Revenge of the nerds

If you believe Jason Koutsoukis of The Age, dumped Labor MP Gavan O’Connor is not only the unanimous inaugural winner of the Mal Colston Medal for Treachery, he is also doomed to certain defeat by Labor candidate Richard Marles in his bid to retain Corio as an independent. Koutsoukis writes matter-of-factly of the perks awaiting O’Connor “after he loses the election, which he surely will”. However, this was written before Glenn Milne of The Australian rocked Canberra* with his shock revelation* that “senior figures at the Melbourne (Liberal) campaign headquarters” were finalising arrangements to preference O’Connor ahead of Marles (* sarcasm alert), placing O’Connor “in the middle of the perfect election storm”.

To provide some historical perspective, I present the recent history of sitting members dumped at preselection who sought revenge at the ballot box. I do not doubt there are a number I have missed, particularly at state level, where the only one that immediately sprang to mind was Steven Pringle in Hawkesbury at the New South Wales election in March. Readers are encouraged to note any such omissions in comments and I will rectify them in due course.

• Moore and Curtin (Federal 2006): The only examples on this list where the independents actually won the day were these two Perth seats at the 1996 election, in which sitting members Paul Filing and Allan Rocher respectively lost preselection to Paul Stevenage and Ken Court (brother of then-Premier Richard Court). These results were widely blamed on the machinations of controversial Liberal warlord Noel Crichton-Browne, although the reality was more complicated. The important thing was that they incurred the displeasure of John Howard. This led to the Liberal candidates’ campaigns being starved of resources, and an apparently accurate perception emerging that the independents retained the imprimatur of the party leader. In blue-ribbon Curtin, Rocher easily outpolled Labor 29.4 per cent to 19.8 per cent, proceeding to an easy victory over Court (39.2 per cent) on Labor preferences. Paul Filing won even more resoundingly in Moore, leading the primary vote with 34.1 per cent to Labor’s 28.4 per cent and the Liberals’ 27.3 per cent. The 1998 election saw both members defeated by less contentious Liberal candidates.

• Wentworth (Federal 2004): Malcolm Turnbull’s well-funded move against one-term Liberal member Peter King succeeded by 88 preselection votes to 70, but King did not take his defeat lying down, announcing he would stand as an independent at a press conference on Bondi Beach in the first week of the campaign. Despite vigorous campaigning attended by intense publicity, King recorded only 18.0 per cent of the vote and finished well behind Labor’s David Patch on 26.3 per cent. While Turnbull’s 41.8 per cent was well down on the 52.1 per cent King recorded as Liberal candidate in 2001, it converted into an unembarrassing 2.3 per cent two-party swing after distribution of King’s preferences.

• Dickson (Federal 1998): After one term as Liberal member, the political career of Tony Smith (most certainly not to be confused with the current member for Casey) imploded when he was questioned by police after leaving a building which housed a brothel. Smith forestalled preselection defeat by quitting the Liberal Party and declaring his intention to run as an independent (so arguably this one doesn’t count). By this time it had emerged that the Labor candidate for the coming election would be defecting Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot. Smith predictably failed to set the tally board alight, polling 9.0 per cent of the vote, and Kernot went on to win by 176 votes.

• Hawkesbury (NSW 2007): Liberal member Steven Pringle was dumped after one term in favour of Ray Williams, who had the backing of the ascendant forces of the Right. It was reported that Pringle lost control after an influx of Lebanese Maronite Christians swelled membership of the Beaumont Hills branch from 17 members to 500; according to the Sydney Morning Herald, this included 120 members who transferred from a branch in Hornsby after leader Peter Debnam denied them an influence there by insisting its Left faction incumbent Judy Hopwood keep the seat. Pringle reacted to his defeat by quitting the party and reiterating the popular theme that it had become “controlled by an exclusive sect, an extremist right-wing group”, of which the “Godfather” was upper house MP David Clarke. This prompted a rebuke from the Prime Minister, who described him as a “hypocrite” and a “sore loser”. The former judgement was based on the manner of Pringle’s own preselection at the 2003 election, when he ousted Kevin Rozzoli with support from what Simon Benson of the Daily Telegraph described as “right-wing extremists as well as the left”. Pringle did succeed in getting ahead of the Labor candidate, whom he outpolled 27.1 per cent to 16.0 per cent, but Williams’ 45.6 per cent primary vote was enough to get him over the line by a 6.6 per cent margin. The margin would have been narrower but for the optional preferential voting system, which saw many Labor votes exhaust.

