What is to be done

What I don’t know about the Liberal Party could fill a warehouse, but most of the prescriptions outlined by Michael Kroger on Sky News on Tuesday accord with my prejudices:

The organisational wings around the country need to be reformed immediately, particularly in relation to the branch structure and preselections. There’s a lot of things that can be done, very quickly. The party is in a terrible electoral position, but it can very quickly put itself into a fantastic position. This is not a five or ten year repair job. You could actually fix all the organisational and structural problems in the Liberal Party within 12 months if you had the will to do it, and make whoever the incoming leader is in a fantastic position to fight the next federal election in three years’ time. But what tends to happens is people retreat to their corners, they want to protect their own power bases and nothing happens. It requires some strong decision-making from the senior people to fix this thing, they can fix it in 12 months … The branch structure is 60 years old and even though the branch members still do a fantastic job, it’s the structure, not the branch members, it’s the structure which is drowning us. We’ve got probably 500 people in the Victorian Liberal Party whose job is as honorary auditor … There need to be branch amalgamations, we need to base the party around state or federal electorates, you need to broaden the base of people voting in preselections, you need to have perhaps a senior committee of senior party people who have the final say over preselections to rubber stamp the selections, you’ve got to stop the petty branch stacking, we should amalgamate with the National Party, we should give the federal party some more power a little like the ALP does, we should make it a federalist party and not just individual states, we need to totally revamp the fundraising within the organisation and we need to give the federal executive some power … you just can’t have situations where five or 10 or 20 people can stack a few branches and take over a safe Liberal Party seat and preselect a C-grade candidate and be happy with that. I pay credit to the Labor Party for some of the candidates they preselected, I don’t like their politics, but the fact is in various places they strong-armed some tired old members out, put some new people in who may or may not succeed but on the face of it some of them have got very good credentials for parliament. That’s the way you have to operate in politics. To leave these things to the branch-stackers is a recipe for disaster.

Malcolm Turnbull – wealthy, assertive, independently powerful – struck me as being just the man for the job outlined by Kroger. Perhaps the party room knows better. Or perhaps, to use Kroger’s formulation, they have signalled an intention to retreat to their corners and protect their own power bases, and nothing will happen.

Recommended reading: Alister Drysdale of the Business Spectator reports that both parties’ internal polling showed a late Coalition recovery that was stopped dead in its tracks by the Lindsay pamphlet disgrace. It’s also argued that the fake Jeff Kennett letter regarding proposed funding cuts to the states had the same impact during the last week of the 1996 campaign. I personally do not imagine that either incident was single-handedly decisive, but this is not the first report to emerge of a sharp shift in party tracking polling following Jackie Kelly’s infamous “Chaser-style prank” interview of last Wednesday. There’s also a very intriguing article on the Liberal Party’s late-term leadership ructions from Pamela Williams in today’s Financial Review (subscriber only unfortunately).

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.

1,042 comments on “What is to be done”

Comments Page 17 of 21
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  1. RE CALARE
    this seat could be close depending on who finishes third labor or indep
    The people in half this seat were represented by Mr Andren previously
    maybe the green & other non major party voters might allocate prefernces so as
    to try and ensure Mr Cobb doesn’t win
    Does any one know?

  2. 762 Doug Says:

    Has anyone had a close look at the counting in Calare?

    Does anyone know about Green preferences in Calare?

    The GRN preferenced the independent before the CLP.

    The total Ind+GRN vote is 19672 to the CLP’s 18,556. If the GRN preferences are tight and CLP somehow managed to figure out that they should preference the ind before Cobb then it might be interesting.

    The ALP’s HTV is no longer available online so has anybody got any info on that.

  3. Albert Ross, it’s a fairly safe bet that Labor (what is this ‘Country Labor’ rubbish, btw?) preferenced Peter Andren’s chosen successor ahead of John Cobb.

