Queensland election endgame

An account of the electoral and constitutional situation in Queensland, most of it cribbed from Professor Graeme Orr.

I ceased updating my Queensland election count thread on Saturday, partly due to distractions from Canberra, but mostly because incoming votes had reduced to a trickle. With the dealine for receipt of postal votes passed at 6pm this evening, we can expect the final tallies and preference counts to be conducted over the next two or at most three days. No late count surprises transpired, so it is beyond doubt that 44 seats will be declared for Labor, 42 for the Liberal National Party, two for Katter’s Australian Party and one independent, Nicklin MP Peter Wellington, who has thrown his lot in with Labor while the Katter members continue to haggle for terms. To summarise the last four seats I had left on my watch list:

Ferny Grove. There have been 193 new votes added here since Saturday, and the Labor lead of 414 is now at 408.

Mount Ommaney. Another 109 votes added, and the LNP lead is up from 170 to 187.

Whitsunday. A further 249 votes have been counted. Here there is a complication, explained thus by Antony Green: “The votes have been counted but they haven’t been isolated by count centre and so haven’t been entered into the computer system. I’ve had a discussion with the ECQ who are seeing what they can do, but it may be that the count in Whitsunday won’t include all the votes until the actual distribution of preferences is reported this evening or tomorrow. There are no votes missing and everything adds up except the website.”. It matters little – my projection had the LNP lead at 351 on Saturday, and 352 now.

Lockyer. Ian Rickuss never looked comfortable in his tussle with Pauline Hanson, but his lead is now at 194, compared with 183 on Saturday.

Today I wrote an account for Crikey concerning the constitutional situation given the apparent conviction of the Liberal National Party that it can remain in power until any uncertainty surrounding Ferny Grove is resolved. By the time of publication, this had been overtaken somewhat by two events. The first was Campbell Newman’s visit to the Governor to tender his resignation, “pending the appointment of a new Premier” – so not actually a resignation at all then, as far as I can see (UPDATE: J-D in comments reasonably argues in comments that this is overreach, but I remain curious about the timing). Ordinarily when a Premier tenders their resignation, they concurrently advise the Governor to call upon somebody else to form a government. I am left to surmise that the true purpose of the visit was to get in before Annastacia Palaszczuk with legal advice he had sought yesterday, which in the words of The Australian included “a plan for the Queensland Governor to delay commissioning a new government until after a possible by-election in a Brisbane seat that could be months away”.

The second of today’s two events was an announcement by the Governor, Paul de Jersey, which suggested Newman’s visit might not have gone entirely according to plan. Taking to Twitter, de Jersey announced he would “commission new Premier following #qldvotes polls declaration”.Since there is no question that Ferny Grove will be declared for Labor, that doesn’t leave much room for doubt that he will commission Palaszczuk. Certainly the result in Ferny Grove will not be undeclared by virtue of being referred to the Court of Disputed Returns, which will require a substantial amount of time to consider the various legal arguments. This will involve establishing that Palmer United candidate Mark Taverner was indeed disqualified by virtue of bankruptcy; that precedents at federal elections finding against nullification of elections on the basis of candidate disqualification do not apply under optional preferential voting, since those who cast a one-only vote for Taverner were deprived of a valid vote; and that the number of such votes was potentially great enough to affect the result, which would require further scrutiny of ballot papers. There would then follow an automatic right of appeal.

To push the envelope for the sake of argument, the Governor might accept that, for the sake of continuity pending a final resolution, he should install Lawrence Springborg in some manner of ongoing caretaker capacity. However, this would require holding off summoning a parliament in which Mark Furner would be entitled to sit until the Court of Disputed Returns ruled otherwise. To put it mildly, keeping the parliament in suspension for the deliberate purpose of maintaining in office a Premier who lacks its confidence does not seem in accordance with responsible government. If the LNP believes it will attain Ferny Grove in due course, there doesn’t seem any reason why it shouldn’t sit it out in opposition until that occurs – other than the purely political consideration that it would be less likely to win the by-election from opposition, which is no concern of the Governor’s. Furthermore, Graeme Orr observes that the caretaker conventions under which Springborg would presumably be obliged to govern are expressly designed from the period between the dissolution of parliament and the declaration of the result.

