Election plus 11 days

Late counting, a disputed result, new research into voter attitudes, Senate vacancies, and the looming party members’ vote for the state Labor leadership in New South Wales.

Sundry updates and developments:

• As noted in the regularly updated late counting post, Labor has taken a 67 vote lead in Macquarie, after trailing 39 at the close of counting yesterday. However, there is no guarantee that this represents an ongoing trend to Labor, since most of the gain came from the counting of absents, which would now be just about done. Most of the outstanding votes are out-of-division pre-polls, which could go either way. The result will determine whether the Coalition governs with 77 or 78 seats out of 151, while Labor will have either 67 or 68.

• Labor is reportedly preparing to challenge the result in Chisholm under the “misleading or deceptive publications” provision of the Electoral Act, a much ploughed but largely unproductive tillage for litigants over the years. The Victorian authorities have been rather activist in upholding “misleading or deceptive publications” complaints, but this is in the lower stakes context of challenges to the registration of how-to-vote cards, rather than to the result of an election. At issue on this occasion is Liberal Party material circulated on Chinese language social media service WeChat, which instructed readers to fill out the ballot paper in the manner recommended “to avoid an informal vote”. I await for a court to find otherwise, but this strikes me as pretty thin gruel. The Chinese community is surely aware that Australian elections presume to present voters with a choice, so the words can only be understood as an address to those who have decided to vote Liberal. Labor also have a beef with Liberal material that looked like Australian Electoral Commission material, in Chisholm and elsewhere.

• Political science heavyweights Simon Jackman and Shaun Ratcliff of the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre has breakdowns from a big sample campaign survey in The Guardian, noting that only survey data can circumvent the ecological fallacy, a matter raised in my previous post. The survey was derived from 10,316 respondents from a YouGov online panel, and conducted from April 18 to May 12. The results suggest the Coalition won through their dominance of the high income cohort (taken here to mean an annual household income of over $208,000), particularly among the self-employed, for which their primary vote is recorded as approaching 80%. Among business and trust owners on incomes of over $200,000, the Coalition outpolled Labor 60% to 10%, with the Greens on next to nothing. However, for those in the high income bracket who didn’t own business or trusts, the Coalition was in the low forties, Labor the high thirties, and the Greens the low teens. While Ratcliff in The Guardian seeks to rebut the notion that “battlers” decided the election for the Coalition, the big picture impression for low-income earners is that Labor were less than overwhelmingly dominant.

• As reported in the Financial Review on Friday, post-election polling for JWS Research found Coalition voters tended to rate tax and economic management as the most important campaign issue, against climate change, health and education for Labor voters. Perhaps more interestingly, it found Coalition voters more than twice as likely to nominate “free-to-air” television as “ABC, SBS television” as their favoured election news source, whereas Labor voters plumped for both fairly evenly. Coalition voters were also significantly more likely to identify “major newspapers (print/online)”.

• Two impending resignations from Liberal Senators create openings for losing election candidates. The Financial Review reports Mitch Fifield’s Victorian vacancy looks set to be of interest not only to Sarah Henderson, outgoing Corangamite MP and presumed front-runner, but also to Indi candidate Steve Martin, Macnamara candidate Kate Ashmor and former state MP Inga Peulich.

• In New South Wales, Arthur Sinodinos’s Senate seat will fall vacant later this year, when he takes up the position of ambassador to the United States. The most widely invoked interested party to succeed him has been Jim Molan, who is publicly holding out hope that below-the-line votes will elect him to the third Coalition seat off fourth position on the ballot paper, although this is assuredly not going to happen. As canvassed in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Financial Review, other possible starters include Warren Mundine, freshly unsuccessful in his lower house bid for Gilmore; James Brown, chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW, state RSL president and the husband of Daisy Turnbull Brown, daughter of the former Prime Minister; Michael Hughes, state party treasurer and the brother of Lucy Turnbull; Kent Johns, the state party vice-president who appeared set to depose Craig Kelly for preselection in Hughes, but was prevailed on not to proceed; Richard Sheilds, chief lobbyist at the Insurance Council of Australia; Mary-Lou Jarvis, Woollahra councillor and unsuccessful preselection contender in Wentworth; and Michael Feneley, heart surgeon and twice-unsuccessful candidate for Kingsford Smith.