  4. RE CALARE
    I cannot locate the state wide how to vote But I would be sure MR Priestly
    would have been placed ahead of Mr cobb…. so if things stay as they are
    Mr cobb would lose

  6. RE 805 thank you… As I suspected maybe Calare will again return an independent
    which would make only 9 nat party mps and be a fitting tribute to Mr Andren

  7. Robertson down to a 270 vote lead from 296 last night. It will only take one large batch of nursing home votes from here ….

  9. Having screen scraped the data.. Here is the current summary of what the AEC has recorded in their Divisional scrutiny summaries (space delimited).. by STATE

    Absent Provisional Pre-Poll Postal Total
    ACT 6469 5448 60258 24448 75518
    NSW 551406 96121 874657 549851 929386
    VIC 403605 77926 787259 613826 830780
    QLD 360848 70676 406683 443882 551200
    WA 222219 43851 181614 102087 233781
    SA 137242 28526 136410 149080 206503
    TAS 46868 8646 51341 52081 61440
    NT 4511 4222 38103 8196 24338

  11. ESJ at 807: I dunno why you would say that. The TPP vote in the two larger SHTs was 50/50.

    Mind you if Lloyd does get up there will be a bright side: it will hopefully see the demise of Mrs Della Bosca’s political fantasies.

    However I suspect that they will have to drive a golden stake through her heart to make sure she is truly politically dead.

  12. ABC Radio News said there are still 10,000 votes to count in McEwen. I suspect Fran Bailey will hold on, but the Labor bloke is making a spirited comeback.
    Robertson: how many left to count there? Belinda will hold on, I predict!
    Doesn’t seem there will be any counting today in the doubtful QLD seats.

  14. OK here is the correct breakdown. There should not be any more votes issued but more postals can be received back (not sure as to the cut off-date)

    StateID, Categrory, SumOfAbsentee SumOfPostal SumOfPre_poll SumOfProvisional SumOfTotal
    ACT, Envelopes Issued, 3458 10654 27771 2724 44607
    ACT, Envelopes Received, 1618 9794 16775 2724 30911
    ACT, Rejected at Preliminary Scrutiny, 22 11 21 0 0
    NSW, Envelopes Issued, 275610 236711 369116 47949 929386
    NSW, Envelopes Received, 249445 204797 305943 47949 808134
    NSW, Rejected at Preliminary Scrutiny, 132 300 221 8 0
    NT, Envelopes Issued, 2002 3054 17171 2111 24338
    NT, Envelopes Received, 2002 3519 15019 2111 22651
    NT, Rejected at Preliminary Scrutiny, 11 2 4 0 0
    QLD, Envelopes Issued, 163895 182412 169555 35338 551200
    QLD, Envelopes Received, 136859 142403 137340 35338 451940
    QLD, Rejected at Preliminary Scrutiny, 401 203 65 0 0
    SA , Envelopes Issued, 70237 64603 57400 14263 206503
    SA , Envelopes Received, 64643 46872 42895 14263 168673
    SA , Rejected at Preliminary Scrutiny, 8 35 68 0 0
    TAS, Envelopes Issued, 16938 19335 21003 4164 61440
    TAS, Envelopes Received, 16887 17517 17526 4164 56094
    TAS, Rejected at Preliminary Scrutiny, 591 168 51 106 0
    VIC, Envelopes Issued, 216572 249413 325832 38963 830780
    VIC, Envelopes Received, 173964 208692 266887 38963 688506
    VIC, Rejected at Preliminary Scrutiny, 39 259 354 0 0
    WA , Envelopes Issued, 107115 29224 75619 21823 233781
    WA , Envelopes Received, 83137 36527 60806 21823 202293
    WA , Rejected at Preliminary Scrutiny, 121 39 40 8 0

  16. Julie Says:
    November 30th, 2007 at 6:27 am

    Problem with Latham et. al (Beazely, Crean) was a leadership issue. Those in the party never felt 100% comfortable with any of them. Thus they couldn’t be effectively sold to the electorate. Had they had an effective leader at any of the 4 elections Howard won, he wouldn’t have been in power for so long..

