Post-match report: South Australia

Welcome to episode two in the slower-than-anticipated Post-Match Report round-up of federal electorate results, which today brings us to South Australia.

Of the three seats that were highly marginal for the Liberals going into the election, Kingston emerged with the smallest Labor margin following a relatively subdued 4.5 per cent swing. The swing was reasonably consistent throughout the electorate, though slightly heavier at Morphett Vale and the Liberal-voting suburbs to the north than along the coast. Makin produced the third biggest swing in the state, perhaps boosted by the retirement of sitting member Trish Draper, with the 0.9 per cent margin obliterated by an evenly distributed 8.6 per cent shift to Labor. In Wakefield the swing was 7.3 per cent, which was markedly lower than in the small towns in the north of the electorate than in the low-income outer Adelaide centres of Elizabeth and Salisbury.

Only at four of Boothby‘s 42 booths did Nicole Cornes achieve a swing greater than the 5.4 per cent needed to win the seat. All were in strong Liberal areas, including the coast around Brighton and the Adelaide Hills suburb of Flagstaff Hill. Labor’s worst results came in the area closest to the city, with swings to the Liberals recorded at Mitcham, Myrtle Bank, Kingswood and Hawthorn West. The Greens’ vote picked up 3.1 per cent, perhaps benefiting from embarrassment surrounding Cornes’s performance. In Sturt the Labor candidate Mia Handshin picked up a close-but-no-cigar swing of 5.9 per cent that was concentrated in the heavily mortgaged northern end of the electorate, with swings near or above 10 per cent at Dernancourt, Gilles Plains and Windsor Gardens. Pyne now sits on an uncomfortable margin of 0.9 per cent.

The 7.2 per cent swing in Adelaide was slightly higher than the state average of 6.8 per cent, and was driven in remarkable degree by the stronger Labor areas to the north and north-west of the city. The swings in many of these booths cracked double figures, whereas the strong Liberal booths to the north-east and south-east of the city mostly came in at well under half that. Labor’s Hindmarsh MP Steve Georganas also had a much more relaxing election night this time around after prevailing by 108 votes in 2004, picking up a 5.0 per cent swing that was fairly evenly distributed throughout the electorate.

Labor’s biggest swing in South Australia was wasted in the safe Liberal rural seat of Barker, where Liberal member Patrick Secker went to preferences for the first time since 1998 after his primary vote fell from 53.2 per cent to 46.8 per cent. Labor was up 8.6 per cent on the primary vote and 10.4 per cent on two-party preferred. Swings were larger in the bigger centres than the small rural booths: all five Mount Gambier booths produced above average swings, peaking at a remarkable 21.4 per cent at Mount Gambier North. Talk of a swing in Grey big enough to endanger the Liberals was partly borne out by double-digit swings in the seat’s traditional Labor centres of Whyalla, Port August and Port Lincoln. Swings were much more gentle in the many smaller rural and remote booths, dampening the overall shift down to an insufficient but still severe 9.4 per cent.

Alexander Downer’s seat of Mayo followed the statewide trend in swinging to Labor by 6.5 per cent. Particularly heavy swings were recorded at the southern coastal towns of Victor Harbor and Goolwa. Nine years after coming within an ace of winning the seat, the Australian Democrats can now manage only 1.5 per cent. The Greens did well to increase 3.4 per cent to 11.0 per cent, partly assisted by the donkey vote. Another good seat for the Greens was Port Adelaide, where they picked up 3.3 per cent and boosted Labor from a 3.7 per cent increase on the primary vote to 6.8 per cent on two-party preferred. Remarkably, all but one of the 10 booths in Paralowie, Salisbury and Parafield to the east of Port Wakefield Road produced a double digit swing, a trend which carried over into neighbouring Makin. Swings in booths further west varied around the 4 per cent mark.

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.

557 comments on “Post-match report: South Australia”

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  1. Brenton- Phil Robins, Thankyou for your story about Gough. I only have 3 Australian political heroes. Gough Whitlam, Don Dunstan and Bob Brown. Gough is a legend!!!!!

    Could not agree more, they’d be the three i’d pick. How about those shirts Don used to wear? Pretty snazzy!

