Thursday morning
I’ve now taken Gaven, Cook and Burdekin off my watch list, the first two credited to Labor, the latter to the LNP (see below for further detail on Burdekin). That gets Labor to 45, which then becomes 46 if Margaret Strelow is right to have conceded defeat in Rockhampton, which she presumably is (more on that below also). To get to 47, Labor would need one out of the following: to retain Macalister, which will happen if independent Hetty Johnston can’t close a 3% gap against the LNP on preferences (which I would rate somewhat likely); Townsville, which is going down to the wire with Labor very slightly behind; and to be the beneficiary of Scott Emerson’s defeat in Maiwar, which seems somewhat more likely to go to the Greens. The ABC computer is predicting 48 for Labor, but I’m not sure why, because it only projects them with leads in 47.
The latest iteration of my results table looks as follows, with explanatory notes to follow:
Rockhampton
The big news of the day was independent Margaret Strelow’s concession that she is not going to win, contrary to most back-of-envelope projections to this point. The kicker is apparently a very tight 60% flow of preferences from the LNP to the One Nation, which will cause the latter to overtake Strelow at the second last exclusion, by a fairly comfortable margin of around 400 votes on my reckoning. One Nation would need about 55% of Strelow, LNP and Greens preferences to overtake Labor, and evidently Strelow’s are favouring Labor enough that this is not going to happen. It seems a full preference count will be conducted today.
Macalister
The count here seems unusually advanced, so there will presumably not be much change to the current results – which is good for independent Hetty Johnston, who has been getting smashed on postals. The key to the situation is the LNP’s 26.66% to 23.33% lead over Johnston, which she needs to close to poach the seat from Labor. The sources of the preferences will be the Greens on 6.54% and three minnows on 6.82% between them. Out of a three-way split of preferences, Johnston’s share will need to be about 25% higher than the LNP’s. Buried deep in a typically eyeroll-inducing report from the Courier-Mail is the news that Labor is very confident that this won’t happen.
Townsville
Not much progress in the count yesterday, with 90 postal votes breaking about evenly, and Labor clawing back about 30 on rechecking of booth votes. I still have the LNP a few dozen votes ahead, but there are perhaps 2000 absent votes that are yet to be counted, which might turn up something for Labor – though they were in fact slightly favourable to the LNP in relative terms in 2015. The same goes for maybe 700 outstanding out-of-district pre-poll votes. Also to come are around 600 declared institution, polling day declaration and uncertain identity votes, whose idiosyncrasies cancelled each other out last time.
Maiwar
All that was added yesterday were 130 postals, which increased the Greens’ primary vote lead from 37 to 43. Still to come: about 1500 absent votes, which are historically strong for the Greens; about 400 out-of-district pre-polls; a trickle of postals and 200 or so odds and sods. With scrutineer talk of a strong flow of Greens preferences out of the 737 votes for independent Anita Diamond, Labor will need to do extremely well on the outstanding count to get their nose in front.
Burdekin
My projection that the LNP would pull away here is looking pretty good after 652 postals were added to the count yesterday, breaking 430-222 to the LNP if preferences behaved as before. I’m projecting a 637 vote LNP win, and while this is probably inflated by an overestimate of the number of outstanding postals, I’m no longer regarding it as in doubt.
Hinchinbrook
Not really anything to follow here, as we won’t know the real situation until the preference distribution. However, it looks very much to me like One Nation’s narrow lead over Katter’s will be eliminated by Labor preferences, and that Katter’s will then ride home over LNP member Andrew Cripps on One Nation preferences. That’s unless Labor gets a strong flow of preferences from independent Peter Raffles and the Greens (3.04%), in which case Labor will close a 21.02% to 18.83% deficit against Katter’s, causing the latter to be eliminated in fourth place. In this case, there would need to be a Labor preference share around 30% higher than that to the KAP – plausible in the Greens’ case, but there doesn’t seem any reason to think preferences from Raffles, who wants statehood for north Queensland, will not go strongly to Katter. As top candidate on the ballot paper, some of Raffles’ vote would be of the donkey variety, and that vote won’t harm Katter’s.
Tuesday evening
The ECQ have unhelpfully pulled the notional two-party counts from their site. That makes it particularly difficult to track Burdekin, where Labor today picked up a bonus I hadn’t been factoring in: a strong pre-poll booth at Collinsville, which would have narrowed Labor’s two-party deficit from 366 to about 150. However, I’m still projecting the LNP to gain a couple of hundred votes on remaining postals.
