Seat of the week: New England

The normally sleepy rural New South Wales electorate of New England promises to be one of the highest profile contests of the coming election, with Tony Windsor fighting to survive the backlash over his support for the Gillard government and Barnaby Joyce looking to move his career to a new stage.

UPDATE (29/4/13): Essential Research is perfectly unchanged for the second week in a row, with Labor on 34%, the Coalition on 48% and the Greens on 9%, with the Coalition lead at 55-45. It finds a seven point drop since last June in respondents who think the economy is heading in the right direction, to 36%, and has 38% expecting the budget to be bad for them personally against 12% good and 38% neutral. Respondents were also asked about preferred revenue-raising measures, with “higher taxes for corporations” towering above the pack on 64%. Reducing tax breaks for higher income earners was net positive (45% approve, 38% disapprove), but reductions in the baby bonus and family tax and any spending cuts were rated negatively. It was also found that 45% believed population growth too fast, 37% about right and only 5% too slow.

New England was created at federation and has changed remarkably little since, at all times accommodating Armidale and Tamworth and losing Glen Innes only between 1934 and 1949. Currently the electorate sits inland of the north coast seats of Richmond, Cowper and Lyne, extending southwards from the local government areas of Tenterfield and Inverell on the Queensland border through Glen Innes and Armidale to Tamworth, Gunnedah and Walcha. Tony Windsor has been the seat’s independent member since 2001, when he ended an uninterrupted run of National/Country Party control going back to 1922.

Windsor came to politics from a background as a local farmer and economist, winning the state seat of Tamworth as an independent in 1991 after unsuccessfully seeking preselection to succeed a retiring Nationals member. Windsor had received the support of seven out of nine local party branches, and his defeat prompted a revolt among local members of the Nationals as well as the Liberal Party, which did not field a candidate at the election. He went on to win election with 36.2% of the primary vote to 31.9% for the Nationals candidate, prevailing by 9.8% after preferences. Windsor’s victory gave him an early taste of life as an independent in a hung parliament, Nick Greiner’s Coalition government having lost its majority at the election. Windsor was at first the most accommodating of the independents in shoring up Greiner’s position in parliament, but he would join the others in forcing Greiner’s resignation following an adverse ICAC finding in June 1992. Windsor polled 82.2% of the primary vote in the absence of Nationals or Liberal candidates in 1995, which came down to 69.4% when the Nationals fielded a candidate in 1999.

Windsor announced his intention to contest New England two months out from the 2001 federal election, having also floated the idea of running against then Nationals leader John Anderson in the neighbouring seat of Gwydir. He duly recorded 45.0% of the primary vote against 38.9% for Nationals incumbent Stuart St Clair, who had come to the seat in 1998 in succession to retiring former party leader Ian Sinclair, and prevailed by 8.3% after preferences. Windsor’s primary vote would swell to 57.3% in 2004 and to 61.9% at consecutive elections in 2007 and 2010. Windsor’s testy relationship with the Nationals worsened in the lead-up to the 2004 election when he claimed he had been offered a sinecure if he agreed to quit politics, telling parliament a few months later that the offer was communicated to him by a Tamworth businessman acting at the behest of John Anderson and Nationals Senator Sandy Macdonald. This was denied by all concerned, including the businessman.

Household name status awaited Windsor after the 2010 election left him and four other cross-benchers holding the balance of power. With independent Andrew Wilkie and Adam Bandt of the Greens declaring early for Labor, Julia Gillard needed the support of two of the three remaining independents to achieve a majority. Each represented electorates that were rural and broadly conservative, especially in Windsor’s case. It was thus an especially bold move on Windsor’s part to join with Lyne MP Rob Oakeshott in throwing their lot in with Labor. All indications since have been that Windsor and Oakeshott have paid a high political price for their decision, in contrast to Kennedy MP Bob Katter who cagily declared for the Coalition as the Windsor-Oakeshott deal made his vote redundant. A Newspoll survey of 500 voters in October 2011 had Windsor trailing the Nationals 41% to 33% on the primary vote and 53-47 on respondent-allocated preferences. In June 2012, at which time it was anticipated Richard Torbay would be the Nationals candidate, a ReachTEL poll of 532 respondents 532 respondents gave Torbay a primary vote lead of 62% to 25%.

Richard Torbay’s name first emerged as a possible Nationals candidate in mid-2011, though it was said at the time that this was conditional on Windsor retiring. Torbay had been an independent member for the state parliament since 1999, when he unseated Nationals member Ray Chappell in the Armidale-based seat of Northern Tablelands. Torbay’s primary vote progressed from 44.2% to 71.3% in 2003 and 72.7% in 2007, before falling back to 63.4%. In the wake of the latter result Torbay complained of “the trashing of the independent brand”, which was easy to interpret as a dig at Windsor and Oakeshott. He also revealed at this time that he had been approached to run for New England by the Liberals and Katter’s Australian Party as well as the Nationals, and that he was taking very seriously the offer from the latter. His intention was confirmed in mid-2012, when the party granting him “freedom to speak with an independent voice on local issues”.