If a new election is indeed required for Ferny Grove, which is far from being the foregone conclusion that the LNP and friendly elements of the media are suggesting, the ECQ says the earliest possible date is April 11. However, that is surely based on untestable assumptions as to how long the legal process will take unfold. A notable wrinkle in the situation is the role of the Chief Justice, Tim Carmody, an enormously contentious Newman government appointment to replace Paul de Jersey on his appointment as Governor. As Fairfax’s Amy Remeikis describes it, “the Chief Justice may elect to be the single judge, or appoint another Supreme Court judge to act in his place”. However, Graeme Orr (who you might well think I should just pass this post over to) refuted this notion in an interview on 4BC today, saying there was “a roster of judges that are picked at random in advance”.

UPDATE: I should also have noted the following from Graeme Orr: “The killer argument is simpler. Let disqualified losing candidates upset a close election, and in future every marginal seat will be seeded with a dummy candidate whose disqualification is obscure, but ready to be leaked to upset the result if it doesn’t go the way the dummy’s masters want.”

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.

179 comments on “Queensland election endgame”

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  1. As Itep says, Ferny Grove has now been declared, with Furner the winner. (Much rejoicing in the local ALP branches 😕 ) So far, the ECQ is still only showing the notional 2CP and just the first line of what will eventually be the full distribution of preferences.

  2. Please, can one of the ALP members among the PBs help me here? In the week before the election I half-saw on TV some ALP bloke saying something that sounded like they were planning to make a reasonable new offer on stolen wages. Anyone have details or a link please? I’ve said for years that I’d rejoin the party if they added a zero to the mean and pathetic Beattie-Bligh offer.

  4. Yes thanks Itep – I had an image of Curtis in my mind as being the person I’d half-seen on TV while my wife was talking about something else. 21 mill eh? – about half the stolen amount as I recall. Maybe I’ll half rejoin…

  5. The CV of the Qand Gov de Jersey looks very impressive and he seem to have a distinguised legal career
    He won’t be bluffed by the C-Mail or Springborg I think

  6. Or ABC 24, who to my mind are doing a damn good job of giving the impression that there is a “new election” imminent (they did not even say by-election). Incompetence, or helping to establish a “no mandate” slur on the incoming government?

  7. Actually D & M, when an election is declared invalid, the replacement is not a by-election, it’s a “fresh” or “new” election. But imminent? Possible, but far from certain.

  8. Some real step-by-step preference distributions stating to appear on the ECQ pages. Format is as annoying as they could possibly make it – details although not booth-by-booth are at the bottom of the booth details page, and percentages going to each continuing candidate are percents of the non-exhausted votes, so adding up the percents across each row you get more than 100%. But still interesting.

    I’ve looked at 2 so far – Sandgate and Yeerongpilly. In each case the exhaustion rate is only about 30% for the trivial independents and 10-20 for the Greens (that’s counting the votes the Green received directly as well as those that came to them from earlier pref distributions). “Number every square and put the LNP last” had a big effect – congratulations to Jenny Wellington who tells me she invented it!

  9. @ Jack A Randa, 58

    Which part of the ECQ’s site shows the full distribution of preferences? I can’t seem to find anything other than the first-preference and 2PP counts.

  10. Looking around a few completed seats, seems Greens prefs broke up to 10:1 to Labor after often < 20% exhaustion. That's just a tiny bit different to last time (and to William's standard 4:1 assumption). The election outcome vs polling predictions is right there.

    Seems the ALP share is higher, and the exhaustion rate much lower, in seats with a high Greens votes — which are of course all city seats. Do polling co "last election" preference distributions allow for that effect?

  12. No, polling companies would simply apply a total preference distribution to the statewide primary vote. The model used to project seat totals from my poll tracker sought to take seat-level variation into account, for all the good it did.

  16. As I suspected, the full preference distribution for Lockyer hasn’t been recorded.

    I still think there’s a chance for this to go any which way, depending on who gets into the final two candidates (it’s not guaranteed to be Hanson, what with there only being a 1.58% primary vote buffer between her and the Labor candidate).