Labor had a much better day today in Townsville, getting 35.3% of the primary vote from a batch of 635 postals, compared with 28.5% from the earlier batch of 885. The LNP’s 37.7% vote in the first batch fell to 33.2% in the second. Based on earlier reported preference flows, I’ve got Labor paring their deficit back from 78 to 31, and the projected losing margin down from 312 to 154 – and with perhaps 3000 voters yet to come, there’s a fairly substantial margin for error on that.
In Maiwar, the Greens are now 37 votes ahead of Labor on the primary vote, pending the unknown quantity of the preferences of independent Anita Diamond, who is on 734 votes. Kevin Bonham hears scrutineer talk that the Greens are getting a strong flow of preferences from those votes, to the extent that they should boost them by about 200. The two main outstanding categories of vote are absent votes, both of the pre-poll and polling day variety. If these favour the Greens like they did in 2015, I’m projecting the margin to increase by 135 votes. That does not factor in what will presumably be a few hundred outstanding postals, which have so far been fractionally more favourable for Labor.
Monday evening
A better day for Labor today, with three indicative two-party counts in seats where the ECQ had picked the wrong top two all bringing good news. In short:
Cook. A Labor-versus-One Nation throw records One Nation receiving 64% of preferences, when they need more like three quarters. The only remaining question is whether it will indeed be One Nation facing Labor in the final count, the other possibility being Katter’s Australian Party, who might get a better flow of preferences. However, there are likely to be only about 2500 votes left to be added to the count – in which case KAP would need to outpoll One Nation by nearly 10% of the outstanding vote, when they are closely matched at present.
Maiwar. Labor will clearly defeat the LNP’s Scott Emerson if it make it to the final count ahead of the Greens (I’m not actually clear in this case why the ECQ wasn’t conducted an LNP-Labor count all along). Presumably Labor preferences would go even more strongly to the Greens, to the outstanding question is who gets over the hump. The Greens currently have a lead of 19 votes, subject to the slight impact independent candidate Anita Diamond’s preferences will have.
Burdekin. Previously identified as a technical LNP gain, meaning a retain in a seat the redistribution had made notionally Labor. With a Labor-LNP throw now conducted, it has emerged that Labor has enjoyed a strong flow of One Nation preferences, and trails by only 34 votes. The seat is prompted me to add it to the summary chart below, where it constitutes a potential Labor to gain to compensate for the fact that I’ve now called Pumicestone for the LNP along with a detailed projection. The latter suggests today’s development is a false alarm for the LNP, who have a huge advantage on postals that is yet to flow through to the published two-party count.
Not featured in today’s two-party throws: LNP versus KAP in Hinchinbrook; Strelow versus Labor in Rockhampton; Johnston versus Labor in Macalister. Next to nothing happened today in Gaven and Townsville.
Sunday evening
Today’s counting has yielded two notable developments, both of them unfavourable to Labor. The LNP has roared back into the race in Townsville, performing very strongly at the city’s pre-poll centre and in the first half of postal votes. Postals have swung to the LNP by 8.9%, pre-polls by 6.8%, with the latter doubling in number since 2015. Some activity of the Defence Force that I’m not aware of may have had a bearing here.
Labor’s lead in Aspley has also withered from 2.2% to 0.6%, with postals swinging to the LNP here as well. However, that seems to most of the postals accounted for – most of the outstanding votes now are absents, which are likely to favour Labor.
I now have detailed projections for the three seats I am reading as straightforward Labor-versus-LNP contests, which are Gaven, Pumicestone and Townsville. These suggest Labor is in real trouble in Townsville and has little chance in Pumicestone, but will most likely win Gaven.
Not much has happened in the count today in Gaven, so what it says below is much the same as yesterday. In Pumicestone, Labor had a raw vote lead of 309 last night, but I was calculating this would become a 53-vote deficit when primary votes in the count were added on two-part. I then projected a 228 winning margin for the LNP on the final count, with the LNP to gain 341 on postals and 217 on absents. Once again though, postals have been bad for Labor, swinging against them 4.5%, such that I am now projecting the LNP to win by 535.