Torbay’s ambitions became rapidly unstuck in March 2013 when the Financial Review reported he had received assistance from embattled Labor operative Eddie Obeid ahead of his run for state parliament in 1999. Over the next two days Torbay withdrew as candidate and resigned as member for Northern Tablelands, with Nationals state chairman saying the party had received unspecified information “of which we were not previously aware”. This information was referred to ICAC, which raided Torbay’s home and electorate office the following week. Torbay’s loss proved a gain for Barnaby Joyce, who had emerged as the Nationals’ most visible figure since his election to the Senate in 2004 and was widely thought a more promising candidate for the party leadership than low-profile incumbent Warren Truss. Joyce had been open in his desire to move to the lower house, and nominated New England, where he had been born and raised, as his second favoured entry point after the Queensland rural seat of Maranoa.

Not all within the NSW Nationals were quite so keen on furnishing the nominal outsider with what had traditionally been a stronghold seat for the party. In 2011 his opponents sounded out the party’s state leader, Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner, with a view to stonewalling Joyce by contesting the seat and assuming the federal party leadership. Stoner said he wasn’t interested, and the Torbay option would firm in its stead after party polling in early 2012 showed he offered the clearest path to victory over Windsor, including in comparison with Joyce. Thwarted in Maranoa by incumbent Bruce Scott’s determination to serve another term, Joyce reconciled himself for the time being to continue serving in the Senate. When Torbay withdrew Joyce was quick to reiterate his interest, although there were suggestions he might have a strong preselection opponent in the shape of Nationals Farmers Federation president Alexander “Jock” Laurie. However, Laurie instead chose to run in the state by-election to replace Torbay in Northern Tablelands, and Joyce went to an easy 150-10 win in the local preselection vote over Tamworth IT businessman David Gregory.

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.

2,050 comments on “Seat of the week: New England”

Comments Page 2 of 41
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  1. Henderson gives the Liberal game away on AGW action: use direct action as a fig leaf to get into govt, and then do nothing to mitigate our emissions.

  8. The Coalition’s ‘taking with one hand, giving with another’ approach to business tax seems overly complicated.

    Can’t they NOT impose a levy for parental leave, NOT give the companies concerned a tax break, and use the money from the extra tax to fund PPL?

  10. Gerard Henderson just said it outright. It is easy to drop Direct Action after the election because nobody is going to elect Tony Abbott because of DA so it is easy to drop. We should do nothing like the USA according to Gerard.

    the Shell Game continues.

  11. Mod Lib – They’re white so don’t go while it’s snowing.

    (Polar bears f#cking in the snow 😆 if you get the allusion)

  16. ML:

    [You pompously state you never “celebrate” the death of someone because you are an atheist, when you posted “The iron lady appears to have rusted” on hearing of her death and then you are offended when I laugh at your justification of why atheists shouldn’t celebrate someone’s death.]

    “Offended” is much too strong as your laughter is not based on anything that embarrasses me. I find your claims to be amused to be mere self-serving handwaving. Saying that “the iron lady appears to have rusted” is not celebrating her death. It’s at most a breach of the euphemisms that are supposed to attend mortality in most cultures. That I breached that taboo seems to have been interpreted by you as a celebration.

    [What, christians should celebrate death should they, just not atheists?]

    It makes a certain sense for believers in an afterlife — especially those who say its attributes are some sort of consequence of the conduct of the person in life to celebrate death. You’re sending a message to the flying spaghetti monster or the whatever it is. Maybe you believe you can still punish the person after death or trouble them in some way.

    Of course, if they are unable to be harmed, or even aware, it’s as pointless as prayer on their behalf.

  17. Before Reagan and Thatcher the LNP had the Menzies model for economic policy from memory.

    So its back to that. Could explain the confusion amongst Coalition ranks on economic matters

  18. Fran:

    If there is nothing after death but emptiness and no consequences to worry about you can dance all you like on anyone’s grave. You live, you die, think, say and do whatever you like as long as you are happy.

    If there is life after death and you have to face the consequences of your thoughts, speech and action then you might be more circumspect about being nasty. Hence, those who believe in some form of cause and effect system (whether Judeo-Christian, Buddhist or any other) need to think about their thoughts, speech and actions.

  19. Very telling article about the massive hypocrisy of the left….

    http://www.theage.com.au/comment/now-the-mud-sticks-to-both-sides-20130427-2ilar.html#ixzz2RhBBsAOg

    “But now it’s the left that is furious. The commentary says more, however, about where the left is at psychologically as a movement.

