Seat of the week: Hasluck

Held for the Liberals by the first ever indigenous member of the House of Representatives, this ultra-marginal eastern Perth seat has changed hands at every election since its creation in 2001. Labor desperately needs for it to do so again on September 14.

UPDATE (22/4/13): The weekly Essential Research records no change on last week on voting intention, with the Coalition leading 55-45 on two-party preferred from primary vote of 34% for Labor, 48% for the Coalition and 9% for the Greens. The poll also finds 51% thinking Australia made the wrong decision going to war against Iraq against 23% for the right decision; support for same sex marriage at 54% and opposition at 33%; and 68% supporting the Gonski report recommendations against 13% opposed, but 43% opposed to the government’s specific plan against 40% in support.

UPDATE 2 (22/4/13): The Morgan multi-mode poll has Labor up half a point to 32.5%, the Coalition down 2.5% to 44% (their weakest result since this series began eight weeks ago) and the Greens steady on 10.5%. That pans out to 54.5-45.5 on respondent-allocated preferences (down from 55.5-44.5), which Morgan prefers, and 54-46 on previous election preferences (down from 56-44), which I and every other pollster prefer. The sample this time around was 3270.

The eastern Perth seat of Hasluck has changed hands at all three elections since its creation as Western Australia’s fifteenth seat at the 2001 election, from territory that had previously been in Perth, Tangney and Swan. Labor has outperformed the state swing in Hasluck at each election, but has twice been denied by the force of the statewide tide to the Coalition. The electorate consists of three discrete population areas, with those in the north and south favouring Labor and the one in the centre leaning to the Liberals. The northern area includes Midland, home to a high proportion of seniors, rent payers and low-income earners, and the more Liberal-friendly Guildford, which is demographically unremarkable on all measures. The central area includes middle-income suburbs around Kalamunda in the Darling Scarp, home to a large number of English migrants, as well as mortgage-sensitive Forrestfield and Maida Vale nearer the city. In the south are the suburbs of Gosnells, Thornlie and Maddington, which are marked by lower levels of income and home ownership.

Hasluck is held for the Liberals by Ken Wyatt, whose win in 2010 made him the first ever self-identifying indigenous member of the House of Representatives. Wyatt was formerly a director of the Office of Aboriginal Health director and is the uncle of Ben Wyatt, an emerging figure in the state Labor Party. His win came at the expense of Labor’s Sharryn Jackson, who had won the seat in 2001, lost it in 2004 and recovered it again in 2007. Jackson became the seat’s inaugural member after defending a notional margin of 2.6% against a Liberal swing of 0.6%, before a further swing of 3.6% evicted her as Perth failed to take a shine to Mark Latham in 2004. The seat was then held for the Liberals by Stuart Henry, former executive director of the Western Australian Master Plumbers Association. Jackson served as Labor’s state president in the interim, and was reportedly urged by the LHMWU to seize the opportunity of Kim Beazley’s vacancy in Brand at the 2007 election. She instead declared herself set on recovering Hasluck, and was duly successful on the back of a 3.1% swing driven by a recovery of support for Labor in the electorate’s south following a slump in 2004. Redistribution cut Jackson’s 1.3% margin to 0.9% going into the 2010 election, and she was then seen off by an evenly distributed 1.4% swing in 2010

Labor’s new candidate for Hasluck is Adrian Evans, deputy state secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia. Evans’ preselection is the product of an increasing assertiveness within the state ALP on the part of the MUA, which according to one report accounts for a quarter of the state branch’s membership after a recruitment drive swelled its numbers from 150 to 850. The union first sought to flex its muscles when Evans ran for preselection for the state seat of Fremantle, which prior to the 2009 by-election defeat was held by LHMWU figurehead Jim McGinty. The LHMWU faction was able to secure preselection for its favoured candidate, UnionsWA secretary Simone McGurk, but it took a deal with the Right faction Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association to shore up her position in the face of the challenge from Evans. The quid pro quo included support from United Voice (as the LHMWU had become known) for the Senate ambitions of SDA state president Joe Bullock, who has duly gained top position on the Senate ticket at the expense of incumbent Louise Pratt. This has in turn caused friction between United Voice and Pratt’s AMWU sub-faction of the Left, with which the MUA is aligned.

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.

1,831 comments on “Seat of the week: Hasluck”

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  1. Henry Parkes was once asked why the Legislative Assembly did not have a physical bar. He said there was no need as there was a bar upstairs where most of the members opposite spent every waking hour.

