Call of the board: Western Australia

Another deep dive into the result of the May federal election – this time focusing on Western Australia, which disappointed Labor yet again.

The Call of the Board wheel now turns to Western Australia, after previous instalments that probed into the federal election results for Sydney (here and here), regional New South Wales, Melbourne, regional Victoria, south-east Queensland and regional Queensland.

Western Australia has been disappointing federal Labor ever since Kim Beazley elevated the party’s vote in his home state in 1998 and 2001, and this time was no exception. After an unprecedented Labor landslide at the 2017 state election and expectations the state’s economic malaise would sour voters on the government, the May election in fact produced a statewide two-party swing of 0.9% to the Coalition, and no change on the existing configuration of 11 seats for the Liberals and five for Labor.

As illustrated by the maps below (click on the images to enlarge), which record the two-party swings at booth level, Perth typified the national trend in that Labor gained in inner urban areas, regardless of their political complexion, while copping a hit in the outer suburbs. This will be reflected in the seat-by-seat commentary below, which regularly invokes the shorthand of “inner urban” and “outer urban” effects. The map on the left is limited to seats that are clearly within the Perth metropolitan area, while the second adds the fringe seats of Pearce (north), Hasluck (east) and Canning (south).

For further illustration, the table below compares each electorate’s two-party result (the numbers shown are Labor’s) with a corresponding two-party Senate measure, which was derived from the AEC’s files recording the preference order of each ballot paper (with votes that did not preference either Labor or Liberal excluded). This potentially offers a pointer as to how much candidate factors affected the lower house results.

Brand (Labor 6.7%; 4.8% swing to Liberal): Like so many other suburban seats distant from central business districts across the land, Brand recorded a solid swing to the Liberals after going strongly the other way in 2016. This dynamic drowned out whatever impact candidate factors may have had: Labor’s Madeleine King picked up a 7.7% swing on debut in 2016, but this time copped a 4.8% reversal despite theoretically being in line for a sophomore surge. The Senate result was little different from the House, further suggesting candidate factors were not much of a feature.

Burt (Labor 5.0%; 2.1% swing to Liberal): On its creation in 2016, Burt recorded a swing to Labor of 13.2%, the biggest of the election. This partly reflected the dramatic boomtime suburban growth that had caused the seat to be created in the first place, and which has since ground to a halt. The Liberals swing of 2.1% this time was typical for suburbia outside the inner urban zone, overwhelming any sophomore effect for the seat’s inaugural member, Matt Keogh. However, Keogh very substantially outperformed the two-party Senate metric.

Canning (Liberal 11.6%; 4.8% swing to Liberal): Covering Perth’s outer southern fringes, Canning was another seat that typified outer suburbia in swinging heavily to the Liberals, in this case to the advantage of Andrew Hastie. Hastie came to the seat at a by-election held a week after Malcolm Turnbull’s rise to the prime ministership in September 2015, at which he survived a 6.6% swing to Labor, most of which stuck at the federal election the following July. The swing in his favour this time has returned the Liberal margin to the peaks of 2013.

Cowan (Labor 0.9%; 0.2% swing to Labor): Anne Aly gained Cowan for Labor in 2016 by a margin of 0.7%, slightly less than she would have needed to hold out the 0.9% statewide swing had it been uniform. She was in fact able to boost her margin by 0.2%, in a seat slightly out of the range of the wealthier inner urban areas where Labor did best in swing terms. The disparity between the House result and the two-party Senate metric, which records a 1.5% advantage for the Liberals, suggests Aly can take much of the credit for her win, over and above the exercise of the sophomore surge effect.

Curtin (Liberal 14.3%; 6.4% swing to Labor): The most prestigious Liberal seat in the west had a complicated story to tell at this election: Julie Bishop retired after more than two decades as member; the party raised some eyebrows locally by endorsing a Christian conservative, Celia Hammond, despite the seat’s small-l liberal complexion; and Labor initially endorsed former Fremantle MP Melissa Parke, who shortly withdrew after copping static over contentious pronouncements about Israel. An independent, Louise Stewart, held out some promise of harnessing support from Malcolm Turnbull loyalists, but her campaign was torpedoed after polling she circulated showing her well placed to win proved to be fabricated. Stewart claimed to have been the victim of a trick, while the Liberal response to the episode betrayed a certain inconsistency in attitude towards the dissemination of fraudulent documents for political purposes. The loss of Bishop’s personal support and the broader inner urban effect were evident on the scoreboard, with the Liberals down 11.3% on the primary vote and 6.4% on two-party preferred. The Greens continue to fall just shy of edging Labor into second – this time they trailed 17.6% to 15.6% on the primary vote and 20.4% to 19.6% at the last preference exclusion. Louise Stewart finished a distant fourth with 7.8%.

