Victorian election live

Live coverage of the count for the Victorian state election.

Live publication of results, updated by the minute with full booth results, swings and probability estimates, can be found here. Commentary of the progress of the count follows below.

12.50pm. John Pesutto now leads by 53 votes in Hawthorn, and I’m also now projected the Liberals to hold Caulfield. So without wishing to take anything away from the scale of Labor’s win, a big part of the election night story is that Liberal voters voted early. I’ve now got Sandringham back down as a confirmed Labor gain, but with no pre-polls or postals there yet, I certainly wouldn’t take that for granted. I will be off line for the next half an hour, and my results won’t be updating in that time.

12.18pm. Things continue to look less bad for the Liberals. My model now has the Liberals with their nose in front in Mount Waverley and Nepean, and is no longer giving away Sandringham, Bayswater and Hawthorn — though it’s still calling it for Labor in Ringwood, Caulfield and Box Hill. Over the past hour, the statewide Labor swing has come down from 3.7% to 3.2%.

11.35pm. The notion that some of the more freakish results would be overturned on late counting is looking good. The Liberals are now home in Brighton, after hardly any swing was recorded on pre-poll and postal votes. My seat projection has come down over the last few hours from 59 to 56 (which really means 60 to 57, because a bug is awarding Preston to the Liberals — though equally, it may be wrong about the Greens winning Prahran).

9.30pm. The Greens, as ever, are living on a knife edge — they could win four, they could win nothing. The ABC projects them with leads of 2.2% in Melbourne and 1.0% lead in Brunswick, while they’re 1.0% behind in Northcote. The only thing the Prahran two-party count tells us is that they will definitely beat the Liberals if that’s what it comes down to, but with nothing to separate Labor, Liberal and the Greens, they may drop out in third, or lose to Labor if it’s the Liberals who do so. The one thing that is clear is that they have not won Richmond, despite the Liberals’ decision to give them a leg-up by not fielding a candidate.

9.07pm. Plenty to feast on in the ABC’s seats in doubt list, on which twelve seats are listed. Labor has only the gentlest of leads in Brighton, which one suspects will not stick; they are slightly further ahead in Sandringham, which remains very much in doubt; a Labor win in either would be astonishing. Both were vacated by sitting members, and male candidates (a conservative young turk in the case of Brighton) were chosen for both of them.

9.02pm. There are nine seats listed on the ABC’s “changing hands” list – Bayswater, with a 2.0% Labor lead and 42.8% counted, may not be nailed down yet, but the others look fairly solid. The only ones that were widely thought a shot for Labor in advance were Bass, South Barwon and maybe Burwood. The others are remarkable for being affluent and historically blue-ribbon Liberal seats: Box Hill, Caulfield, Mount Waverley and Ringwood. Then there is Nepean, which is a semi-rural seat neighbouring Bass, where the Liberals had a retiring sitting member and may, as in Bass, have been hampered by the retirement of the sitting member, not to mention the party’s uninspired choice for his successor.

8.24pm. Rather extraordinarily, the ABC computer has Labor ahead in Brighton and Sandringham. Either the backlash against the Liberals by well-heeled voters has taken on hitherto unanticipated dimensions, or the high pre-poll vote is turning up static.

8.08pm. Labor has retained Richmond, where the Greens showed characteristic persistence with a dud candidate, but the ABC has the Greens retaining Melbourne and Northcote. Brunswick has been going back and forth — currently it’s down as Labor retain. Prahran is a three-way contest that will be determined by the candidate who drops out in third.

7.53pm. Burwood took a long time to report a result, but not it has, it’s looking like another possible gain for Labor … and indeed has been called for Labor by the ABC as I type.

7.49pm. Ringwood and Mount Waverley looking very solid for Labor now, and Labor looks to have gained South Barwon. The ABC calling Box Hill and Nepean for Labor, but I wouldn’t give those away yet. Less unexpectedly, Labor to gain Bass. Looking close in Ripon, which was thought a lot more likely to go to Labor than the aforementioned.

7.48pm. The ABC computer is now calling Mildura an independent gain, but it shouldn’t be because it’s far too close.

7.38pm. Independent Suzanna Sheed comfortably returned in Shepparton. The ALP is calling Mildura a Nationals retain, but it looks close to me, with independent Ali Cupper a show. The ABC computer apparently doesn’t expect Darryn Lyons to get very strong preferences in Geelong, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it. Ditto Benambra, where Jacqui Hawkins looks competitive against Liberal Bill Tilley. Independent Tammy Atkins is running second behind beleaguered Nationals member Tim McCurdy in Ovens Valley, but his primary vote of 43% looks high enough.

