Morgan face-to-face: 59-41 to Coalition; Seat of the week: Bass

Morgan’s face-to-face polling from last weekend, which has been published a day earlier than usual, shows Labor up slightly off a record low the week before, with their primary vote up a point to 30.5%. The Coalition is also up slightly, by half a point to 46%, with the Greens steady on 12%. A narrowing in the headline respondent-allocated two-party figure, from 60.5-39.5 to 59-41, is mostly down to a slight increase in the preference flow to Labor. With regard to the ongoing disparity between this result and the two-party figure derived from preference flows at the last election, which is steady at 55.5-44.5, Morgan has taken to adding the following footnote: “An increasing proportion of Greens voters are indicating a preference for the L-NP ahead of the ALP. At the 2010 Federal Election only 20% of Greens voters preferenced the L-NP, but recent Morgan Polls have this figure closer to 40%”.

The latest instalment of Seat of the Week, like the last two, is brought to you by the letter B.

Seat of the week: Bass

Still famous for the by-election that provided a catalyst for the Coalition’s decision to block supply in 1975, Bass has been an arm wrestle between Labor and Liberal ever since, changing hands at five out of the six elections between 1993 and 2007. The electorate has been little changed since it was created with the state’s division into five single-member electorates in 1903, at all times covering Launceston and the state’s north-eastern corner. Launceston accounts for slightly less than three-quarters of its voters, and has been trending to Labor over the past two elections: between 2004 and 2010, Labor’s two-party vote in Launceston progressed from 47.6% to 58.3%, compared with 46.4% to 54.0% in the remainder of the electorate.

Labor first won Bass when it secured its first ever parliamentary majority at the 1910 election, and lost it six years later when its member Jens Jensen followed Billy Hughes into the Nationalist Party. Jensen retained the seat as a Nationalist at the 1917 election, and it remained with the party after he lost its endorsement in 1919. Labor’s next win came with the election of Jim Scullin’s government in 1929, but it was again lost to a party split when Allan Guy followed Joseph Lyons into the United Australia Party in 1931. Guy was re-elected as the UAP candidate at that year’s election, before being unseated by Labor’s Claude Barnard in 1934.

The next change came when Liberal candidate Bruce Kekwick defeated Barnard when the Menzies government came to power in 1949. The seat returned to the Barnard family fold in 1954 when Kekwick was defeated by Claude’s son Lance, who went on to serve as deputy prime minister in the Whitlam government from 1972 to 1974. The famed 1975 by-election followed Barnard’s mid-term resignation, ostensibly on grounds of ill health, but following a year after he lost the deputy leadership to Jim Cairns. A plunge in the Labor primary vote from 54.0% to 36.5% delivered the seat to Liberal candidate Kevin Newman (the late father of Campbell Newman and husband of Howard government minister Senator Jocelyn Newman), encouraging the Coalition to pursue an early election at all costs.

Bass remained in the Liberal fold for 18 years, with Tasmania bucking the national trend during the Hawke years in the wake of the Franklin dam controversy. Kevin Newman was succeeded in 1990 by Warwick Smith, whose promising career progress was twice stymied by the vagaries of electoral fortune. In 1993 he lost to Labor’s Sylvia Smith by just 40 votes, part of a statewide swing that gave the first indication that election night that things were not going according to script. Warwick Smith recovered the seat in 1996 and served as Family Services Minister in the first term of the Howard government, before the 1998 election produced a second GST backlash and another painfully narrow defeat, this time by 78 votes at the hands of Michelle O’Byrne, a 30-year-old official with the Miscellaneous Workers Union.

O’Byrne held the seat until 2004, when Mark Latham’s restrictive policy on old-growth logging provoked the wrath of Tasmanian unions and Labor politicians, and resulted in John Howard receiving a hero’s reception from timber workers in Launceston in the final week of the campaign. Michael Ferguson gained the seat for the Liberals with a 4.5% swing, but he was defeated after a single term by a 3.6% swing in 2007, and has since pursued a career in state politics. The successful Labor candidate, Jodie Campbell, would likewise serve only one term, announcing she would not stand for re-election as reports emerged her preselection was under threat. Campbell was succeeded by Geoff Lyons, a staffer to Right faction Senator Helen Polley and former manager at Launceston General Hospital. Lyons’ endorsement was determined by the intervention of the party’s national executive, an arrangement which had reportedly been smoothed by the Left not contesting the preselection for Denison. He performed strongly at the election, consolidating Labor’s hold on the seat with a 5.7% swing.

The Liberal candidate at the next election will be Brigadier Andrew Nikolic, whose military service has included postings in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has more recently worked with the Defence Department’s international policy division. Nikolic had been rated a favourite for preselection in 2010, but he withdrew citing work and family reasons. He made the news in May 2012 when he threatened to send “formal letters of complaint” to the employers of those responsible for a satirical blog post about him, and of anyone who had “liked” the post on Facebook.

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.

