This site’s slow-moving Call of the Board series, which takes a closer look at the results for every seat at the May 18 election, now makes it to regional Victoria. This area once enjoyed its fair share of marginal seats (see Ballarat, Bendigo and Monash/McMillan below), but now has only Corangamite to offer in the way of reliable election night seats-to-watch. Nonetheless, there were a few interesting things going on in the results for those who cared to look. (And while you’re here, note also the post on Brexit developments immediately below this one).
Ballarat (Labor 11.0%; 3.6% swing to Labor): Labor has been strengthening in this once highly marginal seat since Catherine King gained it at the 2001 election, at which it was the only seat in the country to shift from Coalition to Labor (with some help from the retirement of Michael Ronaldson, later a Senator). The only serious speed bump in that time was a 6.8% swing to the Liberals in 2013, reducing her margin to 4.9%, which she has now almost made good with successive swings of 2.4% and 3.6%. The Liberal primary vote on this occasion was down 4.0% despite the absence of the Nationals, who polled 4.2% in 2016, although they did face new competition on the right from the United Australia Party, which polled 4.6%.
Bendigo (Labor 9.0%; 5.2% swing to Labor): Victoria’s other regional city seat has followed a similar pattern to Ballarat over time: won by Labor from the Liberals in 1998, retained only narrowly in 2004 and 2013, and now looking secure again after successive swings of 2.5% and 5.2% in 2016 and 2019. The current member, Lisa Chesters, has now almost made up the 8.2% swing she suffered when she came to the seat on Steve Gibbons’ retirement in 2013. The Liberal primary vote was down 6.1% amid an overload of competition on the right, with One Nation, Conservative National and Rise Up Australia all in the field alongside the ubiquitous United Australia Party.
Casey (Liberal 4.6%; 0.1% swing to Liberal): Located on Melbourne’s eastern outskirts and held for the Liberals by the Speaker, Tony Smith, Casey was one of many Victorian seats that looked promising for Labor after the state election, but singularly failed to deliver on the day. Smith actually picked up a very slightly swing on two-party preferred, and none of the primary vote swings were particularly significant. Labor tended to do better in the more urbanised western end of the electorate, particularly in those parts of it newly added from La Trobe in the redistribution.
Corangamite (LABOR NOTIONAL GAIN 1.1%; 1.0% swing to Labor): Corangamite was designated as a notional Labor seat by the barest possible margin, so whoever received the swing was almost certain to win the seat. That proved to be Labor’s Libby Coker, just, in a result perfectly in line with the state average. Defeated Liberal member Sarah Henderson picked up a few swings in the booths newly added to the electorate on the Bellarine Peninsula, but the Great Ocean Road swung to Labor, reflecting its affluent and educated sea-changer demographic. The Greens were down 3.0% on the primary vote, as voters situated in the state’s south-west failed to warm to a candidate called Simon Northeast.
Corio (Labor 10.3%; 2.1% swing to Labor): Labor’s Richard Marles picked up 4.2% on the primary vote and 2.1% on two-party preferred, the former assisted by a small field of four candidates. The Liberals picked up some swings in Geelong’s down-market north, but the city centre and its surrounds went solidly to Labor.
Flinders (Liberal 5.6%; 1.4% swing to Labor): One of many disappointments for Labor was their failure to seriously threaten Greg Hunt in an area that had swung forcefully their way at the state election. Hunt was also little troubled by Julia Banks, who managed 13.8% of the primary vote, well behind Labor on 24.7%. Banks’s presence cut into the vote share for Liberal, Labor and the Greens – Hunt was down 3.8% to 46.7%, and needed preferences to win the seat for the first time since he came to it in 2001.
Gippsland (Nationals 16.7%; 1.5% swing to Labor): For reasons not immediately apparent, Labor was up 3.0% on the primary vote and cut slightly into what remains a secure margin for Nationals member Darren Chester.