7.36pm. The ABC computer has wound Forest Hill back from Labor gain to Labor ahead, but the Labor leads in Mount Waverley and Ringwood look rather formidable.

7.34pm. Prahran now looking a near three-way tie on the primary vote, as it was in 2014. The Greens are struggling to hold Northcote; still early days in Melbourne and Brunswick; nothing yet in Richmond.

7.32pm. The ABC computer is calling Benambra Liberal retain, but this assumes a Liberal-versus-Labor contest, and independent Jacqui Hawkins is well ahead of Labor in second place. With a primary vote barely north of 40%, Liberal member Bill Tilley is another in trouble.

7.31pm. Small swing to the Greens from the first booth in Melbourne.

7.30pm. Antony Green picking three unheralded Labor gains in the eastern suburbs: Forest Hill, Mount Waverley and Ringwood.

7.27pm. The ABC guesstimate says Labor shouldn’t be troubled by Darryn Lyons in Geelong, but the primary vote numbers look pretty soft for them to me, being just north of 40% and with Lyons clearly placed to finish second.

7.24pm. I’ve been tending to focus on boutique regional contests, but the big story is of overwhelming success for Labor in eastern Melbourne. They’re bolting it in the sandbelt seats, and putting the Liberals under pressure in normally solid seats. Though I reiterate the note of caution that there may be a lot of Liberal vote outstanding in the pre-polls, which will come through later in the night. Even so, it’s clearly a question of how far Labor.

7.18pm. Labor’s good early figures in Ringwood, which I found hard to credit, appear to be sticking.

7.16pm. One bit of good news for the Liberals is there’s an early swing to them in the endangered country seat of Ripon.

7.15pm. The Liberals look like they will run third in Prahran, rendering the notional Liberal-versus-Greens preference count academic. So the result will come down to the flow of Liberal preferences between Labor and the Greens.

7.13pm. The second booth in Brunswick is better for Labor than the first – there is now a 1.0% swing in their favour. Nothing else in from the other potential Greens seats.

7.10pm. The ABC is covering Geelong, where it actually seems to me that independent Darryn Lyons is doing a lot better than he deserves — he’s matching it with the Liberals on the primary vote, and Labor is only on 36.2%. However, the primary vote swing to Labor is 3.5%, which would keep them safe if consistent.

7.07pm. An interestingly huge swing to Labor in the first booth in from Albert Park, whose Wentworth-ish demographic might not be too thrilled with the Liberals right now. The Liberals came close to knocking it over in 2010 and 2014, but not this time by the look of it.

7.06pm. First booth in from Brunswick is a 3.7% swing to the Greens, which exceeds the 2.3% Labor margin.

7.04pm. Independent Jacqui Hawkins polling strongly in Benambra with 25.1%, and Bill Tilley’s 43.1% is low enough to make it touch-and-go for him after preferences.

7.03pm. Early days, but Nationals member Peter Crisp is under pressure from independent Ali Cupper in Mildura.

7.00pm. The first electorate with over 10% counted is Gippsland South, with a 3.7% swing to Labor. It should be cautioned here that the dynamic in play may be that the upsurge in pre-poll voting has disproportionately involved conservative voters. If so, some of these swings will come back later in the evening.

6.58pm. The ABC election results page (they need to make this stuff easier to locate) paints an impressive picture of across-the-board swings to Labor in all those electorates where two-party votes are in.

6.56pm. Russell Northe, the Liberals and the Nationals are almost exactly level in Morwell, all on around 17%, with Labor on 28.3%. Only a few small rural booths, 1.5% counted.

6.53pm. James Purcell, the upper house micro-party member trying to win South-West Coast as an independent, trails Labor 21.2% to 17.2% with 4.3% counted. The Liberal is on 42.0%, so he might be competitive if he closes that gap.

6.50pm. The ABC’s booth-matching is picking up a 6% to 7% drop in the Coalition primary vote, although there is only 0.6% counted.

6.35pm. A few peculiarities with the VEC’s approach actually, such as media feed updates only coming through every five minutes. However, they have picked the notional two-party counts I would have expected, having been guided entirely by what happened last time. So Nationals versus independent counts in Shepparton and Mildura, Nationals versus Labor in Morwell and Liberal versus Greens in Prahran.

6.25pm. An unforeseen peculiarity in the way the AEC does its media feeds means I won’t be able to get my results reporting facility to work until every electorate has a two-party preferred result in, which should take a while.