Including Gaven and Aspley, I can see a clear 44 seats for Labor; losses in Cook or Macalister I would still rate as unlikely, but they simply cannot be ruled out given the lack of hard information about preferences. That leaves them still needing an extra seat to reach the magic 47, for which their best chances are squeezing out the Greens in Maiwar or hanging on in Townsville.
Saturday evening
As I see it, in the race for 47 seats, Labor is on 43 and the LNP is on 38; there are at least two for Katter’s Australian Party, one for One Nation and one independent; and then there are eight seats that I’m treating as up in the air in one way or another. First up, there are eight seats that I’m treating as having changed hands. No doubt I’ll be proved wrong about some of them, but I figure you’ve got to start somewhere.
Aspley. Labor has held a stubborn lead of a bit over 2%, which doesn’t look like being overturned.
Redlands. Surprisingly, Labor’s only entirely clear gain from the LNP, off a swing of 6.3%.
Noosa. Independent Sandra Bolton seems to have surprised everybody by topping the primary vote in Noosa. Bolton appears to be exquisitely inoffensive, so there is no chance of the LNP chasing her down on preferences.
Nicklin. With the retirement of independent Peter Wellington, Nicklin returned home to the LNP.
Bundaberg. Gained by the LNP from Labor on a 1.2% swing, putting them 0.7% ahead, which will surely increase on late counting.
Mirani. This looks very much like a case of LNP dropping out and deciding it for One Nation over Labor on preferences. It may be within the realms of possibility that One Nation would tank so badly on late counting they finished third, in which case they might push the LNP ahead of Labor. But I’m putting that in the long shot column for now. For one thing, I’d think veteran Labor MP Jim Pearce would do okay on preferences.
Burdekin. In a seat held by the LNP, but made notionally Labor by the redistribution, this is a near three-way tie on the primary vote. If Labor drops out, the LNP wins. If One Nation drops out, I guess Labor has a chance (its preferences were directed to them). If the LNP drops out, One Nation wins. But the LNP does in fact have a slight lead, which will presumably increase on late counting. So for now I’m calling it an LNP gain from Labor.
Maiwar. Lost by the LNP, but not known whether to Labor or the Greens.
Then there are a further seven seats that I really don’t care to call, for one reason or another. I will be adding summaries of the situation in these electorates as I complete them. To start with though, here’s what I see as a summary of the situation:
UPDATE: For now, I have completed my analysis/projection of Gaven – the others I plan to do will have to wait until later today. The table below shows actual results in the first four columns, and my best attempt at projections in the last two columns. This requires estimates both of the number of outstanding votes, which involves at least as much art as science, and the two-party split. In the case of postals, for which about half the anticipated total have been counted, I have projected the results from the counted votes on to the uncounted. This is bad for Labor, as postal votes were weak for them to begin with, and appear to be recording no swing.
For other types of vote, it is assumed they will observe the same idiosyncrasies as in 2015. On this basis, Labor is projected to do well enough on absent votes to hold back the tide on postals, which largely reflects a strong Greens vote on absents in 2015.
For the other seats I’m listing as doubtful, just the briefest of rundowns for now:
Maiwar. The Greens have a raw 0.7% lead ahead of Labor in the race to finish second and, presumably, win the seat from the LNP on the preferences of the other. No absents or postals have been counted; the former should be good for the Greens, the latter bad, and there should be roughly equal numbers of each. So the Greens would seem favoured, but it’s certainly not done and dusted.
Pumicestone. Labor has a raw lead of 309 votes (0.9%) on the two-party count, but there won’t be much of it left when votes that have presently been counted only on the primary are added to two-party preferred. Postals should as usual favour the LNP, but Labor’s big hope is that the LNP tanked on postals in 2015. None of either have been counted yet.
Cook. With Labor on 39.3%, and a crush of others just shy of 20% (One Nation 18.9%, LNP 17.9%, Katter’s 17.6%), one of the latter will need a strong flow of preferences from the other two to make it home. I would expect that a Katter candidate in the final count would be most threatening to Labor, followed by One Nation, followed by the LNP.
Macalister. Labor faces a threat here from independent Hetty Johnston, but it’s a long shot — she trails the LNP 26.4% to 24.2% on the primary, which she needs to chase down with either preferences or an unusually strong late count performance for an independent.
