority.
The point is that everyone said the corrupt Labor members would cost Beattie the election; instead, he won a record landslide. If Beattie is able to turn Howard’s interference into a states’ rights issue (and I think he will), it will rebound badly on the Feds.
Following up on all the discussion of the Canadian collapse of the conservatives in 1993: notice that the conservatives are now back in government in Canada, despite the magnitude of their disaster then. Predictions about the permanently crippling effects on the conservatives in Australia of an electoral defeat this year, even a very bad one, look exaggerated to me.
That’s very sad about Andren, he’s a very decent guy.
The conservatives are back in power in Canada, but in a very different form – in effect the party that is now in power is largely based on the old Reform Party which has absorbed the remnants of the PCs.
I’d left Canada before polling day in 1993 so can’t comment on how well the seat loss was predicted; the final-week polls did predict the total vote fairly well, but I imagine that in an environment where one major party’s vote was collapsing, it would be difficult to estimate how that would play out in its safe seats, especially in a first-past-the-post system where it would also matter what the balance of the vote was between the Liberals, the New Democrats and (depending on where you were) Reform or the BQ. If experience of some of the more one-sided Australian state elections of recent times is anything to go by, one imagines that the pundits would also have been reluctant to believe that the wipeout predicted by the polls was actually going to happen.
Bob Abbott, mayor of Noosa, says Peter Beatie AND John Howard should hang their heads in shame for politicising the local council debate.
It looks like Noosa and Redcliff are the places that Glen Elmes and Geoff Seeney have written to the AEC to request a “poll”.
I think if Beattie had held a poll asking “would you like to remove over 700 ineffective councellors” there would be an over whelming yes vote.
Greame I live in Coolum.
Also, Qlders like strong leadership; witness the reign of Joh Bjielke-Peterson for about 20 years.
ruawake, I can’t understand how the State Liberals and Nationals can get any boost from this, when they had representatives on the Council reform committee, which agreed to the amalgamations.
ruawake I got three brothers living in Coolum, I’ve not heard through them that the amalgamations are having any effect in your territory. What have you heard?
Leichardt is likely more marginal than it’s margin of over 10%, depends on retiring member Warren Entsch’s popular vote. If say Labor gets a 7-8% swing in QLD all up, Leichardt could be won by Labor.
Bowman, Blair, Herbert, Longman, Bonner, Moreton and maybe Petrie and Flynn would come Labor’s way too.
Very rarely Labor gets more than 50% of the two party vote up there, but this election will probably see that ocassional occur.
I think we will all be awaiting the next state-level polling from Qld with great interest. Until we see that, all is speculation.
Then there was this.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/mergers-dont-worry-us-alp/2007/08/10/1186530576714.html
NO suprises here
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2007/4194/
Gary Morgan, in a comment attached to the latest Morgan phone poll says:
What makes him think that the people who say that Australia is heading in the right direction ever contemplated voting L-NP in the first place?
If he’s got some data that shows the two are linked he should publish it, otherwise his statement merely looks bizarre.
Morgan has been asking this “heading in the right direction” question for some time, but I can’t see its relevance. If the question asked, “is the Howard government taking Australia in the right direction?”, then the results might mean something. But as it stands it’s of no real value.
Can someone explain again why Morgan’s phone polls and face-to-face polls produce such different results? Do we have any clue as to which, if either, is more reliable?
Andren’s press release is here:
http://www.peterandren.com/pdf/Press%20Release/2007/Press20070810.pdf
It sounds a bit gloomy poor sod.
Still it will help The Greens given that prima facie the contest for the last NSW senate place was going to be between Andren and the Greens.
Are the council amalgamations really big news up in Queensland? Is it bad news for Rudd? If that many people are angry about the state government, and the PM is trying to profit on this by saying “State Labor = Federal Labor”, couldn’t that be bad news for Kevin Rudd and Co since Queensland is such a crucial state? It’s a shame that Queensland is such a crucial state because it’s such a conservative state, and is one reason why the Coalition are in power, but now I truly wonder what this whole council amalgamation dilemma will mean for Federal Labor.
Did you see Roy Morgan plugging the Possum’s analysis?
There is a poll on the Courier Mail’s website, that asks: “Will the council amalgamation issue change the way you vote federally?” – 8% would change their vote to Labor, 41% would change their vote away from Labor, and 50% say it won’t change their vote. Of course, it’s not the best source, but it’s interesting I suppose..
I see the ALP has endorsed State Secretary Julie Collins to replace Kevin Harkins in Franklin: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/10/2001718.htm?section=justin
Sean
My thought on the Courier Mail poll is “how would I vote if I opposed the amalgamations”?
The only option is to say I will change my vote from Labor. But how many of these would really have voted for Labor in the first place.
I am surprised by the 8% change to Labor, I thought it would have been much less.
The issue will die down now the legislation has been passed and it will have little if any federal implications.
A few things:
1. On the power of the High Court to restrain the GG or force the GG to do something, the exercise by the GG of his constitutional powers (including the reserve powers) is not justiciable. At the time of the dismissal, the Labor party sought orders in the High Court against the appointment of Fraser by Kerr as caretaker prime minister in circumstances where Fraser did not have the confidence of the lower house. The High Court refused to consider the case. Whatever you think of Barwick’s advice to Kerr, there is little doubt that the judges got this bit right.
2. The GG is not an officer of the Commonwealth. Nor (obviously) is the Queen.
3. The separation of powers (particularly the independence of the judiciary) is not really embodied in the constitution per se (but see s 71 and s 72(ii)), rather it is a series of conventions in the Westminster system, that can be seen to operate in cases such as Boilermakers and attempts to legislate privative or ouster clauses (essentially legislative clauses that try to prevent judicial review of decisions made by the executive).
