Time for a new thread. For the want of anything better to hang it off, I hereby reprint my piece in Crikey last week on prospects for the Senate. This does not mean discussion on this thread need be relevant to this topic.
Like so much else this year, speculation about the Senate election has been guided by “the narrowing”: that mystical force that would drive swinging voters to the Coalition once the campaign focused minds on economic management. It’s now clear to all but a dwindling band of die-hards that this hasn’t happened and isn’t about to.
It is thus necessary to revise the view that the Coalition will be strong enough in the Senate to make life difficult for an incoming Rudd Government. The Liberals and Nationals instead find themselves in danger of losing a swag of seats, which opens up a dizzying range of possibilities for the Greens.
A case in point is Kerry Nettle’s bid for re-election in New South Wales. Earlier in the year it seemed safe to assume there would be a traditional three-all split between left and right, with Nettle fighting a probably losing battle with Labor’s number three, Senator Ursula Stephens. In that context, any improvement in the Labor vote would have been damaging for Nettle. Now it seems Labor might be strong enough to win Stephens a seat without excluding Nettle, perhaps even bequeathing her a measurable surplus as preferences. That would boost Nettle’s chances of overtaking and defeating the Coalition’s third candidate, Senator Marise Payne.
The story is similar in Victoria, given that Labor and the Democrats have thought better of repeating their 2004 preference exchanges with Family First (who nonetheless have a vague chance if they can match their vote at the state election).
There has been a further stroke of good fortune for the Greens with the entry of independent Nick Xenophon in South Australia. Such is Xenophon’s popularity that he looks likely not only to win a quota in his own right, but also to deliver the Greens a substantial surplus. This could help their candidate Sarah Hanson-Young overcome the third Labor candidate, Cathy Perry.
Bob Brown should have no trouble winning a seat in Tasmania, the question being how the remaining five seats will divide between Labor and Liberal. There is familiar talk that Brown might do well enough to also carry running mate Andrew Wilkie over the line, but this at least seems a little too optimistic.
The two states where Labor’s strength does not help the Greens are Western Australia and Queensland. Western Australia does not look likely to produce the huge swing required to cost the Liberals a third seat, so a strong hike in the Labor vote has the potential to squeeze out the Greens. Nonetheless, their candidate Scott Ludlam remains the firm favourite.
Labor is also becoming hopeful of winning a third seat in Queensland, which it has never done before at a six-seat half-Senate election. On the other side of the ledger, there is a chance that the Coalition will lose the seat of Nationals Senator Ron Boswell to Family First, who will harness the entire right-of-centre vote if they get ahead of Pauline Hanson. It’s hard to see how Hanson herself could put a quota together, despite all that has been written about her minor successes in preference negotiations.
The remaining wild card is the Australian Capital Territory, where Greens candidate Kerrie Tucker threatens an historic win at the expense of Liberal incumbent Gary Humphries. This would be especially significant because territory Senators’ terms are tied to the House of Representatives, so that an end to the Coalition’s absolute majority would take effect immediately.
While it is likely that not all of these potential Greens wins will come off, they will probably have around five Senators joining the two continuing from the 2004 election, to be joined on the cross benches by Nick Xenophon and continuing Family First Senator Steve Fielding. The Coalition will be reduced from its current majority of 39 seats out of 76 to around 35, while Labor should increase its current 28 seats by four.
My wife was watching it at the time ( I refuse to listen to anything Howards says anymore and walked out when it was on ) and she reckons it would of turned even the gays off as well. !
ON Channel 10 news Paul Bongiorno just ripped the Libs a new one – “transparent”, “apparently the member in Hinkler is supposed to be working for a agency that no longer exists..”
ALP response is still included in this article on the GG
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22791352-601,00.html
hahahahhaahahaha The Liberal Party’s legal evidence that the Labor candidates are ineligible?
They red it on the Labor party website.
What a bunch of jokers.
i have to say, with the Howard/Costello love-in, the stupid statement by Robb and Howard yesterday promising never ever to repeal, change and virtually set in stone the workchoices legislation for ever (or is that ‘never ever’), it really does seem that their polling must be telling them it’s all over.
Nick @ 41
The Greens have given a public commitment to support Labor’s legislation to get rid of WorkChoices, but the Greens will move amendments to strengthen workers’ rights.
They will be amendments that a lot of unions, who are disappointed wth Labor’s Workchoices lite position, will want.
I hear the creaking sounds of an impending ugly implosion.
Smirk had the interview first on Sky, accusing Labour of not submitting costings and intimating that this was illegal – then came Robb – Smirk couldnt make the accusations, but let it up to Robb to do the dirty work on Newhouse and the other 12 – and intimating this was illegal as well – I wonder why – duhhh
RGee the Democrats that could work well with both sides of politics Liberals and Labor.
Anybody but the Greens, and FF really.
Getting ahead of myself.
Anyone ever seen the original Italian Job? With Michael Caine?
Remember the scene when they pull off the Italian job and news gets back to UK and partic the Mr Big Noel Coward character in jail?
