The public release of Craig Emerson and Jay Weatherill’s report into Labor’s federal election campaign has inspired a run of commentary about the way ahead for the party after its third successive defeat, to which nothing need be added here. From the perspective of this website, the following details are of specific interest:
• Labor’s own efforts to use area-based regression modelling to identify demographic characteristics associated with swings against Labor identifies five problem areas: voters aged 25-34 in outer urban or regional areas; Christians; coal mining communities; Chinese Australians; and the state of Queensland. The variable that best explained swings in favour of Labor was higher education. However, as has been discussed here previously, this sort of analysis is prey to the ecological fallacy. On this basis, I am particularly dubious about the report’s suggestion that Labor did not lose votes from beneficiaries of franking credits and negative gearing, based on the fact that affluent areas swung to Labor. There is perhaps more to the corresponding assertion that the Liberals were able to persuade low-income non-beneficiaries that Labor’s policies would “crash the economy and risk their jobs”.
• Among Labor’s campaign research tools was a multi-level regression and post-stratification analysis, such as YouGov used with notable success to predict seat outcomes at the 2017 election in the UK. Presumably the results were less spectacular on this occasion, as the report says it is “arguable that this simply added another data point to a messy picture”. The tracking polling conducted for Labor by YouGov showed a favourable swing of between 0.5% and 1.5% for most of the campaign, and finally proved about three points off the mark. YouGov suggested to Labor the problem may have been in its use of respondents’ reported vote at the 2016 election as a weighting factor, but the error was in line with that of the published polling, which to the best of my knowledge isn’t typically weighted for past vote in Australia.
• An analysis of Clive Palmer’s advertising found that 40% was expressly anti-Labor in the hectic final week, compared with only 10% in the earlier part of the campaign. The report notes that the Palmer onslaught caused Labor’s “share of voice” out of the sum of all campaign advertising fell from around 40% in 2016 to 25%, and fell as low as 10% in “some regional markets such as Townsville and Rockhampton”, which respectively delivered disastrous results for Labor in the seats of Herbert and Capricornia.
• It is noted that the gap between Labor’s House and Senate votes, which has progressively swollen from 1% to 4.6% since 1990, is most pronounced in areas where Labor is particularly strong.
Other news:
• The challenge against the election results in Chisholm and Kooyong has been heard in the Federal Court this week. The highlight of proceedings has been an admission from Simon Frost, acting director of the Liberal Party in Victoria at the time of the election, that the polling booth advertising at the centre of the dispute was “intended to convey the impression” that they were Australian Electoral Commission signage. The Australian Electoral Commission has weighed in against the challenge with surprising vehemence, telling the court that voters clearly understood that anything importuning for a particular party would not be its own work.
• The ABC reports there is a move in the Tasmanian Liberal Party to drop Eric Abetz from his accustomed position at the top of the Senate ticket at the next election to make way for rising youngester Jonathan Duniam. The Liberals won four seats at the 2016 double dissolution, which initially resulted in six-year terms being granted to Eric Abetz and Stephen Parry, and three-year terms to Duniam and David Bushby. However, the recount that followed the dual disqualifications of Jacqui Lambie and Stephen Parry in November 2017 resulted in the party gaining three rather than two six-year terms, leaving one each for Abetz, Duniam and Bushby. Bushby resigned in January and was replaced by his sister, Wendy Askew, who appears likely only to secure third place on the ticket, which has not been a winning proposition for the Liberals at a half-Senate election since 2004.
• Andrew Clennell of The Australian ($) reports that Jim Molan is likely to win a Liberal preselection vote on Saturday to fill Arthur Sinodinos’s New South Wales Senate vacancy. The decisive factor would appear to be support from Scott Morrison and centre right faction powerbroker Alex Hawke, overcoming lingering hostility towards Molan over his campaign to win re-election by exhorting Liberal supporters to vote for him below the line, in defiance of a party ticket that had placed him in the unwinnable fourth position. He is nonetheless facing determined opposition from Richard Shields, Woollahra deputy mayor and Insurance Council of Australia executive, who was runner-up to Dave Sharma in the party’s hotly contested preselection for Wentworth last year.
Boerwar:
That’s why the Spivs flock together with the Wankers – the Wankers are by definition stupid but provide cover for at least some of the Spivs—such as the aptly named Daniel Spivey—who are smart…
Spivs 1 : Wankers nil – and the Wankers are lucky to get nil…
Bushfire heading towards Blackhead on the Mid North Coast NSW on Saturday night. Photo credit Martin Von Stoll.