1,598 comments on “Morgan face-to-face: 59-41 to Coalition; Seat of the week: Bass”

Comments Page 25 of 32
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  1. Diog
    I just don’t understand it. How could so much investigation occur and then get thrown out? Surely stuff existed in the MP’s possession or it didn’t.
    Hang on. Michael Abbott QC is representing the MP.

  4. I like Justice Steven Rares comment that the case will not need five days of The Court’s time. I reckon he will kick it out day 1.

  7. BK

    One lesson I have learnt is that the legal system is one where there is a huge difference between “public” and “private”. An expensive top-notch legal team with unlimited resources versus an overworked, underpaid junior prosecutor is not justice.

    If you are willing to fight hard enough, it is truly amazing what you can get away with.

  9. GG
    What is happening to the stock market should just about fix consumer confidence for the next little while.

  11. Diogs,

    Of course. That’s why hospitals are empty and there are no sick people anymore.

    Clearly, you’re a charlatan.

  12. z
    I imagine that there will be plenty of scope for tax loss selling. The trouble is that there ain’t much ROI against which to do so.

  13. guytaur

    [Explain Dr Mal Washer. He seems good at politics and I understand he is a medical doctor.]

    Mal Washer is obviously an intelligent and dedicated and decent person. That’s why he has always been a back-bencher and isn’t going for re-election.

  16. Mr Washer is responsible for the continued existence of Mr Brough.

    He noticed something potentially terminally nasty on Mr Brough’s visage and advised him to have it looked at.

  17. Boerwar,

    I’ve sort of uncoupled myself from pork belly futures these days. The Banks still seem to be making a quid.

    I reckon the end of the world is a fair ways away.

  18. Diogs,

    That’s what I keep trying to tell you. But you never listen.

    Might be something to do with Doctors being no good at politics.

  20. guytaur

    [What about Dr Bob Brown. He was not just a politician. He started a whole party.]

    The reality is that the Greens are just bit players. And I usually vote Green so I’m certainly not biased against them.

  25. BK

    Michael Abbott QC, the Fibs lawyer of choice when you have to get a pollie out of trouble. The very same QC who managed to convince a judge that Mary Jo Fisher was sufffering from depression when she assaulted a security guard and stole a trolley full of fruit and veg.
    Abbott (no relation to the loto) doen’t come cheap, his rates for court work are said to be around $9000 a day.
    http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/bolshy-barristers-fire-burns-bright/story-e6frea83-1226212464324

  28. leone

    Abbott is also the Labor lawyer of choice. He’s representing the ALP MP in SA, as well as Mike Rann and Ark Tribe.

  29. leone
    Yes Abbott doesn’t come cheap. The company I worked for some years ago hired him for a particular legal matter that involved a lot of my investigative work. I must say that he was as sharp as a tack.

  31. BW

    Yes hope is rare in financial circles at the moment.
    Spain’s banking crisis rocks Santander in the UK: new worries for British customers after credit rating blow
    By ALEX BRUMMER
    PUBLISHED: 22:48 GMT, 17 May 2012 | UPDATED: 22:48 GMT, 17 May 2012
    Comments (90)
    Share

    Spain’s banking crisis reached Britain’s high streets last night when the credit rating of Santander UK was cut.
    In a sweeping reassessment, ratings agency Moody’s announced in Madrid that it is downgrading 16 Spanish banks because it could not be sure of the ability of the country’s government to provide the necessary support.
    Santander UK was among the banks highlighted after the ratings agency took aim at its parent Banco Santander, based in Spain.

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2146112/Spains-banking-crisis-rocks-Santander-UK-new-worries-British-customers-credit-rating-blow.html#ixzz1vCiY5uaG

  32. victoria

    Yes. Not only getting momentum for Marriage Equality, but also more voters for progressives who were appalled with the Hockey contrast to Wong.

  33. The other really sharp QC is Julian Burnside – I note he is working for the Commonwealth in the Ashby case.

  37. @N2T (1218 & 1221)

    Australia’s longest serving sod turning fishwife…

    Go ahead chastise me it’s Friday…

    OK – sod off you mullet

  41. vic

    [Penny Wong is a class act]

    On Triple J this week, they asked listeners to SMS in what pollies they trusted the most. Not surprisingly given the audience, the Greens won and Windsor did well as did Ted Mack.

    Penny Wong won as most trusted from the ALP.

    Guess who won for the Libs?

  46. I detect that the heat has gone from the Slipper matter – even the Thompson shennanigans. Guess it get air time on Monday as Thompson makes his case. But from what I pick up the punters have moved on – the legal stuff is all too complicated and complex. They’ll wait for an explosion before re-emgaging. This gives Gillard a chance at cleaner air.

  47. [Now I’ll have to sterilize the PC after visiting that site.]

    Wouldn’t want to catch any… ugh… viruses.

  49. g

    Looks like more good news for Spanish seminaries. A couple of years ago I was in Holland and some of my Dutch catholic rellies were complaining that they could not longer understand their imported priests.

    Will Australian catholics have to learn Spanish?

  50. Actually it was Joe Hockey. Young people seem to like him. I would have thought he was the classic bluster and BS artist, but not everyone agrees.

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