Call of the board: South Australia

Yet more intricate detail on the May federal election result – this time from South Australia, where normality was restored after the Nick Xenophon interruption of 2016.

Welcome to another instalment of the now nearly complete Call of the Board series, a seat-by-seat review of the result of the May federal election. Now is the turn of South Australia, previous instalments having dealt with Sydney (here and here), regional New South Wales, Melbourne, regional Victoria, south-east Queensland, regional Queensland and Western Australia.

So far as the two-party swing was concerned, South Australia was largely a microcosm of the national result, with the Coalition picking up a swing of 1.6% (compared with 1.2% nationally) and no seats changing hands. Similarly, Labor did particularly badly in the regions, suffering big swings in Barker and Grey, compared with a highly consistent pattern of small swings in the metropolitan area. Labor won the statewide two-party preferred vote, as they have done at four out of the past five elections, albeit by a modest margin of 50.7-49.3.

As in previous recent instalments, I offer the following image with colour coding of swings at booth level. Compared with other metropolitan capitals, the divide between Labor swings in inner urban areas and Liberal swings further afield is somewhat less clear here, although the Labor swings are a fairly good proxy for general affluence. This would be even more apparent if the map extended further afield to encompass the Adelaide Hills areas covered by Mayo, where, as noted below, the tide seems to be running against the Liberals, and not just in comparison with Rebekha Sharkie.

On the primary vote, comparisons with 2016 are complicated by the Nick Xenophon factor. The Nick Xenophon Team scored 21.3% statewide in 2016, but its Centre Alliance successor fielded candidates only in the non-metropolitan seats of Mayo, Barker and Grey. Rebekha Sharkie was comfortably re-elected in Mayo, but the party’s vote was slashed in Barker and Grey. Primary votes elsewhere followed similar patterns – to save myself repetition in the seat-by-seat account below, the Xenophon absence left between 16.7% and 20.0% up for grabs in Kingston, Makin, Spence and Sturt, which resulted in primary vote gains of 5.1% to 6.2% for the Liberals, 5.2% to 6.6% for Labor and 2.6% to 3.9% for the Greens.

The other factor worth noting in preliminaries is a redistribution that resulted in the abolition of a seat, part of a trend that has reduced the state’s representation from 13 to 10 since 1990. This caused Port Adelaide to be rolled into Hindmarsh, creating one safe Labor seat out of what were formerly one safe Labor and one marginal seat. The eastern parts of Port Adelaide and Hindmarsh were transferred to Adelaide, setting the seal on a seat that has grown increasingly strong for Labor since the Howard years, while the Glenelg end of Hindmarsh went to Boothby, without changing its complexion as a marginal Liberal seat.

The table below compares two-party results with corresponding totals I have derived from Senate ballot papers, the idea being that this gives some sort of idea as to how results may have been affected by candidate and incumbency factors (two-party results for Labor are shown). This shows a clear pattern of Labor doing better in the House than the Senate in the seats than they hold, whereas there is little distinction in Liberal-held seats. My guess would be that there is a general tendency for Labor to score better in the House and the Senate overall, which is boosted further by sitting member effects in Labor-held seats, while being cancelled out by those in Liberal-held seats. Taking that into account, it would seem Labor’s sitting member advantages were relatively weak in Adelaide and Hindmarsh, which stands to reason given the disturbance of the redistribution.

On with the show:

Adelaide (Labor 8.2%; 0.1% swing to Liberal): The Liberal swing in this now safe Labor seat was below the statewide par despite the disappearance of Kate Ellis’s personal vote. In this it reflected the national inner urban trend, and also the long term form of a seat that has drifted from the Liberals’ reach since Ellis gained it in 2004. However, a divide was evident between a Liberal swing at the northern end and a Labor swing in the south, for reasons not immediately obvious. It may be thought to reflect the demographic character of the respective Enfield and Unley ends of the seat, but this doesn’t explain why the Liberals gained in Prospect immediatley north of the city, an area that would seem to refect the inner urban mould. Nor was there any particularly evident effect from the redistribution, which added to the west of the electorate parts of Hindmarsh, formerly held by Adelaide’s new member, Steve Georganas. The Centre Alliance registered a relatively weak 13.7% here in 2016 – the Greens did particularly well in their absence, lifting from 10.0% to 15.7%, although they are still a long way off being competitive.