Indi (Independent 1.4% versus Liberal; 4.1% swing to Liberal): As a number of highly trumpeted independents failed to live up to the hype elsewhere, Helen Haines performed a remarkable feat in retaining the independent mantle of Cathy McGowan. Haines’ primary vote of 32.4% was only slightly short of McGowan’s 34.8% on her re-election in 2016, although the Liberals put up a stronger show after gouging half of the Nationals vote. An interesting feature of the result was the 7.7% swing to the Liberals on two-party-preferred versus Labor, suggesting Haines’ preferences favoured the Liberals more strongly than did McGowan’s.
La Trobe (Liberal 4.5%; 1.3% swing to Liberal): A swing to the Liberals in Melbourne marginals was not a feature of too many pre-election predictions, but such was the outcome in La Trobe. Both major parties were up slightly on the primary vote amid a smaller field of candidates than 2016.
Mallee (Nationals 16.2%; 3.6% swing to Labor): Vacated with the demise of Andrew Broad’s two-term career, this was retained by the Nationals against a challenge from the Liberals, as it was in 2013 when Broad succeeded John Forrest. Liberal candidate Serge Petrovich actually fell out of the preference candidate before Labor, despite outpolling them 18.8% to 15.7% on the primary vote, and his preferences duly delivered a large winning margin to Nationals candidate Anne Webster. Webster would likely have won the seat even if Petrovich had survived to the final count, given her 27.9% to 18.8% advantage on the primary vote.
McEwen (Labor 5.0%; 1.0% swing to Liberal): Despite being an area of dynamic growth, particularly around Mernda and Doreen at Melbourne’s northern edge, McEwen turned in a largely static result on this occasion. This was in contrast to its form at the five elections from 2004 to 2016, when two-party swings ranged from 4.1% to 9.0%. Both major parties were down slightly on the primary vote as One Nation took to the field, scoring 5.9%, and Labor member Rob Mitchell’s two-party margin was slightly clipped after a blowout win in 2016.
Monash (Liberal 7.4%; 0.2% swing to Labor): The solid margin built up by Russell Broadbent since 2004 in the seat formerly known as McMillan was little disturbed, although the 7.6% recorded by One Nation took a 3.6% bite out of his primary vote. A noteworthy feature of the result was a heavy swing to the Liberals in the Latrobe Valley towns of Moe and Newborough, a pattern reflected in coal and electricity producing areas across the country.
Nicholls (Nationals 20.0%; 2.5% swing to Labor): After a three-cornered contest in 2016, in which Damian Drum gained the seat for the Nationals on the retirement of Liberal member Sharman Stone, the Liberals vacated the field in Nicholls (formerly Murray), and Drum retained the seat with a majority of the primary vote. One Nation polled 11.3%, easily the best result of the five seats they contested in Victoria.
Wannon (Liberal 10.4%; 1.2% swing to Liberal): Liberal member Dan Tehan picked up slight favourable swings on both the primary and two-party vote. Former Triple J presenter Alex Dyson polled 10.4% as an independent.
NSW Labor
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/nsw/in-the-thick-of-it-the-fall-of-kaila-murnain-20190830-p52mgp.html
“It was just two years into her reign as NSW Labor boss, and more than 12 months before the state election, when storm clouds started to gather over Kaila Murnain.
Her long-term friend and colleague Sam Dastyari had resigned from the Senate in January 2018 over his links to Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo.
There was no shortage of interest in the vacant Senate spot but two contenders stood out: Transport Workers Union national secretary Tony Sheldon and United Voice union official Tara Moriarty.
But Murnain wanted Kristina Keneally. The former NSW premier had just delivered a disappointing performance in the Bennelong byelection a month earlier but Murnain saw no issue and the “Boss Lady of Fortress NSW”, as she liked to call herself, got her way.
A long-time Labor insider says: “Kaila’s descent … started when Keneally was appointed to the Senate. Undoubtedly that was when people decided to kill her off”.
Albo in Dilli with Jose Ramos Horta
Psyclaw:
Too many words. I think that those who support the evil pedophile speaks for themselves.
The leadership of the NSWALP had parallels with the Soviet Nomenklatura.
The top tier of leadership chose the tier below it but in doing so it ensured that the subordinates were loyal but incompetent and thus unable to mount a challenge to the upper tier. Such a system must eventually collapse under its own incompetence and inertia
Pell is a serial offender, sharing digs with Risdale, a serial child offender. FFS, come to terms.
