In the wake of Craig Emerson and Jay Weatherill’s federal electoral post-mortem for Labor, two post-election reviews have emerged from the Liberal Party, with very different tales to tell – one from the May 2019 federal triumph, the other from the November 2018 Victorian state disaster.
The first of these was conducted by Arthur Sinodinos and Steven Joyce, the latter being a former cabinet minister and campaign director for the conservative National Party in New Zealand. It seems we only get to see the executive summary and recommendations, the general tenor of which is that, while all concerned are to be congratulated on a job well done, the party benefited from a “poor Labor Party campaign” and shouldn’t get too cocky. Points of interest:
• It would seem the notion of introducing optional preferential voting has caught the fancy of some in the party. The report recommends the party “undertake analytical work to determine the opportunities and risks” – presumably with respect to itself – “before making any decision to request such a change”.
• Perhaps relatedly, the report says the party should work closer with the Nationals to avoid three-cornered contests. These may have handicapped the party in Gilmore, the one seat it lost to Labor in New South Wales outside Victoria.
• The report comes out for voter identification at the polling booth, a dubious notion that nonetheless did no real harm when it briefly operated in Queensland in 2015, and electronic certified lists of voters, which make a lot more sense.
• It is further felt that the parliament might want to look at cutting the pre-poll voting period from three weeks to two, but should keep its hands off the parties’ practice of mailing out postal vote applications. Parliament should also do something about “boorish behaviour around polling booths”, like “limiting the presence of volunteers to those linked with a particular candidate”.
• Hints are offered that Liberals’ pollsters served up dud results from “inner city metropolitan seats”. This probably means Reid in Sydney and Chisholm in Melbourne, both of which went better than they expected, and perhaps reflects difficulties polling the Chinese community. It is further suggested that the party’s polling program should expand from 20 seats to 25.
• Ten to twelve months is about the right length of time out from the election to preselect marginal seat candidates, and safe Labor seats can wait until six months out. This is at odds with the Victorian party’s recent decision to get promptly down to business, even ahead of a looming redistribution, which has been a source of friction between the state and federal party.
• After six of the party’s candidates fell by the wayside during the campaign, largely on account of social media indiscretions (one of which may have cost the Liberals the Tasmanian seat of Lyons), it is suggested that more careful vetting processes might be in order.
The Victorian inquiry was conducted by former state and federal party director Tony Nutt, and is available in apparently unexpurgated form. Notably:
• The party’s tough-on-crime campaign theme, turbo-charged by media reportage of an African gangs crisis, failed to land. Too many saw it as “a political tactic rather than an authentic problem to be solved by initiatives that would help make their neighbourhoods safer”. As if to show that you can’t always believe Peter Dutton, post-election research found the issue influenced the vote of only 6% of respondents, “and then not necessarily to our advantage”.
• As it became evident during the campaign that they were in trouble, the party’s research found the main problem was “a complete lack of knowledge about Matthew Guy, his team and their plans for Victoria if elected”. To the extent that Guy was recognised at all, it was usually on account of “lobster with a mobster”.
• Guy’s poor name recognition made it all the worse that attention was focused on personalities in federal politics, two months after the demise of Malcolm Turnbull. Post-election research found “30% of voters in Victorian electorates that were lost to Labor on the 24th November stated that they could not vote for the Liberal Party because of the removal of Malcolm Turnbull”.
• Amid a flurry of jabs at the Andrews government, for indiscretions said to make the Liberal defeat all the more intolerable, it is occasionally acknowledged tacitly that the government had not made itself an easy target. Voters were said to have been less concerned about “the Red Shirts affair for instance” than “more relevant, personal and compelling factors like delivery of local infrastructure”.
• The report features an exhausting list of recommendations, updated from David Kemp’s similar report in 2015, the first of which is that the party needs to get to work early on a “proper market research-based core strategy”. This reflects the Emerson and Weatherill report, which identified the main problem with the Labor campaign as a “weak strategy”.
