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.
@nath
We live in an age of fake news, it is so prevalent that some people understandably cannot trust the establishment media anymore.
ajm
I do hope that some Labor staffers/policy makers/campaign directors are reading all these critical (and telling) articles.
Tristo
says:
Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 11:40 am
@nath
We live in an age of fake news, it is so prevalent people understandably cannot trust the establishment media anymore.
__________________________
So presumably if Shorten does take a frontbench position then that news was correct because you need to have your hand up to get voted in by caucus.
EB:
[‘What a mess. I’m smelling another 2 election strategy has to be built here…’]
On the contrary. Queensland can change dramatically, evidenced by Newman’s loss after having a humongous majority. If Chalmers becomes Shadow Treasurer and Labor does a lot to heal the damage of the contentious policies it put on the table, many of those who turned Tory, voted for Palmer, PHON would come back to the fold. In 2007 Rudd proved that Labor can be competitive up here; it’s now up to Albanese. Incidentally, it’s now fairly clear as to why Chalmers didn’t stand as leader.
@nath
I was merely describing how some people might be skeptical about such stories. Especially given politicians have a habit of spreading false rumors in the pursuit of personal gain. They are supposed to serve the voters who put them in office. However they often just serve themselves, that explains a lot of apathy and mistrust of our politicians in this country.
nath says:
Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 11:09 am
Or maybe he was never as powerful as you have suggested and ultimately gained his success through ability and by building a consensus.
How many Ministers have an achievement like the NDIS on their resume?
And even if he was a leader of the Right, that was never enough to represent the support he had in the Party room.
You call me an idiot, yet it is you that seems to have formed an opinion of him and then trawled through his past in an attempt to justify it by largely raising trivial irrelevancies that had little bearing on his role as a Parliamentarian.
nath says:
Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 11:35 am
It’s also being ‘widely reported’ that Shorten wants a frontbench position. Fake news?
———————————
I will not be surprise at all to see the re-elected Scott Morrison’s hungry government become a minority within 12 months , and question Morrison and co should be under pressure from the so called Beast , which was supposed to have been woken during the election campaign
Who knows. I wouldnt be surprised. He was a more than competent Minister. A less ‘front of shop’ portfolio would be good for him and the ALP.
Detention is not supposed to be a death sentence.
Wong probably being dropped from Foreign Affairs is the most heartbreaking thing to come of this election aftermath. I know some of you will cry “identity politics” but it would have been such a good image to show to the rest of the world that Australia’s representative at many international affairs is a non-white gay woman (Note: She is also smart and competent; I am not saying it’s just about the optics.) But, then again, boring white dude who got to where he is through connections is probably a better representative of the real Australia.
The ALP loss was not so huge to justify a 2 term strategy. Even if it were a huge loss, the self-destruction of the QLD and VIC libs ever demonstrates that governments can fall over in a solitary term.
So where does the ALP have to swing to gain majority?
Bass 0.5%
Chisholm 0.8%
Boothby 1.9%
Swan 2.8%
Braddon 3.2%
Longman 3.4%
Reid 3.4%
Leichhardt 4.0%
Higgins 4.4%
La Trobe 4.5%
Robertson 4.6%
Dickson 4.6%
Casey 4.9%
Deakin 5.0%
Lindsay 5.4%
Hasluck 5.4%
There is the simple hit list for mine.
Mavis Davis @ #121 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 11:43 am
Yeah, that. If QLD seats can swing 8%+ to the Coalition in a single election, they can also swing 8%+ back to Labor at the next election.
Everyone seems to be assuming that the swing can only return to Labor incrementally, without any particular evidence to support that idea.
I’d at least like to see if Clive intends to run candidates in the next election or if he’s going to sit one out before making predictions about what the swing will/won’t do. If he’s not there to split the vote and give the Liberals free advertising (and preferences), a lot more of that swing will come back than people seem to be expecting.
If the ALP can go from a big loss in 2004 to a big win in 2007, I’d say any swing required for a win next time is certainly possible.
E. G. Theodore @ #100 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 9:39 am
No argument there, however the original point I was trying to make was Parliament is awash with people on all sides who have no idea what the “great unwashed ” experience from day to day.
Rational Leftist @ #114 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 12:15 pm
Is Kevin coming back?
Alpha Zero @ #112 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 12:10 pm
I’ll get in early to avoid the rush.
Labor will take them all.
Antony will call it for Labor by 7:30
Interesting that the usual suspects continue to bag Shorten over his desire to remain on the shadow front bench.