  17. Yes Arrnea, they’re posting the more straightforward ones first. Understandable, but if they had any idea about communicating with the public they would have an index page showing which districts had full details and which didn’t, and they wouldn’t hide the preference-distrib details at the bottom of the “booth details” page. Is anyone from the ECQ reading this? If so, learn to comm-un-i-cate! Hire William, or me, as a consultant. You do a good job – you just need to learn to explain what you’re doing better!

  18. 66

    Apparently Hanson/One Nation are on the receiving end of directed Katter preferences (about 7.5% Katter primary) and the Greens got a lower vote than Katter (3.5%)and so the chance of the ALP getting to overtake Hanson/One Nation is lower than you suggest. I would also suspect that, due to the ALP`s preference advertising strategy of saying put the LNP last, the 3CP ALP voters preference Hanson over the LNP at a high rate than the 3CP Hason voters preference the ALP over the LNP.

  19. 67

    The preference distribution, which actually decides the result, should not be at the bottom of the booth details page. State electoral commissions generally do not have the most informative or best set out websites and provide less information than the AEC website.

    The only thing the VEC website does better than the AEC website is to show booth results in a table rather than on different pages for each booth, although they only show vote numbers, not percentages.

  21. Tom, even if Labor got ahead of Hanson at the 2nd-last count (improbable), would Hanson’s prefs then give Labor a win over the LNP? Even more improbable. Her HTV said vote for me, then KAP, then stop. I suppose some of her voters might have heard the trees whispering “number every square and put the LNP last”, but I doubt that too many would have acted on it. Another case where some informed scutineer/spies would help to inform us all, but there don’t seem to be many among us bludgers. Anyway, we’ll know soon enough now.

  23. [The CV of the Qand Gov de Jersey looks very impressive and he seem to have a distinguised legal career
    He won’t be bluffed by the C-Mail or Springborg I think]
    I heard de Jersey speak at UQ years ago. Very sharp mind and a stickler for following legal precedent. He seemed conservative but he would not have been fooled by Newman for a second, and would treat a creative interpretation of parliamentary rules very dimly. It is fortunate that he was sitting at is time.

  24. @ Tom, Jack

    I agree that a significant chunk of Hanson’s preferences would exhaust in an LNP versus ALP contest, but I think of the ones that do not, they would favour the ALP for the simple reason that those who voted One Nation are likely to oppose privatisation of public assets, something that has become synonymous with the Liberal National Party thanks to Campbell Newman and his Government.

    The real question is can Labor get past Hanson – I think the odds aren’t amazing, but it’s possible – Labor could expect to gain the vast majority of non-exhausting Greens preferences, which means it need only get about even with One Nation on non-exhausting PUP and KAP preferences in order to get past them.

    If Labor can get past One Nation, it’s very much game on.

  27. Socrates

    [I heard de Jersey speak at UQ years ago. Very sharp mind and a stickler for following legal precedent. He seemed conservative but he would not have been fooled by Newman for a second, and would treat a creative interpretation of parliamentary rules very dimly. It is fortunate that he was sitting at is time.]

    Exactly right. I have heard him speak on numerous occasions in exactly those terms and also have some personal knowledge of him. While I would expect from his background he would be a conservative voter, I have never detected any hint of partisanship – he took the independence of the judiciary extremely seriously in his service as Chief Justice and was definitely not in the “activist” judicial tradition, although he did a huge amount to bring the courts up to date in an administrative and technological sense.

  30. Tom

    I believe (referring to your comment on the previous page) that the right or lack thereof of a candidate to challenge a whole election is one of the things that will be resolved in the Victorian trial.

    I suspect she’ll be tossed out of court eventually, but it’s still worth following.

  31. 80

    She will probably loose, although I am not as certain about that as others seem to be, but interesting times if she succeeds. A snap election would be a bit under-funded and under-planned all round.

  33. Tom the first and best@81

    80

    She will probably loose, although I am not as certain about that as others seem to be, but interesting times if she succeeds. A snap election would be a bit under-funded and under-planned all round.

    In the case she did succeed, it could be argued that there were a number of safe individual lower house seats where the number of early votes could not mathematically have altered the result and that the results in those seats at least must stand.

    As Brian Costa notes in the interview here: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2015/s4158844.htm the hurdle she faces is very high because a declaration of being unable to vote on election day need only be verbal and the voter does not need to give a reason. So she would need to gather very large-scale evidence of voters not being even asked to give a verbal declaration.