5.30pm. Half an hour before polls close, a YouGov Galaxy exit poll gives Labor a lead of 55-45. While exit polls don’t have a brilliant record in this country, this does add to a formidable picture of a strong result for Labor. For my part, I’m currently sweating over how my live results reporting and projection facility is going to operate in a real world environment, so stay tuned for that. It should be up in one form or another at about 6:15pm, with the first results to come through shortly after.

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.

806 comments on “Victorian election live”

Comments Page 16 of 17
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  1. https://www.pollbludger.net/2018/11/24/victorian-election-live-4/comment-page-15/#comment-3010695

    The Greens do not existing to rubber stamp ALP policies, the Greens exist to get the most Green possible policies enacted.

    The ALP had not negotiated with the Greens on the ETS but had negotiated with the Liberals but that fell through (bar two Liberals in the Senate who held to the deal) and the Greens decided to force the ALP to the negotiating table, which would probably have mean a DD election had the ALP not completely gone to water.

    The Malaysia “Solution” conflicted with the pro-refugee policy of the Greens.

    The Greens voted to remove a late-Howard era structural deficit creating piece of pork for wealthier retirees. Full pensioners retained their entire pensions but the part pension cut out a bit sooner.

  2. @areaman

    That’s as I understand it. But there are always enough votes on the right for Labor to secure passage for right-of-centre legislation, no? They can negotiate with the Coalition, after all. Unless the goal is to maximise the number of individual parties that they can deal with regardless of their politics.

  3. Centrist says:
    Sunday, November 25, 2018 at 2:34 am
    @Matt

    They aren’t the only ones making that kind of error. Labor preferencing right-wing micros over the Greens is similarly counterproductive, as strategically it’s in their best interests to fill non-ALP seats with left-wing and moderate candidates. I don’t know why parties do things like this, unless out of spite, which would be very stupid.

    Centrist, the Gs are an organised anti-Labor force that survives by campaigning against Labor nearly all the time and which will disrupt Labor whenever possible. Of course it makes sense for Labor to seek to disable them.

  4. If the Greens vote were going to collapse, it would have done so at this election due to messy campaign due to the various preselection mistakes. The Greens vote went down a bit over a percent statewide but with better preselections and campaigns it can rise again. The ALP have not and will not destroy the Greens.

    The Greens exist to achieve policy outcomes and they won`t do that by rolling over to the ALP at the drop of a hat by the ALP.

  5. Tom

    The ALP had not negotiated with the Greens on the ETS but had negotiated with the Liberals but that fell through (bar two Liberals in the Senate who held to the deal) and the Greens decided to force the ALP to the negotiating table, which would probably have mean a DD election had the ALP not completely gone to water.

    The Malaysia “Solution” conflicted with the pro-refugee policy of the Greens.

    Before these acts of stupidity by the Greens I had sometimes given them a first preference. That won’t happen again…the highest they will ever get from me now is second.

    FFS, there was no point forcing the government to negotiate an ETS with the Greens because the Greens couldn’t deliver the numbers in the senate. The Greens chose 100% of nothing rather than a step in the right direction.

    The Greens rejected the Malaysia solution because it was held to be too harsh a place to send asylum seekers that arrived by boat. This didn’t make a lot of sense as the number of asylum seekers in Malaysia would have been significantly reduced by the proposed solution.

  6. @TTFAB: They won’t do it by being an isolated voice in the wilderness, either. How is Australia’s ETS going now, since the Greens stood on their purity ponies and kept the issue live for Abbott to blow up? How are those 800 asylum seekers going, the ones who Gillard wanted to send to Malaysia for processing? How are those 4,000 asylum seekers going, the ones who Gillard was going to take in to Australia as Malaysia’s quid pro quo? Politics is about negotiating, compromising and making sure you always give away (from your party’s perspective) less than what you get – not standing tall on your high horse and demanding your way or the highway.

    Unless you think the Greens can form majority Government…ever…which is just not going to happen. The Greens have a hard ceiling of about 15-16% support in every State except Tasmania, where it could conceivably go as high as 25%. The Greens’ approach to politics (on the edge between “moderately left-wing” and “hard left”) simply doesn’t appeal to a majority of the populace. The Greens are a balance-of-power party; a party formed to leverage a major party’s need to get to 50+1 of the votes on the floor of the legislature.

    Being a balance-of-power party gives you some power, and you have every right (and need!) to leverage that to get the best possible deal you can – but the Greens need to learn not to overplay their hands. Because saying “No!” to decent(-ish) first steps because they’re not perfect ends up with the Greens getting nothing and the country going backwards. As we’ve seen.

