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.
Eddy Jokovich
@EddyJokovich
Blobbit @ #348 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 7:19 pm
That turned out well, didn’t it? I think it’s called, counting your chickens before they’re hatched. 😐
adrian @ #349 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 7:19 pm
And that is exactly how negative stereotypes are reinforced in the electorate’s minds.
Thanks Cs1987 and whoever it was early that said something similar.
For some reason I had in my head the current ALP 2PP was slightly higher than 48.2.
The Greens were never going to hold BOP though, even if Labor won. I doubt the convoy had that much of an impact though, although it certainly didn’t help.
Looks like we’re into a series of increasingly alarmist predictions about the economy, perhaps a self fulfilling prophecy.
Bad for the people of Australia and a nightmare for Morrison.
“ltep says:
Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 7:23 pm
The Greens were never going to hold BOP though, even if Labor won.”
Probably. I think they were aiming for BOP in the senate, perhaps together with CA.
The convoy probably wasn’t as much of a factor as Palmer, but it certainly feed into the impression that those soy lefties were telling the rednecks to GOGF.
Zoidlord:
Re. your pic of Dutton and what looks like the repugnant Stuart Robert: it looks like they’re planning to overthrow their beloved leader and install themselves as Der Führer & Stellvertretender Vorsitzender. The deplorables have a lot to answer for. Not to worry, Albo will fix it(?).
“Anthony Albanese refuses to give Labor position on Coalition’s ‘big stick’ energy laws”
Good
Things are not pretty in the electorate of Hunter.
Someone earlier mentioned the possibility of it going to PHON. Holy Moly it is an ugly primary for the ALP.
You’d have to think it’s highly unlikely PHON will overtake the Nationals in Hunter for second place, and even if they did why would preferences to PHON be stronger than to the Nationals?
I can’t help myself from recalling Beecher Stowe:
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/scott-morrison-breaks-with-procedure-as-ken-wyatt-makes-history-20190529-p51sca.html
adrian @ #323 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 6:47 pm
Born to opposition.
It’s the Labor way.
People still going on about the ‘people moved their votes away from labor because they disliked greens policy’ nonsense?
It just doesn’t make any sense.
The liberals policy was to screw the planet, and use taxpayer money to subsidise qld coal jobs. Their vote went up in Qld because they provided the promise of jobs and certainty.
The greens policy was to provide a just transition for coal workers, help them retrain and getting them alternative jobs. Their vote went up in Qld because they provided the promise of jobs and certainty.
Labor’s policy was to not have a policy. To let the market sort out when coal jobs would be lost, and let coal workers sort out their own retraining and next job. Labor lost votes in qld because they promised job losses and uncertainty.
People did not vote against labor because the greens have a climate policy. They voted against labor because labor didn’t have a just transition policy.
Mavis Davis @ #362 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 5:41 pm
I’m not following your logic.
Kevin Rudd talking sense on 7.30. So far.
Confessions @ #365 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 5:48 pm
Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose most famous work is Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Puffy – Left wing governments have won plenty of elections around the world in countries that don’t have compulsory voting.Britain has voluntary voting and since 1945 British Labour has a much higher electoral win strike rate than the ALP do here.
Do you have any actual evidence that Labor would suffer under voluntary voting, my gut feeling is that they wouldn’t and I also think it would probably halve the one nation vote.
I dont disagree with your first and WTFKs what goes through the mind of a Nat, PHON, UAP, FredN voter when it comes to preferences.
My point was to point out that the ALP primary in Hunter is down 14pts to 38. PHON+UAP+Nat+Nile=51.8
Does Federal Labor hope Qld Labor lose the next State election?
Puffy @ 7.01pm
My sympathy bucket doesn’t even exist when it comes to voting.
They voted for no change in all probability, therefore they need to wear the consequences.
Dan G:
I’m still not getting it.
The concept of the first democratically elected First Nations man to Australia’s HoR being sworn in as a Cabinet Minister to me is the very antithesis of the enslavement of African Americans that Stowe opposed.