Rockhampton. With Labor’s vote on only 31.8%, independent Margaret Strelow would seem assured of taking this if she finishes second. However, the LNP looks like bowing out before One Nation, who it had second on its how-to-vote card. So it would seem possible that Strelow will actually run third, in which case I imagine her preferences would decide the result for Labor. For all I know though, there may be a One Nation surprise lurking in wait here. Labor could wear a defeat at the hands of Strelow, a Palaszczuk-backed Labor preselection candidate who could potentially be lured back to the party, or perhaps made Speaker.
Thuringowa. The order here clearly runs Labor, LNP and One Nation about even on second, and Katter’s fourth, with the latter’s preferences presumably set to secure second place for One Nation. The question then arises as to whether LNP preferences go cleanly enough to One Nation to finish the job for them. UPDATE: They don’t – what I had thought was an ABC estimate is actually a real preference count that makes clear One Nation can’t win. So the only conceivable threat to Labor is the LNP, and that’s a long shot.
Hinchinbrook. The LNP incumbent here is on 30%, and then there’s a crush of One Nation, Katter’s and Labor around 20%. Provided Katter’s can stay in the count when the field is reduced to three, they would seem set to take the seat. Otherwise, the final count looks like being LNP versus One Nation, with Labor preferences saving the day for the LNP.
J341893
Apparently it’s the mining town pre polls
not showing on the ECQ site yet?
It was an interesting election night on Saturday, and would even have been exciting to watch (for those of us who don’t subscribe to Sky News) were it not for the problems yet again with Antony’s computer. It was amusing that the ABC set up a backdrop of people sitting at desks doing something on computers (probably playing solitaire). Couldn’t they have give one of their computers to Antony?
Anyway, to get more serious, the result shows that both Labor and the Coalition are faced with the long-term prospect of not gaining more than 40% of the primary vote in elections.
However, at least the Coalition has a potential solution to this problem: certainly in Queensland, anyway. With Labor having made a surprise move to reinstate compulsory preferential voting just before the election, there would seem no good reason to prevent the Libs and Nats separating again. If the Nats can operate separately in Qld, their more united structure and (generally) much better quality candidates should enable them to see off the threat of PHON over time. Indeed, if the Nats were to play their cards right at the national level, they should have some chance of drawing the “conservative” voter base away from the likes of Corey Bernardi: although, beyond Queensland, the National Party branch structure is a shadow of its former self.
The results for the Greens first in Northcote and now in Queensland should cause Labor a great deal of concern IMO. The Greens have had a pretty bad political year (well, at least until Mother Russia lost her preselection in NSW), yet the Northcote by-election result was something of a triumph for them: and this notwithstanding the fact that the Andrews Government is about as far to the political left as a Labor Government can get.
And now the Greens have done really well in inner-city Brisbane. Some of this might be due to concerns about Palaszczuk’s stance on Adani, but I think something more significant is going on, particularly among the millennials.
Over the past two decades – due to the slowly declining influence of both the moderate left and the old Catholic Right – Federal Labor has moved significantly to the left on a range of economic and social issues: fiscal policy, taxation, deregulation, SSM, etc. It has wavered, and continues to waver, on the issue of border security: sometimes it is in lockstep with the Coalition, but the party base is not comfortable with this stance and keeps trying to draw it away. On the environment, Labor is conflicted: again, the majority of the party membership has a similar view to the Greens on most environmental issues, but the old hard left unions – the CFMEU and the AMWU – are concerned to protect jobs in some of the dirty industries. This ongoing tension clearly caused problems for Labor in the Qld election.
So what does the Labor Party stand for in 2017? I look at Federal Labor under Shorten and see a leader who cut his political teeth in the Hawke-Keating era being drawn steadily to the left by a party base who is less concerned with economic and industry policies than it is with the environment, identity politics, boat people, etc.
The problem is that, no matter how much Labor lurches to the left (a prospect that I understand will be welcomed by many who post on PB), it can never hope to have as clearly-defined message as the Greens on the issues that appear to matter the most to a great many millennial voters. Hence, the relatively left-leaning Andrews Government still lost Northcote to the Greens. And then the Greens also did surprisingly well in Queensland on Saturday night.
I reckon the rise of the Greens and the chaos on the right provide an opportunity for Labor to firmly position itself in the political centre, accepting that it will probably need increasingly to govern in coalition with a party that looks like it is here to stay. And the central ground in politics is looking highly likely to become completely vacant shortly, as the Libs look set to knife Turnbull and head back towards the right.