    Facing the likelihood of a conservative government and a Prime Minister Abbott, parts of the left have taken to desperate gutter tactics.

    They seem to be now insisting that media interviewers push their cause and help prevent a Coalition victory in September.

    Meanwhile, Julia Gillard’s ability to win over the electorate remains far from where she and her party would like it to be, but Labor MPs have mostly resolved they must now fall in behind her.

    As obvious a statement as that might be, it is only over this past week that most inside Labor have reached that conclusion.
    ”

    I guess the left can only abide by the red headed role model and ALP policy of abuse. When cornered, start pointing fingers and get personal seems to be the ALP and their supporter motivation at the moment.

  20. Of course one should add ML, quite aside from my view that celebrating deaths is pointless and implicitly religious, the most important question was your claim that “Ding DOng the Witch is Dead” in relation to Thatcher was ethically the same as calling the living person, Julia Gillard, “a witch”.

    I did note in the post that there was an overlap — at least for leftists — saying that those of us passionate about equity and social inclusion ought not to trade in the misogyny attaching to the term, or wink at it. The problem here is that resort to the term here has a life of its own in the culture of the living.

    I did however point out that for the in what was in effect, a hostile wake, Ding Dong the Witch is Dead! had a meaning that true conservatives could embrace and was thus not purely a leftist thing. The cultural roots of this musical ditty predate Thatcher and leftism by many centuries and were summoned not merly by Thatcher herself but her successors. There was an appeal here against Thatcherism and its consequents implemented by Major, Blair, Brown and now Cameron-Clegg.

    That’s the substantive political point which you continue to evade.

  22. Typical conservative tactic – when Labor is wrong only Labor is capable of being so but when the Libs are wrong both sides do it, so it’s ok.

  23. The substantive political point which I continue to evade! LOL 🙂

    You are truly the gift that keeps on giving.

    I am glad you have been brought, kicking and screaming, to the admission that “leftists” who are “passionate about equity and social inclusion ought not to trade in the misogyny”. That is quite an admission for PB.

    So your “substantive” point is that Thatcher is dead and Gillard is alive. I guess that is why the Gillard slogan was “ditch” and the Thatcher slogan was “dead”, eh? That you think the individual being dead makes a difference as to whether or not it is sexist (the real “substantive political point” actually!) is quite telling.

    The other point you made is that people were directly hurt by Thatcher and so they are justified, whereas, apparently, no-one has been hurt by Gillard and so there is no justification to be hostile towards her.

    That is an opinion, and so you are entitled to it. I am also entitled to laugh.

  24. ….. take care here Fran. mod lip, with all that ducking, dodging, diving and weaving, plus the effort involving much goal-post heaving, obviously posseses great muscles in that skull.

  25. [Gary
    Posted Sunday, April 28, 2013 at 10:23 am | PERMALINK
    Typical conservative tactic – when Labor is wrong only Labor is capable of being so but when the Libs are wrong both sides do it, so it’s ok.]

    Typical left tactic- when you are wrong attack those pointing it out rather than admit you are wrong! 🙂

  27. morpheus

    Austerity is dead. Reaganism. Thatherism is dead. Discredited theory prove to fail in the real world.

    That makes those that follow that more wrong. Its the failure of the right.

    At least when left economic theory failed it was due to dictatorship failures.

    Now the right has failed they might see that a middle approach is the way to go.

    No more regulation is bad in and of itself. No more let the poor look after themselves government has no role.

  28. [When asked if federal Labor’s woes had impacted on the result, Mr Andrews said: “There are challenges from a brand point of view and I think everybody knows that,” he told AAP.]

    Looks like Daniel Andrews (ALP Leader in Vic) agrees there is an ALP Brand problem. I remember being ridiculed for suggesting this for the last couple of years!

  31. I would also remind you, ML, that meaning is context-dependent. Just as there’s no separating the word ‘witch’ from its history in culture (with sall of the misogyny attached) there’s no separating the ditty Ding Dong the Witch is Dead! from its location in The Wizard of Oz! Absent that movie, nobody would have thought to sing it, and it would not have shot up the BBC charts.

    Accordingly, when understanding the singing contextually, one should examine the meanings from which the singers in this context borrowed (and of course the sources of meaning for the original — which lie in agrarian mythology). A serious analyst would ask — how have contemporary folk re-positioned the text in question to invest it with new meaning and resonance, following the death of Thatcher?

    I note also that shortly after your complaint about ‘hypocrisy’ — Graham Arnold — coach of the A-League soccer team, the Central Coast Mariners declared that having won, at the forth attempt, a grand final, his team’s tag as ‘chokers’ was now in the past. “The monkey is off our back {…} Ding Dong the Witch is dead!” he said, in an outrageous mixed metaphor.