• A set of recommendations headed “booth management” complains electoral commissions don’t act when Labor and union campaigners bully their volunteers.
• Without naming names, the report weights in against factional operators and journalists who “see themselves more as players and influencers than as traditional reporters”.
• The report is cagey about i360, described in The Age as “a controversial American voter data machine the party used in recent state elections in Victoria and South Australia”. It was reported to have been abandoned in April “amid a botched rollout and fears sensitive voter information was at risk”, but the report says only that it is in suspension, and recommends a “thorough review”.
• Other recommendations are that the party should write more lists, hold more meetings and find better candidates, and that its shadow ministers should pull their fingers out.
mikehilliard @ #606 Wednesday, December 4th, 2019 – 11:59 am
It’s vengeance politics, and the price is other humans’ misery. How did it ever come to this. We’re frogs in boiling water.
Scott Ludlam on twitter: https://twitter.com/Scottludlam/status/1202023948608688131
anytime you think the bottomless cruelty of refugee politics in this place can’t get any worse, it always does
Decades of demonising asylum seekers and refugees as ‘undeserving’, as ‘queue jumpers’, as ‘illegals’ will do it.
‘Not Sure says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 1:04 pm
Boerwar says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 11:26 am
…”In the scheme of things the Medevac stuff is about nothing real.
It won’t impact the tens of thousands of illegal overstayers/fly in refugees applicants.
It won’t cause a nanosecond’s loss of sleep for a single Indonesian people smuggler.
At most it will delay the medical treatment for Australians on waiting lists”…
Did the legislation, as it stood, have a positive impact on the fundamental human rights of a significant cohort of the Australian government’s political prisoners?’
You precisely miss the point. I am sure you know why. For example:
Where is the mass political and social media outrage over Indigenous youth suicides?
Where is the mass political uproar and social media outrage over Indigenous deaths in custody?
Both the latter, statistically, far, far outnumber those of people on Manus and Nauru. But no….
No surprise re Lambie’s vote.
The Guardian
“She says she cannot allow the border protection system to unravel again and have people drown.”
That line was run here for years here and everywhere.
As I opined the other day, she will flip and vote for the Coalition’s anti-union bill.
‘citizen says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 12:49 pm
From NZ:
A climate change “lens” will now be applied to all major decision made by the government, New Zealand’s climate change minister has said, as floods and bushfires wreck havoc around the country in the first week of summer.’
Not a problem. A third of NZ’s CO2 emissions equivalent come from cattle and sheep. One wonders when they will get around to killing them off.
Good to see an old Howard ploy back in action. In Afghanistan back in the day there was a helpful sign at the Aus consulate directing people to, from memory, the consulate in Bangkok.
——————————————-
Iraqi interpreters who served beside Australians say they’re prevented from applying for visas
Visa applications must be lodged at an Australian overseas mission, but Australia’s embassy in Baghdad does not accept visa applications.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/04/iraqi-interpreters-who-served-beside-australians-say-theyre-prevented-from-applying-for-visas
poroti
That is sordid stuff, IMO.
Boerwar
Sordid but seemingly SOP. What a lovely bunch we are.
Anti-union bill:
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/porter-opens-door-to-talks-with-lambie-hanson-on-union-busting-bill-20191203-p53gbu.html
Sydney blanketed in smoke again, strange yellow red sunlight.
If anyone needed proof there is a climate crisis then it’s right here in your home town ScuMo.
BW
Same cause.
Secrecy to conceal a lack of empathy caused by demonisation of the other.
Holding politicians from all parties accountable is a start.
SBS with its Indigenous channel is worth its weight in gold for this purpose.
It’s all linked. It’s the same people being empowered to do the cruelty.
Sydney smoke update:
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR713.loop.shtml
The plumes from the fires near Warragamba are blowing over the southern suburbs and the city. It’s so thick there are no shadows.
What a week for getting over sinus surgery, eh? Poor Mrs Murray having to put up with grumpy me.
