Live publication of results, updated by the minute with full booth results and swings, can be found here. Commentary of the progress of the count follows below.
Thursday evening
The remarkable swing to Phelps on postals continues, with today’s batch favouring her 306-243. This means the progress of her two-party vote across the five batches has gone 36%, 40%, 45%, 52%, 55%. She also gained with the addition of pre-poll declaration votes, which favoured her 189-112. Her lead is now 38,757 to 36,974, or 1783 votes, which is probably more than the number of late arriving postals that constitute all that’s left to come. Phelps’ margin has ticked over from 1.1% to 1.2%, and looks sure to stay above 1%.
Wednesday evening
The dwindling daily addition of postals put a further nail in the coffin today, breaking 242-224 in favour of Kerryn Phelps. Her shares of the two-party vote across the four batches of postals that have been added to the count have been, consecutively, 36%, 40%, 45% and 52%. The provisional votes were also added to the count, and they were higher than usual in number and heavily favourable to Phelps, who received 246 to Sharma’s 175. Phelps’ leads is out from 1554 to 1643, with roughly 2000 postals and 250 declaration pre-poll votes to come.
Tuesday evening
The count continues to drift away from Dave Sharma, with today’s postals favouring him only 433-361, giving him 54.5% where he needs nearly three-quarters. Phelps’s current lead is 1554 votes, with maybe 3500 still to come.
Monday evening
Today’s counting consisted of finishing off the rechecking of ordinary votes. It appears 54 votes in the Paddington PPVC were reassigned from Sharma to Phelps; other than that, the effect was to cut 209 votes from Sharma’s total and 234 from Phelps’s. So evidently a lot of the action on rechecking has consisted of ruling informal votes that were initially admitted to the count. The upshot is that little has changed since yesterday, except that the window seems to have closed on a major anomaly being identified in rechecking, which was Sharma’s best hope. I had a fairly extensive look at the progress of the count in a paywalled article in Crikey today.
Sunday evening
Today’s events as they unfolded:
• Anxieties in the pro-Phelps/anti-Liberal camp that set in as the largest pre-poll voting centres recorded their votes late last night cranked up a notch in the morning as the first and biggest batch of postals were added to the count. These broke 3356-1858 in favour of Sharma (later revised to 3346-1851), his 64.4% share being fractionally more than he would likely need to rein in what remained of Phelps’s lead. Not long after, Antony Green wrote on Twitter: “No (Phelps) is not home. The difference between on the day voting and voting in advance is wider than I’ve ever seen at an election. In conversation with very senior party people today, they have the same opinion.”
• Around 10:30am or so, Sharma got a further small boost when the two Special Hospital Team booths were added to the total, collectively breaking his way by 266-54.
• After that though, the pendulum swung back. The AEC set to work on the routine recheck of the ordinary votes, starting with those booths where the preferences flows recorded yesterday appeared to be anomalous, as was keenly observed by Kevin Bonham. This confirmed that Phelps had indeed been short-changed in the Bondi Beach and Bellevue Hill booths – because, according to Antony Green, the preferences from primary votes for the Liberal candidate had been entered the wrong way around. As a result, Phelps’ 2132-1714 lead in Bondi Beach blew out to 2427-1330, and Sharma’s purported 1305-985 lead in Bellevue Hill turned out to be only 1152-1119. About half the booths have had their votes rechecked to this point, the net effect of the others being neutral.
• Then a second batch of postals went 698-467 to Sharma, or 59.9% to 40.1% – less than he would have needed even before the rechecking raised the bar.
The main votes yet to be counted are late-arriving postals – I see no reason to doubt my earlier judgement that the final number of postals will be very close to the 9392 that were cast in 2016, since the number of applications received was almost identical. That leaves maybe 3000 postals outstanding, along with provisionals and pre-poll declaration votes, of which a high-end estimate would be about 500. This leaves Sharma with about 3500 votes outstanding with which to close a gap of 1616, meaning he will need about 73%.
That’s not going to happen, so it will take the emergence of another error in what remains of the rechecking to make a Sharma victory plausible. Precedents do exist, such as the decisive 1000 votes that showed up for Cathy McGowan as she grappled with Sophie Mirabella in Indi in 2013. But if the remainder of the count proceeds normally, Sharma only seems likely to reel his existing deficit in by around 700 votes, giving Phelps a winning margin of around 900 votes, or 0.6%.
