Fremantle by-election live

679 comments on “Fremantle by-election live”

1. If we’re quoting Antony, let’s not be selective:

   [This is a much more impressive victory that has come about because of Labor’s inability to get its primary vote up. Unlike Organ, Adele Carles has a real chance of winning re-election in Fremantle. It has been forgotten that former Labor MP Jim McGinty never won Fremantle on the primary vote, which is unusual for what was on paper always a safe seat. Now that the alternative Left party has won Fremantle, Labor will have a tough time winning the seat back.]

2. Frank,

   I desperately hope the you and others in the ALP keep believeing this is an aberrant result and do nothing to mend your ways.

3. Frank Calabrese 338! It is really sad to read your comment ” Your typical Feral Green Type” Can I suggest you apologise to the 10,000 Members of the Australian Greens and the thousands of other Australian voters who support the Australian Greens. Your comments are FERAL and uneducated. Actually, completely ignorant. Back from the the theatre tonight to read of Adele Carles’ fabulous victory. A small beacon of light amongst the Conservative Mire of Australian Politics.

4. Hope not too many Lib voters wake up tomorrow with buyers regret 🙂

5. Brenton,

   Your little rant has proven beyond any doubt why the Greens will never be a major force in mainstreams Politics, and you have the gall to call ALP supporters Arrogant.

   Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle.

6. Brenton @ 353, I think Frank was referrring to “typical feral” rather than “typical green”. Don’t be so sensitif!

7. Brenton (again) -you should have stayed at the theatre, where gesture and artifice are so much more forceful. “Adele Carles’ fabulous victory” is -in the REAL world- a step backwards for Fremantle.

8. [Hope not too many Lib voters wake up tomorrow with buyers regret :)]

   I’d doubt that. Any Liberals who voted Greens did so to damage Labor, and have succeeded in that end. Speaking as one of Carles’s constituents, I expect my life to continue much as before.

   By the way, what does your name stand for?

9. [Speaking as one of Carles’s constituents, I expect my life to continue much as before.]

   William,

   I suspect that you’ll see a lot more of Premier Barnett and his Ministers in the electorate than you would’ve had Tagliaferri had retaqined the seat 🙂

10. [Speaking as one of Carles’s constituents]

    I’m jealous.

11. Can we just get rid of this ridiculous idea that the Greens would not have won if the Liberals had run. While it is true that the Greens failed to outpoll the Liberals at the state election, the Greens ran incredibly close and you would have to think in a by-election between Labor and the Greens where the Liberal candidate had no chance of winning and was defending the government position, it would have not required much more than a breeze to push the Greens into second place, making the issue of Liberals running or not largely irrelevant.

    I’m sure it would have been a different race if the Liberals ran, but Adele won because she was the clear choice, both on primary votes and preferences, not because of the list of minor candidates.

12. It doesn’t mean anything William, It’s a throwaway email address I signed up to crikey with for the free trial just before the fed election and appeared as my username first time I made a comment.

13. William

    ‘the Greens swing had a correlation with the Italian-speaking population of -0.47 and an R-squared value of 0.22’

    Does this mean that the Italian-speaking population voted less, proportionately, for the Green candidate than for other candidates? And if ‘intuitively’, why?

14. If the result was due the Tories dogging it and not running a candidate, why didn’t their voters park their votes with the god-botherers first, then the right wing loons and independents and then give their final preferences to the socialists?

    The god-botherers seem to have done quite poorly here.

15. Boerwar, because the Labor candidate was called Mr Tagliatelli, presumably.

    William (or anyone else who knows), how did Labor campaign against the Greens? Did they run the same kind of negative campaign that Labor ran in Albert Park, pointing out far-left Green policies that voters wouldn’t like, or alleging a Green-Liberal alliance? These tactics worked in Albert Park. Were they not used in Freo, or were they used but didn’t bite?

    I remember saying at the time of Albert Park that the Greens would have done much better had they chosen a more presentable candidate, preferably female, rather than the bearded Green stereotype they ran with. Obviously the WA Greens took this advice, which I should have kept to myself. Obviously also it helped Labor in Albert Park that Labor is a popular government in Victoria rather than a recently-defeated opposition.