Alas, both the ALP membership and the more powerful unions seem to want Labor to head further left. It probably doesn’t matter in the short term, because the Libs are currently such a mess that a party led by Kim Jong Un would probably have a show against them in the next election. But IMO the policy mix that Labor is currently putting forward will not have the same long-term appeal as that of the Hawke-Keating era.
I realise most on here won’t agree with me, but I will put these thoughts forward to stimulate discussion.
meher baba:
On top of this, I think the the ABC made a mistake in having a panel comprised entirely of politicians who are currently in parliament. It meant they were all under the obligation to stay on message and stick to their respective talking points, and – at least in the case of the Coalition members – forced to grin and pretend it really is a good result for them, since there’s no way sitting federal members like Canavan and Prentice would be able to get away with saying anything that would imply things arn’t actually going swimmingly for the federal government at the moment.
Normally these panels have a reasonable amount of retired or retiring-at-that-election politicians with little to lose, which allows for rather more open and honest commentary on the campaign and the results.
meher baba: I believe the real benefit of the LNP merger in Queensland is that it launders the National Party members as “Liberal” for the benefit of voters in SEQ.
Liberal/National coalitions have for a long time had a problem of electoral geography in Queensland. The problem is that the majority of their core heartland seats are deeply conservative Nationals electorates – to the point where, when they are in Opposition, Nationals are usually a party-room majority. However, in order to form Government they require Liberals to win a significant number of seats in South East Queensland, where Nationals policies – and a Nationals LOTO – are sand in the electoral gears for those Liberal candidates. The LNP branding allows this to be somewhat obscured.
MB – the neo-liberal/free market economy that has been supported by Labor over the last 35 years has resulted in massive increase in inequality (and a big increase in wealth). It is hardly a move to the left to want to sort out inequality. The people who do the “where do I stand on the political spectrum” have ALP on the right of centre and the Greens a bit on the left. They may be a bit off the mark but to describe the current ALP as too far left compared with the people who vote for them is not accurate.
Asha Leu: “On top of this, I think the the ABC made a mistake in having a panel comprised entirely of politicians who are currently in parliament. ”
I totally agree. From what I hear of it, the Sky coverage – featuring the likes of Credlin, Richo, Beattie, Newman, etc. – was much more interesting.
Moreover, the currently serving pollies who they had on the panel were – with (whatever you might think of him) the exception of Canavan – a pretty dull lot. Some serving pollies – Richo and Ray when they were still in the Senate, or Pyne – can be entertaining. The two State MPs and Senator Chisholm weren’t of this calibre. They should have tried for someone like Graham Perrett on the Federal Labor side and a Jackie Trad from State Labor (and, to be fair, perhaps they did and were rebuffed).
meher baba: In regards to the ALP, I think the dynamic you describe will be self-correcting. That’s because, as much as the membership may want to go further leftwards, the minds of the parliamentary party will be concentrated wonderfully by the reality of what’s required to win seats. A political vacuum cannot stand, so if the Liberal party continues to drift rightward, the Labor Right will naturally move in to occupy the political space they have vacated.
Wakefield: “MB – the neo-liberal/free market economy that has been supported by Labor over the last 35 years has resulted in massive increase in inequality (and a big increase in wealth). It is hardly a move to the left to want to sort out inequality. The people who do the “where do I stand on the political spectrum” have ALP on the right of centre and the Greens a bit on the left. They may be a bit off the mark but to describe the current ALP as too far left compared with the people who vote for them is not accurate.”
By most measures, inequality in Australia is not at a historic high. There is definitely a problem with house prices (and, increasingly, rents) in Sydney and Melbourne, but I’m not sure that income and wealth redistribution policies are going to provide any answers here. But they’re increasingly the sort of economic policies that Shorten Labor are putting forward.
The Hawke-Keating economic approach was based on stimulating economic growth in conjunction with massive investments in improved social welfare. In retrospect, they probably could also have invested a bit more in education. But what they certainly did get right was to resist the temptation to push taxes up: instead, they used the benefits of economic growth to create budget surpluses that they then used to create tax cuts for working people as an alternative to wages growth: thereby benefiting both individuals and the economy.