  2. 445 Phil-While it is wonderful to see Dante quoted on Poll Bludger, and each year of the Rodent’s reign could be a circle of Hell, don’t forget that Dante and Virgil went to Purgatory before reaching Heaven. And Virgil had to leave Dante behind at the entrance to Heaven…

  3. Hi Molotov, you may be interested to know that Flinders University has a special collections room for Don Dunstan and several of those famous safari suits are there as well!

  4. @ 404 Work To Rule Says:

    We’re all still learning that broadcasts that started with “the prime minister said today….” means you no longer have to brace yourself for some twisted Textor-Crosby dog whistle sound bite.

    So right. As Phil quoted at 445 it is truly that E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.

    I was given MacCallum’s book for the midwinter festival and a great read it is but it is hampered by poor editing in some places and the lack of any sort of index which is unforgivable in this computerized age. It is eminently more readable than anything by Bob Elils except perhaps for his 1983 An Election Journal: The Things We Did Last Summer which I shall reread once I have located it on the bookshelves here at Chez Ross. Mind you Ellis may be alright in small doses – there’s a collection of his essays at http://www.bobellis.com.au/ or more directly (revealing Bob for the parsimonious cheapskate he is: http://members.iinet.com.au/~senagal@ihug.com.au/articles.htm ) which are diverting.

  5. Furthermore 436 Senate Watch, now seen as even more heartless, upon my 435.

    ‘would have you thing that the Greens are beyond criticism and a protected political species’.

    Your virulence and your argument suggest that, whilst the Greens do not enjoy the former, it may yet be necessary to consider the latter, should your view be representative.

    Would you bait them, chop them, burn them, pulp them?

    Shame that your invective cannot be directed to some of the deserving.

    Are you Family First? Pauline? Even best case, Liberal? Be any of those or whatever you choose, but what is your problem?

    The Greens, as applies to the above, are legitimate electoral candidates, and as you point out, hardly the majority government.

    Should you be confident of your statistics, have no fear.

    And as your mother said, stop doing that!

  6. Greetings from foreign parts, Bludgers. I read Mungo’s book on the plane and laughed all the way. I think they were about to call the sky marshalls. He hasn’t lost his touch. Labor Right types like me will have to put with a certain amount of Whitlamite nostalgia and several pages of crap about the Martyr Hicks (whose old classmates have so gloriously murdered Benazir Bhutto), but apart from that it’s highly recommended summer reading.

  7. Rann-Labor would have to do something totally disastrous to lose the next SA election. The SA Liberal Party is so antiquated, full of the same old Liberal family names and ofcourse a growing number of fundamentalist Christian candidates, that the South Australian voting public know well and truly that the Liberal Party has not ventured into the 21st century! The social policies of the Liberal Party are so conservative, so outdated and they havent yet realised to win government, you have to win electorates in the city of Adelaide which has over 1 million, culturally diverse people. The Liberal Party think everyone votes about ‘money’ and that is as about as far as any of their policies go! It is actually embarrassing to witness the demise of this political party around Australia. Unfortunately, Liberals truly believed that John Howard’s 1950’s attitudes were what Australians wanted, but look in reality at how many seats the Liberal Party holds in both Federal and State Parliaments. The Liberals are totally out of touch with modern Australian society.

  8. Albert Ross @455. I met Bob Ellis during the election campaign whilst he was on a visit to Queanbeyan. I have always admired his prose, if not always his message. He was very pleasant to speak to, and told me he was writing a book on the campaign and aftermath. It should be worth a look on publication.

    Whatever your feelings on Bob, he is definitely a “true believer”.

  9. GG – enjoying your cricket commentary very much.

    Jen – enjoying everything you post.

    Re St. Gough – he was asked a few years ago what he thought of Malcolm Fraser now. Answer : “He’s improving”. And I believe he has claimed the seating position of the left-hand of God in Heaven when he gets there.

    William – do you need any more dough to keep this chat thread going?

