Federal election minus six months (probably)

Tales of preselection action from Hughes, Indi, Cowper, Bennelong, Chisholm, Longman and New England.

Roughly six months out from a likely federal election, a gathering storm of preselection action. (Note also the thread below this one on the Victorian election campaign).

Phillip Coorey of the Australian Financial Review reports Scott Morrison has sought to save Craig Kelly from a preselection defeat in Hughes, but that moderate backers of challenger Kent Johns are not to be deterred. According to a source identified as one of his conservative allies, Kelly “has been remiss in looking after his branches and would be lucky to have 25 per cent of the vote”. Quoth a moderate: “As far as the moderates are concerned, Malcolm Turnbull saved Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and Angus Taylor and Kelly last time, and look what they did to him.” Among the quandaries this raises are that Kelly may react to his defeat by moving to the cross-benches, further weakening the already shaky position of the government.

• There have been a few suggestions that Barnaby Joyce may fall foul of a new candidate-vetting process the Nationals have introduced, ostensibly to prevent further Section 44 mishaps. Figures in the party appear to have been putting it about that Joyce might face trouble due to the fear that even after the events of the past year, there remain “skeletons in the closet”. However, inquiries by Richard Ferguson of The Australian suggest that “a few members on the NSW Nationals’ 84-people-strong central council do plan to refuse to endorse Mr Joyce but they are in the minority”.

David Johnston of the Border Mail reports nominees for a Liberal preselection vote for Indi, to be held on December 8, include Steve Martin, project manager for the Mars Petcare Wodonga plant expansion and Seeley International’s relocation from Albury to Wodonga, and Stephen Brooks, a local businessman. Another potential nominee is Greg Mirabella, husband of former member Sophie Mirabella. The seat’s independent member, Cathy McGowan, has not yet committed to seeking another term. The report also raises the possibility that Senator Bridget McKenzie, who is preparing to move her electorate office to Wodonga, might run for the Nationals.

Christian Knight of the Nambucca Guardian reports the Nationals have preselected Patrick Conaghan, a local solicitor who was formerly a police officer and North Sydney councillor, to succeed the retiring Luke Hartsuyker in Cowper. The other candidates were Chris Genders, a newsagent; Jamie Harrison, former Port Macquarie-Hastings councillor and owner of an electrical business; and Judy Plunkett, a Port Macquarie pharmacist. Conaghan appears to have won over half the vote in the first round.

• Labor has recruited Brian Owler, neurosurgeon and former Australian Medical Association president, as its candidate for Bennelong. The party had initially preselected Lyndal Howison, communications manager at the Whitlam Institute and the party’s candidate in 2016, but she agreed to step aside for Owler.

• Gladys Liu, director of Blue Ribbon Consultancy, has been preselected as the Liberal candidate to succeed Julia Banks in Chisholm, having emerged “the clear winner in the field of eight candidates”, according to Liberal sources cited by Benjamin Preiss of The Age. Other candidates included Theo Zographos, a Monash councillor, and Litsa Pillios, an accountant. James Campbell of the Herald Sun reports Liu had backing from party president Michael Kroger and conservative powerbroker Michael Sukkar.

David Alexander of the Pine Rivers Press reports the Liberal National Party has preselected local small businessman Terry Young as its candidate for Longman. The party recorded a portentously weak showing in the seat at the Super Saturday by-election on July 28, for which Young was an unsuccessful preselection candidate.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,349 comments on “Federal election minus six months (probably)”

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  1. antonbruckner11 @ #97 Friday, November 16th, 2018 – 6:20 am

    This is how the committee for Ranked Choice Voting in Maine describes the procedure. I assume they are right.

    Ranked choice voting gives you the power to rank candidates from your favorite to your least favorite. On Election Night, all the ballots are counted for voters’ first choices. If one candidate receives an outright majority, he or she wins. If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate with the fewest first choices is eliminated and voters who liked that candidate the best have their ballots instantly counted for their second choice. This process repeats and last-place candidates lose until one candidate reaches a majority and wins. Your vote counts for your second choice only if your first choice has been eliminated.