Perhaps they would also expect Tanya P. to go to the back bench as she was deputy leader for 5 .5 years and was part of the inner shadow cabinet leadership group ? On the same basis perhaps Penny Wong should go to the back bench ? Or is it only Shorten ?
Also interesting the speculation around those in and those out of the shadow ministery. So far it appears Shorten is after Health, Foreign Affairs, NDIS etc etc.
The bottom line ? No one in the MSM has a clue. The names will be revealed tomorrow and it will be interesting to see how many “ journos “ were on the money. Huge factional brawl my arse. Perhaps their predictions will play out like the polling companies ?
Posters here ( not all but some ) complain about the MSM yet continue to hyperventilate over every utterance from them as if it was gospel.
Damn right. And if the Coalition continue as they were (which they will) there will be an even stronger effort from a group of centrists to challenge their blue ribbon seats.
Rational Leftist @ #111 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 12:03 pm
Really?
Pretty low down on my list.
Rational Leftist @ #111 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 12:03 pm
Really?
Pretty low on my list of heartbreak.
Simon² Katich® @ #118 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 12:33 pm
And back down the wormhole we go……
With Shortens’ NDIS credentials already first class I would have thought it was the obvious and politically the smartest place to put him.
Which probably means he’ll get IR
Why?
Rational Leftist @ #114 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 10:15 am
That’d require Morrison to be as bad as Newman, which is of course possible, but not guaranteed.
I suppose the ‘widely reported’ information that Shorten already had his house half packed to move into the Lodge was fake news too.
Labor frontbencher Ed Husic will quit the frontbench to make room in the ministry for his colleague Kristina Keneally.
Senator Keneally had wanted the position of deputy Senate leader but lacked factional support, leading to criticism new leader Anthony Albanese would struggle to have enough women in senior positions.
Mr Albanese said on Wednesday morning he wanted to see Senator Keneally on his frontbench which is expected to be announced at the weekend or early next week.
“I want the best team and the best team includes Kristina Keneally,” Mr Albanese said.
Mr Albanese’s directive meant Senator Keneally could only be elevated to the shadow ministry if one of her factional colleagues from the NSW right made way for her because the party’s factional rules dictate the number of frontbenchers which can come from each state and faction.
On Wednesday, Mr Husic said he had decided to be that person.
“While I’ve loved being a shadow minister, I won’t be running for re-election to that role today,” he said. “Instead I’ll be backing my great friend Kristina Keneally for that spot. We need to ensure someone of Kristina’s enormous talents has the opportunity to make a powerful contribution on the frontline, in the Senate.”
“In the aftermath of the federal election, there are things we need to do to rebuild our standing – especially in the place I love, western Sydney – and I’ll be doing just that.
@nath
I am not surprised in the least, because the general expectation was that the Labor Party was going to win the election, only a few thought the Coalition would be re-elected as a majority government.
An economist John Adams who used to advised the Coalition when Tony Abbott was Liberal Party and keeps in touch with Federal politicians, said that Coalition politicians told him they expected expected to lose narrowly.
The semi-professional Lib-kin that bludge here will continue to try to use Shorten to defile Labor. Give them time. They will find new figures to whip. Labor-hate comes in many guises and is never satisfied.
Shorten should of course do the right thing by the party and quietly leave the parliament part way through the term, serving out the whole of that time on the backbench. Otherwise I can see the ‘A vote for Anthony Albanese is a vote for Bill Shorten” campaign written in advance; and the non-stop articles as the press see blood if Albanese is not performing well.
Campbell Newman led one of the most astoundingly awful governments in recent history, although the Abbott Government was giving him a run for its money for those brief years. Just about everyone they could pick a fight with they did, and I was quite glad they were rejected swiftly.
Rational Leftist says:
Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 12:15 pm
If the ALP can go from a big loss in 2004 to a big win in 2007, I’d say any swing required for a win next time is certainly possible.
The Lib-kin will do there utmost to prevent it, Rational. Rely on it. The Green-anting has already resumed.
nath says:
Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 12:44 pm
And the Potato sold his Canberra house and Pyne and other senior Liberals decided not to stand.
So what?
The result wasn’t what was expected.
Anyway a good opportunity for a spring clean declutter.
Gee I know that Labor did badly in Queensland, but ‘their ABC’ ran a vox pop today and yet again they could not identify a single voter who had anything remotely positive to say about Albanese or Labor. Labor should sell it off, yep take that to the next election and promise to do something postive witht he revenue.
Husic choosing to stand aside for KK just highlights the strength of talent in Labor.
Bill Hayden led labor to the 1980 election for a honourable loss. He was rolled by Hawkes just before the 1983 election. Hayden did not resign from Parliament and played a significant role in the Hawke cabinet for a number of years.