NONE, nada, zip, zilch, zero of which he was on trial for.
FFS, come to terms yourself.
It’s exactly what I was pointing out: Pell is not a nice person, and he is unpopular in many parts of society, for good reason, but he was not on trial for being unpopular.
He was on trial over specific charges, all related to the same i cident, for which the prosecution produced just ONE witness.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/student-leader-joshua-wong-arrested-in-hong-kong/2019/08/29/9d35e1fc-ca98-11e9-9615-8f1a32962e04_story.html
Did you ever think 20 years ago OC you would live to see the fall of the machine?
Heard being muttered by people milling around Sussex St HQ..
“rex mortuus est, vivat rex”.
Should an accusation of sexual abuse require multiple witnesses other than the person sexually abused before the case can proceed to court?
Ah. Sprocket was posting fanboy photos of Shorten not long ago.
Love moves in mysterious ways
It’s always so surprising
When love appears over the horizon
Despite the extreme difficulty being experienced by some posters when it comes to giving permission to others about what they are allowed to say about Pell, it is not at all difficult to work things out.
Pell is guilty of sexually assaulting a child.
People who sexually assault children are paedophiles.
Pell is a paedophile.
Moving forward, Pell may win leave to appeal and he may win such an appeal.
If Pell loses the appeal, Pell is a paedophile.
If he wins the appeal, Pell becomes not guilty of sexually assaulting a child.
Pell will no longer be a paedophile.
These statements are 100% independent of a very large number of extraneous considerations which have been raised: Chamberlain, the Sri Lankans, Milat, anti-catholic bigotry, religious fervour, what the the dissenting appellate opinion was, the earlier hung jury, the dozen or so other allegations by a half dozen or so other children, all the important technical issues such as the weight of the vestments*, the reliability or credibility of all or one of the witnesses or any other consideration that might be raised, whether real or imagined. It does not matter what you think. It does not matter what I think. None of that matters now. None of it.
Pell sexually assaulted a boy.
Pell is a paedophile.
*Having been a vestry habitue for years I knew that one was a crock the moment it was flagged by the defence. But so what? It no longer matters that priests can and do piss standing up while wearing the vestments.
The Prosecution of Danny Lim is genuinely silly but at least it produces some comical moments concerning his dog, Smarty:
[The police prosecutor, Rick Mansley, who also had Smarty on his lap during some of the hearing, argued that unlike the f-word, the c-word could not be used as an adjective or verb and had only one use: to be offensive.]
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/30/cheeky-but-not-offensive-serial-sydney-protester-danny-lim-wins-appeal-over-sign
sprocket_ says:
Friday, August 30, 2019 at 9:13 pm
Heard being muttered by people milling around Sussex St HQ..
“rex mortuus est, vivat rex”.
_________________________
Rex Douglas is being appointed the administrator?
“Force NSW!” sounds like some far right outfit. It might attract a few “Liberals” who think their preferred party is not right wing enough. “Team NSW”? Sounds like a beer commercial run at State of Origin time.
I can see nath is yearning for some Biblical inspiration on Shorten and Albo…
Isaiah 43:18-19 ESV /
“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/29/alvin-kennard-sentenced-to-life-released-prison
Mercy comes very late in Alabama.
Psyclaw, you’re just being a dickhead now.
I wish I could introduce you to some of my friends, who would fill you in in my attitude to the Church and to Pell.
True, I doubted the reliability of a conviction based on one witness. I certainly wasn’t alone in that doubt, including a fair chunk of the legal fraternity, one of the appeal judges (the one most versed in the criminal law) and half of the first jury.
I don’t believe Pell’s jury trial conviction is a Leftist conspiracy, or a pagan plot against Catholicism, or any of the “Illuminati did it” style theories. I have no brief for the Catholic Church, and no love for Pell or pedophiles. I am not a closet pedophile.
Your irrational, judgemental insistence that I am lying on one or more of the above is tantamount to trolling, and I wish you’d quit it please. Discuss the issue, or not, but please stop the false insinuations.
Remember how the “Liberals” lost 10 NSW MPs in 2016 owing to illegal donations.