Durack (Liberal 14.8%; 3.7% swing to Liberal): When she first came to the seat covering northern Western Australia in 2013, Melissa Price had to fight off the Nationals, over whom she prevailed by 4.0%. However, she has since gone undisturbed over two elections as the Nationals have fallen to earth. The applecart was upset slightly on this occasion by the entry of One Nation, who scored 9.5%, contributing to respective drops of 4.3% and 5.8% for Labor and the Nationals, while Price’s primary vote rose 2.6%.

Forrest (Liberal 14.6%; 2.0% swing to Liberal): Nola Marino was re-elected with a modest swing amid a generally uneventful result. One Nation and Shooters Fishers and Farmers were in the field this time whereas the Nationals were not, but this was rather academic as the primary votes for all concerned were inside 6%.

Fremantle (Labor 6.9%; 0.6% swing to Liberal): The scoreline in Fremantle was not particularly interesting, with little change on two-party preferred, and downward primary vote movements for the established parties that reflected only a larger field of candidates. However, the results map illustrates particularly noteworthy geographic variation, with the area around Fremantle proper swinging to Labor in line with the inner urban effect, while the less fashionable suburbia that constitutes the electorate’s southern half went the other way (a pattern maintained across the boundary with Brand, where there was a 4.6% swing in favour of the Liberals). Labor member Josh Wilson was in line for a sophomore surge effect, although this was not his first bid for re-election thanks to a Section 44 by-election in July 2018, which passed without incident in the absence of a Liberal candidate.

Hasluck (Liberal 5.2%; 3.2% swing to Liberal): The Liberals’ most marginal Western Australian seat going into the election, Hasluck delivered Labor a particularly dispiriting defeat, with Ken Wyatt securing the biggest margin of his four election career. The swing reflected the general outer urban effect, although Labor did manage to pick up a few swings around relatively affluent Kalamunda.

Moore (Liberal 11.7%; 0.6% swing to Liberal): This northern suburbs beachside electorate is affluent enough to be safe Liberal, but not fashionable enough to have partaken in the inner urban effect. Third term member Ian Goodenough picked up a very slight swing, as the primary vote told a familiar story of the three established parties all being slightly down amid a larger field of candidates.

O’Connor (Liberal 14.5%; 0.6% swing to Labor): Covering the southern part of regional Western Australia, O’Connor was held by the Nationals for a term after Tony Crook unseated Wilson Tuckey in 2010, but Rick Wilson narrowly recovered it for the Liberals when Crook bowed out after a term in 2013, and the Nationals have not troubled him since. One Nation entered the race this time, but managed only a modest 8.4%.

Pearce (Liberal 7.5%; 3.9% swing to Liberal): Among the many Liberal scalps that went unclaimed by Labor was that of Christian Porter, who emerged the beneficiary of the outer urban effect after being widely written off in the wake of the state election landslide and the coup against Malcolm Turnbull. One Nation landed a fairly solid 8.2%, contributing to a solid 5.2% primary vote slump for Labor.

Perth (Labor 4.9%; 1.6% swing to Labor): One of Labor’s few reliable seats in the west, Perth has undergone frequent personnel changes since Stephen Smith retired in 2013, with Alannah MacTiernan bowing out to return to state politics in 2016, and her successor Tim Hammond failing to make it through a full term. This complicates sophomore surge considerations for current member Patrick Gorman, who retained the seat without Liberal opposition at a by-election in July last year. The swing in his favour reflected the inner urban effect, but he also managed to outperform Labor’s two-part Senate metric for the seat.

Stirling (Liberal 5.6%; 0.5% swing to Labor): In a once marginal seat that looked increasingly secure for the Liberals after Michael Keenan gained it in 2004, this election loomed as a litmus test of how secure the party would look when stripped of his personal vote. The results were encouraging for the party, with new candidate Vince Connelly suffering only a slight swing. The results map suggests a pattern in which the beachside suburbs and areas near the city swung to Labor, while the unfashionable area around Balga at the centre of the electorate went the other way.