Sunday morning
To cut the following long story short: this isn’t over.
Those who were still paying attention at the close of last night’s action were thrown into a spin when Dave Sharma did remarkably well out of the pre-poll voting centres, which these days account for many thousands of votes and do not report their results into well into the evening. In particular, the 6431 votes of the Rose Bay PPVC broke 4473-1958, which slashed Phelps’ lead from 4.2% to 1.9% – creating just the slightest opportunity for Sharma to pull a rabbit out of the hat on postals.
In the last of my updates in the section below, I calculated that Sharma would need 70% of postals to close the gap, but it seems this was an overestimate. The number of postal votes issued at this by-election has been almost identical to that in 2016 (12860 compared with 12796), so it’s a very safe bet the number of formal postal votes will be around the same, namely 9329. We can also expect 500 or so provisional and pre-poll declaration votes, but it’s the postal votes that are most interesting because they skew conservative. Malcolm Turnbull did around 9.5% better with postals in 2016 as compared with ordinary votes, on both the primary and two-party preferred vote.
If that bears out this time, Sharma can expect to reduce his present deficit of 2590 votes by around 1400. However, it’s not impossible that he will do significantly better than that. Given the trend of polling and the general course of political events over the past week or two, it could be surmised he would do relatively well on votes that were cast earlier in the process. Kevin Bonham points out that the Mayo by-election is particularly auspicious for the Liberals in that Rebekha Sharkie gained a 3.5% two-party swing on ordinary votes against the Liberals, but there was actually a 5.1% swing in the Liberals’ favour on postals. No doubt this was unusual, but it does demonstrate that it would not be without precedent for postals to weigh towards Sharma heavily enough to sneak him over the line.
However, some objections have been noted to the results as currently published:
• The Rose Bay PPVC is an extreme outlier in having a primary vote swing of only 1.9% against the Liberals, where in every other booth it was in double digits (not counting the 16 votes cast through the blind or low vision telephone voting service), and this is not reflected in any unusual movement in the Labor primary vote. However, this very likely reflects the fact that the Rose Bay PPVC wasn’t in use at the 2016 election, and the “historic” vote totals provided by the AEC to facilitate booth-matched swing calculations (including those featured in my own results facility) were well off the mark. Specifically, the “historic” totals only account for 1459 formal votes, of which 983 were credited to the Liberals, compared with the 6431 that actually appear to have been cast. As such, I see no reason not to think Sharma was indeed being undersold in early assessments of the count, as it was not appreciated how much of the harbourside vote was locked up in the Rose Bay PPVC, waiting to be unleashed at the very end of the night.
• Probably more substantively, Kevin Bonham has identified curiously weak preference flows for Phelps at Bondi Beach and Bellevue Hill. These would be consistent with 450 votes that properly belong to Phelps having been wrongly placed in Sharma’s pile. If the imminent rechecking of votes indeed proves this to be so, the hill would look just that little bit too high for Sharma to claim. But as Bonham also notes, there could just as easily be other inconsistencies awaiting discovery that could tip the balance the other way.
Election night
Midnight. The last pre-poll voting centres tightened things up quite a lot – not quite enough for Sharma, but there won’t be much in it in the end. Phelps ends the night with a 1.9% lead, which would leave Sharma needing a more-than-plausible 70% or so of postals.
9.55pm. The Paddington pre-poll booth has reported on the primary vote, and it’s a better result for Sharma than the Paddington election day booths, suggesting Phelps’ current 4.4% lead on 2CP will be wound back a little by the end of the night.
9.37pm. If anyone’s still paying attention, all the election day polling booths have reported their 2CP counts now. But we’re still yet to see either primary or 2CP numbers from the four pre-poll voting centres, which should be with us later this evening.
9.02pm. None of the four pre-poll voting centres have reported yet. Other than that, there are three booths yet to report their two-candidate preferred results.
8.36pm. With 28 booths in out of 43, Phelps’ lead is 55-45, which is exactly what the Liberal internal polling in The Australian this week purported to show. Sharma’s primary vote of 39.9% is also what today’s report of Liberal internal polling in the Daily Telegraph said it would be.