    Julie I would argue the labor party made their choices, it was the electorate that wasn’t comfortable.

    It’s the same with the liberal party, if they want to govern they have to select someone the electorate is comfortable with. I would suggests that is a centralist.

    To get elected the labor party had to get over class politics, they did, they had to give the left representation in proportion to the vote they bring ( as they have nowhere to go, thats very little); they have. To get elected the liberal party has to get over class politics; they haven’t, and they have to give the right representation in proportion to the vote they bring, not done.

  17. ESJ says in an earlier post

    “Essentially I agree with the Latham hypothesis that organised politics in this country is broken.

    Unfortunately because of his own bitterness that thoughtful message has been lost on people”

    Edward – I knew if I kept at it long enough I would find something that you and I could agree on. It WAS a thoughtful – and in my opinion -accurate reflection by Latham. Just a pity that his emotional failings ended up with him being labelled a nutter, which he clearly isn’t.

    By the way, since today is apparently your swan song on this site, may I wish you the best of luck in all your future pursuits.

  18. Im my opinion…

    With McEwen with lets say 10,000 votes to go. There should be more Absent & Prov vs Pre-Poll & Postals. However even if we use a 50/50 allocation for each group holding the same current vote percentages 60/40 & 45/55 ALP split for each group respectively…loooks like its ALP at around 50.4% (at least). Hopefully this is real and not a bunchof silly numbers.

  19. ESJ,

    I am out celebrating Labor’s victory tonight so will miss your valedictory.

    Whether you are exiling yourself to Antarctica to win “the battle of ideas” with the local penguins or have decided to make your fame and fortune in the new Labor Utopia, farewell and best regards.

    PS Are you Caroline Overington?

  20. The “narrowing” appears to be in the postal votes. On election night it was 53.5% odd TPP to Labor. This was in line with the last minute polls, but also the earlier polls that Newspoll and AC Nielsen had (54-46). These were somewhat meaningless though, since the Libs had locked in a lot of their vote through early postals. The fact that only 75-80% of the vote is now cast on election day is disturbing.

    Rightly or wrongly, the Coalition seems to have had a massive postal vote. This may be due to “stuffing” by sitting Coalition MPs or due to factors when the postal votes were cast weeks in advance (eg. Lib tax cuts) – but who can say. Nonetheless, it does smell fishy. And it’s now these postal votes that are winding back what appeared to be certain Labor wins last Saturday night. It has now brought the TPP for Labor under 53%. Please see http://www.aec.gov.au for the latest results. The ABC computer has been bouncing seats back and forth all week based on strange and inconsistent postal vote figures.

    This is why Liberal insiders were talking about winning with 48% TPP. They were not going to do it just through clever “electoral math” (ie. Labor swings in the wrong places) but with their (legitimate or otherwise) postal vote advantage. A 51.5-48.5 ish count on election night, could have been wound back and won for the Liberals on postals during the weeks after. It was only when they got 46.5% on election night did they have to concede because their postal votes that they had counted via the electoral offices wouldn’t be enough to wind back a Labor victory.

    The AEC needs to either ban postal votes, or reform the system such that MPs are not allowed to send out postal vote applications. It gives incumbents an unfair advantage, and also is open to abuse, given that the applications go via an electoral office. (Talk about putting the fox in charge of the hen house!) I dare say the Coalition electoral office shredders probably favour certain postal vote applications over others…

    Call me a conspiracy theorist, but even if there wasn’t foul play, the postal vote system is dangerous and always has been. Even President Kennedy in the US played this game in West Virginia. There’s also been cases in the UK in 2005, where incumbent Labour has been using it to its advantage. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4408101.stm

    Pre-polling places are a much better idea and are under tight AEC control, just like the polling places on election day. We are getting to be a very lazy society when now we even want to vote from home… Time to rethink postals.