• Newcastle (NSW 2007): After holding the seat since 1991, Bryce Gaudry was contentiously dumped for preselection in 2006 following intervention by Labor’s national executive. As Damien Murphy of the Sydney Morning Herald describes it, Gaudry had been “regarded as a sincere plodder who made a nuisance of himself during the Carr era with a long-running critique of office-winning policies”, prompting his Left faction to sacrifice him by surrendering Newcastle to the Right in exchange for the Sydney seats of Londonderry and Toongabbie. The Right had initially hoped to recruit Newcastle lord mayor John Tate, who had not been part of the Labor grouping on council, had defeated the party’s incumbent lord mayor in 1999, and floated the possibility of running as an independent at the 2003 election. Tate claimed to have been told when approached that Gaudry was planning to retire, and got cold feet when it became apparent that this was not so, and that the Left-controlled local branches still backed Gaudry. Morris Iemma and Mark Arbib then surprised everybody by having the national executive intervene to support a new candidate, 37-year-old former television news reader and public relations consultant Jodi McKay. This the national executive agreed to do, splitting 13-7 in McKay’s favour on factional lines. The reaction in local party circles was typified by former federal Newcastle MP Allan Morris, who wrote first an open letter to Tate criticising his intention to run for Labor, and then a letter to then-federal leader Kim Beazley decrying the installation of McKay. Tate and Gaudry both declared their intention to run as independents, although Gaudry’s hoped dimmed when it emerged he had not told Morris Iemma of the explosive local rumours surrounding Swansea MP Milton Orkopoulos, a colleague of Gaudry in the party’s “soft Left” faction. Gaudry ended up finishing third behind McKay (31.2 per cent) and Tate (24.1 per cent), and his preferences narrowly failed to push Tate ahead of McKay.

• Noosa (Queensland 2006): An unexpected beneficiary of the 2001 and 2004 Beattie landslides, Labor loose cannon Cate Molloy was disendorsed in the lead-up to the September 2006 election due to her public opposition to the government’s dam-building proposals, which extended to leading protest marches and threatening to introduce a private member’s bill. Molloy promptly announced that she would run as an independent, and held off until the campaign before delivering an angrily worded letter of resignation from the Labor Party (from which she was soon to be expelled in any case for running against an endorsed candidate). Molloy finished a fraction behind Labor on the primary vote, 23.7 per cent to 23.6 per cent, overtaking them with Greens preferences. However, Liberal candidate Glen Elmes’ 38.2 per cent primary vote was easily enough to deliver him the seat, with considerable aid from vote-splitting and exhaustion (Queensland also has optional preferential voting) between Molloy and Labor.

NOTE: Do not feel under any obligation to keep this thread on topic.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

284 comments on “Revenge of the nerds”

Comments Page 4 of 6
1 … 3 4 5 6

  2. Lord D,

    I think Gillard would pretty much thrash anyone frontbencher from the Coalition – which is the reason why no one has challenged Gillard to a debate (including Costello).

    A Roxon-Abbott debate would be a sure-fire loser for the Coalition. Abbott would be expected to thrash Roxon, so anything better than that would be a perceptions “win” for Labor. Additionally, Abbott comes across as arrogant on TV, which would be heightened by the debate setting and the contrast with Roxon, whilst voters are already predisposed towards Labor’s health policies compared to the Coalition’s.

  3. The 4.3% who are still unemployed – or any number of the large number of people who still under-employed.

    For example, a few thousand more Doctors whould make a huge difference to the hospital system, but not much dint on the 4.3% unemployed.

    (Pre-emptive rebutal: I’m not suggesting that you train currently unemployed people as Doctors, there’s a cascade effect. Imagine what would happen if you added 1000 places in medicine at University… people who would otherwise have gotten into bio-tech, do medicine, people who would otherwise have done science, get into bio-tech etc.)

    There’s also no reason to assume there are actually more (or less) jobs. The more skilled person might replace a less skilled person – and simply produce more. Or you take an unskilled person, train him and then give him a more advanced version of his old job back that replaces his old job. The same number of people produce more things. This is the essence of the “growth in GDP” part of the argument for more skills training.

  4. Beattie proposed buying out Cubbie Station around 2002, to help with the water crisis. John Anderson of the Nationals was not a supporter of the idea.

    “As far as I am concerned, the proposal as it stands is dead in the water,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services, John Anderson. “In my view, the Cubby Station proposal fails on all counts of transparency, consultation, science effectiveness and value for money”.

    During the 2004 water became an issue, but not as big as now, however there were worries that Howard would use water grant to pork barrell in the 2004 election.