8.12pm. Phelps’ lead after preferences looks to have moderated a bit, with 16 booths out of 43 counted, but just eyeballing the booths that are in on the primary but not the two-candidate count, they are largely from relatively weak areas for the Liberals like Bondi, Clovelly and Paddington. In any case, Phelps’ 54.4% obviously leaves her home and hosed. She is giving her victory speech as I type.
7.43pm. Two-candidate preferred results are coming in at a clip, with eight of them now in, and Phelps now leads 56.2-43.8. Labor’s Tim Murray has edged ahead of the Greens on the primary vote, for what it’s worth. That he wasn’t doing so earlier was another symptom of the first booths being extremely wealthy harbourside ones.
7.35pm. Now we’ve got two-party results from Bondi North and Darlinghurst East, and I need no longer fret that my results display has the Liberals in front.
7.30pm. No doubt having sixteen candidates slows up the two-candidate count.
7.28pm. Twelve booths in on the primary vote – not much point in obsessing over them individually now. Still waiting for some more two-candidate results so my display stops showing the Liberals in front.
7.22pm. Bronte and Edgelcliff added on the primary vote. Still waiting on a fourth two-party result to push Phelps ahead on two-candidate preferred, which is where she will clearly end up.
7.18pm. Antony Green calls it.
7.17pm. Bondi Beach East two-party result almost pushes Phelps ahead on the raw two-party count, which is still dominated by two strong Liberal harbourside booths.
7.16pm. Wealthy Bellevue Hill South pushes Sharma ahead on the primary vote; inner city Darlinghurst East fails to reverse it. But the Liberal primary vote is clearly still too low.
7.14pm. Bondi North in, and the pattern is highly consistent: primary vote swings against the Liberals are between 19.9% to 27.1%. That leaves them below 40% of the primary vote, which is fatal for them particularly given the strength of Phelps’ primary vote.
7.10pm. Vaucluse is in on two-party, and because the two booths to have reported on two-party are super-rich Vaucluse and Double Bay East, the raw two-party vote is deceptively favourable for Sharma. So far though, Phelps is getting 65% of preferences, and she’s actually ahead on the primary vote with five booths counted (the latest being Kings Cross Central, a leftish booth where the Liberals are down 20.2% to 25.5%).
7.09pm. Worth noting Phelps’ thumping primary vote, three to four times higher than Labor or the Greens.
7.06pm. Bondi Beach East is the Liberals’ least bad result so far in terms of the primary vote swing, but it’s also the booth where they had the least to lose. The bigger deal is that Phelps has trounced them on the primary vote, 41.4% to 29.7%.
7.00pm. First preference count in from Double Bay East: Phelps gets over 80% of them, 65 to 15, and only loses the booth 52-48. Liberals down 25.7% on primary vote in Darlinghurst East. Early days, but not looking good for them.
6.53pm. If the swing holds, Sharma ends up on 38.8% of the primary vote, which is less than he wants. But booths in are super-wealthy and not broadly representative.
6.51pm. Vaucluse a bit better for the Libs than Double Bay East – down 22.9% rather than 27.1%, Phelps on 20.0% rather than 29.5%.
6.46pm. Details of Australia Institute exit poll here.
6.42pm. So far so good for my live reporting — my swings are the same as the ABC’s.
6.40pm. We have a result: harbourside booth of Double Bay East. Liberal vote down 27.1% to 47.7%; Phelps on 29.5%. Fairly small booth with 346 votes, but an encouraging result for Phelps I’d have thought.
6.15pm. Which is a bit disappointing from my perspective, as it means I can’t give my results projections a workout, assuming as they did a Liberal-versus-Labor count in which two-party swings could be calculated. From the perspective of letting us know who’s likely to win though, it’s very likely the correct choice.
6pm. Polls have closed, and the first mystery of the night is resolved: the AEC’s notional two party count will be between Dave Sharma and Kerryn Phelps. My live results facility will be up shortly.
So if there is another 5000 postals Sharma would need them to break 85%?
My calculations remain the same.
If there are 5000 votes left to count, Sharma needs 68.64% to win.
If 5500, 66.95%.
If 6000, 65.53%.
If 6500, 64.34%.
If 7000, 63.31%.
Given that the majority of those still to come are postals and Sharma has been winning 64.38% of those, if that trend continues then Sharma requires that there be about 6500 or more votes left to count. Which seems too high. So things are firming for Phelps.
Late Riser:
Nothing amazing. A decent portion of it was just quoting Meher Baba.