To lose one MP might be considered unfortunate, but 10?
I’ve read conflicting reports in the media about this and am not certain sure your take is entirely accurate on an HC ruling.
Sprocket. It’s obvious you need a strong mature man as a leader to guide you. All the best with your new infatuation.
30 years ago I did not believe I would see the fall of the Soviet Union but in the end it happened very quickly
And it is clear LVT is a sheep who has lost its way, struggling to move forward, this verse may help..
Hebrews 12:1 ESV /
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
NSW Labor
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/fallout-revealed-panic-sparked-labor-s-deadly-domino-effect-20190830-p52mk1.html
“It has also ended with calls for federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese to intervene to take back control of the party and demands from Senator Kristina Keneally that NSW Labor move out of its Sussex Street headquarters.
Will he intervene?
The huge advances in the last election by the Greens being extolled repeatedly by Firefox are:
House of Reps: an increase of .17% to 10.4%.
The Greens peak for the decade was 11.76%.
Senate: an increase of 1.54% to 10.9%.
The Greens peak for the decade was 13.11%.
At this rate of electoral improvement, the Greens will regain their peak achievement in the House of Representatives by 2043 and they will regain their peak achievement in the Senate by 2025.
George Pell is a convicted child molester serving time for that crime. A pending appeal might, but probably won’t, change that status.
It’s as simple as that.
I think Boerwar is finally beginning to understand what a minor party is. He’s almost there. 🙂
nath, thank you for the encouragement – Albo’s patience in waiting his turn whilst the Liberals trash the joint probably reminds you of this verse..
Proverbs 27:23-24 ESV /
Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds, for riches do not last forever; and does a crown endure to all generations?
BB pleads
“Your irrational, judgemental insistence that I am lying on one or more of the above is tantamount to trolling, and I wish you’d quit it please. Discuss the issue, or not, but please stop the false insinuations.”
I can’t stop laughing. Dishes out his bile ad nauseum and he begs to be treated decently. Too funny.
‘Oakeshott Country says:
Friday, August 30, 2019 at 9:21 pm
30 years ago I did not believe I would see the fall of the Soviet Union but in the end it happened very quickly’
One of my lecturers at Monash told me that it was very close, shortly before it happened. He was a very Lefty. Why, I asked?
‘Samizdat’.
[‘He was on trial over specific charges, all related to the same incident, for which the prosecution produced just ONE witness.’]
The jury accepted the evidence of the complainant. He must have been a very compelling witness. And, moreover, why would this young man lie? You, GG, must accept that Pell was into young boys, the effects of which ruin their lives.
sprocket_
says:
Friday, August 30, 2019 at 9:31 pm
nath, thank you for the encouragement – Albo’s patience in waiting his turn whilst the Liberals trash the joint probably reminds you of this verse..
____________________________________
I do much prefer your new love. The old one was yucky and had a dodgy history.
Catholic Priests have relied on that pathetic excuse for decades-‘Who do you believe? Me, your friendly parish priest, or that ONE boy who says I sexually abused him?’
It was a crock of crap then, and is an equally noxious pile of merde to try it on in order to facilitate a path for Pell to worm out of his conviction for Child Sexual Abuse now as well.
Muse: Thought Contagion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ_3S-IQm38
Perhaps criminal laws should be changed to require victims of sex offences to produce at least three witnesses when they report the offence. If you don’t meet that threshold you can’t accuse your assailant – in fact, you would be charged with an offence yourself if you did that.
The NSW ALP head office peaked with Stephen Loosely and John Della Bosca, both of whom were exceptionally smart and, at least for Della, not completely unethical. These were also people brought up when the Right was not in a majority across Australia and so were ideologically driven and not complacent.
The rot then started with Eric Roozendal, clever but devoid of ideology. Arbib was competent but pure self interest. Bitar and Thistlethwaite incompetent, Dastyari competent but dubious, Clements highly dubious and Kaila just another incompetent. All of whom operated in a totally right-dominant environment but often preferred to do deals with the Left to enhance their own influence.