  7. @Centrist:

    Labor preferencing right-wing micros over the Greens is similarly counterproductive, as strategically it’s in their best interests to fill non-ALP seats with left-wing and moderate candidates.

    The initial rationale, AFAIK, was that they were doing swaps with those RWNJ microparties because said micros putting them ahead of the Libs (which used to sometimes happen) could mean the difference between getting 2 LegCo seats in a given region, or getting 3 LegCo seats. To their view, the risk of getting a RWNJ in that seat instead was worth it – either Labor would get an advantage over the Libs to take the seat, or the RWNJ who took it instead (on ALP prefs) would be in the habit of doing deals with Labor, and therefore more inclined to listen to them once seated. Either way, Labor wins.

    Having said that, it’s pretty damned clear (from my outside-looking-in perspective) that if ever that rationale held water, it doesn’t anymore. The RWNJ parties are nuttier than ever, and preference one another, then the Libs, then Labor, then the Greens – so Labor ought to give them a cold shoulder in fair return.

    So far, I’m putting it down to people being creatures of habit; hopefully, that’s all it is and it can be reassessed when the dust settles on this election.

  8. Firefox says:
    Sunday, November 25, 2018 at 1:10 am

    This is just wrong. It’s wrong about the L/R set-up in Labor. It’s mistaken in the claim – the self serving claim of the Gs – that Labor copy G policies.

    Labor does not steer it’s way by referring to G navigation lights. It just doesn’t.

  9. At times it felt like the entire Liberal strategy was focused on the four sandbelt seats. It looks like all four are now on double-figure margins.

    Interestingly, a lot of regional seats (including a couple, Euroa and Eildon, which come close enough to Melbourne to take in Melbourne satellite towns) didn’t swing much at all in a Labor-Coalition sense. Most of those would have seen only token Labor campaigns, with Ripon the only one amongst them considered marginal pre-election (although quite a few Melbourne seats on bigger margins than Eildon have fallen), though one might imagine that spending lots of money on infrastructure in Melbourne isn’t such a vote-winner once out of town.

  10. @briefly

    The Greens are an organised anti-Labor force in exactly the same way that any party which is not Labor is an organised anti-Labor force. And much like any party, they do not typically block legislation which is part of their own political agenda. You could argue with some merit that they have made poor pragmatic decisions in their opposition to past Labor legislation, as noted by @Matt. You cannot reasonably argue that they just exist to sabotage Labor specifically.

  11. @Matt

    Labor swapping preferences with a right-wing micro does make some sense to me in the context of it being a gamble for Labor to receive enough preferences to get a majority in the legislative council, although it strikes me as being very risky and stacked largely in the micros’ favour. But thank you for explaining that rationale, regardless.

  12. In substance, coast to coast, Labor is one brand, one set of values, one open offer to voters.

    As a NSWer, I wish this were true. There are light years between Dan Andrew’s party and Luke Foley’s cesspit

  13. Had a function last night. The results were way beyond expectations.
    Well done Dan the Man and Labor!
    Well done Victorians for not buying into fear and division.
    The libs should be ashamed of themselves

  14. Firefox: “More broadly, if Labor think this result will translate federally in relation to the Greens, they should think again. The Andrews gov is the most progressive Labor government in the country, with the one exception of the Green/Labor ACT gov. Federal Labor is far more to the right, is dominated by the right faction, and is lead by a right winger in Shorten. Federal Labor is a far cry from the Victorian version of the party. As progressive as Vic Labor is and as terrible as their campaign was, the Greens still look to have managed over 10% statewide, have received swings in some key seats, and could possibly win one off Labor.”

    Outside the Melbourne inner city – which an ABC reported last night wonderfully described as the “Great Wall of Quinoa” – I doubt that there were many Victorian voters who were either aware of, or gave a toss about, which faction of the ALP Andrews belongs to. They voted in massive numbers for a Government that looked like it was doing a good job and against an Opposition Party which ran a rather poor scare campaign. And they were no doubt also influenced by the chaos among the Federal Libs and especially the demise of Turnbull, who appears to have been quite popular in Victoria.

    State Governments are largely responsible for the provision of infrastructure and government services, areas in which ideologically-driven political beliefs are relatively unimportant. You could see during the Victorian campaign that the Liberals kept saying things like “this is the most left-wing Labor Government ever”, but – even though there is some truth to this proposition – they couldn’t really point to very many concrete instances of Andrews’s left-wing ideology in action.