51.28% Phelps vs 48.72% Sharma…. the gap is widening….
The dark clouds opened for a second…. and they are now closing again…. torrential rain imminent over the Liberal party…
What a rollercoaster today must have been for the Liberals! That brief moment of hope, only to have it snatched away once again.
So is it over now?
I note the comment re Bank Directors
The responsibilities on Directors is (correctly) onerous
And particularly for such complex businesses as our banks are
I have periodically been offered Board positions over the years (mostly private Companies) and I still receive invitation to consider but the answer is always to acknowledge, thank and decline (on the basis that I enjoy my retirement!!)
Being a Director may give gravitas but you are actually required to fulfill a responsibility – a responsibility which carries obligation including legal obligation
Directors are ultimately responsible
I note the Rose Bay PPVC outlier has not been updated since Saturday night. Perhaps a few more wrong piles there?
It does look like Phelps will win now
On the electoral trivia front, another sterling result from the Australian People’s Party, which has now managed to come dead last in 6 out of 6 by-elections since their formation.
Phelps consolidating her win in Wentworth….
Jane Caro to challenge Tony Abbott in Warringah….
Is there a pattern emerging?
Prominent independents (women in particular) to challenge the Liberals in their safe seats…. ALP to challenge in marginal and less safe Liberal seats…. A pincer movement against the Liberal party that could send them to not just opposition but to the land of Lilliput.
Well then no sense delaying the recriminations any longer in Team Blue. Who will start?
Who came up with the Australian embassy move idea?
Who was responsible for the Senate motion “administrative error?”
Who organised right wing meetings in the week of the vote? Tony??
Who leaked news of another National leadership spill?
If they were a credible, disciplined team all these individuals should be disendorsed. But they are not. So nothing will happen. And the leaks will go on.
Asha Leu @ #1053 Sunday, October 21st, 2018 – 2:59 pm
And the inverse experience for Phelps!
Kevin Bonham…
So ignoring the few out-of-seat prepolls and provisionals, at the current rate of postal gain and postal informals, Sharma needs all bar 357 of the remaining postals to arrive + be accepted for processing. If there are no further errors. #Wentworth
Highly unlikely that many come back and in practice flow on later postals often weakens. So I think realistically Sharma needs a substantial counting error to go in his favour. #Wentworth
Observer @ #1057 Sunday, October 21st, 2018 – 6:01 pm
Indeed. Which is why we see so many of them convicted, punished and disgraced when things go belly up … oh, wait 🙁
Laurence Maclean has a go at projecting out 9,000 postals…
I’m happy Kevin Bonham was right. Phew. Not that I ever doubted Antony’s call 🙂
So is it over now?
99% over.
As noted deep down in my post, I don’t see any specific reason to doubt the Rose Bay PPVC numbers.
If it comes down to the last couple of postal votes, wonder whom Malcolm and Lucy voted for?
Antony Green
Verified account
@AntonyGreenABC
Bondi Beach booth corrected 2CP has now come through for #wentworthvotes Phelps now leads by 1,862 votes, Phelps (IND) 51.3%, Sharma (LIB) 48.7% – results at https://ab.co/2R0CWQu
Memo to the Coalition:
The Sensible Centre still exists, it still decides general elections, and if you want to discern it, look off to your left and it’s there in the distance.
“There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
(R.Waters, D.Gilmour)
That’s “the Middle” trying to talk to you, Morrison my brother.
I suppose for me, the question I had about Rose Bay, even if taking the points about the Orthodox Jewish population, and the “historic” issue … to have the ALP and GRN vote behave very similarly to the way it did across Wentworth, but the Lib vote barely wobble? Even compared its immediate neighboring booths… it’s worth a look, even if only for intellectual curiosity since it is a legitimate curiosity.
William, whilst checking all of the tally figures at midnight, I read your final comments .
I realised the Sharma had picked up 8,000 votes to Phelps receiving only 3,000 votes, in the very late counting. I contacted the Age, other media outlets and even Antony Green, stating that the contest was not over and that the Liberals could still win! But they had all stopped watching! Green called the contest over at 7.00pm! How ridiculous was that!
And another fascinating day today as the votes ebb and flow. The outcome is still far from clear. Thanks for the informative updates!
If the margin is less than 1000 and one booth can be put by 600- shouldn’t they be rechecking all the booths?