    But since the whole process is computerised, maybe it just looks like some steps have gone missing.
    http://www.rcvmaine.com/how_does_ranked_choice_voting_work

    That sounds right, it could be that they have treated the distribution of preferences as one round and lumped them all together.

    Not very rigorous, but we are talking about the US. 🙂

  2. Just reading again about the Arecibo message highlighted today by Google.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message

    And I was thinking that an alien race decoding it would get nearly all the way through, and be on the verge of working out where “we” are, then they get nearly to the end, to the row of planets and say “No, that star system we thought it came from only has eight planets, so it must be somewhere else – we won’t send our hyperdrive starship and ambassador there after all. (Pluto joke for nerds)

  3. Rebecca BallhausVerified account@rebeccaballhaus
    16m16 minutes ago
    NEWS: The Justice Department is preparing to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and is increasingly optimistic it will be able to get him into a U.S. courtroom, per @aviswanatha @duberyan.

  4. avoids the abomination of “preference whisperers” which bedevils our elections.

    Uh, no, “preference whisperers” do not bedevil our elections.

    “Preference whisperers” were playing on the mistake that was introducing Group Voting Tickets, which have mostly been abolished now (alas the Victorians haven’t seen the light just yet, but hopefully they will soon).

    “Preference whisperers” have very little to work with once GVTs are gone – parties negotiate how they are going to lay out their HTV recommendations for voters, but that is not something that “bedevils” our elections, unless there is some electoral travesty that has occurred that I am completely ignorant of.

  5. Fierrvanti-Wells joins the long list of politicians who clearly do not understand how the internet works.

    There are few greater clues that someone is an out-of-touch dinosaur then when they start bemoaning all the evil trolls they’ve encountered online, as if that is somehow something new or out-of-the-ordinary. It’s the fucking internet – what were they expecting?

    It’s even more ludicrous when the person complaining about it is an elected official, and therefore far more prone to attracting commentary from people who do not like them very much. Does she think left-leaning politicians and public figures don’t get bombarded with similarly critical tweets from the right?

    There are a lot of fuckwits on the internet. It’s not a conspiracy, just a fact of life. Either refute their points, ignore them, or block them.

    Mind you, more than a few individuals here are regularly guilty of the same logical fallacy Fierrvanti-Wells is – quite rightly – being mocked for.

  6. @bobjcarr tweets

    Listening to @JoshFrydenberg on @frankelly08 @RadioNational elevate our relationship with Netanyahu’s Israel over ours with Indonesia and Malaysia. Doesn’t grasp that shifting embassy is wrong decision in principle, and in addition is hurting us in Asia – this is the point. (1/4)

    Can’t believe @JoshFrydenberg has taken it on himself to attack Malaysian PM.Fed Treasurers don’t assail leaders of friendly countries.What got into him?He also defended joining Guatemala & Trump in shifting embassy. How on earth is this in AU national interest?How on earth?(2/4)

    Australia has rewarded a nationalist Israel spreading settlements, all illegal under international law. Postured ourselves after US as most pro-Israel nation in the world. And we blow our influence with Malaysia and Indonesia. The Israel lobby must be flushed with success! (3/4)

    Congratulations to @billshortenmp & @SenatorWong for calmly presenting the national interest on this one. Let’s get a government that runs a foreign policy that reflects our national interest not another nation’s and works with DFAT and its ambassadors and asks their advice.(4/4)

  7. An ominous signal ?????? for a Mueller Friday date with destiny – someone posted this :

    Ms Turri‏ @sheila_turri

    Haven’t counted myself but someone here said Friday is the 666th of 45’s torture as POTUS. O the irony if the gates open tomorrow!

    ************************

    I just checked :

    How long has Donald Trump been president?