  34. Ajm

    Agreed. It follows from that that the sensible thing for Palaszczuk to do in dealing with de Jersey is play the situation by the book. Wait till writs are issued. As soon as she has a majority of writs, and is confident she can gain a majority in parliament, ask that convention be followed and be recognised as Premier.

  35. Well SportingBet/William Hill has just paid out on ALP providing the Qld Premier. Maybe they have the heads up from Paul DeJersey?

    The $6 I got a week out when Abbott’s Sir Prince Phillip debacle swamped poor Campbell’s message a nice earner. When the L-NP mouthpiece Courier Mail devotes its front page 5 days out to mocking the PM, the ALP campaign which was faltering a bit got a huge boost of adrenalin.

  38. News from Maryborough! ECQ now has an apparently complete distribution of prefs up at http://results.ecq.qld.gov.au/elections/state/State2015/results/booth51.html#4 showing ALP winning by 813. Foley was about 450 behind Labor at the final exclusion and 43% of his votes exhausted and the others went 68/32 to Labor. (That’s everything on his pile at that stage including those he got from earlier exclusions.) Not “declared” yet but that can’t be far away.

  39. Jack A Randa @71

    Tom, even if Labor got ahead of Hanson at the 2nd-last count (improbable), would Hanson’s prefs then give Labor a win over the LNP? Even more improbable. Her HTV said vote for me, then KAP, then stop. I suppose some of her voters might have heard the trees whispering “number every square and put the LNP last”, but I doubt that too many would have acted on it. Another case where some informed scutineer/spies would help to inform us all, but there don’t seem to be many among us bludgers. Anyway, we’ll know soon enough now.

    I highly doubt it. Voters who goes for these party are highly disillusioned with the major parties and would rather go the easy path and take advantage of OPV than to think along the lines of which major party will most likely not privatise state assets.

  41. Yes Raaraa, I had said I doubted it too. I think the term for what we’re doing is “furiously agreeing”. Though I must qualify that a bit – looking at the finalised votes from other electorates with PUP and KAP candidates, the general pattern, despite the lack of direction from HTVs, is that only 30-40% of their votes exhaust and the others are sprayed around roughly uniformly among the other candidates. But that still isn’t likely to put Labor ahead of Hanson in Lockyer, so in the end we’re still furiously agreeing!

  42. Jack, if the ALP and One Nation candidates get the exact same share of KAP and PUP preferences, the Labor candidate will be ahead at the relevant exclusion thanks to the fact that Greens preferences are very likely to flow almost unanimously to Labor over One Nation.

  45. True, but there are 3000+ PUPs and KAPs and only 1190 Greens, and they. are. all. individuals., and some of them don’t think like you or me. Look at Mansfield at http://results.ecq.qld.gov.au/elections/state/State2015/results/booth49.html#4 – Ian Walker only won because 381 votes went from the Greens to him. Up to 227 may have come from Jarrod Wirth in the first place, but that still leaves at least 154 people who, for reasons that made sense to them, voted 1 Green 2 LNP. Similarly, there will have to be some in Lockyer who, for reasons that to make sense to them, will vote 1 Green and put Hanson ahead of Labor. So I’m still not expecting a Labor win there – but I’ll shout “whoopee” if it happens. And Unitary, where the heck are you? I hope you’re not in A&E suffering from uncontrollable giggling spasms, though it would be quite understandable!

  49. Labor did surprisingly well on absents in Lockyer – and Hanson surprisingly badly, so things narrowed a bit on primaries late in the count.

    My gut feeling though is that she’s still too far ahead given KAT and PUP prefs will favour her – even if the GRNs go the other way at a higher rate

  50. Jack A Randa@91

    Yes Raaraa, I had said I doubted it too. I think the term for what we’re doing is “furiously agreeing”. Though I must qualify that a bit – looking at the finalised votes from other electorates with PUP and KAP candidates, the general pattern, despite the lack of direction from HTVs, is that only 30-40% of their votes exhaust and the others are sprayed around roughly uniformly among the other candidates. But that still isn’t likely to put Labor ahead of Hanson in Lockyer, so in the end we’re still furiously agreeing!

    Maybe I was meant to reply to the other person you were discussing with, but picked the wrong comment to reply to. Poor form on my part!

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