Remember the scene when all the prison inmates chant and bang their pots and chant Mr Big’s name (cant remember what it is exactly) and Mr Big turns to them like he’s onstage after a grand shakespearean performance?
That’l be Rudd on Sat night.
[Anybody but the Greens, and FF really.]
Family First will vote with the Liberals on social issues, and with Labor on economic issues.
Why would the Libs pick someone so unappealing as Robb to go on the news with this? Especially since he’s going to draw fire from the telegenic, articulate Penny Wong.
The whole Robb 13 thing was about Wentworth – shows that they really think they will lose the seat.
Howard and Costello looked like that old gay couple reminiscing on the ‘good old days’, how they survived together in the face of adversity after all those years, stroking up each other egos. For a minute I thought they were about to hold hands. Made me want to vomit. What they forgot to ask was “Peter would you turn gay for Johnnie ” who knows maybe he already has.
Haven’t heard from Adam for a few days….
Centrebet now Maxine 2.2, Rattie 1.60, the narrowing, the narrowing.
114: Dinsdale Piranha
Check a few of the old threads.
He said he’d be too busy to contribute until the election.
Rates Analyst, reply from the previous thread.
The North Sydney Poll was reported on the Blog http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/728
Adelaide Advertiser Polls, showing a 10% swing to Labor in Hindmarsh and 14% in Adelaide.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,22638480-5006301,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,22649966-5006301,00.html
I predict the outer suburban electorates will hold up for the government, while much more safer inner city ones fall to Labor. Say the Liberals in Victoria retaining Latrobe, while losing Kooyong and maybe Higgins. The inner city small ‘l’ Liberal progressives have been wanting to stick it into the Howard government for ages, now they will.
Robb’s legal advise is worth as much as Turnbull’s Rain Machine.
Oh look, only 545pm and already its a “major embarrassment for the LIbs”. As predicted.
Their useless campaign team needs to be taken to the knackery.
As I said in the other thread if Newhouse wins Wentworth and they force a byelection the only result is to make the seat safer for him.
After all this is what happened in Lindsay in 1996. As William himself has stated.
Labor’s Ross Free held Lindsay by margins of around 10 per cent throughout the Hawke-Keating years, having previously been member for Macquarie from 1980.
He was most unpleasantly surprised to find himself voted out in 1996, following an epochal 11.9 per cent swing to Liberal candidate Jackie Kelly.
Free was able to secure a re-match because Kelly, who did not expect to win, had failed to get her affairs in order before nominating (she was still serving as an RAAF officer, an “office for profit under the Crown”). Voters dragged back to the polls on a technicality rewarded Free with a further 6.8 per cent drop in the primary vote, and Kelly picked up another 5.0 per cent on two-party preferred.
The combined 16.9 per cent swing to the Liberals meant the electorate’s demographic profile came to be seen as typifying John Howard’s constituency – high numbers of skilled workers on good incomes, low levels of tertiary education and a distinctly less multicultural flavour than suburbs closer to the city.
116, i put on a bet at $2.70 ill be a happy man if the rodent loses his seat
If the Libs had just gone after Newhouse they MAY have been able to make a case or at least give the impression they had one, but as usual they went too far and included 12 others. Now, because they’ve been found out to be wrong on these 12, their case against Newhouse is obliterated along with the 12.
The Libs are covered in it and the steam is arising.
“Why would the Libs pick someone so unappealing as Robb to go on the news with this?”
When you look at the alternatives available they probably drew his name out of a hat.
Has Loughnane been boned and Robb is now running the show? 😛
Thanks Tristan
To all those Labor hacks here, what evidence has your HQ put out that proves that these nominations were legal?
This talk of previously safe liberal seats looking risky while holding on to the spiv vote is very similar to what happened in the US from the 1960s onwards. The democrats were once the party of the rural south, while the republicans were the party of old money and industry in the north. Civil rights, Vietnam and oil shocks changed all that, and now, as we know, the “red states” are in the south and the democrats hold the north east, north west and California
Are we witnessing an “inversion” in Australia?
A-C, The burden of proof lies with Robb.
A-C
How does a candidate resign from a position that no longer exists?
A-C@128, Half of the organisations the Libs are saying the candidates work for don’t even EXIST any longer.
what was that site that was going to have booth by booth results on saturday night?
it really is no surprise that this mean and vicious group of ‘born-to-rulers’ would be mean and viscous right up to the bitter end – they should all go home and write an essay about dignity. They certainly aren’t going to bow out graciously…
[To all those Labor hacks here, what evidence has your HQ put out that proves that these nominations were legal?]
The fact the Liberal’s evidence is a webpage!
[what was that site that was going to have booth by booth results on saturday night?]
http://www.orgburo.com/elections/
The last time a defendant was required to disprove allegations was the Spanish Inquisition….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZQI0Xm29To
My HoR and senate prediction as entered into the Crikey tipping competition. I used the Roy Morgan senate poll to get my senate results so I will probably be way off 🙂
http://australiavotes2007.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-prediction.html
“(Centrebet CEO) Mr Kafataris said he was surprised by the volume of election betting taking place.