Voice Endeavour @ #364 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 7:16 pm
Not sure if you have noticed, mate, but the Greens didn’t win those seats either, despite their just transition policy.
So there’s that.
If Labor can work out why it’s so on the nose in Hunter and how to turn that around, it will go a long way towards helping it win the next election.
Goll
“The convoy contributed to the demise of the ALP vote”
This is just a bit weird…
Who knew the convoy was so powerful?
How on earth would you judge this?
There’s a lot of groupthink going on here and a desire to blame things other than the Campaign the ALP ran.
And if the Convoy was affecting votes, why weren’t the ALP aware of it with their internal polling? Why wouldn’t they have done something about it?
Why play the victim?
Outsider @ #374 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 8:06 pm
With deep thinking like this we’ve got it in the bag!
Just like to point out if the Greens get 6 Senators this election, quite likely they will get 6 next time too… That would be 12… Very well positioned to get BOP in the next election and possibly hold it for some time…
If there is one thing that is crystal clear about this election it was that the ALP were completely unaware of what was actually going on, and their internal polling was simply inadequate and not remotely telling them what they needed to know in order to adjust course and patch up the holes where votes where draining away from them at a rate of knots.
Why this was so is the biggest question of the ALP campaign and strategy IMO.
“Who knew the convoy was so powerful?”
Well, Bob Brown thought it had a point, or was it just a waste of time?
The whole Adani thing, not just the convoy, hurt the ALP. It wedged them between going for inner city votes or jobs.
It’s something the ALP will have to address. My view, which is worth nothing, is that come next election the only viable path for them to form government is to go hard on jobs, and downplay the environment, in the hopefully rare instances they need to have a policy.
Ideally, do what the current PM did and simply lie if there’s no other choice.
mmm why is Labor on the nose in the Hunter? I just can’t put my finger on it.
Might have to do a few focus groups, some polls, some computer data mining
Jackol @ #378 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 6:14 pm
I think Poss had a few tweets about this in the days immediately following the election.
C@tmomma says:
Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 7:20 pm
…”That turned out well, didn’t it? I think it’s called, counting your chickens before they’re hatched”…
It’s called shitting in your own nest.
Lucky Creed
The Hunter is a pro-coal area.
I thought it was because Labor commissioned their internal polling from the same company that produced the (implausibly) long string of published ’51-49 to Labor’ results?
Confessions @ #372 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 6:04 pm
“Uncle Tom” is a slur nowadays directed at African Americans who are accused of selling out their fellows on behalf of their “white masters”.
Not Sure @ #382 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 6:24 pm
More accurately it was shitting in someone else’s nest.
Regional working-class seats exist in places other than NSW and Queensland. One trend I find very interesting is that in the last 30 years, Bendigo and Ballarat have gone from being places won by the Liberals more often than not to being reasonably safe Labor seats at both federal and state level (and had some of the strongest pro-Labor swings in the country this time).
Another observation comes from the statistics presented on the ABC website in a piece last week: the mining areas of central Queensland and the Pilbara have amongst the highest percentage of people earning over $150,000 of any local government areas in the country (surpassed only by the richest parts of Sydney and Perth). There may not be very many of those jobs, but the fact that they exist likely creates a much larger pool of people who aspire to them, and recognise that even if new industries create more jobs, they’re unlikely to pay anywhere near as well.
Mentioned in Dispatches:
Shorten tried to head off the Albanese ascension, according to a person involved in the process, because he believed Albanese hadn’t been entirely loyal – although Shorten’s brutal approach to those above has been well documented. On the Monday morning Shorten was ringing MPs to drum up support for his deputy, Tanya Plibersek, who he must have figured might be able to block Albanese, party sources say.
If you support Shorten, he returns the favour, as long as you’re below him on the political hierarchy.
https://www.afr.com/news/politics/national/the-downfall-of-bill-shorten-20190527-p51rof
7.30 & the aspirational Rudd..thank you. .. 9 more years of Scott!
I think the term goes back to the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin (harriet beecher-stowe?) where the family’s faithful sole black slave, Uncle Tom, agrees to be sold, though it broke hearts and ties, to save the family from disaster. If my recalling reading it in my teens is correct, and I refuse to google it.