16. Albert, because their objective was to dish Labor, and the simplest way to do that was vote Green.

17. “Equally interesting was the lack of a significant correlation between the Greens swing and the Liberal vote from the state election. That would seem to argue against the notion that a static Labor vote was swamped by Liberals moving to the Greens”

    From whats been on here since last night i’m coming around to the view that Carles probably would have won even if the Libs had run a real candidate. As a resident in this electorate i can say there were a lot of people here i know who would normally vote ALP and preference Green (with the expectation that the Greens will run 3rd) who gave their vote to Green this time. Maybe the increase in Green vote was ALP voters jumping ship, and the ALP vote was held up by Libs who cant stomach the Greens no matter what?

    Personally, mine went to the Socialist alliance dude first, but that’s just because i am not that enamored of Carles. Put Carles at 2 and then ALP as i am even less impressed with Tagliaferri. Sad for me have to decide on that basisas i’m usually solid ALP at a state level. Would have been a different story if this was a general election with the chance of changing the Government though and i think that Carles may have to keep that in mind as she considers alliances going forward as a member of parliament.

    Carles has a chance to prove herself now and good luck to her if she can solidify her support. It certainly a wake up call for the ALP not to take safe seats for granted. I know in White Gum Valley (a traditionally strong booth for the ALP) we have seen very little campaigning in the 4 years we have lived here and have always assumed that its because we are in such a safe ALP area that no-one bothers from any party.

    For myself I have no intention of voting Greens federally in the HoR as i think Parkes is shaping up pretty well and showing good sense in working on a local profile. In the Senate i’ll consider Green very carefully but my problem is when the Greens run fruitcake candidates. I wont vote for Siewert, but was impressed by Ludlam before the last election. I’ll preference them before the Libs for certain though.

    I’d fully expect the Greens to run a strong campaign here at the next federal election to try and capitalize on this victory, but over the larger seat of Brand i don’t think they stand much chance. Unless the Libs decide to not run? Wonder if they would try that as a tactic at a federal election?

18. I’ve seen the name Brand come up a couple of times now… that’s further south, around Rockingham. The federal electorate containing Fremantle is called Fremantle too. 😉

19. Psephos: Labor’s campaign in Fremantle was comparatively not dirty compared to past campaigns, such as you note in Albert Park.

    Tagliaferri’s entire campaign basically consisted of “vote for me, I’m wonderful” – light on the policy, but he also didn’t really attack Adele much that I can remember.

    The one attempt to play dirty backfired hilariously: a huge anti-lead shipping sign, in Green (same shade as our signs) that said Vote Tagliaferri. The problem was that the “Vote Tagliaferri” bit didn’t stand out, and until pointed out, everyone thought it was one of our signs… though it helped that it wound up ringed in Green triangle signs.

20. Boerwar: Tagliaferri does have a very strong following in the Italian community in Fremantle. We had many old Italian people showing up to vote in the morning who were only taking Labor HTVs, and a few actually told people along the lines of “I’m voting Labor – I’m Italian”. Although I did have one old Italian man, thick accent, who walked up to me near the close of polling and said “I hope you win…f**k Tagliaferri!”, which just summed up the day really.

    I think we’ll hold this seat at the general election, if the Green campaign then is anything on par with what it was this time. We didn’t just scrape in on preferences – we won every booth bar two, and won easily in some territory which is traditionally very much not Green-friendly. I think this result’s going to scare a few Labor state MPs; some of the booths we won last night suggest that if the Vic Greens got their act together, we might well have a long-term shot at seats like Northcote.

21. #364

    Possibly also because in somewhere like Fremantle, Liberal voters would likely be ‘small l liberal’ types who would feel okay about voting Green, rather than CDP-voting Tories.

22. As a few people have commented upthread, I think in hindsight Labor’s preselection of Tagliaferri in the first place wasn’t the bright idea that they thought it was.

    Tagliaferri has enormous name recognition down there, but I got the distinct impression out campaigning that a lot of people just hate his guts over some of the decisions he’s made as mayor, a lot of which seem to have been pretty controversial. I think he actually helped the Green margin; though I think they probably would have still lost, Labor would have done better, I think, to put in a cleanskin candidate.

