Welcome to the latest instalment of Call of the Board, which probes into every seat result from the May federal election region by region. Earlier instalments covered Sydney, here and here; regional New South Wales; Melbourne; regional Victoria and south-east Queensland. Today we look at the electorates of Queensland outside of Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast.
The posts dealing with the big cities have featured colour-coded seat maps and the results of a model estimating how the results would have looked if determined by demographic factors alone. Unfortunately, colour-coding doesn’t get you very far when zooming out to vast and unevenly populated regional terrain, and the model hasn’t proved to be much use in producing plausible results for regional seats, in which elusive factors of local political culture appear to loom large. However, I can at least offer for purposes of comparison Labor two-party estimates derived from the Senate results, potentially offering a pointer to how much candidate factors affected the lower house results.
Seat by seat alphabetically:
Capricornia (LNP 12.4%; 11.7% swing to LNP): Labor held this Rockhampton region seat for all but one term from 1977 to 2013, but history may record that it has now reached a tipping point akin to those that have excluded the party from former regional strongholds including Kennedy (Labor-held for all but two terms from federation to 1966, but only once thereafter), Grey in South Australia (Labor-held for all but one term from 1943 to 1993, but never again since) and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia (Labor-held for all but three terms from 1922 until Graeme Campbell quit the party in 1995, and now divided between the safely conservative seats of O’Connor and Durack). The 11.7% swing to Michelle Landry, who has held the seat since 2013, was the biggest in the country, shading the 11.2% swing to the beloved George Christensen in Dawson. Landry’s primary vote was actually little changed, reflecting the entry of One Nation, who accounted for most of Labor’s 14.3% collapse. The rest came from a halving of the Katter’s Australian Party vote from 7.1% to 3.7% and the absence of Family First.
Dawson (LNP 14.6%; 11.2% swing to LNP): Dawson behaved almost identically in swing terms to its southern neighbour, Capricornia, as voters showed themselves to be a great deal more concerned about Adani and its symbolism than George Christensen’s enthusiasm for life in the Philippines. As in Capricornia, the LNP primary vote was little changed from 2016, but the arrival of One Nation soaked up 13.1% which neatly matched Labor’s 12.5% decline. Katter’s Australian Party held up better here than in Capricornia, their 6.3% being only slightly down on 2016.
Flynn (LNP 8.7%; 7.6% swing to LNP): Labor narrowly won this Gladstone-based seat on its creation at their 2007 high-water mark and sliced the margin back to 1.0% in 2016, but hopes of going one better this time fell foul of the party’s region-wide disaster. The swing in this case was fairly typical of those suffered by Labor outside the immediate range of proposed Adani mine, though in this case One Nation were not a new feature, their 19.6% being slightly higher than their 2016 result. The seat was a bit unusual in that Labor’s score on the two-party Senate estimate was 2.8% stronger than their House result.
Groom (LNP 20.5%; 5.2% swing to LNP): The 5.2% swing to John McVeigh was a bit below the regional Queensland par, despite him being a sophomore of sorts – although he may have arrived in 2016 with a ready-made personal vote due to his background as a state member. Nonetheless, it was sufficient to catapult the seat from fifteenth to second on the national ranking of seats by Coalition-versus-Labor margin, reflecting the narrowing of margins in many blue-ribbon city seats. The 2016 result was remarkable in that Family First polled 10.0% in the absence of right-wing minor party competition – this time the newly arrived One Nation polled 13.1% in their absence. The LNP primary vote was little changed and Labor was down 3.5%, the rest of the swing bespeaking a more right-wing minor party preference pool.
Herbert (LNP GAIN 8.4%; 8.4% swing to LNP): Labor’s most marginal seat pre-election, following Labor member Cathy O’Toole’s 37 vote win in 2016, the Townsville seat of Herbert was one of five seats across the country and two in Queensland that were gained by the Coalition (balanced to an extent by Labor’s gains in Gilmore and, with help from redistribution, Corangamite and Dunkley). While the swing was lower than in the Adani epicentre electorates of Dawson and Capricornia immediately to the south, it was sufficient to produce the most decisive result the seat has seen since 1954. O’Toole’s primary vote was down 5.0% to 25.5%, while LNP victor Phillip Thompson added 1.6% to the party’s 2016 result to score 37.1%. High-profile Palmer candidate Greg Dowling did relatively well in polling 5.7%, and One Nation were down from 13.5% to 11.1%.
Hinkler (LNP 14.5%; 6.1% swing to LNP): Keith Pitt, who has held this Bundaberg-based seat since 2013, picked up a swing well in line with the regional Queensland norm. He was up 2.2% on the primary vote, while Labor was down 3.8%; One Nation fell from 19.2% to 14.8%, mostly due to an expansion in the field from seven candidates to ten, including three independents, none of whom did particularly well individually.