Swan (Liberal 2.7%; 0.9% swing to Labor): Together with Pearce and Hasluck, Swan was one of three seats in Labor’s firing line, but Steve Irons was able to secure a fifth successive win in what has traditionally been a knife-edge seat. This was despite the pedigree of Labor candidate Hannah Beazley, whose father Kim Beazley held the seat from 1980 to 1996, when he jumped ship for Brand. The results map tells a family story in that the affluent western end of the electorate swung to Labor, while the lower income suburbs in the east went the other way.

Tangney (Liberal 11.5%; 0.4% swing to Liberal): Liberal sophomore Ben Morton held his ground in this safe Liberal seat, despite the riverside suburbia of Applecross and Attadale partaking of the inner urban effect. He gained 4.8% on the primary vote in the absence of former member Dennis Jensen, who polled 11.9% as an independent in 2016 after being defeated by Morton for preselection.

ANNOUNCEMENT: If this painstakingly compiled post interested you enough that you have made it all the way through to the end, perhaps you might care to make a donation. These are gratefully received via the “become a supporter” button that appears just below, or the PressPatron button at the top of the page.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,840 comments on “Call of the board: Western Australia”

Comments Page 34 of 37
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  1. Having treatment at home is more convenient for patients, reduces the demand on hospitals, and cuts costs for the health system.

    But if you have private health insurance and want to access these services via a private hospital, it’s often not possible. This needs to change.

    What’s the problem?
    Private health insurers are tightly regulated. If you have a top “gold” package, for example, the insurer must pay for all hospital services that attract a government Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) payment, other than cosmetic surgery.

    But insurers are currently not allowed to cover care provided outside of hospitals, except in very limited circumstances.

    Insurers are allowed to cover eligible home-based programs developed by private hospitals. But they get to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to cover these programs. And each insurer makes a separate decision for each program.

    This means private hospitals must negotiate with each private health insurer for each separate program, for each contract period. This makes it almost impossible for private hospitals to develop sustainable business cases for their programs.

    The upshot is patients often miss out on the convenience of having hospital-type services in their home, and instead may face prolonged hospital stays.

    The red tape needs to be untangled to make it easier for private hospitals and doctors to run these programs and for insurers to pay for them.

    https://theconversation.com/private-health-insurers-should-start-paying-for-hospital-type-care-at-home-126345

  2. Yabba, good on you for saving a piece of real forest. Most people don’t get to see old growth forests . Most regrowth forests are cut down in 80 year cycles which stops natural succession to a climax ecosystem. I mainly bush-walk in the central highlands of Victoria and most of that is logged repeatedly and the silence is eerie. My walking companions, who are not bird watchers, don’t notice until I point it out. They get more disgusted when I point out most of these 80 year old trees are converted to low value wood chips.

  4. GG

    Good spin

    Reality is different.

    We have already seen the well documented quote.

    Keep inclusivity and increase our appeal.

    One example.

    Human Rights are central to all Australians.
    You even have the Australian campaigning on Free Speech.
    Not exactly a radical left wing publication.

  5. phoenixRED @ #1638 Thursday, November 7th, 2019 – 3:36 pm

    Ahem ….. cough ……go back to 1.07 pm this afternoon …..

    12:07pm, you mean.

    Yeah, I should have ignored that post. But the idea that Hillary’s campaign was set up as a referendum on a Trump presidency that hadn’t happened yet and included as official material a leaked remark that she publicly retracted and apologized for is still completely ridiculous.

  9. This sounds like a good pick by the ABC:

    The Project’s Hamish Macdonald will host ABC’s Q&A next year, replacing outgoing presenter Tony Jones.

    (Canberra Times headline)

  10. Average spot price for electricity in SA are historically higher than NSW (except the odd year here and there when gas prices were very low).
    Yet for each of the last 3 months, SA prices have been significantly lower than NSW.

    And next year, averaged for the whole of the year, SA RRP is predicted to be significantly less than NSW. Yep, NSW, with all its cheap cheap coal.

  11. Bucephalus
    says:
    Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 4:16 pm
    Albo keeps coming to Perth. I assume he is doing the same to Queensland.
    Noone cares if he comes here -it is what his policies will do for WA that matter and the long history of the ALP is that they don’t give a flying f^&k for WA and just want to tax the buggery out of our mining sector.
    ___________________________
    Yes but he has to win Swan and hold Cowan so if coming over might help that happen he will keep coming.