    1 year, 299 days, 6 hours, 44 minutes and 28 seconds = 365+299 = 664

    http://howlonghasdonaldtrumpbeenpresident.com/

  8. I loved the reason for challenging RCV in court.

    Sounds like they think the Constitution is against democracy! 🙂

    Maine’s plan to become the first state to use RCV for a federal election was briefly threatened when Poliquin filed his lawsuit, claiming that it was unconstitutional to allow voters to rank their choices in order to ensure they are represented by a lawmaker with the majority of support.

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/11/15/stunning-after-court-rejects-gop-lawsuit-democrat-wins-maine-becomes-first-state-use

  9. Barney ,
    Thank you for stating the ‘obvious’ about 3+ candidates.
    However I don’t see it as a ‘problem’, especially if it eliminates the possibility of a people being elected who lost their deposit.
    BTW, I nearly voted for Rick Muir in 2013! It’s just that I deplore possibility of real f-wits getting in.

  10. That sounds right, it could be that they have treated the distribution of preferences as one round and lumped them all together.

    Yeah, I would guess that they have put in some mathematical/procedural (or perhaps just in summary) shortcuts based on the fact that, in this case, the total combined votes of the 3rd and 4th candidates don’t exceed 50% so neither can win and both can be safely eliminated ‘at the same time’.

    On that summary the ‘undervotes’ and ‘overvotes’ seem … curious to me. Undervoting and exhaustion (which they have separated out) seem like weird categorization. ‘Undervoting’ in the first round presumably means an entirely blank ballot? who goes to the trouble of turning up to vote in an optional system and lodges a blank ballot?). ‘Overvoting’ can’t mean filling in too many preferences, surely, so I guess it means duplicating the preference (filling in two or more ‘1’ votes in the first round eg). I guess I’m just used to the AEC generically aggregating ‘informal’ votes, but I would have thought normal exhaustion shouldn’t be mixed up with what would clearly be errors (deliberate or otherwise) on the part of the voters when summarizing the results?

  11. Barney @10:38
    “I loved the reason for challenging RCV in court.

    Sounds like they think the Constitution is against democracy! ”

    In fact , the US constitution was specifically designed to avoid “mob-rule”, which was the 18th Century word used by opponents of “democracy”.
    The history of the constitutional convention makes fascinating reading, specially the bulwarks the slave-owners erected to protect their “property”

  12. Gippslander @ #116 Friday, November 16th, 2018 – 6:40 am

    Barney ,
    Thank you for stating the ‘obvious’ about 3+ candidates.
    However I don’t see it as a ‘problem’, especially if it eliminates the possibility of a people being elected who lost their deposit.
    BTW, I nearly voted for Rick Muir in 2013! It’s just that I deplore possibility of real f-wits getting in.

    You seem confused.

    You’re conflating a single member electorate with a multi member, i.e. our Senate.

    As Jackol pointed out the issue preferences was in the Senate with the group tickets and those groups deciding where their preferences went.

    This, federally, is no longer a problem and has never been a problem with House of Reps electorates.

  13. I’m still working through that link by antonbruckner11. The section on Republican support for RCV includes these statements.

    “Decades of rancor and scorched-earth politics have created an environment where it is difficult to get anything accomplished. Ranked-choice voting encourages candidates to reach beyond their bases to earn first-, second- and, in crowded races, third-choice rankings.”

    “Ranked-choice voting offers an opportunity for those of us who have felt disenfranchised by the political status quo to take back the power the Constitution intended we should have all along.”

    “The built-in “instant runoffs” narrow down the field of candidates one-by-one, until one candidate reaches a majority and wins. In each round, the last-place candidate is eliminated and your vote counts for the candidate you ranked highest who is still competing. With Ranked Choice Voting, all of us participate, equally, in electing consensus candidates who are more broadly supported by the people.”

    This from Republicans.