    It’s a different story at the Federal level. Australia is a wealthy country and its voters are a relatively conservative lot. The Federal Government controls areas such as the tax system, foreign affairs, defence and border control, in which people of a strongly left-leaning disposition are prone to want to institute major change. Which means that, at the Federal level, a it would be much easier for the Coalition to target a politician like Daniel Andrews on a wide range of issues.

    This is why I am concerned that – notwithstanding the right-wing factional backgrounds of Shorten, Bowen, etc – the suite of taxation and some other policies being taken forward by Labor to the next election risks their coming across as being too far to the left. The Federal Libs appear to be in total disarray and the electorate’s respect for ScoMo is diminishing on a daily basis. But Labor’s policies on neg gearing, CGT, dividend imputation, etc. appear to me to be giving the Coalition a bit of a lifeline to hold on to.

  15. One can only hope that the demented and misguided obsession with the Greens amongst some ALP posters here doesn’t reflect the thinking of the party proper. How sad to have obliterated the LNP and in response spend your time jeering at a broadly aligned minor party which predictably lost a small fraction of its vote due to the scale of the major party swing.

  16. Tom

    ‘The ALP have not and will not destroy the Greens.

    The Greens exist to achieve policy outcomes and they won`t do that by rolling over to the ALP at the drop of a hat by the ALP.’

    Certainly none of this reflects my attitude towards the Greens, for example.

    I don’t want the Greens destroyed. However, if they look like they are destroying themselves, certainly I will point it out – as I have frequently done with the Liberals, for example.

    Similarly, if I am concerned about the Greens policy outcomes, I’ll point that out, too. And, as I said last night, it would appear that they are becoming a party not of the environment per se but of social issues which particularly concern inner city professionals.

    This should be a concern when we are confronting some major environmental issues, some – like climate change, obviously – of catastrophic implications.

    Voters assume that if something is serious, the party associated with that issue will be making a fuss. (If Labor didn’t protest against a workplace law change, most people would assume it wasn’t a worry; if the Liberals didn’t buck up against a tax rise, most would assume it was acceptable). So if the party associated with the environment isn’t making the environment a major issue, then voters assume that everything must be on track.

    I once road tested this idea, when Bob Brown put Tasmanian forests ahead of climate change (and at least that was an environmental issue). I asked multiple Green voters why he did that, and all of them answered that it must be because forests were more important. Arguably, this helped defuse the push for climate change action.

    The Greens have gone down to 4% across the board in Northern Victoria, down from a steady 8-10% – I suppose because there are very few inner city professionals living in these parts.

  17. MB, the current expenditure on the various taxation measures planned by Labor, dividend imputation credit refunds, Negative Gearing and CGT, have grown far beyond initial estimates, and cannot be defended on policy grounds.
    And the budget is still in deficit, with debt now far higher than it was in 2013

    The problem is that some people have structured their finances to take advantage of these measures and will be badly affected by changes..

  18. ‘His gullibility is extraordinary’: Pulitzer Prize-winner describes why Trump gets easily played by Putin and Saudi prince

    Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston lampooned the foolishness of President Donald Trump for taking autocrats at their word during a Saturday appearance on MSNBC’s “AM Joy.”

    “It’s about Donald and money,” he answered. “The Trump family is all about what they call winning, by which they mean putting money in their pockets.”

    “Whether they earned it legally — as they occasionally do — they stole it or cheated, that’s just fine with them so long as they get paid,” he explained.

    “Duty and honor, which ought to be at the center of any presidency, are words that have no meaning to Donald Trump,” he continued. “This is a man who never did one day of public service before he took the oath of office — that he goes around violating all the time.”

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/11/gullibility-extraordinary-pulitzer-prize-winner-describes-trump-gets-easily-played-putin-saudi-prince/

  19. More generally on the election result last night, both major parties got what was coming to them IMO.

    The Andrews Government has governed pretty well and certainly deserved to be returned.

    The Liberal campaign under Guy was weak and snarly. They couldn’t really do much else: it’s always difficult for opposition parties to campaign against a Labor state leader who is seen to be performing well: think Neville Wran, Peter Beattie, various South Australian Labor leaders, etc.

    And the Libs also had the problem of the disastrous leadership change in Canberra. There’s really nothing about ScoMo that has any appeal to Melburnians: he’s exactly the brash sort of Sydney person on whom they like to look down. Even a reasonable effort on his part to show his respect at Pellegrini’s and then step around the corner to hold a press conference was portrayed as crass behaviour, adding to his already poor image.