    “Mr Howard told the premiers that he would be prepared to negotiate with them soon on individual water projects – a move premiers speculated could fuel pork-barrelling during the federal election campaign. Areas likely to be considered for federal water project funding include the Namoi Valley, in the electorate of the Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, who, Mr Howard said, had played a pivotal role in reaching yesterday’s agreement.”

    http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/25/1088144980448.html

  6. If Maxine has been briefed and could get the point across then it could be the end of Costello on Tuesday.
    Speak slowly Wayne and repeat…
    Now that I think about it I’d be having Hawke and Keating in the room as guests too, parked right in front of Costello. Hawke’s laugh is worth votes.

  7. Liberal backbenchers must really be considering their options now after this Newspoll. I’ll wager many of them are deleting Howard (and Costello) from their electoral handouts and local advertising for fear of contamination. It might be a bit like ‘go for the lifeboats’ with current Libs trying to shore up their vote with their personal appeal and not much else. Sad really.

  10. Wayne Swan needs to take a bit of a chill pill and slow down the rate at which he speaks.

    He came across as being a bit tense / uptight / over-eager last night on the 7.30 report.

  12. [If Banton joins in advertising in support of the unions that would be a massive blow to the Coalition’s anti-union campaign. They would be in danger of looking like they were trying to pick a fight with Banton, and that wouldn’t go down well at all]

    The flaw of the government’s anti-union campaign is that the world isn’t black and white. Not all unionists are good, but nor are they all bad. It seems to me that the only reason the government is running the anti-union line is that they have nothing left to campaign on. At the current rate of Newspoll shifts Rudd will be even on the economy with Howard, so that is no longer an automatic strength.

  13. Each day Hugh MacKay’s ‘waking up’ hypothesis seems more real [http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/waking-up-scratchy-from-the-dreamy-period/2007/09/14/1189276986753.html]…it’s about 5:30 am, and boy does the sky seem clear in this morning light.

  14. I wonder if any of the MSM comentators, or pollsters, will be bold enough to pick the coming election as a once-a-generation, rather than once-a- decade wipeout? ie 75, not 96 style.

    Im not saying it will be that ( ’96 is probably more likely)- but there’s a good chance. Enough room for a commentator to stake a bold claim, and possibly come up trumps.

    My guess is no – we’ll get boring risk-averse assessment everywhere but here on the blogs.

  16. on Tony Abbot – this morning he said the he and his fellow Libs were not getting the negative feelings whilst out and about in the electorate. Well, perhaps it’s because people are generally polite and wouldn’t talk to/couldn’t be bothered talking to someone they genuinely don’t like. I understand that when campaigning there are generally three types who talk to you: 1) genuine swingers/undecideds, 2) your party faithful 3) the faithful from the other side whose job it is to stop you talking to group 1.

  19. Mr Howard said all the decisions had been made prior to the election being called.

    “Therefore it is a commitment of government,” he said.

    So this is the stuff was about before he called the election.

  20. Shows On @140
    On election night, I don’t use the state swing or the national swing. Every prediction is based on the swing within each seats based on the swing in the booths. If you want to predict into seats with no results, usually later states, I use a regression model based on state, region, past result etc, to apply the swing in the seats received into those not reporting. I’ve never used uniform swing to predict election night. You just use the progressive results.

  21. Though speaking of polite – is it just me or does Mr. Howard seem to be coping a lot more stick on his travels these days. Or is it just that it’s being reported?

    It would be great to get a youtube clip up of collected public jeers directed towards Mr. Howard… though, it might risk ppl very sorry for him. Better to wait for the post-election period of revisionism for that one.

  22. Alex McDonnel @ 157

    I don’t think many backbenchers will be feeling at risk. They’ve been told that their internal polling has them in front and I bet they’d rather believe that. Couple that with anecdotal evidence eg. “I’ve never had any complaints” and statements about how hard they work.

    I remember Matt Price saying that all the Liberal backbenchers he’s spoken to remain confident that they will retain their seats.

  24. A big ommission: The Queensland One Nation Class of ’98.

    A number of them contested their seats as independents in 2001 and some managed to hold their seats.

    Maryborough – John Kingston
    Nanango – Dorothy Pratt, still sitting
    Thuringowa – Santa Claus guy (unsure about this one)

    Gympie – Elissa Roberts, won in 2001 then was re-relected as an Independent

  26. Just saw the headline ‘Crazy John Dead” and first thought… Mr. Howard… don’t do this to me! It was the phone guy though.

  27. [On election night, I don’t use the state swing or the national swing. Every prediction is based on the swing within each seats based on the swing in the booths. If you want to predict into seats with no results, usually later states, I use a regression model based on state, region, past result etc, to apply the swing in the seats received into those not reporting. I’ve never used uniform swing to predict election night. You just use the progressive results.]