  3. CC,

    You Libs can forgive Tony anything.

    You’d think being able to exercise self control when in a position of responsibility might go to questions of integrity and competence.

  6. Some members do drink in their offices, and they can also drink in the dining room. A few are notorious for it. But the culture of male Members drinking all night at the bar, which was endemic in the Old House, has disappeared. Praliament sits more civilised hours now, and the presence of more women has changed the culture.

  7. [VictorianLaborWomen ‏@VicLaborWomen 1m
    “@ABCNews24:Coming up on #ABCNews24, the PM @JuliaGillard to address the Victorian ALP State Conference. From 10:30am approx”

  11. Difficult problem for insular/rural Americans.

    The Czech Embassy in USA has had to make an official statement that The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two different entities.

    Especially in light of the explosion of the fertiliser factory in a Czech settled town.

  13. Greensborough Growler@47

    Turnbull humiliation grows and grows. Now he’s walking away from his own figures. Apparently, more fibre to the house because NBN costs for rolling out the network might be accurate after all.

    http://www.zdnet.com/au/if-fibre-costs-are-lower-well-do-more-fibre-turnbull-7000014253/

    Of course as you do more fibre to the premises, it becomes less and less viable to do the remainder to the node.

    No wonder Labor dropped their original intentions on FTTN, it is just a kludge.

  14. George Bludger ‏@GeorgeBludger 2m AFR: “Abbott kills off surplus promise”… Come on AFR, missed opportunity, headline should have been “Abbott cuts surplus’ throat

  15. Psephos@59

    Finns has blocked me on Twitter because I told him he was an ass for making jokes about the Boston bombing. I conclude he is indeed an ass.

    Why did it take you so long to reach that conclusion?

    I may disagree with you from time to time but thought you had the intelligence to work that out a lot quicker.

  18. [Also that high profile woman from the public service (can’t think of her name) who played a key role in Howard’s misleading workchoices ads – she should have been for the high jump but as far as I am aware got off scott free.]
    Darn, Barbara Bennett the face of workchoices.Still pulling in 400 or so as a senior public servant and supplying Labor with really good advise I suppose.At least the transition to an Abbott Govt. will be smooth at the senior levels of the public service.As well as being a stupid decision to leave these people in place it showed absolutely no loyalty to their supporters.

  20. David Ettridge’s catch 22 is that he wants publicity and support for his action.

    To do that he thinks it is a good idea to speak to Mike Smith and now Hedley Thomas who then do a job on him.

    [The legal action, which also seeks $1.5 million in damages, will come up again at a hearing in a few weeks, and Ettridge is hoping to garner public support to keep it rolling in the lead-up to the federal election.]

  22. lizzie

    [

    Difficult problem for insular/rural Americans.

    The Czech Embassy in USA has had to make an official statement that The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two different entities.]
    I’m pretty sure he is actually from Dagestan. His father lives there and he went to school there. I wonder if they are saying Chechnya because nobody has heard of Dagestan ? 🙂

  23. Geordie Guy ‏@GeordieGuy 9m You realise if an Austrian ever bombs a US marathon there’ll be Apache gunships over Canberra within 24 hours

    And we all know where Adolph Hitler was born…….

  24. There’s an argument running about whether the brothers are from Chechnia or Dagestan. It doesn’t make much real difference. The relevant point is that they were young Muslims from immigrant families who were radicalised into jihadist Islamism over the internet. This is the same pattern as the people who did the London bus bombings and the attempted attack at Glasgow airport.

  27. And the men who did the London bus bombings were all British-born. That’s the point. The pattern is that young men from immigrant Muslim families become drawn into radical Islamism, usually via the internet, and lured into committing these crimes.

  28. Psephos@75

    So those of us who said from the start that this was an Islamist attack and were told “not to jump to conclusions” were in fact correct.

    Yep, sure, and Dr Haneef was also guilty wasn’t he.

    I have refrained from speculating on this and that is the best course of action to avoid wrongful accusations.

  29. [So those of us who said from the start that this was an Islamist attack and were told “not to jump to conclusions” were in fact correct.]

    So what?

    You were guessing as much as everyone else was. We all have our favourite “bad guys”. You happened to be right this time.

  31. [You were guessing as much as everyone else was. ]

    Not at all. I posted about this after the bombing. Different types of terrorists have different MOs. In this case the MO, the use of IEDs to kill large numbers of civilians in public places, is that of Islamists. Extreme rightists and extreme leftists go for different types of target. That’s why Jones’s “student radicals” comment was so stupid.