  21. Based on similar thoughts for Robertson but a 60/40 group split of 5000 vote estimate with same current % prefs…thtas at least 50.3 for ALP

  22. McEwen 2004:
    Ordinary: 70,428 (Lib 39,302, 55.8%, ALP 31,126, 44.2)
    Absent: 6,188 (Lib 3,468, 56.0%, ALP 2,720 44.0%)
    Provisional 553 (Lib 316, 57.1%, ALP 237, 42.9%)
    Prepoll 3,451 (Lib 2,108, 61.1%, ALP 1,343 38.9%)
    Postal 6,798 (Lib 4,128, 60.7%, ALP 2,670 39.3%)

    McEwen 2007:
    Ordinary 74,692 (Lib 37,056, 49.6%, ALP 37,636, 50.4%)
    Absent 2,070 (Lib 802, 38.7%, ALP 1,268 61.3%)
    Provisional not counted
    Prepoll 2,441 (Lib 1,344, 55.1%, ALP 1,097, 44.9%)
    Postal 7,004 (Lib 3,957, 56.5%, ALP 3,047, 43.5%)

    Thus, the only reason Bailey is ahead is that she did well on the prepolls and postals. Presumably most of these are now counted, although the prepoll is lower than last time which seems odd given that enrolment has increased by 9,000. Bailey will probably maintain her edge in whatever postals are still to come in. There are 4,000 fewer absents than last time, so presumably the bulk of the uncounted votes are absents. Labor is doing very well on these and if they get can indeed get 61% of these 4,000 votes they will win, but that can’t be assumed. Nevertheless Labor seems likely to have the advantage of the late count from here.

  23. John Ryan…in the future postals will disappear and become internet votes. Having said that, I dont believe the voting pattern for incumbants will really change.

  26. I don’t think people trust the integrity of internet voting sufficiently to allow online voting from home. Online voting at the polling booth is another matter.

  27. I have noted with some interest how much more it has been raining in the eastern states since last Saturday.

    Just like when Hawkie won in ’83.

    Precipitation will ALWAYS be higher under a Labor government!

  31. I would be in favour of interweb tube broadbeany thingy voting IF and its a big IF there was a verifiable audit trail for all votes.

    Until then I think the system we have is OK.

  32. John Ryan (820) As an ex AEC person, I share your concern about the current trend in postal voting. I think it is outrageous the way the major parties have become involved in the process, sending out postal vote applications to all and sundry like confetti – and then interposing themselves between the voter and the AEC when the votes are returned. It should be a requirement that all postal votes must be posted directly to the AEC, not via the local member’s office.

    This is something that crept in about 15 years ago ago and both the Labor and Liberal parties have since been up to their necks in it. They have turned it into an art form – and the number of postals now issued at each election has got completely out of control. I don’t agree that the parties would ever deliberately tamper with votes, but there is always the possiblity they with lose or misplace them.

    It isn’t possible to completely ban postal votes, as they serve a valuable purpose for people travelling overseas and for the elderly, or disabled, who cannot get to a polling place. But something needs to be done to try and get some sanity back into the whole thing. Unfortunately, the only ones who can fix it – the two major parties – are having too much fun trying to gain an advantage over each other, to want to do anything about it. So I guess for now we’re stuck with it.

  34. John Ryan @820…don’t forget retirement villages ,nursing homes,etc.
    Agree open to abuse, as is proposed electronic voting if US is any indication.

  37. There is something very civic and engaging about election day. It is a great democratic symbol and would be a pity if it disappeared into virtual world. How very olde worlde of me…

  43. Darn, postal votes are NOT posted to local members’ offices. They are posted by the AEC to the voter, and by the voter directly back to the AEC. It’s the postal vote APPLICATION that is sent back to the member’s (or candidate’s) office. The only time an actual ballot paper is seen by a member or candidate or their staff is when a postal voter asks for help filling it out, as elderly RPVs often do.

  45. Adam (843) Thanks for reminding me of that. It still does bother me though the extent to which the parties have become involved in the process.

  48. Albert Ross (846) RPV stands for Registered Postal Voter. These are people who register with the AEC to have their ballot papers automatically sent to them whenever an election is called, without having to fill out a postal vote application.

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