    A realistic election scenario has now emerged in which Labor can gain government by holding onto their existing seats in NSW, Queensland and WA and simply picking up the 3 or 4 Victorian seats which now look ripe for the taking.

    It appears increasingly likely that the decision to dump Turnbull will go down as easily the greatest political own goal in Australian history, surpassing even Chifley’s plan to the nationalise the banks in the late 1940s and Evatt’s response to the Petrov defection.

  20. meher baba,
    The Budget can’t be held hostage by selfish people. Especially when those same people bleat about the ‘fact’ that the Budget can’t sustain an increase in Newstart.

  21. Talking about ‘demented and misguided obsession’, did we all notice that when Ratnam and Di Natale both spent some time sledging the real enemy during their interviews last night?
    Who did they attack viciously?
    Labor, of course.
    It turns out that the self-smearing Greens, who are having a wave of trouble managing the sexist behaviour from Adelaide through Melbourne to Sydney, projected on the Labor Party of smearing the Greens.
    BTW, let’s just focus on the Greens’ policies:
    The Greens are promising to destroy Australia’s cotton industry.
    The Greens are promising to get rid of the ADF.
    The Greens are promising to close Olympic Dam.
    The Greens are promising a UJG.
    Of course they don’t use their words. But it is all there.

  22. Firefox

    “More broadly, if Labor think this result will translate federally in relation to the Greens, they should think again…’

    I agree. But no-one in Labor is expecting a 5.7% 2PP swing to Federal Labor in the next election.

    But to change Government they would need barely a 1% gain in 2PP and that is, at this stage, a likely outcome.

    As for the Greens, if voters actually looked at their policies, their vote would collapse. Taken together, the Greens policies would immediately smash the economy:

    The Greens are promising to destroy Australia’s cotton industry.
    The Greens are promising to get rid of the ADF.
    The Greens are promising to close Olympic Dam.
    The Greens are promising a UBI.

  23. John Reidy: “MB, the current expenditure on the various taxation measures planned by Labor, dividend imputation credit refunds, Negative Gearing and CGT, have grown far beyond initial estimates, and cannot be defended on policy grounds. And the budget is still in deficit, with debt now far higher than it was in 2013.

    The problem is that some people have structured their finances to take advantage of these measures and will be badly affected by changes.”

    Absolutely. Housing prices are falling but the rental market remains extremely tight in many places (it’s diabolical in Hobart at the moment) and share prices have fallen dramatically in recent months. I couldn’t think of a worse time for an opposition party to be running around with these sorts of proposals.

    They should drop all of them as soon as possible. The coming week is the time to do it: while the Libs are in complete disarray.

  24. C@tmomma: “meher baba, The Budget can’t be held hostage by selfish people. Especially when those same people bleat about the ‘fact’ that the Budget can’t sustain an increase in Newstart.”

    Well that proposition is total nonsense given the current projections for budget revenue (going up) and for unemployment (coming down). If Labor in Government wants to increase Newstart, it could certainly afford to do so without bashing self-funded retirees and stuffing up the housing market.

    But what are the grounds for increasing the rate of Newstart? It’s been indexed to the CPI for as long as I can remember. That means that people on Newstart having been seeing their fortnightly income rising at a slightly better rate than workers on enterprise agreements in recent times. And the economy is growing and creating lots of new jobs for the unemployed to have a crack at.

    So why is an increase in Newstart a more worthy cause than, say, a tax cut for working people who have been experiencing stagnant wages growth? I’ve recently heard a lot of the usual bleeding heart suspects going on about the rate of Newstart, but I haven’t heard a cogent argument as to why it’s a particular priority right now.

  25. @briefly at 12:23 am

    What do you mean for the first time.

    If you look back in 2014 Labour preferences did not go to greens in the LC

  26. Just had a look at the LC results – Derryn Hinch did very well it would seem.
    Labor will probably need to deal with at least one or two of the crossbench to get their legislation through the upper house, so Hinch’s lot would be a good starting point.

  27. From a political point of view I don’t think Labor would gain a single vote if the measure were dropped, certainly not a net increase. They are now factored in by investors, and for that matter coalition scare campaigns.

    Regarding the impact, the negative gearing changes are grand fathered and are still available for new houses.
    It can be argued the best time to introduce changes like these is in a cooling market, rather than a hot one in a bubble.

    On affordable housings, Labour plan it to reduce taxation measure that distort the market. The Government’s measures are to regulate the banks to get them to reduce investment lending. For a free market, it is much better to remove tax distortion than to limit lending.