Especially with 12 candidates.
If the margin is less than 1000 and one booth can be put by 600- shouldn’t they be rechecking all the booths?
Especially with 12 candidates.
SkyFoXNews shill Gary Hardgraves quick out of the blocks with RWNJ conspiracy theory…
Seems extremely unusual for 20 bundles each containing 50 votes (1000 votes) to suddenly show up in a different pile. Who are the scrutineers? Was anyone from @LiberalAus there today as this “day after swing to Phelps” occurred. Complete recount in Wentworth now vital.
Bob
All the booths are being rechecked. If the final margin is under 100, there is an automatic recount
That’s not what happened though, because there was no Rose Bay PPVC in 2016. The base from which the Liberal vote barely wobbled was a wrong estimate by the AEC. I think the basic issue here is that there was no harbourside PPVC in 2016, so the PPVC votes collectively were (relatively speaking) stronger for the Liberals than they were last time, whereas it was being assumed they would collectively swing the same way as the polling day booths.
I’ll be slowly disappearing from social media / etc.
Except maybe PollBludger.
I’ve applied for the Defense Force so I will be concentrating on preparations for the YOU and Assessment Days (YOU session on Thursday). Hoping that my Disabilities doesn’t limit my employment if I past the Interviews/tests.
Seems reasonable
Alpo:
In my view, the Liberals are in serious danger. They are bleeding votes from the right to parties like One Nation, moderate/centrist supporters to to both independents and parties like Centre Alliance, and swing voters to Labor.
Preferences will probably limit the damage to their TPP vote come election time, but I think their primary vote may wind up quite a bit lower than polling currently indicates, with some more safe seats falling as Indi, Mayo, and Wentworth. People can see the blood in the water, and there will likely be many an independent who fancies their chances in various traditionally blue ribbon seat.
Combine that with the rumours of various sitting Liberals defecting to the crossbwnch, and we could be looking a serious existential crisis for the Libs over the next few terms, particularly if the Shorten government proves competent and well-regarded by the electorate and the current disunity in the Libs continues in opposition.
South Australia will be interesting. I think there’s a decent risk of the Liberals failing to win a single seat there this time around.
Judging by their continued agitation, I wonder if the Nats can see the writing on the wall, and are looking to minimize the damage they suffer themselves. Could we perhaps see an end to the Coalition once they are back in opposition?
The one saving grace for the Liberals at the moment is that their competitors are a total rabble of various micro parties and independents with widely divergent views and often seriously bad blood between them (ie. Hanson and Anning.) But if, say, Bernardi, Hanson, and Katter were to merge their respective parties into one new conservative party, or some combination of Centre Alliance, McGowan, Phelps, and Storer formed a new centrist party together, perhaps with some renegade Libs or Nats to add some credibility to either force, the Liberals would be in serious shit.
Phelps just lost 6 votes
Every election we always fantasise about Pyne losing his seat, but he never does. Same with Boothby and that always holds for the Liberals too.
There is also the two large rural seats that the Liberals should retain.
Good luck, Zoidlord.
Player One
Absolutely correct
Trading a Company whilst insolvent – not to act as Director for 3/5 years BUT does not disqualify from acting as Financial Advisor and still effectively directing a Company
What penalty did John Elliott receive for trading the insolvent Water Wheels?
How many Directors have fronted the Hayne RC?
A joke – and an “old boys” club
How you do justice to multiple Companies is beyond me
You would have tothink that all the counting corrections for today are in.
So, just have to tease out the next two or three days before the finish line is in sight.
AL – If Barnyard regains the leadership, the Nats might split right down the middle. Plenty of Nats in Victoria and NSW would find him both electoral poison and personally distasteful. It’s very easy to imagine them going to the cross-benchers. Barnyard might end the whole party.
1626 lead for Phelps – all postals for the day counted
That 1266 postal batch cost Phelps 200, in line with projections though marginally better than earlier postals. Current ratio on postals now
Sharma 63.56
Phelps 36.44
If the margin is less than 1000 and one booth can be put by 600- shouldn’t they be rechecking all the booths?
The 2CP count yesterday was only ever an indicative count. It’s not the proper distribution of preferences which can only happen after all the votes are in and counted.
The reason a check count was done on Bondi Beach and Bellevue Hill in particular was that the indicative count threw up a result that looked clearly wrong, and so it proved to be.