  10. 456 Crikey –
    MelbCity/SenateWatch (what’s he watching in the Senate?) is actually Labor right

    450 Molotov –
    The Greens have never experienced a severe voting % drop, like One Nation or the Democrats

  11. Sean, 462, you are absolutely correct. The Greens vote has been building slowly , election by election. Very committed voters. Also, thanks to all of those very expensive Anti-Green publications, the vote is gradually rising even quicker. I met an elderly lady at the bus-stop just before polling day. Like a lot of older people they dont beat around the bush! The lady asked me who I was going to vote for? I told her and waited for a perhaps negative reaction. I asked her the same. I was surprised. She said “The Greens”! Then she told me that (over several elections )the first time that she received an anti-Greens pamphlet she believed it! The second time she studied it more and looked up the website of the Greens . The last time she decided that the Greens were the only party that she wanted to vote for! I was quite taken aback by all of this. So please Liberal Party and the Exclusive Brethren , please keep printing more of those pamphlets. Nothing like free publicity! And as dear Oscar said , it is better to be talked about than not talked about!

  12. Can’t believe those wascally gweens were mean to you MelbCity! 🙁 If you keep being a boring moron, that’ll get them back.

  13. Melb City/ senate watch…get over it. I hope the Greens go from strength to strength unlike The Exclusive Brethren, Family First and Pauline.

  14. It’s probably worth recalling, and its irony won’t be missed by anyone, but George W Bush was interviewed before his first election “win”, and one of the questions was “who is the president of Pakistan?”

    Needless to say, he had no idea, and billions of US dollars pumped into the place later, he must be wondering what to do now with this clumsy dictator.

    It seems that Bush has had two policies for dealing with the fractious Muslim world: drop bombs on it, or drop money on it, (or do both). Neither has been very succesful, either alone or in combination, and now Bush finds he has another dubious dictactor that he’s supported but who has played his own game while paying lip-service to any notion of democracy.

    Bhutto’s egomania, confrontation with the military, and need to revenge her father was always a dangerous and heady mix, and those close to her knew that she stood a much better than even chance of becoming a casualty in a country that seems poised on the brink.

    I suspect that Bush thought backing Bhutto was going to get him out of the dilemma of being beholden to Musharraf forever, and that her pro-Western attitudes would be easy to work with. It wasn’t going to be, and if the lunatic fundamentalists didn’t get her, then the ISI (Secret Service, lot of pro-Taliban sympathies) certainly would. Now it seems the question is why was there hopelessly inadequate security around her? And of course Musharraf is going to look culpable no matter what the facts of her assasination.

    Of course another irony in all this relates to Bush’s neocon obsession with Iran, about which George was conjuring with world war three, just a few short weeks ago. But just look at Pakistan: armed with nukes and missiles, politically on the boil, and jihadis building up more and more audacious attacks each month.

    Now, tell me, what was the urgent problem with Iran again? Proving once again (as if we needed any more of it!) that the Bush administration is just floundering in the fog of its own ineptness.

  15. KR. Great post.

    I don’t suppose GWB ever pauses to think about how much stronger his position in the middle east might be if there was just one reliable bulwark against Islamic extremism in the area. A place like Iraq under Saddam, perhaps?

  16. Ive studied, researched and published on the human rights abuses of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Ive interviewed in excess of 100 Iraqi refugees on their experiences of torture.

    In sum, Im not some distant lefty newpaper-reading critic of the US intervention, and have heard personal stories of Ba’athist abuses that would curl your toes.

    And yet I have no hesitation is saying the human rights situation is now incomparably worse in Iraq.

    Gulf War 2 must and will be recalled as an unmitigated human disaster on every score.

  17. 471
    Mike Cusack

    It’s been a tragedy to watch the hundreds of billions of bucks squandered in Iraq, to say nothing of the millions of lives dislocated and traumatised in this folly, while all the while Afghanistan and Pakistan were crying out for real, instead of ersatz, attention.

    I’ve just read yet another good article by Juan Cole:

    (http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/12/27/bhutto/)

    …where he makes the comaprison between Musharraf and the Shah of Iran. My god, who said history does not repeat, it just rhymes?

    His main point is what is George’s Plan B? ‘Coz he sure as hell needs one now!

    But as you say, destabilising one of the few purely secular regimes in the region on a neoconservative whim was probably the greatest folly of all times, and the blowback is only just truly begun.

  18. 472
    Lefty E

    I remember so well, back before March of 2003, arguing with the outraged ‘moral’ right that no matter how ‘good’ it made them feel, to ‘topple’ a ruthless thug dictator, we didn’t do it with Suharto for very good reasons ie he kept the mad jihadists at bay. And even if his methods weren’t pretty, and lots of innocent people got hurt (and worse), we were never going to ‘invade’ Indonesia to ‘liberate’ them.