23. Rebecca, Labor’s campaign in Albert Park wasn’t *dirty*, it was *negative*, which is a campaigner’s term-of-art, not a moral judgement. A negative campaign focusses on your opponent’s policies, seeking to portray them in a negative light. A positive campaign focusses on your own policies (or personality), putting them in a positive light. If Labor’s campaign in Freo was focussed on promoting Tagliaferri as a great candidate, that’s a positive campaign, though not a very effective one obviously. A negative campaign would have highlighted the more extreme elements of Greens policies, and also made the point that the Liberals wanted the Greens to win and were voting for the Green.

    In Victoria, for example, the Greens have a policy of abolishing selective state high schools. Unfortunately for them, one of the best selective schools in Victoria, MacRobertson Girls’ High, is in Albert Park. So Labor ran ads asking why the Greens wanted to close MacRob and deny smart girls a quality education. The Greens fell for the bait and spent the campaign complaining about Labor’s tactics rather than promoting their own policies – always a fatal mistake.

24. …in other words, dirty.

25. How is it dirty?

26. I don’t live in this electorate, but read in the news this morning that the results here would quite likely cost Ripper his job. Don’t remember the ladies name but the article put her up as the most likely replacement. If I lived in this electorate, I would have remembered the name but I chucked the Sunday Times after reading it (while at my 11yo junior footy game). You all probably know who I am talking about though …..

27. Alannah Mactiernan probably.

28. If Ripper gets chopped and MacTiernan runs for a federal seat, will Ben Wyatt then become Leader straight away? Is there anyone else?

29. [Did they run the same kind of negative campaign that Labor ran in Albert Park, pointing out far-left Green policies that voters wouldn’t like, or alleging a Green-Liberal alliance? These tactics worked in Albert Park. Were they not used in Freo, or were they used but didn’t bite?]

    Weren’t used. They ran a positive campaign about Tagliaferri’s virtues, with a bit of drum-beating on the lead exports issue which in no way differentiated them from the Greens. Quite the contrary, in fact – these banners festooned every polling booth, making each one a sea of green.

30. Well there you go. Negative campaigning works. Everyone says they abhor and eschew it, but if you don’t do it you lose.

31. Juliem @ 375, Alannah Mactiernan may well replace Ripper quite soon, though it would be hard to justify on the basis of the anti-ALP swing, which was pretty small. But even the most ardent ALP supporter (Frank?) would have to concede that Alannah, though very competent, is a polarising figure and has a fair amount of baggage. Both Ripper and Mactiernan would only really be warming the seat for the next hot property, Ben Wyatt, who is steadily building his profile, has plenty of charisma and media smarts, and the chance to make history as the country’s first-ever indigenous party leader.

32. Psephos: I think that’s rather telling. The Greens can fight fair and win on our policies and our values; Labor can’t win unless they resort to dirty tactics.

33. I wrote that comment before reading Rebecca’s, which said exactly the same thing. I do think the green banners were a mistake.

    [As a few people have commented upthread, I think in hindsight Labor’s preselection of Tagliaferri in the first place wasn’t the bright idea that they thought it was.]

    Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Beware the old “Labor lost so everything they did was wrong” fallacy. Only Labor so far as I’m aware have conducted actual market research on this, so they are best placed to know the answer. We do know it was telling them no one else could win for them a few months ago. However, I suspect the severity and intensity of the campaign against him by his local critics exacerbated the leakage of Labor votes to the Greens on a scale they didn’t see coming. You might well argue that they should have. Would they have done better with, say, Dave Kelly? Maybe, but I’d doubt it. I expect you’d be getting a slightly different formulation of the same discussion, i.e. Labor shouldn’t have run a union/party/factional hack.

    [If Ripper gets chopped and MacTiernan runs for a federal seat, will Ben Wyatt then become Leader straight away? Is there anyone else?]

    Michelle Roberts probably fancies herself. She was Carpenter’s main rival to replace Gallop. Carpenter himself is probably a bit much to ask. I personally think Wyatt would be their best available option in that unfortunate set of circumstances. People mention the deputy, Roger Cook, as a future leader, but he’s only been in parliament since the September election when he was very nearly defeated by an independent.