Guytaur
It really is a disgrace. I am actually shocked by the recklessness of the fed and state nsw libs.
Fancy cutting funding as well!
NSW State Labor has called for NSW state parliament to be suspended this week so that pollies can be with the communities they represent.
Dozens of schools closed tomorrow.
Victoria
Inevitable. Not shocking to me. Ideology over science and the expert advice that comes with it.
Thats ignoring the cuts to the CSIRO to restrict reporting data on actual effects of climate change for the world.
Edit: It’s why I believed Morrison when he said he had the same values as Trump
Vic:
No surprise Taylor didn’t respond to any of the correspondence. Wasn’t that around the time he was in the hot seat over the MDB and water buybacks?
EGT
haha.
There is no law that says that wankers have to be clever.
Desi @ #1697 Sunday, November 10th, 2019 – 4:24 pm
Yes, a new low.
spr
Great pic. As a photographer I have been observing the imaging with much interest.
I’m cringing.
Mike Carlton
@MikeCarlton01
Won’t be long.
Gee, you think?
No one said any such thing.
The Burning Bush is good, is it not?
Let us fall upon our knees and give thanks to the Lord, the Fossil Profiteers and the Coalition for their bounty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_bush#Biblical_narrative
BW, yes – the image of a boy staring at the Apocalypse
On Blackhead beach of all places, I have relatives up there and have visited many time. My brother-in-law had to take his horses down to the beach, and the roads out were cut off. Normally the vegetation up there is lush and wet, sub tropical rainforest.
The Muslim community sent hay and water to a drought area in NSW. Do you think Hillsong and its friends might risk a million or two to help the farmers whose fences are all burnt out? (Please form a queue behind Morrison.)
P1
Despite my saying explicitly that I am opposed to it you say that I am a proponent, a sort of malicious illogicality!
As I pointed out I am simply saying what the evidence suggests is the Indian government’s position on it. The evidence is that they do indeed place less value per-life on an Indian life than the Australian government places pre-life on Australian lives. The same disproportionate ration is evident in all sorts of other areas – for example it is well known that the Australian media regards one Australian death in Indonesia as much more important that 1000 Indonesian deaths.
What are you proposing to do about the Indian government’s evident “attitude problem”? Should we invade to give them what-for and teach them what’s-what? Bucephalus might be in favour of it in the spirit of derring-do and to honour the ghost of Gunga Din (though who knows which side he’ll take as these ‘conservatives’ are so unpredictable)
Some State Governments and Businesses are bypassing the government’s anti-China rhetoric and doing trade deals with China.
“Former WA Liberal premier Colin Barnett said if he was Prime Minister Scott Morrison, he would have shut Mr Dutton down.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-10/the-iron-ties-that-bind-australia-states-to-china/11664730?WT.ac=statenews_act
lizziesays:
Sunday, November 10, 2019 at 4:44 pm
Maybe if it was a loan.
Fess
Incompetence and a flagrant disregard. I’m surprised that the people of NSW aren’t out with pitchforks baying for the heads of these pollies.
The funding cuts are in of itself inexcusable
There have been some mutterings about fires coming out of national parks over the past couple of days. But not quite so much muttering about fires going into national parks.
After the Warrumbungles fires there was a lot of urgings from rural communities that the state government be sued for allowing fires out of national parks.
This died a natural death after the various industries started to understand the number of fires that started on farms OR were allowed to travel from one farm to another. Lawyer’s picnic.
Further to the RFS specific resource cuts decision, the state government has been cutting national parks staff for years. This has resulted in what might reasonably be regarded as yet another structural deficit in rural and regional fire fighting resources.
lizzie:
I’m sure the Hillsong mob believe charity begins at home. 😀
Might by like Jan 94 in Sydney when all the major national parks were on fire.
Part if UTS at Lindfield was even under threat.
David Rowe..
Vic:
Yes I’m sure once the emergency dissipates there will be some uncomfortable questions levelled at the NSW govt. And the feds need to have hard questions asked of it too, having mismanaged the MDB and the drought.
There was a very large court case arising out of the Canberra bushfires in 2003 which included New South Wales being sued mainly by insurers seeking to recover monies which they had to pay under their policies.
The damage to the Mount Stromlo facility gave rise to a High Court case
spr
I had management, ethical and potential criminal liability for a situation in which lives and property were at risk in wild fires. During one fire I was in a position of knowing that some of my responsibilities were abandoning property and fleeing for their lives to a nearby beach and that others were involved in a desperate battle.