    Thank you for your reply.

    So will your computer predictions dynamically feed into the ABC election webpages? Or will you only present this prediction information on TV?

    Is there going to be a single page that will give the current over all seats prediction using the booth-by-booth and demographic swings?

    I usually have about 30 AEC and ABC web pages open tracking what is going on. It would be great to have a single page that has say a picture of the House of Reps chamber, and just shows varying degrees of red and blue based on the data and predictions that are flowing in.

    In previous telecasts you show the chamber image occassionally, but it would be great if there was a webpage where you could just click refresh and see the current state of play whenever you want.

    Yes, I’m suggesting even more work. 😛

  28. I agree the anti-union ploy just won’t work for the Libs. Unions have been around a long time and people are comfortable about them. Howard carries on as if they’re aliens who just arrived on the planet. Similar situation with Howard’s dire warning of wall to wall Labor governments. If all State and Territory governments were Coalition, would Howard be telling us to vote Labor? By railing at State Labor governments, he is indirectly criticising the people of the States who elected these governments. It also highlights the fact that State Liberals are hopeless and couldn’t win a chook raffle.

  29. @86 (in response to Costello modeling himself on Keating as a parliamentary performer) I think this gives Cossie too much credit: he resembles Keating in parliament because that is his natural style, not because he made a conscious decision to project that persona.

    One thing about Keating, though, was that he had different styles for parliament vs. election debates, and it remains to be seen whether Cossie can adapt his style to one more appropriate for the National Press Club (personally, I doubt that he can).

  30. I have been wondering whether, in these Workchoices, scared for your job, benifits etc times, whether people might be thinking:

    “Hmm Unions. Not such a bad idea were they?”

  31. The flaw of the government’s anti-union campaign is that the world isn’t black and white. Not all unionists are good, but nor are they all bad. It seems to me that the only reason the government is running the anti-union line is that they have nothing left to campaign on. At the current rate of Newspoll shifts Rudd will be even on the economy with Howard, so that is no longer an automatic strength.

    The interesting thing here is that there is the potential for Labor to turn the unions into the a negative for *the government* rather than themselves.

    I think the Libs have over-cooked their anti-union line. Most people recognise the important role unions play (case in point: current nurses union action in Victoria).

    When the government attacks the unions it simply reinforces the negative associations of workchoices… ie. that the government is intent on stripping away the rights of everyday blue-collar workers.

    The anti-union line was working well for the Libs up until the weekend. That’s because up until recently they have been able to frame it as “government vs. union bosses”.

    But now they are going to cop it. The unions can turn it around very easily with their advertising, and it will soon become “government vs. the ordinary working class”. The unions will replace images of union thugs with everyday people who are trying to earn a crust. Very hard to counter for the government.

    I think the nurses strike in Victoria is a plus for Labor while the government continues to pursue an anti-union line. Most of the public sides with the nurses, and so this is a very topical and very positive image of unions at work.

    The problem for the Libs is that unions are made up of ordinary people, and not just a bunch of thugs. Once this message comes across more strongly, as the ad campaign kicks in, I think the government will feel a backlash.

    Anti-unionism and Workchoices is going to sink this government.

  35. For all those crunching numbers – what are the chances of Bronnie Bishop being tossed out if NP numbers are repeated on Nov 24? I would love to see her eat dirt!
    Did anyone see her on Sky panel with Mark Arbib the other day mouthing off about not only 70% of Labor front-benchers being union officials but also *socialists* & *collectivists*!!
    Arbib was gobsmacked – I think her and the Mad Monk have been drinking the same bong water recently!

  37. [Isn’t the money for pensioners grab usually made closer to the election?]

    Desperate times / desperate measures.

    Considering this is a re-announcement of something announced a month ago, they could just re-announce it again in the final campaign week!

  39. ShowsOn @177
    You will have a front page like this
    http://www.abc.net.au/elections/vic/2006/results/

    However, we do supress the prediction until I am confident it is correct. If my model is telling one side is winning 76 seats (+ or -3), I’m always more reticent to release it, where if it was 90 (+/-3) I’d be confident on it being published. When the count is 1%, you get a bigger margin of error than when it is 10% or 20%. The closer the election, the longer you have to wait to call the election. On past experience, you can call the majority on 5% counted unless it is going to be close. However, time zones can be a complicating factor at Federal elections.

    Our system has a prediction from the moment votes arrive, but of course, you have to let early figures settle down. For this reason, we supress predictions on individual seats until 10% is counted.