Barker (Liberal 18.9%; 5.1% swing to Liberal): The Barossa Valley swung to Labor, but the rest of this seat followed the script of regional Australia in going strongly enough to the Liberals to substantially increase Tony Pasin’s already safe margin. A majority of the Centre Alliance collapse (from 27.6% to 2.9%) ended up with the Coalition, although the United Australia Party recorded an above average 5.9%, while the Labor primary vote made a weak gain of 4.7%.

Boothby (Liberal 1.4%; 1.3% swing to Labor): Labor once again failed to realise hopes of reeling in this southern Adelaide seat, despite it reflecting the national trend of affluent suburbia in recording a 1.3% Labor swing that overwhelmed whatever sophomore advantage may have accrued to Liberal member Nicolle Flint. The absence of the Centre Alliance left 18.5% of the vote up for grabs, and the Liberal, Labor and Greens primary votes were respectively up 3.5%, 7.7% and 3.8%.

Grey (Liberal 13.3%; 5.6% swing to Liberal): Another big regional swing to the Liberals, in this case to the advantage of Rowan Ramsey, who came within 2% of losing to the Nick Xenophon Team’s Andrea Broadfoot in 2016. Broadfoot ran again for the Centre Alliance this time and was down from 27.7% to 5.1%, of which a fair bit was accounted for by the entry of One Nation and the United Australia Party, a further fair bit went to the Liberals, while the Labor primary vote hardly budged.

Hindmarsh (Labor 6.5%; 1.9% swing to Liberal): The Liberals recorded a swing perfectly in line with the statewide result in a seat that is effectively a merger of the safe Labor seat of Port Adelaide, whose member Mark Butler now takes the reins in Hindmarsh, and what was previously the highly marginal seat of Hindmarsh, which extended into more Liberal-friendly territory further to the south. The income effect took on a very particular manifestation here in that the booths along the coast swung to Labor while those further inland tended to go the other way. With the Nick Xenophon Team taking its 17.0% vote into retirement, each of the main parties made roughly comparable gains on the primary vote.

Kingston (Labor 11.9%; 1.6% swing to Liberal): For the most part, this once marginal but now safe Labor seat followed the national outer urban trend in swinging to the Liberals, though not be nearly enough to cause serious concern for Labor member Amanda Rishworth. However, separate consideration is demanded of the northern end of the electorate, which is notably more affluent, particularly in comparison with the central part around Morphett Vale. This northern end consists of two parts separated by the Happy Valley Reservoir — the coast at Hallett Cove, and Flagstaff Hill further inland, the latter gained in the redistribution. For whatever reason, the former area behaved as did the rest of the electorate, whereas the latter swung to Labor.

Makin (Labor 9.7%; 1.1% swing to Liberal): So far as the electorate in aggregate is concerned, everything just noted about Kingston equally applies to Makin, which remains secure for Labor member Tony Zappia. There was perhaps a slight tendency for the more affluent parts of the electorate (in the north-east around Golden Grove) to do better for Labor than the low income parts, but not much.

Mayo (Centre Alliance 5.1%; 2.2% swing to Centre Alliance): As the Nick Xenophon/Centre Alliance vote tanked elsewhere, Rebekha Sharkie had no trouble repeating her feat of the 2016 election, when she unseated Liberal member Jamie Briggs, and the July 2018 Section 44 by-election, when she accounted for the now twice-unsuccessful Liberal candidate, Georgina Downer. Downer trod water on the primary vote this time, but nonetheless won the primary vote as Labor recovered market share from Sharkie after a particularly poor showing at the by-election. Sharkie’s winning margin of 5.1% was slightly down on her 7.5% by-election win. The Sharkie factor obscured what may be an ongoing trend to Labor in the seat, with Downer winning the Liberal-versus-Labor vote by a very modest 2.5%. This partly reflected a 2% shift in the redistribution, but there was also a 0.7% swing to Labor that bucked the statewide trend.

Spence (Labor 14.1%; 3.0% swing to Liberal): As well as changing its name from Wakefield, the redistribution removed the rural territory that formerly leavened the Labor margin in a seat that now encompasses Adelaide’s low-rent north, up to and including Gawler. For those with a long enough memory, it more resembles the long lost seat of Bonython, a Labor stronghold through a history from 1955 to 2004, than Wakefield, which was a safe Liberal seat until Bonython’s abolition drew it into the suburbs. Consistent with the national trend of low-income and outer urban seats, Labor member Nick Champion emerged with a dent in his still considerable margin.