4. We do have an “executive branch” of government under the constitution – see Chapter 2.
5. Howard can resign the prime-ministership but keep his seat until the next general election. If the coalition retains government but has less than 77 seats, this is a realistic possibility.
Presumably those saying Aust is heading in the right direction includes a lot of the people who both want and expect Labor to win. So it’s a pretty useless question from our point of view.
BTW Galaxy was phonepolling specifically in Bennelong last night. Look out for it in the News Ltd papers Sunday or Monday.
The Morgan phone poll sample of only 589 electors (MoE 4%) is a bit too mickey-mouse for my liking. However, a Labor primary of 49.5% is great news by any standard.
1. Are you sure that the Labor Party actually sought such orders? Somehow that doesn’t ring true to me. Can you cite your source?
2. That’s what I would have thought.
3. I’m not sure why a principle (assuming for the sake of argument that there is one) that legislation cannot prevent judicial review of executive action should be called ‘separation of powers’. But in any case, you are obviously not claiming that ‘separation of powers’, whatever it means, has the consequences earlier asserted for it.
4. Chapter 2 does indeed say that the executive power is vested in the Governor-General. But it doesn’t define what the ‘executive power’ _is_.
5. Good point. I hadn’t thought of that.
Gee 589 people is so representative of all of Australia…let me guess it had the Nationals on 1%…why do people think Morgan is a serious polling group?
My main concern in the news re-Andren is for his survival. In or out of parliament Australia (and the world) needs people as fundamentally good as him. Despite the pessimism of his statement one can only hope that advances in cancer therapy will do the trick.
However, I also don’t think it is good news, electorally speaking, for Kerry Nettle. While there was a possibility Andren would beat her, the more likely scenario was that he would drop out early. If he had preferenced her (and I think this was likely) it would have given her chances a significant boost.
J-D…
1. I’ve looked for the source, and not been able to find it. I think I read it in the 2002 version of Blackshield and Williams, but I don’t have a copy at hand. As George Williams sometimes posts here, I stand to be corrected. I was not able to corroborate this today using other sources.
3. I don’t think that’s quite what I said. Legislation can in fact prevent such review (subject to certain limitations and one obvious constitutional protection – s 75(v)). However, the court’s approach to determining what is justiciable (including consideration of whether privative clauses limit or deny the court’s jurisdiction) is an example of the operation of the principle of the separation of powers. Which is a round about way of saying there are certainly issues that could arise under the constitution that would not be justiciable before the High Court, as one of the consequences of the doctrine of separations of powers (and notwithstanding s 76(i)). Issues concerning actions of the Queen or GG would be clear examples.
However, there is no question that we have separation of powers under the Westminster system. It is implicit within our system of government.
4. The fact that the constitution doesn’t say what it is, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Again, the convention of the queen/king appointing a minister (prime minister) to advise her/him on affairs of state, comes from the Westminster system, and is implicit within our system of government. Thus, Parliament makes laws, which are administered by the Crown (GG) on the advice of ministers under the Crown. Ministers are appointed under the Crown (which actually does make it into the Constitution – s 64).
I’m not sure that’s right either. Like you, I can’t locate the source at the moment, but I’m sure I have a transcript of an interview with the then Solicitor-General, Sir Maurice Byers, where he says that he thought the Government (ie Whitlam et al) should have briefed him to go to the High Court and argue that Kerr’s actions were ultra vires and should be set aside.
d
Wow. Labor’s new Franklin candidate Julie Collins is an absolute babe!
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/2007seats/franklin.shtml
Hope they put her in the front ros of Parliament!
1. I don’t know the book you’re referring to, but I’ll try to find it when I get a chance. Failing that, I might think about asking George Williams directly.
3. It may not have been what you said, but it was what somebody else said earlier. Which I think illustrates my point. Here’s you saying that ‘the separation of powers’ means the the High Court can’t direct the Governor-General and here’s somebody else saying that it means that the High Court can direct the Governor-General. To me, this means that there is no clear shared understanding of what ‘the separation of powers’ means, and in that case statements about it are not false but in the strict logical sense meaningless. I notice that you haven’t offered your definition of what you think it means, although you’ve talked around it a bit.
4. Again, what is the definition of ‘the executive power’? You’ve talked around this, but you haven’t given a direct answer to the question.
The other thing to remember with Canada is they effectively have separate party systems on a provincial and federal level. So in some provinces there are provincially based parties in power. The old Canadian Alliance (which merged with the PCs to form the Conservatives) is still in power in Alberta in its original form (now called the “Alberta Alliance”) and some provinces still have PC parties.
As well as this, on the other side of politics the Liberals, NDP and Greens (although the Greens really don’t have much influence) all have different appearances in different provinces. In BC and Quebec the Liberal Party is actually the conservative party, and their voters (and indeed politicians) would usually support the Conservatives on a national level. The leader of the Parti Liberal in Quebec is a former cabinet minister in the last PC government. Indeed he became the PC leader when they were wiped out in 1993.
In British Columbia, rather than having a centre-right Conservative party, a centre Liberal Party and a left-wing NDP, they have a centre-right Liberal Party and a centre-left NDP, both of whom are more conservative than their national counterparts.
You also find substantial differences in policy between Green parties.
In comparison to Australia, we don’t find anywhere near as much separation, which I guess means there’s something to fall back on when you lose federal power. The ALP in 1996 still had a substantial presence on a state level, whereas in Canada provincial politicians generally don’t have any moral or political expectation to support their federal party.