In short, about 20 years ago the NSW right began a shocking decline whereby Tammany Hall and self interest, always in the race but tempered by genuine ideological concerns, took complete control.
They will now need to put a person of real substance in as Secretary not another apparatchik. Or maybe an exceptionally adept apparatchik who is in politics for something more than the game.
Pegasus,
I, too, lolled at the ‘quit with the false insinuations’ line. His schtick is to construct a miasma of false insinuations to suit the argument he is attempting to prosecute!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/30/hong-kong-pro-democracy-leader-joshua-wong-arrested-says-demosisto
More than 800 people have been arrested since protests began in early June against a legislative bill that would have allowed suspects in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China. Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, has said the bill is “dead” but protesters continue to demand it be permanently withdrawn.
According to a report by Reuters, Beijing has ordered Lam not to accede to any of the protesters’ demands, which also include launching an independent investigation into police behaviour and implementing direct elections.
“This is something the government can do – massive arrests to dry up and sap the strength of the protest movement,” said Joseph Cheng, a retired political scientist who has been following the protests closely.
“It’s a campaign, probably a well-planned campaign, to arrest all the activists and this will involve a lot of less famous people who have been standing in the frontlines of the protests,” he said.
Saturday’s rally was meant to mark five years since Beijing’s proposal for direct elections in Hong Kong, which would only allow candidates screened by Beijing. The proposal sparked mass protests known as the umbrella movement, of which Wong and Chow were major leaders.
Neither has played a central role in the current protests, a largely leaderless movement organised via social media.
Wong has attended the protests and spoken out frequently in support of the demonstrators’ demands. Chow has also attended recent demonstrations and maintains an active social media account in support of the protests, but has otherwise kept a relatively low profile.
Peg has a keen interest in NSW politics, here is what is going on in the Greens..
Ella Buckland, the woman at the centre of sexual assault allegations that ended the political career of NSW politician Jeremy Buckingham earlier this year, will be delivered a formal apology by Greens NSW for the hardship she endured during the internal complaints handling process.
But rather than put to rest a scandal that caused a major split in the party in the lead-up to the March state election, a second motion yet to be voted on by Greens NSW members to release a secret internal report may help shed light on what two other senior male politicians within the party did – or did not do – after Ms Buckland says she told them of the incident.
>…………
Video footage of the evening, filmed by Ms Buckland, confirms that Mr Buckingham and the young woman were heavily intoxicated.
She alleges Mr Buckingham phoned her the next morning and threatened her employment. Within months, her job as a Greens staffer ended acrimoniously.
Mr Buckingham has strongly denied all the allegations levelled by Ms Buckland.
Almost seven years later, in April 2018, Ms Buckland made a complaint to Greens NSW after seeing a social media post by NSW MP David Shoebridge lambasting senior Greens figures for their treatment of sexual assault victims.
The party investigated and found there was insufficient evidence to prove the allegations, although Mr Buckingham eventually resigned anyway.
The motion to apologise to Ms Buckland was passed at the most recent meeting of the Greens NSW State Delegates Council, held in late June.
New Matilda understand the motion called on the party to acknowledge and apologise for the hardship Ms Buckland experienced during the complaints handling process.
However, the apology was originally part of a broader motion which also called on Greens NSW to release a copy of the investigator’s report into the alleged sexual assault to Ms Buckland.
That report – which has been seen by only a handful of senior party members – has never been made available to Ms Buckland, and ultimately found there was insufficient evidence to prove her allegations.
However, the document contains potentially explosive information about what investigators were told and, importantly, by whom.
In the course of the inquiry, Ms Buckland was asked by investigators to respond to false allegations she was a ‘promiscuous intravenous drug user’. It’s never been revealed who made those claims, and Mr Buckingham has refused repeated requests to comment publicly on it.
Greens NSW have also not responded to questions from New Matilda about who made those allegations, and whether or not they’re contained in the final report.
The report also contains information about evidence investigators sought from two other senior serving Greens’ politicians – Justin Field, a former Greens MP who quit the party earlier this year in protest at the treatment of Jeremy Buckingham, and Adam Guise, a Greens councillor currently serving on the Lismore Shire Council.
https://newmatilda.com/2019/08/06/greens-to-formally-apologise-over-buckingham-sexual-assault-saga-but-secret-internal-report-still-hangs-over-partys-head/
The ‘one witness’ argument is perhaps the most facile argument of all.