  14. Key points:
    National Pollution Inventory data has been mapped according to postcodes
    The Australian Conservation Foundation report reveals the country’s most-polluted postcodes
    Botany Bay in Sydney and Altona in Melbourne are the cities’ most-polluted areas

    https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-16/australian-pollution-mapped-by-postcodes/10478620?pfmredir=sm

    I like the call for an Environmental Protection Agency independent of government. 🙂
    Hate the wealthy avoiding effects lower income people have to put up with.

  15. Confessions @ #103 Friday, November 16th, 2018 – 10:29 am

    Rebecca BallhausVerified account@rebeccaballhaus
    16m16 minutes ago
    NEWS: The Justice Department is preparing to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and is increasingly optimistic it will be able to get him into a U.S. courtroom, per @aviswanatha @duberyan.

    Release the cats! And Julian will follow…into custody. 🙂

  16. With the Dems now having gained 32 House seats and with probably 4 more, it’s the best result for them since Nixon resigned, the results coming in pretty close to polling. And with Mueller apparently ready to pounce, it seems the US is returning to a semblance of normality.

    On the home front, that Morrison fell into line with Abetz’s instruction to move our embassy, it’s apparent that FauxMo was deeply involved in the coup. He’s obviously a prisoner of the extreme-Right just as Trumble was. The Tories are indeed slow learners.

  17. Re Mia Love, the only black woman from the GOP to be a member of Congress (and soon-to-be-ex-member, depending on the count in UT-4)… she’s actually Haitian-American (though US-born), and her involvement in GOP politics has much to do with the fact she’s a Mormon who settled in Utah. (IIRC, she converted while working as a flight attendant.)

  18. Gippslander

    The American constitution was designed to avoid “mob rule”.
    ————————
    It is amusing that the Liberal Labour oppostion to proportional representation in electing Members of Parliament is the same fear of “mob rule”.

    They pretend that it’s better if the two born-to-rule parties determine all governments. It’s more “stable”, you know. Bugger the voters will.

  19. Player One:

    I still think the pendulum’s swung against Trump. If he attempts to sack Mueller, the House will reinstate him come Jan. 1. While Trump will no doubt turn more crazy if, say, his son is indicted, there is provision in the US Constitution to remove him. And, the polls are starting to turn against him, with 16% of Republicans not wanting him to stand in 2020 – this being quite significant.

    https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/14/poll-trump-2020-reelection-support-990015

  20. Concetta F-W really doesn’t have a clue if she’s picked out Mari to attack, compared with all the REAL Labor (anti-LNP) posters. She’s completely off the mark.

  21. C@tmomma:

    [‘Correct. They have guns. They support Trump.’]

    So do the Dems, but it won’t end in civil insurrection, cooler heads will prevail.

  22. With regards the Maine election. On the first round the top two candidates scored about 46% each meaning the other two candidates between them had 8%. There was no way that the third candidate could have overtaken the the second candidate with the distribution of the fourth candidates votes so both of these candidates preferences would have been distributed at the same time. This would happen in Australia except that such a situation rarely happens.

  23. For Michael who thought Queensland was lagging:

    Nick Behrens
    ‏ @NickBehrens1
    5m5 minutes ago

    Queensland’s economic growth for 2017-18 of 3.4% is the strongest growth since 2011-12 #qldpol

  24. Mavis Smith @ #132 Friday, November 16th, 2018 – 11:40 am

    C@tmomma:

    [‘Correct. They have guns. They support Trump.’]

    So do the Dems, but it won’t end in civil insurrection, cooler heads will prevail.

    I’m not so sanguine. They got to Ronald Reagan.

    Not that I’m implying Trump is a target, but who knows how the people who fervently support him will react? Gabby Giffords is but one example.

  25. lizzie
    My few conversations with Concetta would support a view that the good Senator just doesn’t have a clue about anything.
    If Mr Rees-Mogg, the British MP, is the member for the 18th Century, Concetta would provide good support for Mr Rees-Mogg.