Sturt (Liberal 6.9%; 1.5% swing to Liberal): In the seat vacated upon Christopher Pyne’s retirement, swing results neatly reflected the distribution of income, favouring Labor at the northern end and Liberal in the south. Whatever the impact of the loss of Pyne’s personal vote, it didn’t stop Liberal debutante James Stevens scoring a primary vote majority and 1.5% two-party swing.

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.

498 comments on “Call of the board: South Australia”

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  1. lizzie @ #379 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 3:36 pm

    Are peeps by any chance translating “mining” as “coal mining”?

    No, but I think a few people here may be confusing thermal coal mining with metallurgical coal mining.

    The Adani coal mine is a thermal coal mine, and Albanese has said he will support it. But whenever he talks about coal mining, including in sprocket’s speech, he talks only about metallurgical coal.

    Albo may think Queenslanders are that dumb, but … oh, wait … 🙁

  2. C@tmomma @ #397 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 1:01 pm

    I see you’re ignoring the fact that, as recently as a couple of days ago, Anthony Albanese pledged to rectify the clusterstuffup of an NBN that the Coalition have bequeathed Australia.

    Why did you decide to do that?

    My comment was on the “we went in to the election in 2019 with a responsible and credible plan”. I merely pointed out that “making the best of what we have” isn’t much of a plan.

    I never mentioned what Labor has in store for 2022 and beyond because neither I nor you, nor anyone else has any idea of what the actual plan is. Pledging to rectify the clusterstuffup of the LNP version of the NBN is a little, no a lot, short of actual detail of how and what they’re going to do.

    Until there actually is some detail on it, no-one can say how good, bad or indifferent the “plan” is.

  4. “distanced himself from the decision.”

    At the time news surfaced of the first two men being brought to Australia, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, distanced himself from the decision, stating it was made when Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister. However, Guardian Australia revealed the national security committee of cabinet, of which Morrison was a member at the time, was briefed about all aspects of the refugee swap deal in later 2016, including regarding the Rwandan men.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/24/third-rwandan-rebel-reportedly-accepted-by-australia-in-us-refugee-swap-deal?CMP=share_btn_tw

  6. nathsay

    In the great Labor split of 1955, the “Shoppies”, as they are called, were expelled from the union movement for supporting the Catholic controlled Democratic Labor Party (DLP).

    For me the proof of the rottenness is that a small group of religious fanatics kept a grip on power ever after. Then using that power to push a religious agenda that would have been rejected by the vast majority of their members and indeed policy harmful to their members.

    Maybe that is why NSW Labor is so rotten ? Apparently their “Santa’s Little Helpers” remained within the party rather than split.

  7. Can highly recommend “Official Secrets”, a film based on Katherine Gun, a UK whistle blower. A strong performance by Keira Knightley and it poses a real moral question. How many of us would be prepared to go to such lengths?
    Very pertinent right now considering our current political masters.

  8. lizzie @ #379 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 3:36 pm

    Are peeps by any chance translating “mining” as “coal mining”?

    Sandgropers aren’t. Over the West mining =GOLD and Iron Ore.

  9. Clevah!

    @Perorationer
    3h
    In the 6 item express lane quietly fuming.
    Oblivious to the sign, a woman ahead of me slipped into the line pushing a cart piled high with groceries. Imagine my delight as the cashier beckoned the woman forward and asked sweetly, “So which six items would you like to buy?”

  10. lizzie
    It’s a lot more complicated than that. Pinker talks about a huge number of measures that humans are doing better on, and not just in capitalist countries. He is arguing that society has evolved due to enlightenment values. Capitalism is only one part of the puzzle. It’s a lot more than just life expectancy as well. I haven’t read Enlightenment Now but I read his Better Angels of our Nature.

  11. Di Natale should just pick up the phone and explain to Xi and Putin that they should reverse the gains from their current invasions of their neighbours and take part in the re-invigoration of Australian peace studies instead.

  12. Increasing life expectancy is misleading as humans have always had he ability to live a long time but the average has improved due to falling child mortality rates and less child birth related deaths.

    Progressive policies have little to do with improving life expectancy or the quality of life but it could be said that progressive ideas have contributed. Governments are usually good at helping to roll it out but it does that in conjunction with capital.