It is not the number of witnesses that put Pell in the pokey.
It is how credible the jury found the witness.
He must have been a dousy, a ripper, the ants pants, the ultimate prosecution nightmare. He had not suicided. He did not die young. He was still there. He was smart, which is why he got to be where he was in the Cathedral at all. The patterns of his language demonstrate that he went on to acquire considerable language skills in later life.
Despite days of cross examination by Australia’s No 1 criminal lawyer, the Prosecution could not crack him.
The ‘one witness line’ echoes that of the denialists who argue that such a teensy weensy amount of CO2 in the atmosphere could not possibly cook the planet.
It was not the quantity of the witnesses that mattered to the jury. It was the sheer quality of the witness.
No I think the rot started the day that the assassin in the cardigan took the Kingswood to Mascot to pick up Geoff Cahill. Richardson was general secretary by the end of the day and the reign of “whatever it takes” started. Loosely lost many millions of party funds on Centenary House and your point that Della “was not completely unethical” is telling.
The rot has been there for 40 years not 20.
Marsh batting for red ink.
Surely they aren’t thinking of….. no. Shirley not.
Nearly all sex offences have only one witness to the crime: the victim. If we disallow convictions secured on a victim’s evidence alone we are letting nearly all sex offenders get away with their crimes. We already have a rigorous process for testing the credibility and reliability of witnesses. At some point you just have to trust the process.
Most rape or domestic violence cases have only the one witness, that being the victim. Should those cases be thrown out or ridiculed or dismissed because there aren’t multiple witnesses to the allegations?
Boerwar:
While not pissing in your pocket – yes!
And I wonder whether GladysB’s inquiry into James Packer’s proposed sale of his Barangaroo casino to Hong Kong triad linked figures will touch on how he got the prime harbour front site from Barry O’Farrell’s Liberal Government?
Which had nothing, of course, to do with the $500,000 donation by Ros Packer to the Liberals..
“A public inquiry into allegations of wrongdoing at casinos run by Crown Resorts will decide whether the James Packer-dominated group is fit to hold a licence in New South Wales and whether the state’s gambling laws need to be overhauled.
Terms of reference, released by the NSW Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority on Thursday, show the inquiry, to be headed by former judge Patricia Bergin, will also investigate whether Packer’s decision to sell almost 20% of Crown to Hong Kong billionaire Lawrence Ho breached the gambling group’s licence to build a high-roller casino at Barangaroo in Sydney.
If she finds Crown or its NSW subsidiary is not fit to hold the Barangaroo licence, she is to decide “what, if any, changes would be required to render those persons suitable”.
At stake for Crown is the $1bn Barangaroo casino, currently under construction near the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which Packer proposed back in 2012 as part of a bid to lure international VIP gamblers to Australia“
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/29/james-packers-sale-of-crown-resorts-shares-on-hold-amid-inquiry-into-casino-group
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-primaries/democratic/national/
Biden, Sanders, Warren and Harris appear to have the running between them. Of these, Warren appears to be the improver, Biden is static, Sanders is ebbing and Harris has improved slightly. It does seem that the more voters see of Warren the better she does.
C@tmomna buys in, as usual. Not because she believes any of Psyclaw’s pseudo psycho-babble about my real motivations, but because she’s having fun being part of the pile-on.
Fair enough. As long as you’re happy.
sprocket
I have read the article. It has been posted several times already and will undoubtedly be pulled out of the bottom drawer for the next few years whenever there is a need for “look over there” whataboutery.
I am a Victorian Green who is not privy to the machinations within the NSW Greens.
From what I have read in the media, everything relating to what happened to Ella Buckland, and her subsequent treatment is shocking and appalling.
“It was the sheer quality of the witness.”
Yes, he must be an incredibly resilient and courageous individual.
Peg, it must be something about Sydney and it’s convict past, followed by fast money and shills chasing advantage with politicians.
The Greens can’t seem to get beyond internal personality cults.