Should Hayden have done the “ right thing “ for the labor party and resigned or is it only Shorten ?
Shorten has accepted responsibility for the election loss and resigned as leader. As he should. He is a yesterday man with no hope of return to the leadership. As he knows.
Whether he remains on the back bench, seeks a front bench roll or resigns from Parliament is up to him.
clem @ #132 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 12:58 pm
Nothing remotely positive to say about Labor.
How do we get to this point where there isn’t a person living in Australia today who doesn’t owe the ALP a debt of gratitude for something, many of whom apparently have nothing remotely positive to say about Labor.
It’s about time Labor started explaining to the electorate just what this country would look today if hadn’t been for past Labor governments.
Barney in Makassar @ #133 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 1:01 pm
No, it doesn’t.
a r:
[‘Yeah, that. If QLD seats can swing 8%+ to the Coalition in a single election, they can also swing 8%+ back at the next election.’]
That they can. For example, in the 2012 Queensland State election, Newman achieved a 13.7% swing, winning 78 of 89 seats. Labor could’ve caucused in a phone booth. But all that changed in 3 three years,
with the Tories reduced to 42 seats, losing government.
Federally in 2007 Labor achieved a 5.74% swing, gaining 23 seats, and parity in Queensland. Now they have a miserable 6 seats. But those big swings beyond Brisbane can, with the right policies and leader, be turned around. Chalmer’s, and possibly Butler’s advice and guidance should be given credence & priority, on the basis of local knowledge and the parochialism of Queenslanders.
As for Palmer, he ran attack ads well before the election was announced, mainly bagging Labor. I posted at the time that Labor should counter his clap-trap, but was surprised that he wasn’t counter-attacked until well into the election, and then only with a lettuce leaf. Whoever managed Labor’s campaign should be sent to Coventry.
@Mavis Davis
Labor should have realized that both Clive Palmer and the Coalition were working together on a campaign to attack them. This joint disinformation campaign could have costed Labor between 2-3% of the vote.
Trust the posters here to spin the Keneally fiasco as a positive for Labor.
“Shorten has accepted responsibility for the election loss and resigned as leader. As he should. He is a yesterday man with no hope of return to the leadership. As he knows.”
Does he really know? Politicians have a pretty strong tendency to delusional and irrational beliefs. See Abbott, Tony; Rudd, Kevin.
Husic not standing for the shadow frontbanch is a poor decision, the guy is across all things tech and innovation and is well liked in that industry so a bad loss and possibly Albo’s first mistake.
Being a former opposition leader who remains in parliament as a back bencher, or taking up a shadow ministry or even a possible future ministerial position is perfectly acceptable.
It is an entirely different proposition to a former PM hanging around and stinking up the joint.
One matter on which I agree with the anti-Rudd brigade, is that he should have resigned on the spot, leaving Labor (Shorten included) to wallow in the foul mess they created for themselves.
All Rudd achieved in remaining, was hand them a stick to beat him with.
“Husic choosing to stand aside for KK just highlights the strength of talent in Labor.”
Promoting a loser like Don Farrell highlights the lack of talent in Labor. And frankly having a mediocrity like Marles as deputy doesn’t say a lot for their depth of talent either.
ABC ‘World Today’ had two good items:
1. An economic forecaster predicting 50% renewable energy before 2030 mainly due to massive uptake of solar panels/batteries. Another forecaster saying cost of renewable power rapidly falling and leading to coal (existing and any new generators) becoming uncompetitive. State incentive schemes are playing a part.
It’s quite obvious that Morrison is on the wrong side of history here.
2. Entsch has made a fool of himself over his claim that the biggest threat to the GBR is plastics coming from Asia. ‘World Today’ played a clip of Entsch interviewed on AM Breakfast by Hamish Macdonald where he refused to mention climate change as any sort of threat to the reef.
Will the $440 million of taxpayers’ money given to that GBR crowd now go to collecting bits of plastic to show how much Morrison and Entsch love the reef?
Welcome to the stage Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles!
*crowd goes wild*
Apologies if this good article from the conversation has already been linked.
https://theconversation.com/how-might-labor-win-in-2022-the-answers-can-all-be-found-in-the-lessons-of-2019-117742
I will say one thing about Shorten, like most if not all MP’s he probably thinks his own voice is the sweetest sound known to the world, and when it comes to senior politicians they are all ruthless operators out for themselves and whatever point they want to put forward which can and does lead to some strange bed fellows. One day they are mates, next they hate one another depending on the circumstances.
The AEC has lost the plot. At the moment the Libs lead Macquarie by 7.