    Capitalism is simply the allocation of capital, it isn’t separate from government.

  13. Social mobility as a goal is basically just a defense of an unjust status quo. People who advocate social mobility are saying that the current obscene degree of inequality is okay as long as a small percentage of people in the lower classes are able to ascend to a higher class. They don’t see that the system itself – a system based on inequality and exploitation – is deeply flawed and has to be changed. The goal should be an economic order in which absolutely everybody has a decent standard of living, and in which there aren’t major differences between the living standards enjoyed by people in different percentiles of the income distribution.

  14. Nicholas
    It is possible to increase everyone’s living standards and social mobility can be a positive thing if done right.

  16. poroti @ #408 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 4:40 pm

    lizzie @ #379 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 3:36 pm

    Are peeps by any chance translating “mining” as “coal mining”?

    Sandgropers aren’t. Over the West mining =GOLD and Iron Ore.

    What do you call the miners who work at Collie? Carboniferous Deposit Extraction Specialists? Or just Coalgropers? 🙂

  17. Diog, Nicholas and MB

    At last! Comments that aren’t just concerned with (whispers) Greens/Labor.

    But I did find the review interesting, and not just because of life expectancy. The health of rural people in England contrasted with those in the industrial towns was referred to in the writings of Gertrude Jekyll. Now we can also reference the effects of coal on lungs here.

  18. poroti @ #413 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 4:38 pm

    nathsay

    In the great Labor split of 1955, the “Shoppies”, as they are called, were expelled from the union movement for supporting the Catholic controlled Democratic Labor Party (DLP).

    For me the proof of the rottenness is that a small group of religious fanatics kept a grip on power ever after. Then using that power to push a religious agenda that would have been rejected by the vast majority of their members and indeed policy harmful to their members.

    Maybe that is why NSW Labor is so rotten ? Apparently their “Santa’s Little Helpers” remained within the party rather than split.

    Oooookkkk, let me see, a Western Australian and a Victorian trying to sound authoritative about NSW Labor.

    It doesn’t get more ridiculous than this.

  19. Lizzie
    Governments showed their value in how they brought the excesses of the industrial revolution under control and slowly brought about real social policy reforms. In many ways the late Victorian era was both the best and worst of times when it came to political debate and policy making.

  20. Nicholas @ 5:01pm

    Completely agree. Albanese’s if I can do it so can you, aka pandering to the aspirational voter, is no different to Latham’s old and stale “ladder of opportunity”

    The ladder of opportunity is a catchphrase coined by former Australian Opposition Leader Mark Latham to describe the process of social advancement or the elevation to higher social classes of Australian citizens. … The ladder of opportunity was a phase to inspire middle class ‘aspirational’ Australian voters.

    Liberal lite.

  22. Ah yes, here it is. David Leonhardt of The New York Times, and may I just say a sober counter to the blather from the Socialist Lite Party in Australia, The Greens:

    …“A realignment in British politics may be in the making,” The Economist explains. A good chunk of the electorate in working-class towns like Grimsby have come to see the Labour Party as big-city elitists, rather than blue-collar allies.

    The Economist piece caught my eye partly because I’m reading a 2017 book called “Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government,” by two political scientists, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels. They argue (as Vox’s Sean Illing has summarized) that all politics is identity politics.

    Voters don’t tend to make decisions based on which party offers policies favorable to them but instead on which party is in tune with a big part of their social identities. And social identity can be related to class, race, religion and age, among other things. The key, for a political party, is persuading voters that we’re on your side.

    Left-leaning parties, like Labour in Britain and the Democrats in the United States, used to win elections in large part through class identity. They now struggle to do so, for a complicated mix of reasons — including both the parties’ own mistakes and a pattern of race-baiting by conservative parties.

    How can the left win again in places like Grimsby or, say, Ohio? It doesn’t yet have an answer. Full-throated leftism doesn’t seem to work, based on the Labour party’s current standing in the polls and on recent American political history. Nor does it work to call your opponents racist. And while it may help to offer a lot of worker-friendly policies, it’s not enough, as Achen and Bartels argue.

    Throughout much of the world, the left is still searching for an effective way to convey to the voters who often decide elections: We’re on your side. It’s a hard problem to solve, I recognize. But the payoff for doing so would be very large.