    Context and provenance is key. Doing this kind of analysis however of course far beyond someone of your acumen and cultural predisposition.

  32. Fran:

    I think I understand now:

    Its not sexist for people to sing “Ding, dong the witch is dead”, because:
    1. It was in a song from the Wizard of Oz
    2. A Soccer coach used it

    Yeah?

  33. Could someone tell me what Seccombe ended with as his shot at Henderson? I was called away and missed the end of Insiders.

  34. morpheus @ 69…that story is a bit of media-on-media nose rubbing. It is hardly about “the left”. The writer concludes that Abbott should be face scrutiny. A chance would be a fine thing.

    We could begin with his pseudo-policy on Climate Change or his non-existent economic policies. We could ask him what magic incantations he will use to revive the expansion of Olympic Dam. He could explain how it makes sense to both increase and decrease company tax at the same time.

    We would like to know why he will increase taxes on the lowest earners when they face the greatest cost-of-living pressures.

    Any inquiry to Abbott on these supposed policies would be welcome. Perhaps such questions amount to insults “by the left” from Abbott’s point of view. Who knows. He expects sycophants and he usually gets them.

    One thing, however, is completely certain – his avoidance of these issues is an insult to the intelligence of the public.

  36. lizzie

    It was Austerity has failed. Thatcherism and Reaganism has failed. One source mentioned was Paul Krugman whom GG has posted at 76

  39. Its not fake, I am seriously laughing, trust me! 😉

    I do thank everyone, though, it is a lovely way to waltz into the weekend wading through the posts here!

  40. briefly,

    I’d also give that argument more credence if the same rightists who now complain about all the nasty commentary from the left were as forthcoming with their condemnations when Jones and Hadlee are in full cry or when Abbott deliberately poses in front of putrid signs of abuse against the Gillard.

  44. There was an England cricketer, pre WWII, by the name of Maurice Leyland. If from a brogan family he would have been Morris Leyland. It might of course have just been his parent’s sense of humour anyway.

  45. confessions

    He always sits sideways, in a very defensive, look-away manner. Always defending the conservatives, but bloody grumpy.

    He’s still repeating his opinions on “inaction on CC is good”. That’s just a leetle out of date now.

  47. Clive needs to hire a media manager- when you are on national TV you shouldn’t stand in front of a bare wall and what looks like an empty cupboard…..not a good look when you are starting a new party.

  48. [izatso?
    Posted Sunday, April 28, 2013 at 10:54 am | PERMALINK
    …. certainly. you will be also]

    Indeed I will. It is going to be a fantastic decade for political tragics…heaps of material to sift through, I reckon! 🙂

  49. ML:

    [I am glad you have been brought, kicking and screaming, to the admission that “leftists” who are “passionate about equity and social inclusion ought not to trade in the misogyny”. ]

    It was in my original post. I volunteered it and explained it at length. You either failed to read or are being tricky here.

    [So your “substantive” point is that Thatcher is dead and Gillard is alive. ]

    You are brazen in you dishonesty, even when my text is in front of the eyes of others.

    [There was an appeal here against Thatcherism and its consequents implemented by Major, Blair, Brown and now Cameron-Clegg.

    That’s the substantive political point which you continue to evade. {emphasis added}]

    [That you think the individual being dead makes a difference as to whether or not it is sexist (the real “substantive political point” actually!) is quite telling.]

    Now you pile Pelion upon Ossa. I neither said nor implied such a thing. Had I asserted this, my remark on winking at misogyny would not have been germane. You surely no this but are trying to weasel out of admitting that you have no case.

    [The other point you made is that people were directly hurt by Thatcher and so they are justified, whereas, apparently, no-one has been hurt by Gillard and so there is no justification to be hostile towards her.]

    Again, you are either being dishonest or are simply intellectually inept. I didn’t seek to justify the sloganeering, but to explain its provenance and distinguish its provenance from those at the Abbott carbon “tax” rally in order to explore its meaning. In the latter case, the misogyny was express and the cultural glue binding together a broader reactionary campaign against the regime, whereas in the former case the misogyny was inherited via mediaeval fears of witches, reworked in the 1930s musical and channelled by the contemporary anti-Thatcher protesters. It’s still there of course — as one of the readings — and for that reason speaks against them, but as I said in the April 14 post:

    [It is a feature of life that those blighted by exclusion, oppression and brutality, often express their sentiments in forms shaped by their oppressors. Just as ‘an eye for an eye’ goes back to Hammurabai, so too those who choose brutopia as their standard for dealing with others can scarcely be surprised if a simulacrum of their paradigm passes the lips of their victims. If you mess people up, they are unlikely to respond to you as enlightened people.]

    That’s not a justrification. Rather, it settles responsibility for inter alia misogyny, where it properly should.

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