    But no, it was the ‘right’ thing to do, unleash the dogs of war, trash a country, leave its open wounds gaping and inviting Wahhabist infection, and no amount of rational argument could disuade them.

    Hanging Saddam was small compensation for spawning a million clones of him. When I heard Shiites lament that they wished they could have Saddam back I could have wept for what ‘we’ had done.

  19. Sinowestie @ 468

    Caucus is primarily and originally (18th c) a US term.
    The Brits have adopted and use it, but only in a pejorative way – as a term for a committee of ‘fixers’.

  20. KR- Thanks for your posts. There is a wonderful book on the fall of the Shah of Iran by Kapuscinski and the parallels with Musharref are frightening. The Shah’s end came almost overnight after a funeral where the crowd refused to disperse. He describes a moment where one member of the crowd refuses to stop walking towards the police barriers despite repeated warnings as the “tipping point” (not his words). There are going to be a lot of people walking towards barriers in Pakistan in the next few days.

  21. 477
    Diogenes

    Yeah, it’s like not knowing any history and being doomed to repeat it, isn’t it?

    There’s a dreadful feeling of impending something, and something not good, in all of this, and it must be horrifying for the vast majority of Pakistanis who are secular and want their democratic institutions to survive this endless onslaught.

    One truly despairs for the human race on days like this.

  22. Lets face it the ‘War on terror’ (sic) is a joke. It has just managed to spread the problem of murderous Islamo-fundamentalists not eliminate it. Any rational thinking person must think Bush and his bunch of Neo Con fanatics are a bunch of unthinking morons.

    I hope Obama becomes the next prez but sadly I think it might be Hillary C (Bush Lite).

  23. 476
    Artie B

    Apparently the Yanks have tried to claim ‘caucus’ as some Algonquin Indian word, but in fact it’s Latin for ‘drinking vessel’ and the etymology is most probaly related to the Caucus Club of Boston were the hot young radicals hatched the beginnings of the Revolution.

    (So, it’s more to do with getting pissed than a sober meeting of chiefs. That makes MUCH more sense, eh?)

  24. The only “war” we need is a war on global warming. As George Monbiot so aptly put it, a state of war has in the past justified major state interventions in industry.

    Frankly, thats what we need now. The Arctic could be completely melted by 2012.

  25. 481
    Ron

    There’s a bit of history about the radical school that Musharraf did a Waco with (now, there’s a comparison to conjure with!) and the British empire’s outrageous imperial exploits, but it’s a bit too long to relate here and now in full detail. But suffice it to say that the fundamentalist school of Deobandi Islam that even today exists in Pakistan has its roots in a reaction to British atrocities against them in the early days of the colony.

    Of course the Taliban are its direct descendants.

  26. KR
    As far as I know the etymology is entirely a matter of conjecture.
    I’m not aware of any similar Latin word that means anything like this, (but caulker was a slang term current in the 19th c for a shot of whisky).
    The claim re an Algonquin origin was made in a paper in the Proc Am Philol Soc in 1872 by JH Trumbull. (No, really, I know this stuff.) There is an Algonquin word that makes sense in this context, and and he states that Indian names were commonly taken by clubs and secret associations in New England. There is however no direct evidence of a link. The word long pre-dates the revolution.

    If you want to have a drink you don’t have to make up silly excuses to sneak off down to the pub – it’s fine by me.

  27. 485 I think they are saying that there are similarities between the instability in Iran prior to the downfall of the Shah of Iran and the instability of Pakistan now.

  28. The current situation in Pakistan has the stability of a powder keg, much more a threat to world peace than Iraq/Iran/Palestine ever was. India must be looking nervously, China concerned, if not actively meddling. And on the other side we have the granddaddy of village idiots who must be positively orgasmic at the thought of even more chaos to foment.

  29. RE the greens
    their support has increased at the expense of the democrats, but they did help
    cause a change of Government
    their position is they will not be in Government so their policies will not be
    ever implemented however they will have a lot of influence in the post 01/07
    senate.
    In TAS after the next election they could have the balance of power in the lower
    house

  30. With the ALP now occupying the (conservative) space vacated by the Coalition in its headlong hurtle into US style neocon territory where Pauline lurks in the lunar landscapes of the right, the Greens are left with the vast acreage vacated by the ALP, on the centre-and-left. There’s lots of room here for thinking Australians still waiting for their hopes to be realised.