  23. Peg
    It is not Liberal lite. If people assume workers get up in the morning and go to work because they like their boss and like work then that is missing the point of why workers go to work and while many of them might like their line of work but if it paid zero then most would not turn up. If aspiration is a bad thing then close down all the universities because most people attending university are doing so with their career in mind. Most things people do is for some kind of benefit or aspiration. It is the underlying driver that allowed humans to leave the plains of Africa all those years ago and to develop language and everything else since.

  24. Victorian Liberals

    https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/warring-liberals-fail-to-reach-truce-in-victorian-preselections-stoush-20191124-p53dll.html

    Weekend peace talks between Victorian Liberal federal MPs and their party’s administration have failed to produce a truce in their bitter row.

    Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and other MPs and Senators met with members of the party’s Administrative Committee on Saturday in an effort to dissuade them from opening Victorian seats for preselections in January, up to two-and-half years out from a national election.
    :::
    With the committee nearly evenly split on the question, Mr Frydenberg’s camp needs only to convince one member to change their vote to have the preselections postponed.

  25. Full-throated leftism doesn’t seem to work, based on the Labour party’s current standing in the polls and on recent American political history.

    And ditto for Australian Labor circa 2019 federal election.

  26. MB

    What about the non-workers?

    Bandying about “Working Australians” is not inclusive rhetoric. Both major parties are guilty of doing this, in the past and currently.

    One manifestation, is that under successive Coalition and Labor governments, there has been no real increase to Newstart for 25 years.

  27. Labor went to the 2019 election with policies and agenda espousing ”full-throated leftism”?

    What “full-throated leftism” would that be?

  30. The reason why I think leftism doesn’t work electorally is because it involves taking from people to then be spent on others.

    I think if the left focused less on taxing people and more on helping people then they would be more successful because many of the problems people pick on with government relate to how government operates which doesn’t relate to its budget so when the left says lets raise tax and spend more it is basically saying nothing will change except we (the government) will take your things.

    Machiavelli wrote about this in the Prince.

  31. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/daniel-andrews-eyes-private-investors-to-fund-suburban-rail-link-20191124-p53dkd.html

    Smaller trains and services so frequent you won’t need a timetable is what Premier Daniel Andrews is promising for the new Suburban Rail Loop – but the total cost is still unclear and the project will rely heavily on private investment.

    The new 90-kilometre rail ring is expected to have up to 12 new stations, with twin tunnels connecting every major rail line from the Frankston line to the Werribee line through Melbourne’s middle suburbs.
    :::
    In September, a group of transport groups, councils and planning academics urged the Andrews government to prioritise a rail tunnel connecting Melbourne’s north and west suburbs, the Melbourne Metro 2 project, over the Suburban Rail Loop.

    ——-

    https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/second-cross-city-tunnel-trumps-suburban-rail-loop-experts-20190930-p52wbt.html

    But three months before last year’s state election, Premier Daniel Andrews revealed the more ambitious $50 billion “Suburban Rail Loop”.

    A hit with voters, the project was conceived in secret within an agency called Development Victoria. The state’s transport bureaucracy knew nothing of the plan until moments before Mr Andrews posted about it on Facebook.

  33. Peg
    Aspiration can apply to the unemployed with only a small part of the unemployed population having no aspiration, and the disabled show time and again that when given the opportunity they can be just as driven as any able bodied person can be and you can raise newstart and if we were honest about today’s labour market then we would be raising it to help the unemployed do the things expected in today’s labour market.

  35. I really cannot fathom why the LNP continues to torture (yes, torture) the unemployed, the disabled, the homeless, asylum seekers, etc, when a little kindness would be so easy and need not use up all their precious surplus. The only reason I can think of is that they have won government without moving an inch and are confident that they will continue to gain support.

    Remember Howard with his “relaxed and comfortable”? It was a good line and I think many voters need a little warmth right now.

  42. lizzie
    Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 6:10 pm
    Comment #435

    I really cannot fathom why the LNP continues to torture (yes, torture) the unemployed, the disabled, the homeless, asylum seekers, etc, when a little kindness would be so easy ……

    The reason they persist with their bastardry is because they can.

    I often ponder this question purely on the question of whether being either friendly or nasty to strangers or chance acquaintances is healthier. I don’t have any answer apart from the belief that kindness is better for me than the alternative. Many others think and act differently.