  13. Buce, Your original premise that SA had the highest electricity prices in the world because of renewables is just plain wrong.

    That title goes to the Solomon Islands, they pay about $US0.99 a kWh.

    And they produce it using fossil fuels.

    This is holding the development of the Solomon Islands back so the world bank has been assisting to reduce the cost, by introducing of all things, those evil renewables.

    https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/12/06/agreements-signed-to-bring-reliable-renewable-electricity-to-solomon-islands

  14. GG,

    Mark R Sullivan really knew his business and where it was headed

    Unlike Tomas Watson, president of IBM who said in 1943 “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

  15. Following a preference deal with the Coalition, Clive Palmer dovetailed his $70 million
    advertising spend with the Liberal Party’s in the final two weeks of the campaign, moving
    his attack to Bill Shorten as “Shifty Shorten” and, in Western Australia, to a bizarre claim
    the McGowan Government sold an airport to China for $1.00.

    Palmer’s advertising blitz strongly amplified the Coalition’s anti-Labor message to
    economically insecure, low-income voters. In focus groups of soft voters, Palmer was
    described in the most derogatory terms, helping explain the poor vote he and his party
    received, but his blitz against Shorten took its toll on Shorten’s leadership standing.

    Emerson said that there may always be another Palmer. Time to limit electoral advertising?

  16. Aaron Patrick, another apologist for the status quo:

    Here’s an earlier article he wrote on 1/11/2019:

    The frenemies frustrating Albanese’s shift to the centre

    With friends like The Australian Institute, Doug Cameron and Sean Kelly, no wonder Labor leader Anthony Albanese is struggling to drag his party back towards the centre.

  17. Aqualung
    Thursday, November 7th, 2019 – 5:14 pm
    Comment #1658

    Hopefully this works KayJay

    It did ❗ It did ❗ This is one of the images. Thank you. Cancel my anti depressant order please.

    While on my weekly day release we met a lady who had the cutest pup in the world in a shopping basket. The pup has damaged feet (birth defect) but is a frequent visitor (together with the lady managing the basket) to a nursing home to support a family member. Many Aged Care Facilities have visits from the Delta Dogs organisation plus various others take wonderful dogs to visit. One of my favourite photos of my wife is of her with a little white pup sitting on her chest – both blissfully happy.

  18. Back in September 2010 when Gillard and the Greens negotiated on an agreement:

    Ms Gillard and Senator Brown have signed the deal, which ensures newly elected Lower House Greens MP Adam Bandt will support the formation of a minority Labor government.

    The concessions secured by the Greens include:

    the formation of a climate change committee
    a parliamentary debate on Afghanistan
    a referendum on recognising Indigenous Australians
    restrictions on political donations
    legislation on truth in political advertising
    the establishment of a Parliamentary Budget Committee
    a parliamentary integrity commissioner
    improved processes for release of documents in Parliament
    a leaders debates Commission
    a move towards full three-year parliamentary terms
    two-and-a-half hours of allocated debate for private members’ bills
    access for Greens to various Treasury documents

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-09-01/greens-labor-seal-deal/966044

  19. Ballot on nuclear waste dump:

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-07/majority-of-kimba-residents-support-nuclear-waste-facility/11680774

    A clear majority of Kimba residents have voted in favour of a nuclear waste dump being built in their region, the ABC understands.

    The Kimba Council is yet to officially release results of a month-long indicative postal ballot, but the ABC has confirmed with both sides of the contentious debate that residents voted around 60 per cent in favour of the dump.

    The non-binding ballot was a key factor in the Federal Government’s decision on where to build the facility, but native titleholders have challenged the validity of the process.

    Two sites near Kimba, halfway between Australia’s east and west coast, were shortlisted as possible locations for the country’s first national nuclear waste facility.

    A third site in Hawker, near the Flinders Ranges, was also shortlisted, and a vote of that town’s residents will begin next week.
    :::
    Only local residents were permitted to vote in the ballot, infuriating the region’s native titleholders, the Barngarla people.

    The Barngarla people lost a court battle to stop the vote, but vowed to appeal to the Federal Court.

  22. pegagsus,

    Of course, Patrick wrote a balanced article based on his understanding of the review.

    You clearly can’t handle or allow alternative POVs to be published without smearing or traducing the author.

    What are you Greens afraid of?

    Are you concerned you can’t bully the blog?

  24. GG

    Oh dear.