Have a look at the Labor platform today: is there anything in it that is remotely like the Federal economic policies of the 1980s and 1990s?
In an era when the ABC must carefully watch the budget, I am guessing that currently serving politicians will work for free whereas retired politicians want to be paid.
caf: “In regards to the ALP, I think the dynamic you describe will be self-correcting. That’s because, as much as the membership may want to go further leftwards, the minds of the parliamentary party will be concentrated wonderfully by the reality of what’s required to win seats. A political vacuum cannot stand, so if the Liberal party continues to drift rightward, the Labor Right will naturally move in to occupy the political space they have vacated.”
I’d like to think so, but the UK gives a relevant example of a political battleground in which both Labor and the Tories have abandoned the centre-ground. There is also a possibility that Turnbull will win his battle with the conservatives in his party and hold the centre ground. Then Labor could join the ranks of those European socialist/social democratic parties (France, Germany, etc.) that look to me to be struggling a bit at the moment.
Interesting times!
MB
From my perspective as a humble ALP Branch member in suburban Brisbane (a lefty in a moderate-right branch with a fair bit of union influence) I think the party, including the unions, are pretty realistic about what it takes to get elected to government. The unions are not dumb – they can see if the industries they are in are subject to natural decline and their main concern is developing ways for displaced members to find another job where they will hopefully lead to increasing unionisation in their new industry. I’ve also been impressed that they are increasingly looking at new ways to recruit and communicate with members (including use of social media). The unions are far less of a drag on Labor (if at all) than the rent-seeking parasites are on the LNP in terms of relating to voters.
What is the latest in the seat of Mirani. Thanks in advance.
jeffemu
According to the ABC computer, PHON have attained 53.6% to Labor’s 46.4% on the TPP with a 1731 lead on votes.
Seat predictions seem to have been removed.
A Shorten ALP government would be somewhere to the Right of Malcolm Fraser. ‘Lurching’ to the left is IPA, GG idiocy.
And if Labor doesn’t have policies like the 80s/90s ALP governments it is probably because it isn’t the 80s or 90s anymore. The problems are different so unlike the ideological nitwits on the right so are the proposed solutions. Whodathunkit? The idea that the ALP is anything but a capitalist party that acknowledges a vital role for the state to regulate and intervene as lightly as possible to prevent the damaging effects of power imbalances and market failure in a market economy is stupidity. Anyone who says otherwise is talking out their arse.
LATTER, Kerry LNP 6,450 27.00
ANDREW, Stephen ONP 7,523 31.49
PEARCE, Jim ALP 8,920 37.34
CARLISLE, Christine GRN 998 4.18
JeffMu
The Mirani primaries are above, and no 2PP is up on the QLD electoral website. The ABC have plugged in their assumptions, and given the seat to PHON, but they are guessing on how disciplined the LNP preferences are going to PHON.
The ABC numbers for Mirani and Burdekin amongst others are intersting because the ECQ doesn’t have any N2CP numbers up for those two seats.
I see the ABC have flipped Burdekin to ALP. Antony flipping a coin?
ajm: “I think the party, including the unions, are pretty realistic about what it takes to get elected to government”
I think that this is true for the right faction of the party, and the unions in general: eg, I have been pleasantly surprised at the growing pragmatism re environmental issues being displayed by the CFMEU (an organisation which is not renowned for its pragmatism).
However, I don’t think I’m wrong in suggesting that the left faction is more powerful today in the party than it has ever been. The right remains dominant in Qld, but the left holds the party leadership in NSW, Vic, SA and Tas (and WA? I’m not quite sure what faction McGowan comes from). If Shorten were run over by the big head bus tomorrow, then I would imagine one of Albo or Plib would become leader. The Senate Leader is also from the left.
And the ALP left faction is more firmly left today than it was in the past. Albo, Plib and Foley come from the so-called “NSW hard left” which has won the internal battle against the now defunct Baldwin-Faulkner more moderate left (Baldwin is so moderate that these days he hangs out a fair bit with Mark Latham). Likewise, Andrews is from a strong union left background. Bec White in Tas and Weatherill and Wong in SA are from a more moderate left background (although Wong has ties to the forestry arm of the CFMEU), but that’s becoming increasingly rare.
It’s odd that many poster s on PB have long claimed to support the cause of moving the ALP further to the left but, now that they appear to be winning this battle, they are denying that it is so.