  28. Zoomster
    The Greens have gone down to 4% across the board in Northern Victoria, down from a steady 8-10% – I suppose because there are very few inner city professionals living in these parts.
    ——————————–
    I figure that many rural people who have voted Green previously went for independents this time. Which makes sense and seems to have payed off for some.
    Whilst many of the Lab bots here seem to be infantile and obsessed with winning, many Greens I think are prepared to work for better policy or outcomes when time and circumstance calls for it.
    With Lab responsible for preferences to a few RWNJ, with almost no broader support, getting into the upper house, and probably only hanging on in Melb seats by sucking up Lib preferences. Greens primary votes actually went up in four of the main Melb seats they are hoping for.
    The results seems almost entirely due to the delusional toxic state of the Libs and Dan Andrews seeming to be a fairly reasonable human, for a contemporary political party leader.

  29. Quoll @ #782 Sunday, November 25th, 2018 – 8:21 am

    Zoomster
    The Greens have gone down to 4% across the board in Northern Victoria, down from a steady 8-10% – I suppose because there are very few inner city professionals living in these parts.
    ——————————–
    I figure that many rural people who have voted Green previously went for independents this time. Which makes sense and seems to have payed off for some.
    Whilst many of the Lab bots here seem to be infantile and obsessed with winning, many Greens I think are prepared to work for better policy or outcomes when time and circumstance calls for it.
    With Lab responsible for preferences to a few RWNJ, with almost no broader support, getting into the upper house, and probably only hanging on in Melb seats by sucking up Lib preferences. Greens primary votes actually went up in four of the main Melb seats they are hoping for.
    The results seems almost entirely due to the delusional toxic state of the Libs and Dan Andrews seeming to be a fairly reasonable human, for a contemporary political party leader.

    The Greens lost big time. At the end of the day, you can do diddly if you don’t have the seats in Parliament. The Greens wanted to be relevant and have influence over the politics. They failed.

  30. As the always reasoned and calm Catmomma has posted on the other thread:

    This summary from Lenore Taylor in the Guardian highlights the basic issue, that a lot of middle suburban voters have moved straight from Liberal to Labor.

    And I think this is for 2 main reasons, seemingly competing with one another but relevant:

    * Labor are seen by many cautious former Liberal voters to have gotten the Green monkey off their back. Dan Andrews repeatedly made a point of saying he wouldn’t do a deal with them. Federal Labor have said the same.

    * Labor are embracing Progressive Taxation, IR, Social Welfare, Public Services and Environment policies, which Suburban and Regional voters like but not as extreme as The Greens’.

    Put them together and you have the Goldilocks algorithm for voting Labor.

  31. Quoll

    I’d heard (from very reliable sources) that the Greens were in trouble locally long before any indie put their hand up. Their perennial candidate (who ran as an indie this time) deserted them when di Natale was elected.

    That’s not the issue (or the point) – the Greens have ceased identifying themselves as an environmental party (cf di Natale’s interview post election).

    If you’re obsessed with inner city issues, of course you’re not going to appeal to seats which aren’t in the inner city.

  32. Christ meher either you don’t know anybody trying to live on newstart or you’re a heartless cretin who belongs in a dickens novel

  33. Labor with Andrews as leader and a swag of already implemented projects and more to come have trounced all before it.
    The Liberals are now recognised as the party of spiv types, shonksters and fast money dealers. Their story no longer passes muster.
    The Greens will carry on and complain that their 10% of inner city deity should have sway way beyond their due. They should stick to their designated walking trails and not trip over the sign posts.
    The Nationals should stick to B&S balls and looking for rain.
    The assortment of oddballs in the upper house will soon lose patience with the Greens and their hyperbole.
    Andrews and Labor generally are dressed appropriately and more importantly are trusted.

  34. I gave up on the Greens when I watched them sit in their bunkers as the MRRT was destroyed. Having weathered the barrage in reasonable comfort, they were out as soon as it lifted to deploy a few snipers. Aiming at the ALP. Far too wishy washy were the ALP’s policies, THEY would’ve……

  35. Quoll

    ‘Whilst many of the Lab bots here seem to be infantile and obsessed with winning, many Greens I think are prepared to work for better policy or outcomes when time and circumstance calls for it.’

    Haha.

    Four years of the Greens wedging Labor, sledging Labor, and whinging about Labor was the entree. The main course was crawling to Labor for preferences.
    This was sauced with a bit of election count night surly smearing of Labor. It turns out that Labor was not to say anything about the Greens’ systematic problems with sexism and anti-women problems.
    Dessert was some name-calling: ‘infantile’, ‘obsessed’ ‘demented’ ‘misguided’.