• Federal Labor may have evaded a party membership ballot through Anthony Albanese’s sole nomination, but a ballot is pending for the party’s new state leader in New South Wales, which will pit Kogarah MP Chris Minns against Strathfield MP Jodi McKay. The members’ ballot will be conducted over the next month, the parliamentary party will hold its vote on June 29, and the result will be announced the following day. Members’ ballots in leadership contests are now provided for federally and in most states (as best as I can tell, South Australia is an exception), but this is only the second time one has actually been conducted after the Shorten-Albanese bout that followed the 2013 election. As the Albanese experience demonstrates, the ballots can be circumvented if a candidate emerges unopposed, and the New South Wales branch, for one, has an exception if the vacancy arises six months before an election. Such was the case when Michael Daley succeeded Luke Foley in November, when he won a party room vote ahead of Chris Minns by 33 votes to 12.

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.

999 comments on “Election plus 11 days”

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  1. Meme on, nath. I don’t have bad days. The political solution is very clear. Just as the DLP were extinguished, so will the Gs also be extinguished.

  2. Briefly
    Thank dog I am not looking for work. If there was one that could adapt to my needs, my age would strike me out first round. One thing experience has taught me, it is a good policy to STFU.

  3. The bit about the data being taken by USB as the only possible method using the logging data is true.

    The bit about Seth Rich is most likely true. And curiously some in the MSM tried to bring this up, but were shut down by the DNC the day after. ALSO it IS true the DNC refused to allow the FBI to look at their server -FACT
    And for some curious reason the FBI allowed this, so even the FBI couldn’t assess if the allegation of Russian hacking into the DNC had any merit at all. So why would the DNC deny this access if it were true.

    Nevertheless the person who does know is Assange. But I’m guessing he wont get the chance to talk about it.
    I know this sort of thing doesn’t sit well with the Left.

    And how on earth would you know it is ‘garbage’ – when most of what i said is True, and the Seth Rich angle has been postulated many times in the US. Just because it offends sensibilities does not make it untrue.

  4. “Salk, this isn’t true, and I’m not going to let you persist with this sort of garbage.”

    So they’ve charged someone for this murder? I must’ve missed that update.

  6. One of my sons is the in-house guru on USA politics. I will run that past him before I get back to you. That is not my backyard.

  8. Salk @ #492 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 11:20 pm

    that recent timing analysis showed could be the only possible method of their being taken, from the logging

    I saw that analysis when it was first posted. It belied a strong lack of technical understanding in the person carrying it out. If that’s what you’re relying on for asserting that Russia didn’t do it, then yeah, tinfoil hat territory. 🙂

  9. Of course, any ALP MP that makes too many noises about all this will fear moneybags coming after their preselection. That’s why I don’t come here often.

  10. On this blog, it is polite to link unfamiliar sources. I get a cyber security company, which does nothing for me in checking what you have described.

  15. Salk @ #503 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 9:27 pm

    The bit about the data being taken by USB as the only possible method using the logging data is true.

    The bit about Seth Rich is most likely true. And curiously some in the MSM tried to bring this up, but were shut down by the DNC the day after. ALSO it IS true the DNC refused to allow the FBI to look at their server -FACT
    And for some curious reason the FBI allowed this, so even the FBI couldn’t assess if the allegation of Russian hacking into the DNC had any merit at all. So why would the DNC deny this access if it were true.

    Nevertheless the person who does know is Assange. But I’m guessing he wont get the chance to talk about it.
    I know this sort of thing doesn’t sit well with the Left.

    And how on earth would you know it is ‘garbage’ – when most of what i said is True, and the Seth Rich angle has been postulated many times in the US. Just because it offends sensibilities does not make it untrue.

    Your post is missing several other trooths:

    9/11 was an inside job;
    The Protocols Of The Elders Of Sion;
    Queen Elizabeth is a shape shifting lizard person from another planet;
    Pizzagate;
    The Illuminati;
    The Bildeberg Group;
    Port Arthur was a plot to rid Australia of guns;
    NASA faked the moon landings;
    FEMA death camps.

    Go on. We know you want to.

  16. If Assange was going to be knocked off from telling the true story, why hasn’t he told the true story so there is no reason to knock him off? Or did the spy thing and hide the story, envelopes to be posted in the event of demise, etc etc. Or told it and taken his chances. Plenty of people in history have been done in for truth-telling. The certainty did not stop them.

  19. Radguy,
    There is truth in the 9/11 story. It might even be the official one. Jack the Ripper might have been a member of the Royal Family.
    The point is, such speculation is useless, because no-one is ever going to tell you, and it is very hard to prove a negative. This many a hanged person has found out when confronted with a prejudiced jury.

    Now, for the sake of all our sanity, including yours, just drop that one. And the one about 9/11 too.

  20. Puffy – With Labor managing one parliamentary majority from the last nine elections and with a vote that is becoming dangerously clustered for a single member constituency electoral system leading to them possibly needing a 2pp vote of 52% to scrape a bare bum majority (a figure they have managed from memory three times since the war)

    It needs to be discussed again and again and again because Hawke Keatingism is still the driving philosophical force of the modern Federal Labor Party a party that loses ground to a chaotic second term government onto it’s third Prime Minister.