@ meher baba… ” It was amusing that the ABC set up a backdrop of people sitting at desks doing something on computers (probably playing solitaire). Couldn’t they have give one of their computers to Antony?”
Antony did have a computer. He was constantly toggling between his laptop in front of him and the big touchscreen behind him.
meher baba
I think it depends on your point of reference and PB commentators seems to skew older. The ALP moved right in the 80s / through mid – 90s (as did most centre left parties in the Anglosphere). They’ve been moving back left recently (and again like most anglosphete centre left parties they seem to have moved faster on the social dimension than the economic).
It’s also a different world, the Hawke-Kearing market may have been overregulated but you’ll get very little electoral agreement on that argument today where the market seems to run rife.
Should post what I actually came here to post:
Maiwar
Looks like absentee votes are hitting the pile now, as the ALP lead over GRN just narrowed to 12 votes (whereas it was increasing before). That suggests the postals are mostly done too , otherwise they’d have roughly cancelled. Emmerson has only got to 42.16% so with postals mostly done it’s probably all down hill for him from here. Confirming that I was correct in wondering what the ABC Liberal commentator who said the LNP would chase it down on postals was smoking.
Does Tim Mander have a nickname? Gerry?
Thanks to all for the Mirani updates
Has Antony Green turned off the prediction algorithm yet and relying on raw numbers? Or are we still looking at just primary votes right now?
Elaugaufein
And surely the postals are still trickling in? Isn’t the postal cut off on 5 December?
Jim Pearce, the defeated Labor member for Mirani, was the most impressive person on the ABC election cover on Saturday night.
An old-fashioned Labor man who spoke from the heart.
“Thanks for the bad news,” he said when told he was looking down the barrel.
A former miner, he will be missed.
Tim Mander was the face of chaplains in schools
Raara
Yes, 10 days after polling day, but Maiwar is fairly inner city , the bulk of postals will arrive the day after they are mailed, so it should be relatively minor stragglers. The postal vote is already a relatively similar number to the ~10% in Mt Coot-ha and Indroopolly from which it came.
Don’t write Pearce off yet TT. He’s in big trouble, but I’m not sure the info we have yet is complete.
Elaugaufein
Interesting. As a matter of curiosity, what qualifies for the cut off? Is the time to allow for the postal system to do its work? So if someone posts their vote after voting day, will the date stamp disqualify the vote?
Just had a look at Gaven with >75% counted (and only three candidates) and it seems the Green preferences are splitting >50% to the LNP based on the 2PP figure.
Is this correct?
I don’t see that Labor have moved to the left on economics, they are still wedded to a watered down neoliberal model They are really not much different to the coalition they just advocate a slightly more robust welfare state.
What has happened is they look increasingly like the North American left, more concerned with issues around race gender sexuality etc. than economics, more a progressive liberal party than a labour movement.
The big social issue in Australia that hardly rates a mention because the Labor Party has become bourgeois and preoccupied with post materialist issues is the rise of contracting as a form of employment and the way it is undermining the minimum wage stagnating wages growth and giving ruse to a huge transfer in the profit share from labour to caputal.
For eg my local shopping centre recently was advertising on it’s notice board for a cleaner, must have ABN. This kind of thing is rampant and allows employers to dodge around minimum wages and conditions making the fair work commission increasingly irrelevant
If the Greens were splitting >50% to the LNP, the LNP would be having a come-from-behind victory in the seat, but the ALP is winning from 2nd instead, indicating they’re gaining more than half from the Greens. Judging from a quick glance at the results, it seems to be splitting roughly 72-28 ALP-Grn.
Thanks MB,
I’m not sure Labor have “lurched to the left”, but I take your point.
What seems odd to me is that the L-NP seem determined to press on with company tax cuts. It’s not really a lurch to the left to notice that the electorate are getting tired of the constant march toward neo-liberalism.
The ALP also don’t want to increase the medicare levy on the poor, but a lurch to the left would include eradicating the levy altogether, because it behaves like a flat tax.
The ALP also want to grandfather negative gearing, which is a market distortion that no pure neo-liberal would tolerate.
Finally an ETS is a perfectly sensible market based approach to cutting carbon emissions.
I agree boat arrivals are harder for the ALP, and the left generally. Just about every other attitudinal issue is harder for the right.