34. [Well there you go. Negative campaigning works. Everyone says they abhor and eschew it, but if you don’t do it you lose.]

    The Greens didn’t do it and won…

35. Rebecca, pointing out one’s opponents’ policies is not a dirty tactic. If the Greens adopt policies which voters won’t like, that’s their choice. They can’t complain if other parties choose to draw them to the voters’ attention. Did you know that the Greens in Victoria have a policy banning the use of leather? I wanted to put out a poster with the heading “Say goodbye to your shoes”, but I wasn’t allowed to.

36. It’s dirty in this case because it is misleading and dishonest.

    The Greens dont actually want to close those schools, they want them either less selective and exclusive or not get government funding. We dont believe you can do both.
    The only reason for saying we want to shut them down is because the schools want to be exclusive AND funded.

    If the Greens got their way, the girls would still get education, and the school would stay open

37. [The Greens didn’t do it and won…]

    They didn’t have to because they had the Liberals and the WA anti-Labor media to do it for them. They were just the lucky beneficiaries of other people’s negative campaigns against Tagliaferri.

    But I probably should have said: *When you’re on the defensive*, if you don’t do it you lose. When you’re ahead anyway, you can win on a smile and a promise.

38. I’m not an expert on the Victorian Greens policy but I think the idea behind the concept of that policy is that choosing certain schools to receive more funding and resources creates a schism within the public school system.

    The response is to get rid of the two-tier system and ensure all public schools have at least the resources of current selective schools.

    Of course Labor decides to run with the “They want to abolish good schools!” line, which is not only a misrepresentation, but the complete opposite of the policy.

39. [They didn’t have to because they had the Liberals and the WA anti-Labor media to do it for them. They were just the lucky beneficiaries of other people’s negative campaigns against Tagliaferri.]

    😉

40. Certainly there was no shortage of negative campaigning against Tagliaferri:

    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

    However, none of it was from the Greens – officially, at least. If I were a suspicious type, I might suggest they pursued a deliberate strategy of keeping their own messages positive while outsourcing the negativity to third parties. Bloody good move, if so.

41. William,

    You certainly sound like a suspicious type to me.

    Of course if the ALP preselect a high profile candidate and seek to trade off their record, they have to expect the negative aspects of their record will be highlighted as well.

42. Adam, are you no longer in Canberra?

43. Is Labor on borrowed time in the inner-city seats? Would Labor hold Melbourne without Tanner? The rise of the Greens is like the rise of the Country Party perhaps. 20 years from now it is likely that the Greens may have supplanted Labor in the inner-city as the CP supplanted the Nationalists in the wheatbelt by the late 1920s. But if the policies of the Australian left as a whole were set by the Greens the Libs would probably be in power for ever.

44. Luke, I work in Canberra but I live in Queanbeyan.

45. Geoff, that’s quite possible, but Labor will fight them on the beaches and on the landing fields etc. If that does happen, no doubt we will come to some sort of modus vivendi with them (as we have done in the ACT), although it will drag us to the left and thus make beating the conservatives more difficult. On the other hand, maybe responsibility will draw the Greens toward the centre, as it did in Germany during the Schroeder-Fischer government.

46. I think that Melbourne will probably fall to the Greens next year because the government is seen as arrogant and the margin is so small.

47. If you mean state Melbourne, possibly. If you mean federal Melbourne, I doubt it very much.

48. I mean Gonwyn Pike`s seat.

49. >>Is Labor on borrowed time in the inner-city seats?

    Did anyone notice that Albo was at great pains to deny on Insiders that the ever fragrant Mrs Albo was whiteanting Reesie for the chance to lead Catholic Action errrr… I mean the NSW ALP to electoral oblivion in 2011? Based on the WA action overnight Carmello will have her work cut out defending Marrickville especially if the Liberals run dead there.

50. In Marrickville the Greens ran second. The Liberals did not direct preferences/directed against them so most of their votes exhausted. If the Liberals preferenced the Greens then the seat would be closer (the margin would have been half or less in 2007 had they done so).

    http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/state_government_elections/electoral_districts/all_districts_/marrickville/results_2007/perferential_count

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