Kennedy (KAP 13.3% versus LNP; 2.3% swing to KAP): Bob Katter had a near death experience at the 2013 election, at which time he was presumably tarred with the minority government brush despite being the only cross-bencher who backed the Coalition after the inconclusive 2010 result. However, he’s roared back to dominance since, picking up successive two-party swings of 8.9% and 2.3%, and primary vote swings of 10.5% and 2.6%. On the latter count at least, he’s been assisted by the fact that One Nation have declined to challenge him. In Coalition-versus-Labor terms, the seat participated in the regional Queensland trend in swinging 7.8% against Labor.
Leichhardt (LNP 4.2%; 0.2% swing to LNP): The negligible swing in favour of LNP veteran Warren Entsch was an exception to the regional Queensland rule, and was generally attributed to the centrality of tourism to the economy of Cairns, giving the region a very different outlook on issues like Adani. The result was generally status quo in all respects, but the seat had the distinction of being one of only three in the state where the Labor primary vote very slightly increased, along with Ryan and Fairfax. With Entsch’s primary vote down slightly, the two-party swing, such as it was, came down to an improved flow of preferences.
Maranoa (LNP 22.5% versus One Nation; 6.6% swing to LNP): For the second election in a row, Maranoa emerged with the distinction of being the only seat in the country where One Nation made the final preference count. One Nation and Labor were down on the primary vote by 3.2% and 2.7% respectively; at the last preference exclusion, One Nation led Labor 21.3% to 19.0%, compared with 23.6% to 22.9% in 2016. The other story here was the strong sophomore showing for David Littleproud, who was up 6.8% on the primary vote and by similar amounts on two-party preferred against both One Nation and Labor. The 25.4% margin versus Labor is now by some distance the biggest in the country, compared with the electorate’s ninth ranking on this score in 2016. Equally impressive for Littleproud is the distinction between his 25.4% margin and the 20.4% recorded by the two-party Senate measure.
Wide Bay (LNP 13.1%; 5.0% swing to LNP): Llew O’Brien may also have enjoyed a sophomore effect after succeeding Warren Truss in 2016, as his primary vote was up 3.2% while One Nation fell from 15.6% to 10.8%. However, the Labor primary vote held up unusually well, and the two-party swing was at the lower end of the regional Queensland scale.
Wright (LNP 14.6%; 5.0% swing to LNP): So far as the major parties were concerned, the result here was typical of regional Queensland, with LNP member Scott Buchholz up 3.1% on the primary vote and Labor down 4.0%. Independent Innes Larkin, who appears to have made his name locally campaigning against coal seam gas, scored a respectable 5.3%, which presumably helps explains the drop in the One Nation vote from 21.8% to 14.0%.
doyley….spot on.
What did Canavan mean, exactly?
Doyley
So you are saying those attacking Labor on twitter are right.
Got it. Bye bye Labor’s environment credentials if so. That’s very very clear and you and Labor are fooling yourselves thinking otherwise
The Australian almond industry earns around half a billion a year in exports.
We eat one third of our crop.
Around half of Australian households purchase almonds.
India is our biggest almond importer.
Almonds are found in several hundred products.
RI @ #734 Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 8:02 am
This comment needs to be preserved for posterity.
Canavan will have been hoping for a commitment to fund and build a coal-fired power plant. Such a plant would be obsolete before it was even designed, let alone built. If such a plant were owned and operated by taxpayers, they would be locked into decades of losses and eventual liquidation for no reason other than political ones. There is no case at all for the State to promise to create loss-making power assets, the ownership of which will cause on-going conflict with the renewables sector while also locking in higher electricity prices. The power companies certainly get this….which is why they’re all closing coal-fired plant at the earliest opportunity.
I have just watched a short video of police on horses “controlling” the protesters in Melbourne. One rider seemed to be urging the rather fractious horse into the crowd. It was always my understanding that horses were used to calm the situation, not to kick and stand on people.
lizzie @ #748 Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 11:36 am
Too late, lizzie. They’ve already been grown, packaged and shipped to Colesworth for you to buy. Enjoy your guilty pleasure! 🙂
Boerwar @ #750 Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 11:38 am
You don’t have to be extremist. How about a moderate perspective? One that doesn’t see an agricultural product uber alles? Like over and above water for the environment?
Matt Canavan wanted Scott’s Big Extension Cord to plug into Clive and Alexander’s Big New Coal-Fired Power Plant in Queensland.
Danama…..by all means, archive the post.
The really simple point is that coal demand in the world is peaking and will fall very steeply as renewables + storage displace first coal and then gas-powered generators.