  26. Goll

    I could easily produce a handful of much more ‘suspicious’ posters on Twitter, most of who don’t even bother to hide their real names.

    sprocket_

    Matthew Guy is a slimy Liberal type, who’s hoping to slide into Premier by using all the normal Liberal lies. In a very few months, as Planning Minister, he managed to foul up Melbourne by granting permits to his maaates. Now he’s going the Dutton road.

  27. I agree 3.4% growth for Queensland is good. Then why is their unemployment rate clearly the highest in the country at 6.3% way above the former so-called basket states such as Tasmania and South Aust who now have rates of 5.3% and 5.4% respectively. Obviously the QLD Premier has no idea how to create jobs.

  28. WTF is going on?
    Australia is not Little Israel in the Pacific!
    Frydenberg is not the Foreign Minister!
    Why are we stirring up muslim resentment to our north for nothing?
    There is no national interest whatsoever in shifting our embassy.
    Or in picking useless fights with Indonesia and Malaysia.

  29. ‘michael says:
    Friday, November 16, 2018 at 12:18 pm

    I agree 3.4% growth for Queensland is good.’
    You were hiding that little gem for later, were you?

  30. From Guytaur, on Sen C F-W’s accusations that twitter accounts of people we know are actually some sort of sinister ALP campaign to undermine the current Federal Govt.

    What really caught my eye was C F-W’s comment: but the anonymity of accounts means we can’t be sure exactly who they are See below for more text.

    I do not want to give them ideas, but if they cannot work out who @randlight is, they really are hopeless at IT. It is actually worth reading the whole article. – the senator seems proud of her ignorance of social media.

    Based in Western Australia, @Talaolp has tweeted 230,000 times in the last five years. That’s about 125 times a day. Some of its anti-coalition material is scurrilous and intended simply to smear. It typically posts to three other accounts: ‘Sir Clyde of Nob’ @Nobby15, ‘Big Al’ @banas51 and ‘Mari R’ @randlight.
    ………….
    These accounts were active during the 2016 election. They’re in full swing and, unless checked, will be active during the next election. Twitter’s submission to JSCEM claims:

    What I have described tonight is the Twitter equivalent of a Labor union telephone tree, a Twitter tree, though perhaps a better analogy would be a jungle, and the law of the jungle applies when it comes to its content. An organised union operation backed by Labor volunteers is the most likely source of this influence campaign, *****but the anonymity of accounts means we can’t be sure exactly who they are ***** !!!. These accounts were active during the 2016 election. They’re in full swing and, unless checked, will be active during the next election. Twitter’s submission to JSCEM claims:

    We focus on developing machine learning tools that identify and act on networks of spammy or automated accounts automatically by tracking account behaviour. This lets us tackle attempts to manipulate conversations on Twitter at scale, across languages, and different time zones.

    I submit that Twitter is on a steep learning curve and still has a long way to go, and I would suggest it review the activities of the accounts to which I have referred as well as many other high-volume accounts like ‘Wowbagger’ and ‘Fair Dinkum Troublemaker’.

    https://polyfeministix.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/liberal-senator-says-auspol-twitter-users-collude-to-manipulate-the-election/

  31. “Ranked-choice voting offers an opportunity for those of us who have felt disenfranchised by the political status quo to take back the power the Constitution intended we should have all along.”

    I see it as VERY positive for US politics, the success of the RCV in Maine. Seems to be something that is easily slotted into the US system…….which will still have flaws like the Electoral College….but progress. 🙂

  32. Shinzo Abe should announce that he will personally supervise the removal of loco C5631 from the Yasukuni Shrine.
    This locomotive was an integral part of one of the worst Japanese WW2 war crimes.
    It pulled the first train from one end to another of the Burma Railway – the Railway of Death.
    The Japanese murdered around one slave per sleeper for the entire length of the railway.
    Having this death machine as a pride-of-place exhibit in the Yasukuni Shrine is a prime example of Japanese war denialists ruling the Japanese roost.
    Abe is not welcome in Australia until he announces that the dishonorable C5631 will be removed.

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