    And, for the liqueur, the Greens ‘are prepared to work for better policy or outcomes (with Labor)’.

    Are you guys really so self-obsessed that you do not have the faintest clue about what you look like from the outside?

  36. Boerwar @ #789 Sunday, November 25th, 2018 – 8:38 am

    Quoll

    ‘Whilst many of the Lab bots here seem to be infantile and obsessed with winning, many Greens I think are prepared to work for better policy or outcomes when time and circumstance calls for it.’

    Haha.

    Four years of the Greens wedging Labor, sledging Labor, and whinging about Labor was the entree. The main course was crawling to Labor for preferences.
    This was sauced with a bit of election count night surly smearing of Labor. It turns out that Labor was not to say anything about the Greens’ systematic problems with sexism and anti-women problems.
    Dessert was some name-calling: ‘infantile’, ‘obsessed’ ‘demented’ ‘misguided’.

    And, for the liqueur, the Greens ‘are prepared to work for better policy or outcomes (with Labor)’.

    Are you guys really so self-obsessed that you do not have the faintest clue about what you look like from the outside?

    For a special treat we get truffles. Nobody knows the Greens Truffles I’ve seen!

  37. Clearly one of the take outs from the election has been candidate vetting and selection.

    All parties suffered some slip ups but probably the Greens had more of a high profile given the issues with the candidates’ views were opposite to the philosophy of that party.

    The ALP with a large back bench will need to ensure that they don’t get bored and are kept busy and engaged.

  38. Patrick Bateman @ #766 Sunday, November 25th, 2018 – 7:14 am

    One can only hope that the demented and misguided obsession with the Greens amongst some ALP posters here doesn’t reflect the thinking of the party proper. How sad to have obliterated the LNP and in response spend your time jeering at a broadly aligned minor party which predictably lost a small fraction of its vote due to the scale of the major party swing.

    I call you a genius, Sir!

  39. As the Greens have abandoned the environment I’ve long thought they should re-brand themselves. “Greens” no longer represents what they aspire to and is probably hurting them electorally now.
    Given how their actions so often result in hindering the outcomes they profess to aspire to, can I humbly suggest “The Irony Party” as their new name.

  40. ‘Akubra says:
    Sunday, November 25, 2018 at 8:49 am

    Clearly one of the take outs from the election has been candidate vetting and selection.’

    The Greens lost because people are wising up to them. They continue to dud the youf, of course. They do that by ignoring these sorts of policies:
    1. closing down Olympic Dam
    2. closing down the cotton industry
    3. closing down the ADF
    4. installing the UBI and doubling taxes.

  41. MB speaking thru the prism of own pocket and self interest?

    Dividend imputation, Capital Gains Tax and Negative Gearing

    The dismantling of Liberal Party legislation, legislation designed to sand bag the vote of a particular demographic

    And speaking of legislation, the Greens will need to occupy the Treasury benches to legislate their policies

    With Labor, the Liberals, the Nationals, the minor parties and the Independents ALL on the Opposition benches forming a gaggle of opposition

    The Victorian election result evidences the progress they have and are making

    On the basis of the Victorian result, the step they have so far not achieved is to replace the Coalition of the Liberal Party and the National Party as the Opposition, furnishing the Leader of the Opposition

  42. I agree with the consensus that the Liberal campaign was pathetic. There was not one aggressive attack ad over Andrews helping himself to taxpayers money re: Redshirts. They should have simply stated that Andrews stole the money from you, (the taxpayer). The ALP boldly implied that Guy killed people because of the ambulance crisis so they couldn’t winge about it. More disturbingly, the Liberals didn’t make anything of the police ‘go slow’ in their investigation. It’s very obvious that the police were making sure nothing happened before the election. That’s Grade A corruption. The ALP have also made it clear they won’t cooperate with the police. If the positions were reversed what would Andrews have made of it? Pathetic is an understatement.

  43. Zoomster
    If you’re obsessed with inner city issues, of course you’re not going to appeal to seats which aren’t in the inner city.
    ———————————
    As a rural dweller with locally greens winning the closest polling place, different state, different place, different circumstances. Does what you say have much significance for me? No. In NSW greens have seats in both rural and city electorates.
    Seems inner city dwellers are always going to be more interested in ‘inner city’ issues. Just happens in Melb, there is a particularly strong support and interest in the Greens. As I said despite the blather here, their primary vote appears to have gone up in most of the seats they were hoping for but may not win. Elsewhere, there are also other issues that are significant for people.

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