@Boolean
1668 difference between priamry and 2PP for Labor
649 difference for Liberals.
= 72% of Greens prefs to Labor.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/qld-election-2017/guide/gave/
Raaraa
I presume its a remnant from the days when the rural postal system was (even more) terrible. I don’t think postmarks would have any effect either (since a rural letter wouldn’t have been postmarked until it arrives somewhere there was an appropriate official).
Negative gearing for new builds is probably sensible (from a social gain perspective not a let the market rip one) , as it increases supply , rather than encouraging people to buy existing supply and rent it out. Though there probably better way of achieving that effect.
And you can’t really remove it where it already applies automatically as you’d bankrupt some people. You’d have to slowly unwind it over time (and probably still have to compensate some people).
Phew — Thanks all, looks like I need a new pair of glasses.
Greens now down by 9 in Maiwar on first preferences.
Has anyone seen an estimate for percentage of Anita Diamond’s preferences going to Greens vs Labor? ABC appears to be assuming whoever is 2nd on primary ends up 2nd after Anita is excluded.
The problem isn’t so much negative gearing itself, as the combination of negative gearing with the 50% capital gains tax discount.
I’d be fine with negative gearing continuing, so long as capital gains tax was paid at the investor’s full marginal tax rate on the profit made at the end of the process.
That’s the real lurk here – offsetting of loan interest against income from a property purchased with that loan makes perfect sense so long as the income is all counted in the long run – rents *and* capital gains.
VE
Someone mentioned Anita Diamond and a fellow PeopleDecides candidate in South Brisbane from 2015, but I cannot remember the figures yet. I don’t think preferences are out yet for her.
Diamond is apparently heavily anti-Adani. It is looking like the Greens will win from third if they do not overtake the ALP on primaries. The ALP has never (to my knowledge and I have done a bit of checking, if I am wrong please correct me) won from third place in a parliamentary election (i.e. excluding local council elections, although the rule may apply there) but is always either the last excluded or second in the 2CP.
If branch members really believe that those workers losing unionised jobs in heavy industry can be retrained to find new unionised jobs they are not realists, they are seriously deluded.
Union me,membership was about 60% in the early eighties when Labor started the neoliberal project.By the early nineties it was down to about 35%, today about 15% the vast majority will never be a member of a union again.
Many will end up contractors or forced to try their hand at self employment, unkess they score a public sector job they will not be in a union Don’t pretend ypu can implement policies that destroy unionised blue collar jobs and then the tooth fairy will create new ones
Posted this a few pages back…
“Looking at 2015 Indooroopilly results People Decide candidate Anita Diamond’s preferences went 46.28% Green, 32.27% ALP, 21.44% LNP.”
If that split repeats Greens will do ~95 votes better than ALP.
Luckycreed: I think the problem was not putting enough effort into unionising white collar jobs outside the public service and academia early on, but it would have been a hard sell when it needed to be done. Nurses for example prove its doable though. And done professional associations fulfill a similar role.
caf
You would have to add inflation in as well but 50% is too generous for inflation
Jay Weatherill is from the left but the right has the numbers in SA. Jay is Premier only because the right thought Labor would lose last time and handed him the poisoned chalice. He surprised everyone then but won’t last two minutes if Labor loses early next year.
Edit: Greens now 20 ahead on primaries in Maiwar.
OK, as at this time (1:20PM AWST), here’s what I’m seeing by way of -confirmed- seats:
ALP 43
LNP 36
KAP 2
IND 2
I’m also seeing ALP leading in 4 seats, by however slender the margins (Aspley, Cook, Gaven & Maiwar), and the LNP leading in a different 4 seats (Bonney, Burdekin, Pumicestone & Townsville). KAP looks to pick up a third seat (Hinchinbrook), with ON to pick up Mirani to complete the 93 seats.
If so, the new Parliament will look like this:
ALP 47
LNP 40
KAP 3
IND 2
PHON 1
If that Parliament becomes reality, Anna Palaszczuk has won a second term of Government – against the virtually unanimous opposition of the media, their wealthy owners, the Federal Government and One Nation. Well done, Anna P!
On top of this, the bare one-seat majority on the floor looks a little better when one considers that independent Strelow (Rockhampton) will almost certainly back Palaszczuk’s call on most issues – she was P’s pick for ALP preselection, but lost out at the local branch level.