“In one hour this morning, we took $120,000 on Labor from $1.20 to $1.17 and $100,000 on the Coalition at around $5.”
“It’s unbelievable … the interest in it.”
“The election book is our biggest turnover book of the year. We would hold upwards of $4 to $5 million on the event.”
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=104544
This farce and further loss of a day to put out any positive messages was authorised by B Loughnane, Liberal Party, Canberra.
Am I right to assume this whole candidacy thing has been overblown and will be quickly forgotten?
“In what is likely to prove as a major embarrassment for Liberal Party campaign spokesman Andrew Robb….”
Herald Sun tells the truth….
109
Glen Says:
November 20th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
RGee the Democrats that could work well with both sides of politics Liberals and Labor.
Anybody but the Greens, and FF really
————————————————-
That is complete nonsense – the Democrats concur with the greens on like 95% of issues. Therefore if the Greens are radical, so are the Democrats, and so are the scientists that provide the foundation for their policies. If anything, The Coalition should be getting a battering from the media on their ‘dirty’ labelling.
[Am I right to assume this whole candidacy thing has been overblown and will be quickly forgotten?]
They have legal opinion for Wentworth, the 12 other allegations are just fear, uncertainty, and doubt based on Labor candidate resumes. It doesn’t take into account whether or not they have resigned. It just says sometime in their past they had government jobs.
Hi all can’t stay long but this was in Crikey today:
2. The Kevin conundrum
Christian Kerr writes:
The most interesting poll appears only after a federal election. It is the Australian National University’s Australian Electoral Survey.
It asks: “When did you decide how you would definitely vote in this election?”
In 2004, 14.2% of respondents answered “A few days before the election”, with 8.6% saying they only made up their minds on the day. That means that at this stage in the last campaign, more than one in five voters had not yet made up their minds.
We are four days away from the election. All the polls point to a Labor win. But what if they are missing something? Labor only needs a swing of 4.8% to win government, but if things are like last time more than 20% of the electorate are yet to decide how they are going to vote.
Last week many papers ran photos of Kevin Rudd in his school nerd days, as captain of the Nambour High debating team. He seems to have forgotten one crucial lesson from back then. You can make a fantastic case in a debate, but if you do not rebut your opponents’ arguments you simply will not win.
There is a real danger in Rudd’s election strategy. He says he will barely change a thing. So why should voters change the government?
Crikey’s Morgan polling tries to identify “soft” Labor voters, people who believe the country is heading in the right direction, but still say they are voting Labor.
There are plenty of them. According to Morgan’s most recent face-to-face poll, 21% of all electors are soft Labor voters. What if they change their minds?
The polls say we will elect a Labor government, but they also say we believe the Liberals are superior economic managers, even after the recent interest rate rise. That contradicts political logic.
“I can’t explain why they are going to throw the government out,” one Labor MP told me last week. “I have a nagging worry they won’t.”
“They like the message, but they don’t like the messenger,” a senior Liberal staffer said of their research into voters’ views.
“They don’t like Howard, they don’t like Costello but they like the government and like Rudd,” another explained.
“Rudd’s popular, but he hasn’t made a case for change,” a minister claimed.
Liberal MPs say that they have not picked up any real anger with the government, yet report a desire for change. That is the conundrum of this campaign.
Kevin Rudd has said he is an economic conservative. For most of the time he has been Labor leader, he has gone out of his way to minimise the policy differences between his party and the Liberals. So if Rudd represents no change – or little change – why change governments? It would just be change for change’s sake.
Australians are conservative about changing federal governments. We have only done it five times since World War II, and never when the economy looks so robust.
Will the undecided voters back the government? Will the soft Labor voters stop their flirtation? The ANU’s Ian McAllister says undecided voters “tend to be swayed by policies, they tend to be swayed by their own particular economic self-interest”.
He describes them as “people who are making much more rational calculating decisions about their votes”.
Or will the votes of people yet to make up their minds likely to follow the direction the polls have pointed in all year? We will have the answer soon enough.
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Channel 7 news Melbourne was on Workchoices and a cover up by the Libs and nothing else. Fantastic.
John of Melbourne, it’s quite well known psychologically that people say they make up their minds in the last days or on their way just so it sounds like their open to the suggestion of changing their mind.
In actual fact there’s very little difference between polling aggregates and the final result.
Gary Bruce, it was the same with 9 news. Of course we can expect screaming headlines in the News Ltd tabloids tomorrow:
“RUDD SHOCK: 13 CANDIDATES CAN’T BE ELECTED, FIND OUT IT ONE IS YOURS”
William – another suggestion to save on bandwidth – have the site default to the last page of comments, not the first, after someone posts a comment. Otherwise you automatically incur two page views (one to load the first page, another to get to the most recent page).
A-C your obvious anger over how the Libs have stuffrd this up is understandable.