    Someone pointed out an alternative to the right wing we must follow the Liberals to win narrative.

    News for you. The centre is not the right.

  26. GG

    Pardon me while I laugh at your absurd characterisation.

    Have I criticised the Labor review report. No I haven’t. It is written clearly, unambiguously and puts to rest some of the repetitive memes that have infested this blog since Labor lost the ‘unloseable’ election.

  28. Hillary Clinton ran heavily on how terrible Trump was. She didn’t have a strong affirmative case for her own candidacy. Her policies were neoliberal and therefore lacked relevance and appeal. It is stupid to assert that making the election a referendum on Trump’s deplorable behaviour is a winning strategy. If Democrats fail to make a forceful policy argument about how they can materially improve the lives of people in the underclass and the working class, well, there is no point in them even existing, and they are likely to lose.

  31. I think the takeaway from Labor’s report is that the left will use it as a justification for a shift to the left, the right will use it as a justification for moving to the right, the centre will use it as a justification for staying where they are, and all factions will use it as a justification for attacking the Greens.

    My prediction: Labor will not learn anything from it and will end up doing nothing at all 🙁

  33. Nicholas, yes, but Dems have to keep in mind that the party is not made up solely of liberals, and they need to win states outside of liberal states….
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  34. Kay Jay,

    Bear with me, but an article by John Crace of the Guardian is very funny, and includes a link to a great article about Dilyn, the No 10 Downing Street dog:

    Swinson was on rather stronger ground when she observed that she would make a better prime minister than either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn. Because almost anyone would make a better prime minister than either of them. Dilyn the Downing Street dog would probably make a better fist of it than them, thoughjudging by the mutt’s expression in recent photos posted on social media, he’s desperate to get the hell out of Downing Street and be relocated to a canine rescue shelter.
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/05/jo-swinson-fails-to-tread-line-between-ambition-and-delusion

    And here is Dilyn himself:

    Edit: Could not make the images work, so check links

  35. P1

    Problem for the let’s move to the right mob is that moving to the left has seen winners. It’s moving to the left of the LNP I am talking about.

    Then for those that have missed the Victorian historic win and recurring ACT wins there are the Democrats winning big as they move left.

    To the point the Democrats have won big in Pennsylvania Virginia and Kentucky

    They won as big as they could have reasonably hoped for. This while being attacked for being radical socialists.

    The election results are clear. Parties of the left win when they remember they are parties of the left.

  36. I saw this nonsense from nice earlier:

    “SA has the highest electricity prices in Australia. Wind and solar are causing that.”

    Utter bollocks.

    It’s gas that sets the marginal price in SA, and gas is expensive.

  43. Nicholas @ #1679 Thursday, November 7th, 2019 – 4:59 pm

    It is stupid to assert that making the election a referendum on Trump’s deplorable behaviour is a winning strategy.

    The KY result says otherwise. Trump himself turned it into a referendum on Trump. And he lost.
    In motherfucking Kentucky.

    Dropped 14+ points off the GOP margin in deep-south Mississippi, too. It’s actually competitive now. 🙂

  44. ‘News for you. The centre is not the right.’

    But it is for you and your ilk. The centre (I’m referring to actual voters, not the politically engaged) are not aching for ‘the left’, if they were the Greens wouldn’t be stuck at 10%, or less than half of that in outer urbs electorates.

    You are also wrong to say that Labor is ‘supposed’ to of the left. This is just nonesense. Labor is meant to be the bridge between the left, centre-left and the centre. It is falling in this regard. Doubling down on leftism will be a disaster. Luckily that does not seem likely to happen.

    So my leftist friend: Labor is prepared to make common cause with you (on mutually acceptable terms) but ‘we’ are not ‘you’. Never were. Never will be.

  45. Since when has a comparison between Australia and a third world basket case like the Solomon Island where we have recently deployed Peace Keepers been relevant.

  46. AE

    “‘we’ are not ‘you’. Never were. Never will be.”

    Are you indulging in ‘identity politics’, or electoral pragmatism, or both, or…..

  49. Someone mentioned there was an interview between Patricia Karvelas and Penny Wong this afternoon.

    I would appreciate someone providing a link so I can listen to it.

    TIA

  50. So Morrison is “releasing” 100GL from the MDB to “grow fodder”.

    I’m guessing this is just totally trashing whatever is left of the integrity of the MDBP, and “environmental flows, what environmental flows? Gotta grow that fodder!”

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