  35. [Does that mean all Caucasians should be treated with suspicion?]

    Most Caucasians (Georgians and Armenians) are Christians. Azeris are Muslims but have no record of involvement in extremism. The Chechens and the Dagestanis do have such a record, arising from their conflicts with the Russian state. But these guys were not, so far as we know, acting out of Chechen nationalism. Look at Tamerlan’s facebook page. He was an Islamist.

  37. Finns, I often find your comments amusing, and we agree about many things, though not all. In this case, I thought making jokes on twitter about the Boston bombing was stupid and tasteless, and I suggested you might stop doing it. You then blocked me. I conclude from this that you’re an idiot, and therefore you’re joining Bemused, ShowsOn, Jaundiced View and Thomas.Paine on my “idiots, do not respond” list.

  38. Herr Doktor, you dont get it do you. i wasnt make fun of the bombing. i was making fun of the way the bombing covered by the #MSM. Sayonara

  39. On a normal day, this might be discussed here.
    [A Chinese businesswoman who has been a generous Labor Party donor and long-time benefactor of influential federal MP Joel Fitzgibbon engaged in a sham marriage and swore false statutory declarations to obtain permanent Australian residency.

    Fairfax Media has uncovered evidence of Helen Liu’s migration fraud despite the Immigration Department aborting its own probe into the matter without conducting a thorough investigation or interviewing key witnesses.

    The federal opposition is now demanding to know why the Department of Immigration and Citizenship failed to conduct a proper investigation. Its immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, referred the case of ”a possible act of migration fraud” involving Ms Liu and others to the department’s secretary last year.]

    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/labor-donors-sham-marriage-20130419-2i62d.html#ixzz2QxpoUuqL

  40. Psephos@81


    You were guessing as much as everyone else was.


    Not at all. I posted about this after the bombing. Different types of terrorists have different MOs. In this case the MO, the use of IEDs to kill large numbers of civilians in public places, is that of Islamists.

    And the IRA.

    But of course the IRA are fundamentalist Muslims aren’t they? 😛

  41. [And the IRA.]

    The IRA doesn’t exist any more, and it certainly wouldn’t attack Boston, a heavily Irish city. Is it impossible to have a serious discussion of these subjects here without silly comments like this?

  42. [Not at all. I posted about this after the bombing. Different types of terrorists have different MOs. In this case the MO, the use of IEDs to kill large numbers of civilians in public places, is that of Islamists.]

    What rot.

    Timothy McVeigh wasn’t an Islamist and he killed hundreds of civilians in a public place.

    Secondly, the MO of Islamic terrorists is suicide bombing. These weren’t suicide bombs.

    So your superior forensic analysis is crap.

  43. [The IRA doesn’t exist any more, and it certainly wouldn’t attack Boston, a heavily Irish city.]

    OIh right, and it wouldn’t attack Belfast, another “heavily Irish city”.

    Psephos, you got lucky. Stop trying to big note yourself as some kind of Miss Marple.

  44. [Timothy McVeigh wasn’t an Islamist and he killed hundreds of civilians in a public place.]

    No, he killed public servants in a government building because he was an anti-government fanatic.

    [Secondly, the MO of Islamic terrorists is suicide bombing.]

    Sometimes, not always. It wasn’t in Bali, or London, or Madrid.

  47. [The IRA doesn’t exist any more,]

    Wow. Just, wow.

    [Is it impossible to have a serious discussion of these subjects here without silly comments like this?]

    Is it possible to have a sensible discussion around here without arsewipes who think they know everything.

    Haven’t you got better things to do than try and edumacate plebs like us?

    Shouldn’t you be working for your member instead of playing with it?

    So far I haven’t seen anything from you that contributes anything to the discussion(s) on here, except putting everyone else down, and blowing your own trumpet.

    Some news for you sunshine, not everyone shares your opinion of you that you do.

  48. [OIh right, and it wouldn’t attack Belfast, another “heavily Irish city”.]

    Are you really this stupid? Thay attacked Protestants in Belfast. Boston is full of Irish Catholics. The IRA never carried out any actions in the US. Anyway, the IRA doesn’t exist any more. This was OBVIOUSLY an Islamist attack from the minute it happened. It was only misguided PC that stopped everyone from saying so.

  49. [Sometimes, not always. It wasn’t in Bali, or London, or Madrid.]

    Pseph, I generally agree with you so far, but need to point out the London bombers were, in fact, suicide bombers

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