Closing coal mines is simply gesture politics. It will accomplish absolutely nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
In the case of the Galilee, any coal that can be extracted could be far more cheaply supplied from Indonesia, which is the world’s largest coal exporter. Indonesia exports around 5 times more thermal coal than Queensland does.
Adani is pure Green Herring.
Morrison’s Big Extension Cord effort is a stark reminder of his lack of grasp of science and technology. He’s always trying to dumb things down
Boerwar @ #755 Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 8:51 am
Citation needed.
I think the campaign against Adani by the Greens is one of the most crippling campaigns advanced in Australia. It has done a lot to retard the changes that are necessary to arrest climate change and to re-build the Australian economy. It has helped pit working people against change and to divide the electorate. This has served the political interests of the Greens and the LNP. It has done very great harm to the politics of the environment.
It will fall to Labor to try to fix this.
Lizzie, Remember what it says on the cops badges:
ABC News 24 now running a “live cross” to the demonstration in Melbourne.
Her Indoor walked in half-way through and foolushly adked “What are they protesting about?”
I told her “Don’t bother asking. They’ll only talk about arrests, traffic disruption and how noisy they are.”
I was right, sadly.
Alpha Zero
Oh dear. 😆
BK
But he’s succeeding. Blast him. (Although Senator Coal Canavan doesn’t seem happy.)
In other words it is a very minor industry that does an amount of ecological damage vastly disproportionate to the industry’s importance to employment. If it isn’t ecologically sustainable, it needs to be replaced by other employment.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/climate-protesters-clash-with-police-outside-melbourne-mining-conference?CMP=share_btn_tw
Inside the Biloela family’s Christmas Island detention quarters.
https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/10/29/biloela-family-christmas-island/
Army Officer Who Heard Trump’s Ukraine Call Reported Concerns
The top Ukraine expert at the White House will tell impeachment investigators he twice reported concerns about President Trump’s pressure tactics on Ukraine, acting out of a “sense of duty.”
WASHINGTON — A White House national security official who is a decorated Iraq war veteran plans to tell House impeachment investigators on Tuesday that he heard President Trump appeal to Ukraine’s president to investigate one of his leading political rivals, a request the aide considered so damaging to American interests that he reported it to a superior.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/us/politics/Alexander-Vindman-trump-impeachment.html#click=https://t.co/nu3jmYEigO
Boerwar @ #750 Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 11:38 am
First they came for the almond eaters……….
Danama Papers @ #756 Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 11:54 am
No need. Briefly has said it many times in the past, and will no doubt repeat it many times in the future.
And it is good that he repeats it – it means no-one takes his other comments seriously.
Danama Papers @ #756 Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 11:54 am
No need. It will be repeated 234,987,000 times by its esteemed author.
Danama Papers @ #764 Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 12:03 pm
You’re crazy! Good enough for you?
Morrison did say something true indirectly though
When the libs/nats were re-elected on May 15th
Morrison did say Australia would be burning under his leadership
Snap!
Boerwar @ #749 Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 10:38 am
Maybe the regions need to get better at picking industries?
‘Nicholas says:
Tuesday, October 29, 2019 at 12:09 pm
The Australian almond industry earns around half a billion a year in exports.
In other words it is a very minor industry that does an amount of ecological damage vastly disproportionate to the industry’s importance to employment. If it isn’t ecologically sustainable, it needs to be replaced by other employment.’
I am sure that regional voters will be transformed once they fully understand MMT.
Banning the almond industry is on top of the Greens banning the trots, the jumps, the dogs, rodeos, and duck shooting. It is on top of getting rid of the cotton industry, the beef industry, the wool industry, the fat lamb industry, the uranium industry, most of the defence industry, the uranium industry, the oil industry, the gas industry and the coal industry.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/economy-idling-at-the-traffic-lights-needs-real-spending-keating-20191029-p5357q.html
Labor should use Mr Keating’s Surplus Virus with gusto.
He still has that cut through language.
‘a r says:
Tuesday, October 29, 2019 at 12:43 pm
Boerwar @ #749 Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 10:38 am
Yet another regional industry sorted.
Maybe the regions need to get better at picking industries?’
Sure. The regions should turn to doing whatever it is that the inner urban greens voters, in their totally degraded environments, do. Nothing more. Nothing less.
BW
I see you have taken up the GOP racist “Urban Areas” talking point.
In Australia it was demonising Labor with the basket weavers of Balmain.
When are you joining the LNP?
Here’s the true Brexit meltdown story.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-28/u-k-to-destroy-commemorative-50p-coins-in-brexit-meltdown
Naturally Round Up will be banned by the Greens as well. No brainer. This has to be done because Monsanto is 6-6-6.
Most of the remaining 80,000 Australian broad acre farms would use Round Up.
Bound to be about as popular as banning rodeos.
The Greens approach to winning the regional vote is nothing if not thorough.