    It is starting to become crystal clear that 2007 was an aberration and that Hawke Keatingism is well past it’s use by date and that 2016 and 2010 are about as far Labor can get with the current coalition of voters that it is attracting.

  22. https://www.pollbludger.net/2019/05/29/election-plus-11-days/comment-page-11/#comment-3193948

    The DLP were a Australia only political movement who were a revenge party over internal disputes in the ALP that got previously ALP members and voting demographics to vote for them and preference the Coalition*. They were destroyed by their straddling of the left right divide and also the reducing power of the Catholic Church over Catholics.

    The Greens do not send the preferences of those who vote for them to the Coalition, they sent them to the ALP.

    * A strategy that would be less effective these-days as ballot papers have party names on them, a good electoral reform of the Hawke Government. With party names on ballot papers, I suspect that the ALP would almost certainly have won in 1961 as the ALP would have won/retained Maribynong and potentially other as well.

  23. @Briefly: In all seriousness, you’re a bit of a broken record when it comes to the Greens. They’re not a Liberal Party splinter group, you know. They’re a bunch of nitwitted treehugging hippies who Labor needs to figure out how to use the way the Libs use Hanson and her mob – as agents provocateurs to shift the Overton Window toward Labor and away from the Liberals. The only problem is, it’s a damned lot harder to do so with a hostile CPG, as compared to the (excessively) friendly one the Coalition enjoys.

  25. @Salk: Kindly get back on your medications, mate. You’re doing neither yourself nor your cause (whatever it may be) any favours at all by spouting your delusional, CT-minded rubbish all over the place.

    Regarding Seth Rich’s murder, when challenged to show their work, Fox News quickly withdrew their initial reporting, which had started the speculation that he was murdered. The lawsuits are pending even now, but I know one thing for certain: His own family have asked that the alt-Right stop trying to weaponize his murder for political gain. Have a smidgeon of decency, will you?

    PS: The DNC didn’t refuse to turn over the servers; the FBI never ordered them to. Why not? Because the expert analysis from Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity firm the DNC hired to investigate, was deemed sufficient for their investigatory purposes.

  33. Which would you prefer? An impartial ABC, or one that allows biased news? And who’s the judge?

    ABC chairwoman Ita Buttrose has said some staff at the broadcaster unconsciously let their biases show through, as she revealed she had no plans to cut jobs despite the almost $84 million budget reduction facing the organisation.

    “Sometimes I think we might be biased. I think sometimes we could do with more diversity of views,” Ms Buttrose told ABC Radio on Wednesday. “Sometimes I think, people without really knowing it, let a bias show through.”

    “I haven’t got a problem with anybody’s view but I think we need to make sure ours is as diverse as it can be … The more diverse views we can represent, the better it will be for us,” Ms Buttrose said in remarks that dovetail with the demands of some of the ABC’s conservative critics.

    https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/we-might-be-biased-more-diverse-views-needed-at-abc-says-buttrose-20190529-p51sj2.html

  35. Socrates @ #532 Thursday, May 30th, 2019 – 4:39 am

    If the democrats do not try to impeach Trump now, they are as weak as he is corrupt. Sorry Nancy, but do the job or step aside. Trump will not go voluntarily.
    https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-america/robert-mueller-breaks-his-silence-on-russia-probe-in-shock-press-conference-20190530-p51ske.html

    So, Trump agrees there was ‘insufficient evidence’. That means to me he also agrees there was evidence. 😐

  36. Mueller speaks publicly.

    Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III said Wednesday that his office could neither clear nor accuse President Trump of obstructing justice, leaving room for Congress to make a call where he would not and fueling impeachment demands among some Democrats.

    In his first public remarks on the case since his investigation concluded, Mueller said that if his office “had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” and noted that the Constitution “requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”

    But if Mueller was trying to suggest that Democrats could initiate impeachment proceedings, he also seemed to dash any hopes they might have had that he would be their star witness, ready and willing to detail new and unflattering information his office had uncovered about Trump.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/special-counsel-robert-mueller-to-make-statement-on-russia-investigation/2019/05/29/f14fd226-8217-11e9-933d-7501070ee669_story.html?utm_term=.bd9309d2580c

  38. I agree with Socrates. For example, Frydenberg published lies on his Facebook page.

    the lies told by Boris Johnson during the Brexit campaign represented misconduct in public office. If only we had that law in Australian federal parliament.