    Happy New Year everyone.

    Re. Pakistan. I long ago gave up thinking of that place as a country. It’s a manic state of mind. The whole population needs psychotherapy. Has needed it for about 50 years. Like the US.

  31. The real tragedy of Iran (and the Middle-East) is that it was a democracy governed by a popular, moderate and secular government until that government developed the quaint notion that Iran should control its oil and get the profits, not the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (BP).

  32. Day 3,

    More glorious Melbourne sunshine. Bit warmer today mid 30s and all that. Maybe we should bottle all this good weather and export it. Could be a positive outcome of global warming.

    1. The Aussies continued their total domination of the game. The reason they are the best in the world is that they totally deconstruct the game and focus on being the best on every component. A bit like the Japanese back in the sixties and seventies. The Indians may be equal in pure talent ie batting and bowling, But the Aussies are fitter, faster and more tactically astute. They run or make singles, their fielding is sharper and even their warm ups are superior. Would not surprise me if the Australians practice packing up their kit as a team because it might give them an advantage.
    2. The game plan for the Aussies was to score around 100 a session. Working as a unit, the players simply pushed themselves to score constantly putting the Indians under presure.
    3. The track is such that you are never in as evidenced by the scores of the players. One mistake and you are gone.
    4. The Indians also let the game drift. Apart from the wickets there was not much happening regarding chances and controversies. They need to be more in the game. Not to say they gave up. But they need persistence with a plan.
    5. The consequence of all this is that The Indinans need to break a world record that has stood for 130 odd years of test cricket to win. Good luck to them if they do it.
    6. Having watched the game from close quarters over the last few days it is interesting to note how our big business companies never miss an opprtunity to miss an opportunity. With thousands of Indians attending, nowhere was there a concession stand of Indian cuisine. Most Austalians might be shocked to know that many Indians don’t eat cows or pigs. Therefore meat pies, hamburgers and hot dogs were not as popular as crowds 70,000, 50,000 and 35,000 might indicate. Also, why not hold a tourist trade fair in close proximity. There are more Indian millionaires than Aussies, their middle class would be roughtly 200-300 milllion. You reckon that might be an opportunity for trade and tourism given their alleged fanaticism about cricket. I blame John Howard!
    7. The other noticeable thing about the cricket is the security. Bags checked, security people on every entrance and exit. I suppose a heightened need for security is an inevitable consequence of the ongoing war against terror.
    8. But, there was also a huge contigent of about 30 police and security persons to mind and monitor the boofheads in bay 13. It is really one of those absurd situations where the security people stand around with not really much to do, so they have to be seen to be doing something officious to justify their oxygen intake. Consequently, every transgression or outburst is seen as the posible precursor to something more sinister. By yesterday, the crowd was somewhat smaller than the earlier days, but the fun police were determined to stamp out every bit of enjoyment. Completely surrounding the aisles where the drunken ratbags were hatching their evil schemes (first the cricket, then the world) the appearance of a beach ball became an everlasting monument to the stupidity of the situation. The mob had an endless supply of beach balls, the fun police a single minded determination to do their duty.

    Can see it now in thirty years from now when these brave souls are asked by their wide eyed grandchildren what they did in the “war on Terror”. They can proudly boast they had a special duty to confiscate beach balls and puncture them with a pin. Hallejujah, Democracy saved!

    I await the letters to the editor complaining that sales of beach balls should be restricted to responsible adults like spray cans of paint.

    9. As mentioned yesterday, I expect the result to be in by late this afternoon. The only glimmer is that Brett Lee bowled half rat power last night. As the plan for the declaration was to go full bore for half an hour, Lee did not or could not fire up. I hope he is not injured which might change things somewhat.

    More tomorrow.

  33. Thanks for the summary, GG. I was waiting impatiently for your contribution so as not to have to bother with the Peter Roebuck version.

    PB has become almost the sole source of information/entertainment for me recently.

  34. Liz, you’re right. I knew it was someone really important (other than some polly or pundit!).

    It’s better than a good line, and it’s applicable more times than it should be. One thing is for sure, as a species we are not very highly evolved, and until we actually learn from our mistakes, may not get the chance to be.

    Sigh.

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