    With the exceptions of the pause on releasing predictions, the numbers published on the ABC website are the same ones I’m using on camera. Every 2-4 minutes we get a sweep of data from the AEC, and after 1-2 minutes, that is parsed out of our database and sent to the ABC website. If I modify anything in my computer on air, such as over-ridding a preference distribution, it is reflected on the website.

    All the predictions in the system are automated using an algorithm I designed when the system was first written in 1991. It’s very rare for me to have to interfere with the automated predictions.

  41. LEPT “I presume some people find Costello entertaining in the same way some people found Keating entertaining. The flip-side is also true.”

    LEPT you can’t compare Costello with Keating!! PK had wit, panche, rhetoric and a very funny sense of humour. Costello has tried to copy PK.
    He can be witty at times, but generally comes across as a smug smart arse. Let alone the smirk……..

    Anyway, Costello has no depth, can’t imagine him delivering the “Redfern Speech”. All tip and no iceberg.

    Here is some vintage PK putting Captain Smirk in his place:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaLLP4sc_6Q

  42. What the hell is Costello doing in Tasmania again?
    Is is just what conservative politicians do when there’s nothing else on (hide)?
    Did they pay for journalists to fly today?

  43. I was watching Swan on the 7.30 report last night and there is a few thing that he needs to address. The first thing is that he talks too fast. He appears to have all this information to get out and it rushes out as he tries to get all of it into the debate.

    He would be better off slowing down and emphasising and developing a couple of salient points, preferably ones that the man in the street can understand. If he gets stuck he can always pick up one of the points he was not intending not to use and develop that thread.

    Secondly, he has a habit of jumping in and answering the question before it is fully asked. Again he would be better off waiting until the question has been fully asked.

    Finally Swan has a habit of smirking himself. It gives me the impression that he is thinking, “what is this idiot talking about”. It is the look a lecturer give a smart-ars know it all in economics 101.

    This might be applicable to Costello but it won’t go down too well with Joe voter.

  44. 164 Lefty E Says: October 23rd, 2007 at 1:00 pm

    I wonder if any of the MSM comentators, or pollsters, will be bold enough to pick the coming election as a once-a-generation, rather than once-a- decade wipeout? ie 75, not 96 style.

    Or Canada circa 1993…

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election%2C_1993

    Progressive Conservatives
    The election was an unmitigated disaster for Canada’s oldest party. Their popular vote plunged from 43% to 16%, and they lost all but two of their 151 seats–far surpassing the Liberals’ 95-seat loss in 1984. It was the worst defeat, both in absolute terms and in terms of percentage of seats lost, for a governing party at the federal level in Canada. It is one of the few occasions that a governing party in any country has gone from a strong majority to being almost wiped off the electoral map.

  46. Will (#145) – thanks for clarifying that the Bruce in ‘Bruce Highway’ was not S.M. Bruce. I could never understand why that highway had been named after a P.M. who apparently made just 4 trips to Queensland in his 6.5 years in office!!!

    Assume the Liberals’ polling is as bad as Newspoll. Is it perhaps possible the truth is being kept from J.W. Howard and other senior Liberals (or perhaps watered-down)? If that seems like a ridiculous suggestion, keep this in mind: I was watching the 1996 election coverage the other night (I keep all election night telecasts, 9 and ABC, on video – its tragic, I know!!!) and late in the night there is this exchange between Laurie Oakes and Gary Gray:

    LO: Did you know tonight’s massacre was coming?

    GG: On the basis of polling over the past few weeks, yes, absolutely

    LO: Did you tell Paul Keating?

    GG: No, there was no point, would hardly help matters

  48. SJP, I’m not arguing with you. I’ve never once found Peter Costello funny. I assume Liberal Party supporters didn’t find Keating all that funny either.

    One thing you can’t really accuse Mr Keating of is being a particularly popular person, and he wasn’t populous. I think parliamentary watchers have been very starved of anything of much interest over the last 11 years.

  49. Simon, thats just Howard still pretending his special relationship with a soon-to-be defunct US regime means squat. Whcih it doesnt. This is his daftest electoral pitch since Incentivation.

    I note he never mentions the FTA anymore. Boy, did we get rogered there.

  50. Antony one of the ongoing rituals of my life involves election nights and your contribution to my experience of the night has been incalculable. I will never forget the introduction of your innovation of matching booth on booth results which took the guesswork out of whether the swing was “real” or not.

    BTW you are very popular amongst a number of my female friends. 🙂

Comments are closed.

Comments Page 4 of 6
1 … 3 4 5 6