    The Mayo Clinic describes psychopathy as a personality disorder where, the person “typically has no regard for right and wrong. They may often violate the law and the rights of others.” Often, psychopaths have little empathy, antisocial behavior and lack inhibitions.

    Exhaustion setting in after a day of Cricket and motor racing.

    Goodnight all. Sweet dreams. 📺💤

  43. BBC getting into trouble for doctoring footage of Johnston by removing laughter and jeers, and replacing them with applause. This is not the first time that they have pulled such tricks attempt to advantage the Conservatives.

    Question is, would the ABC do similar things over here?

  46. “I really cannot fathom why the LNP continues to torture (yes, torture) the unemployed, the disabled, the homeless, asylum seekers, etc, when a little kindness would be so easy ……”

    These are powerless outgroups who apparently have minimal impact on election outcomes*. They lack the resources to fight back. They don’t have powerful allies. And the Right doesn’t do kindness (except to donors and selected demographics).

    (* how do I know? Well, they wouldn’t treat that way anyone who’s vote they actually though mattered)

  47. Anyone who still believes that, by telling her/him/it to “Go and get fucked”, I single-handedly managed to chase away the hideous troll known as “Pegasus”, must have rocks in their head.

    I refer particularly to William Bowe’s weasel words on the subject. C@tmomna’s completely false attempt at setting up an instant sisterhood with the revolting “Pegasus” is not far behind WB in naiveity.

  48. BB, I don’t particularly remember what I said or why you think this has anything to do with me, or understand why you’re choosing to harp on about this right now. However, if you were genuinely the aggrieved party in this that you imagine yourself to be, you wouldn’t have to be so deceitful about what it was that you actually said.

  49. Reds under the Liberals beds:

    https://www.theage.com.au/national/china-tried-to-plant-its-candidate-in-federal-parliament-authorities-believe-20191122-p53d9x.html

    Liberal party records show that from 2015 until his death, Mr Zhao was a Liberal Party member in the federal electorate of Chisholm, which was won by Liberal MP Gladys Liu in the May Federal election, and which has a large Chinese-Australian vote.

    “He was a paid-up member, which means he was likely active in his branch and division,” Mr Hastie told The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes. “Nick himself I think was a perfect target for cultivation – a guy who was a bit of a high-roller in Melbourne, living beyond his means, someone who was vulnerable to a foreign state intelligence service cultivating.”

    The intensely private entrepreneur lived in the upmarket south-eastern suburb of Glen Iris with his wife and their daughter. From at least 2016 Mr Zhao faced financial problems and was hiding secrets from friends and relatives.

    Court records show that in 2017 Mr Zhao was charged with obtaining financial advantage by deception over accusations he had fraudulently obtained loans to buy luxury vehicles. In 2018, administrators began to pursue him over the collapse of his Brighton car dealership, and by early 2019, Mr Zhao had fallen out with his wife and owed money to shadowy Chinese investors.

    “He was a very ambitious young guy who got ahead of himself,” said Bill McLoy, who managed Mr Zhao’s car dealership in Ringwood until 2015. Another business associate, Yvan Lieutier, managed two dealerships for Mr Zhao until 2017 and described him as “young and ambitious … he wanted to make money quick”.

    In early 2019, Mr Zhao told two associates that he’d revealed to ASIO how Mr Chen, whose company is also based in Melbourne, had offered to set him up in a new business with a million-dollar capital injection. In return, Mr Zhao said Mr Chen wanted him to run for a seat in Australia’s parliament in the electorate of Chisholm.

  50. These are powerless outgroups who apparently have minimal impact on election outcomes*. They lack the resources to fight back. They don’t have powerful allies. And the Right doesn’t do kindness (except to donors and selected demographics).

    This is correct, but it’s not even really about a lack of kindness. It’s a deliberate part of the strategy (which to me seems worse than an empathy deficit). See the analysis that cat posted above:

    Voters don’t tend to make decisions based on which party offers policies favorable to them but instead on which party is in tune with a big part of their social identities. And social identity can be related to class, race, religion and age, among other things. The key, for a political party, is persuading voters that we’re on your side.

    To be “on your side” the LNP marks out all these groups that are “others” and hence “not on your side”. Demonize, marginalize, spin … huzzah the LNP are “on your side” and keeping those bludgers or muslims, or protesters, or vegans, or whomever down, just like you think they should.

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