BW
These lot don’t strike me as Green
https://roundup-danger.injury-check.com/?creative=388709094906&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIus6W-a7A5QIVApGPCh3dOwv7EAAYASAAEgKGB_D_BwE
Fans of Britain’s long-running comedy-drama Brexit are today overjoyed after learning that another season of the popular show has been commissioned.
Just when it looked like the UK’s telly addicts would need to find another boxset to binge-watch it has been announced that Brexit – possibly the greatest farce since Fawlty Towers and a fantasy to rival Game of Thrones – will roll on for at least one more season.
Brexit aficionado Simon Williams had been bracing himself for the show’s emotional finale.
“I’m so happy!” he said. “It looked like it would be all over this week, but there was still so much potential with these characters, so many more votes they could have on Boris’ deal – so many more machiavellian plots to fail and embarrassments to endure.
“I’ve been so worried recently what with all the rumours about the show being cancelled amid falling ratings.
https://newsthump.com/2019/10/28/tv-fans-delighted-as-brexit-renewed-for-yet-another-season/?fbclid=IwAR12SroOGQVGgXG91LXCa-pFJi31xrS13V6OcyYVOtnlLSH6vZiy_a2XcRY
Boerwar @ #783 Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 11:50 am
Covering the desert vastness with solar panels wouldn’t be the worst idea ever, I agree. 🙂
Besides, it’s not like anyone tries to grow oranges in Alaska. And if they did they’d 1) fail and 2) not be entitled to any sympathy for choosing to do something that the local environment very obviously can’t sustain.
Don’t see why it should be any different for people who stupidly choose to grow water-intensive crops in a dry, drought-prone place like (most of) Australia because profit.
Then there are the bans on whaling, factory fishing vessels, and deep sea bottom trawling.
Then there is the policy of ‘eliminating fishery bycatch’. Presumably this means eliminating all net fishing because all net fishing involves bycatch. The details are sketchy. We know all about ban Adani. But ban net fishing? Not so much.
There is the usual Greens plethora of additional regulations, delays, ‘cooperative arrangements’, restrictions, and direct management arrangements.
But, just in case regional fishing towns miss the main point, there is policy provision for ‘transitional arrangements’ for those whose livelihoods the Greens intend to disappear.
ar
I see that you are missing the point here. Which is?
The solar industry is going to replace the cotton, beef, sheep, wool, fat lamb, uranium, coal, oil, gas, almond and golden rice industries?
While solar farms are being built they are labour intensive. Once built there is bugger all employment in a solar farm.
The main point here is not the pluses and minuses of particular policies.
The main point is that the Greens are urging Labor to assume a suite of policies that would devastate large swathes of the regional economies, destroy the economic bases for many villages, and towns and regional centres and replace them with ‘transition arrangements’.
How about the inner urban Greens voters transition themselves out of the most degraded environments in Australia?
And if Labor is dopey enough to succumb to Greens blandishments on these matters then the remaining regional seats will fall to the Coalition as night follows day.
GG
Haha. Not worth 50p.
The regions’ pithy encapsulation of the Greens policies towards the regions is that the Greens want everyone to go back to living in caves.
Boerwarsays:
On the other hand we may never have left them in the first place if we said “Let’s not be having any of that fancy new flint napping malarky. Just think of all the unemployed sharp stick industry workers.”
Boerwar @ #428 Tuesday, October 29th, 2019 – 1:07 pm
I imagine that they would be similar to the transitional arrangements that were put into place for the small hardware shop owners when the Bunnings cyclone devastated them, and the small sports shops owners, when the Rebel Sports tsunami hit, and the corner grocers and butchers shop proprietors, when the Colesworths hailstorm smashed them, and the cobblers, and the wheelwrights, and the horse shit collectors, and the bin men. Those bloody Greens, they have a lot to answer for.
BW, your facile trolling is tiresome. Current water policies will result in the total destruction of almost all inland waterway and wetlands ecosystems. Prolonging the death throes of doomed agricultural industries is not an answer to any of the profound questions that climate change, and previous disastrous policies concerning dams, irrigation and water harvesting have landed us with. Smart-arsery is plain stupid.
Boerwar
says:
Tuesday, October 29, 2019 at 1:17 pm
The regions’ pithy encapsulation of the Greens policies towards the regions is that the Greens want everyone to go back to living in caves.
__________________________________
‘Living in caves’ also standard One Nation and Coalition rhetoric used against both the Greens and Labor.
For those finding sleep hard to come by.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/29/is-there-a-better-televisual-sleep-aid-than-the-soporific-joy-of-escape-to-the-country
it’s Labor that will have us back living in caves…. Peta Credlin
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/29/google-sued-by-accc-after-allegedly-misleading-customers-over-location-data-collection
When it’s free, you’re the product.