  39. The Christian Soldiers in the Coalition are on the march:

    Conservative Coalition MPs emboldened by strong support from religious voters at the election are pushing the Morrison government for more radical and far-reaching religious freedom provisions in forthcoming laws.

    Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce wants laws to exempt religious beliefs from employment contracts – effectively giving legal protection to views such as those expressed on social media by rugby star Israel Folau that gay people and fornicators will go to hell.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/folau-s-law-coalition-mps-push-for-bolder-action-in-a-new-dawn-for-religious-freedom-20190529-p51s9m.html

    And it’s interesting to note that the Coalition had Fierravanti-Wells going around the religious places all through the campaign galvanising support from them for the Coalition.

  40. Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce wants laws to exempt religious beliefs from employment contracts – effectively giving legal protection to views such as those expressed on social media by rugby star Israel Folau that gay people and fornicators will go to hell.

    In other words, legalising hate speech.

  41. Confessions @ #540 Thursday, May 30th, 2019 – 6:48 am

    Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce wants laws to exempt religious beliefs from employment contracts – effectively giving legal protection to views such as those expressed on social media by rugby star Israel Folau that gay people and fornicators will go to hell.

    In other words, legalising hate speech.

    ‘The Right to be a Bigot’

  42. Bannon described Trump Organization as ‘criminal enterprise’, Michael Wolff book claims

    Former White House adviser says financial investigations will take down president in sequel to Fire and Fury

    The former White House adviser Steve Bannon has described the Trump Organization as a criminal entity and predicted that investigations into the president’s finances will lead to his political downfall, when he is revealed to be “not the billionaire he said he was, just another scumbag”.

    The startling remarks are contained in Siege: Trump Under Fire, the author Michael Wolff’s forthcoming account of the second year of the Trump administration. The book, published on 4 June, is a sequel to Fire and Fury: Trump in the White House, which was a bestseller in 2018. The Guardian obtained a copy

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/28/bannon-trump-organization-criminal-enterprise-comments-michael-wolff-book

  43. Will the hypothetical law of ‘Barnaby Joyce’ mean that a religious organization could not fire/be forced to hire someone who is a different religious belief.

  44. Barnaby Joyce wants laws to exempt religious beliefs from employment contracts – effectively giving legal protection to views such as those expressed on social media by rugby star Israel Folau that gay people and fornicators will go to hell.

    😆 Barnyard of all people. Let us play spot how many ways Barnyard qualifies for Folau’s ‘Highway to Hell’ list. The Folau list —-drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters.

  45. In the latest Cabinet reshuffle, regurgitated and newly appointed ministers, some with questionable credentials, to say the least, have already been waxing lyrical about the supposed “mandate” for the most objectionable of the Government’s policies.

    The reasons the Morrison Government has been re-elected will be analysed and debated for a long time.

    It’s really not funny when the people who rort and cheat are the ones who are rewarded in society. It is especially unfunny if they are government ministers, entrusted with our money, our laws and the policies that shape our future as a nation.

    https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/stuart-robert-and-4-more-we-cant-afford-including-an-annoying-envoy,12757#.XO7wSiUOUq0.twitter

    Robert, Cash, Lee, Taylor, Entsch.

  46. A POWERFUL taxpayer-funded Indigenous commission run by “elected Elders” would have a say over Federal legislation and launch investigations into departments under secret laws drafted by new Minister Ken Wyatt.

    In the first leak of the new Morrison Government, the Indigenous Australians Minister provided Scott Morrison with his plans of a new Indigenous-led bureaucracy that reviews government policies, activates taskforces, probes complaints about agencies from “empowered communities” and informs “itself on any matter in any way it thinks fit”.

    Mr Wyatt, then aged care minister but angling for the Indigenous Affairs portfolio, sent the draft laws to Mr Morrison on February 14, saying his blueprint “(provides) an overview of a potential way forward to address the issue of constitutional recognition”.

    Mr Wyatt was yesterday sworn in as Indigenous Australians Minister and is the first Indigenous Australian to hold the portfolio and be elevated to Cabinet.

    Timing of the leak was noted by some Coalition insiders, and will today force Mr Wyatt to defend his plan, and the Government’s handling of Constitutional Recognition, in his second day in the job.

    https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/qld/new-indigenous-australians-minister-ken-wyatt-has-plan-for-elder-statesmen-ng-33d34edab496edbfdc6dd497ac18edd6?utm_campaign=share-icons&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&tid=1559163905816

  50. Good Morning

    I see the Sky After Dark mob placed us a visit last night.

    Meanwhile overseas we see the rule of law moving on. Mueller speaks and Johnson gets taken to court for misleading and deceptive conduct during an election campaign.

    Its going to be interesting what effects that has on the politics of both countries.

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