Such big changes are extremely unlikely to be found in other booths simply because all the booths preference flows are within a normal variation. There will be some, but we’re talking in the 10s not the 100s as today’s count found.
My parents lived at Kensington and found themselves in Sturt after a redistribution
Leading up to one election Pyne’s Wife sent a letter saying Pyne was a father to young children and needed to retain his job to provide for his family
True!!
My Dad rang me fuming “I will never vote for such a ………… (censored)”
Pyne was re-elected tho
Ian Wilson I knew in the past – and I understood from Ian there was bad blood when Pyne challenged Ian as the sitting member
If I recall correctly, Pyne marshalled a younger voting bloc
Re: Libs in SA.
Labor and the Libs last time agreed to preference each other to stop Xenophon.
Independents don’t just have one opponent most of the time.
1626 lead for Phelps – all postals for the day counted
It was fun to have a little drama today, but you can stick a fork in Dave now.
Confessions:
I’m not necessarily saying they will go to Labor. Centre Alliance would have to snag a few more too for such a scenario to occur.
Looking at four seats the Libs currently hold in SA, this is how I could possibly see it playing out:
(I should note that the following also operates under the assumption that NXT/Centre Alliance’s vote will only hold up, but also improve a bit. Wth Xenophon out of parliament and SA Best’s lame showing in the last SA state election, that is quite possibly an unrealistic assumption.)
Barker: One of the two big rural SA strongholds. NXT (now Centre Alliance) got roughly 45% of the TPP last night.If the Liberal vote collapses and Labor’s vote increases enough, I reckon its a possible win for Centre Alliance, though not a particularly high possibility admittedly.
Boothby: Currently held by the Libs on 7% (against Labor). Not at all out of the realms of possibility for Labor to take it in the current climate, and Centre Alliance could be in with a shot too (NXT only came 4 points behind Labor on primaries in 2016), the latter likely getting receiving a very favorable share of preferences.
Grey: This is SA’s other rural Lib stronghold, and it actually came very close to being taken by NXT in 2016, with the final TPP being 52-48 to the Liberals. I could easily see this falling to Centre Alliance this time around.
Sturt: This is probably the least likely to fall, with Pyne’s TPP in 2016 a strong 56-44. That said, that was against the Labor candidate, who probably didn’t recieve the greatest share of preferences from the NXT candidate who trailed right behind him – were Centre Alliance to overtake Labor on primaries, the (presumably) higher share of preferences from the Labor candidate could possibly get them over the line, assuming a good drop in Pyne’s vote. Pretty unlikely, but not impossible.
I’ll add too that in the only other election in the last 25 years where Labor won a majority, 2007, there was a five year old state Labor government in power at the time and no competing centre-right minor party. Now there’s a Liberal state government led by a pretty uninspiring premier, and Centre Alliance for many a disaffected moderate Lib to put their protest votes. The swings may well be higher this time around.
Of the postals, I like that
49 empty envelopes returned
124 rejected at preliminary scrutiny
And the Sharma number dropped from 64.38 to 63.56 with only 25% added, so that last batch of 1266 would have been closer to 60/40
Observer:
For real?
Well, I guess he has been in parliament since he was 25. He might not be capable of landing a real job!
Asha:
Ah ok fair enough. Does Xenophon still have a visible presence in SA these days? I don’t recall seeing images of him during the Mayo by-election so perhaps not.
Phelps now 1613 – counting late
Observer
“Leading up to one election Pyne’s Wife sent a letter saying Pyne was a father to young children and needed to retain his job to provide for his family”
We are in Sturt and I remember that one well. Sickening. IIRC the Labor candidate was Mia Handshin and she was running a great campaign, looked to be closing in. But Pyne got desperate and did every dodgy trick he could think of from that letter to dissappearing posters on poles and scraped over the line. The next election was the Rudd/Gillard implosion and Labor has never got that close in Sturt again since.
My favourite story online today is The Border Mail reporting their surprise that Cathy McGowan isn’t commenting on the success of Phelps. Wish I’d held on to my thoughts a little longer, too, just quietly. Mind you, the BM finds it confronting seeing past an LNP rule most days – there are some great female independents in the North East lining up for the VIC state election but they are being portrayed like some sort of curious suffragette movement (I know, a publication that runs out of Indi. Irony, much).