The large investment in training, practice call outs, hazard reduction, capital resources, cooperation with other resource centres sort of paid off, but it is one of the reasons I retired. No-one who worked for over four decades or so had been killed and it became very clear to me that it was not a risk that I was prepared to live with any longer.
Shellbell
The new fire categorisation scheme came in 2009.
Sydney has never had the top CATASTROPHIC before
sprocket_
That “cartoon” brought tears to my eyes because it hit exactly the right note.
Sprocket
I saw that.
Jan 94 is the worst I have seen in Sydney. A woman perished in her home off the edge of Lane Cove National Park
So bad it gave rise to the charity cricket game in which the female player got Brian Lara out.
Retired Army major general Jim Molan is set to return to Federal Parliament after being chosen to fill the spot vacated by Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos.
_____
Jim’s head won’t fit through the Senate doors!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Eastern_seaboard_fires
‘shellbell says:
Sunday, November 10, 2019 at 4:53 pm
There was a very large court case arising out of the Canberra bushfires in 2003 which included New South Wales being sued mainly by insurers seeking to recover monies which they had to pay under their policies.
The damage to the Mount Stromlo facility gave rise to a High Court case’
I was very grumpy about a number of things. The first is that the fire was already burning well by, I seem to recall, Wednesday which is when I heard from the authorities over the radio that there was no cause for concern. I remember saying to OH, ‘Bullshit. With the right winds that fire is going to reach Canberra.
The other grumpiness was, in retrospect, petty, albeit a useful learning experience.
In the immediate aftermath of the fire there was a huge community response with lots of donations for the victims. Being entirely practical, we donated a couple of boxes of good quality wine to friends who had lost the works.
In the years afterwards the victims seemed to me to be querulous and ungrateful.
The lawsuits cost ACT taxpayers a motsa. Many of the homes burned down had had zero bushfire preparation. Blah, blah, blah. They were being stoked up by their lawyers, I believe.
But more than that, many of them – I know many of them still – were suffering from PTSD.
Knowing quite a few survivors from many fires over the years, I believe that PTSD is one of the very heavy impacts, and probably least reported, outcomes of bushfires.
Yep, Jan ‘94 was very hot, very windy
The embers were easily clearing the George’s River and spotting on the opposite banks.
It did give us this unforgettable moment..
https://youtu.be/dwQS8BwNxz0
shellbell
Thanks for the links. Hobart should be in there somewhere as well, I believe.
I’ve always thought the strangest bushfires in recent history were those around and through the west of the Barossa which burnt out parts of my sister-in-law’s parents in law property in Freeling in November 2015.
There were few trees to start with just open country burning.
I’m pretty sure that the mainstream churches are giving much more than ‘thoughts and prayers’ to the victims of the drought and bushfires. That would apply also to non-christian religions, service clubs, the CWA etc.
A lot of their members have been directly impacted, along with their neighbours.
Fess
Yes indeed
Elizabeth Marr
@JmarrMarr
shellbell
Just north of where Yabba was fighting the 2003 Canberra fires, was a large open grassland paddock. It had been burned out the previous year. It had virtually no fuel on it because it was a hot dry growing season. It would have burned at about the same time the main firestorm hit the Canberra burbs where Yabba was.
Well after the fires I was talking to a firey who was near the paddock at the time and he said that he and his crew were gobsmacked at how much fire there was, and at how very, very fast it travelled across what was virtually a bare paddock. He said it was as if the air was on fire.
Sorry boss. 🙂
Barty just lost, two set to zip.
How very unpatrioticment.
Barty just lost.
It’s not our week, is it.
BW not that it changes the result but Barty won the first set.
Next Tuesday’s forecast #weatheronPB
He’s not doing much for Oz’s reputation is he.
C@tmomma:
You are correct. However Mercantilists and Rentiers are almost completely aligned in practice, so I didn’t think it necessary (although it is interesting to look at the differing ratios of Spivs and Wankers in these two side of the same coin)
They are also against “elite” science, education and expertise, and feel that they are entitled to their own facts as well as their own opinions, but I left that out too, because they-at least the Spivs faction-are up front and proud against those things rather than claiming to support them.
dwh
My bad! Apologies to the wonderful Ms Barty.
Frednk:
(it’s because) Wankers gonna Wank
lizzie
He is enhancing the reputation Australia is starting to gain around the world.
With foreign aid also having been cut, Bangladesh may soon also be calling for an emergency shipment of our thoughts and prayers.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-10/bangladeshis-india-hunker-down-storm-shelters-as-cyclone-bulbul/11690122
Sprocket that David Rowe cartoon is brutally accurate.