So the term has been in use for long time in the USA and applying USAian references to Australia means losing a lot in the journey or end up at the wrong postbox.
Perhaps some people, me not being a First Nation person so no expert, might say Aboriginal trackers who tracked their own for the whiteys were OTs. But that is too complex a subject, in my opinion, for people to be given a USA disparagement term. From what I know of the story of one tracker who became a freedom fighter, the tracking came about because he was ripped from his group prior to imitation and tracking other Aboriginal groups ended up his only livelihood and group identity. If I remember the guide correctly, after he was made to track his own group of men, and so an initiation was interruped, he left and became a renown guerrilla fighter. Using the OT term for this man would be an terrible insult, and many like him.
So until we know more of the story, I think it would be best to leave that sort of insult on the other side of the ocean.
Trailblazers are often carry stigma for the compromises they have to make.
Dan Gulberry @ #385 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 8:07 pm
Astrobleme
I don’t think you have read or understood what I’ve written or both.
Bob Brown and the convoy contributed to the demise of the ALP vote.
The ALP vote was seemingly picked up by Phon in the seats outside of Brisbane.
If you choose to not believe my premise so be it.
Martyr? Been around too long.
Astrobleme says:
Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 8:06 pm
…”This is just a bit weird…
Who knew the convoy was so powerful?
How on earth would you judge this?”…
Did you not see the footage of angry, jeering mobs of former and potential Labor voters gathering along its path?
This was absolutely a factor in the election result.
And all Bob’s convoy of complete fuckwittery has really achieved long term, is to add climate change action to an already long list of very important policy areas on which Labor’s dominant right faction will completely ignore its left.
Oh, and I think it was missed here but the Queensland government today announced it would be giving a 3 year royalty holiday to any mining company who donates to a new “regional development fund”.
Now why the fuck do you think that might be?
So, well done Bob, well done Green’s, you broke it, you fucking own it.
@mexicanbeamer. Yes I know it’s a coal mining area.I also know that Labor will lose this seat next election, this was Hunter “feeling it’s way’ to it’s new tribal home.
Labor have lost the mining vote and will never get it back, human nature doesn’t work like that, to stick with Labor in the Hunter or return to it in central QLD would be a huge loss of face for those communities, say goodbye to a over a century of history the mining vote is going, going, gone.
African Americans of course can use any meaning of the words ‘Uncle Tom’ they choose. It is their term.
I am just pointing out that I thought it originated as someone who sold himself for his masters well-being and not even his own. Somewhat like ‘Climate Change’ Malcolm Turnbull?
So Greens Convoy makes Labor voters vote for someone else… Wow, that’s mighty powerful.
How sad that the once great Labor Party are just victims of other Parties activities. Totally unable to fight back… Just victims.
If you blame the loss on things outside your control, how can you hope to ever win again?
Queensland is gone. Maybe not forever. Does that mean the ALP needs to start finding other seats to compensate. Let’s start with Melbourne. Three years to turn it.
“And all Bob’s convoy of complete fuckwittery has really achieved long term, is to add climate change action to an already long list of very important policy areas on which Labor’s dominant right faction will completely ignore its left.”
Again, just a bunch of victims, being blown around by the All POWERFUL GREENS
It is not their party’s activities. It is the morons who drove a line of trucks into proud communities’ backyards and told them they were killing the planet.
Fuken senseless dolts.
I’ll reiterate that I thought the convoy was a stupid thing to do.
Voice Endeavour @ #362 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 7:46 pm
Typical Greens revisionist crap.
Labor provided a thoroughly-detailed policy of a Hydrogen Industry initiative; a gas pipeline from the NT through Queensland, PLUS a suite of Renewable Energy projects, which, as has been pointed out, wouldn’t have employed ALL the former Coal Mining workers, but would have employed a lot of them, while the other initiatives would have employed many of the remainder. Not to mention the fact that Labor didn’t plan to just end Coal Mining of Coking Coal. So, plenty of jobs to go around.