Not ‘we’. I voted against that sort of racist rubbish. Nor did I spend six years Killing Bill, wedging Labor and generally doing cunning stunts, returning 80% of preferences, and de facto giving Morrison the job.
DandyM
Surely even the sceptics must be getting the sense that something is wrong. In the 35 years I’ve lived in Sydney I’ve never seen the smoke haze be so prolonged.
BW
No you just keep using the LNP talking points labelling the Greens extreme.
The ones who have argued for empathy the most. No matter what you think of their tactics.
Lambie is playing to her base and will be re-elected.
mikehilliard
Scrott will be cheering his arse off. Such a sight would give him hope that the End of Days his church thinks is nearly upon us is HERE. He’ll have his toothbrush and clean undies packed ready to be ‘Raptured’ away .
Who voted to support the implementation and continuation of the offshore detention regime? Out of sight, out of mind. Remain faceless and dehumanise.
That’s how it has come to this.
rhwombat:
[‘Adrenalin rarely works for idiopathic angioedema in anybody, but we try it anyway if aireays are involved because nothing else works either. Antihistamines & corticosteroids (like prednisone) work quite slowly (minutes-hours), so, while they may terminate a continuing response, they are only really of use in blunting the diffuse capillary leak that underlies the angioedema. Immune responses are as complex and unpredictable as neural systems, so most rationales in immunology are little short of well-informed witchcraft.’]
Thanks for your professional perspective. For me, a large dose of antihistamine coupled with prednisone usually works, though on several occasions I’ve been given adrenalin in A & E. I get the impression that treating angioedema is nothing much more than a hit and miss affair, as you suggest.
BW
WTF!!!!!!!!!
ALP Sent them off shore!!! blood is on their hands as much as Libs, wouldn’t have to have a medivac bill if there was no off shore detention!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry BW cant erase history that easily, labor tried the play on hate card too, its just that the Libs are better at it. Remind me again, what is labor’s policy on boat people? who have supported the libs with most of these “urgent” national security measures???
That’s right though, we have to sell our soul and get re-elected, and then we might do something about it errr in our second term of course once we are ready to retire and live of the fat pension paid by the tax payer, sounds a bit like climate change policy really!
I just arrived home and am reading that the Medevac Repeal has gone through. I’m steaming with anger, but will wait to read through all your comments before I cut my throat..
I doubt that people will be bought by Clive again. One phenomena that people are overlooking is when PHON does very well, the beneficiary can often be Labor. Think Qld 1999.
It just depends if PHON runs a split ticket.
If I were running ALP HQ, I’d be running a simple message – put the LNP last.
That’s right folks. Everything would be hunky-dory re treatment of asylum seekers if there were only the two major political parties to vote for.
No Greens, no CA, no ON, etc.
Pigs might fly. The same race to the bottom would have occurred.
Because it’s all about the voters who really matter, the minority in a minority of electorates who decide the outcome of every election.
You know economic policy has failed when the search for pathetic excuses begins. Health has been underfunded since Abbott’s first budget. Now NSW Liberals want to blame tourists?
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/it-s-not-fair-tourists-leave-taxpayers-with-20m-hospital-bill-20191128-p53ey8.html
This completely ignores the fact that Australians are one of the largest groups of international tourists in the world. And yes, we get sick too when we travel. With reciprocal agreements we get free medical cover when we go to Canada, Japan and half of Europe. On one trip I had to go to a dentist in Europe and it cost me $6. Cheaper than here. Shall we send them all a cheque for their costs from us before debating about tourism medical costs here?
If a neoliberal centrist candidacy implodes in a forest, at 3 percent in national polls, did the candidacy every really happen?
port
LOL. I wish he’d get on with it.
The Greens have done fuck all for asylum seekers.
Their achievements are zip. de nada. zero.
Grandstanding does not count.
Stunts to do not count.
Calling for this or that does not count.
Wringing hands does not count.
Whinging does not count.
Wailing piteously does not count.
Bloviating does not count.
NONE of that counts.
But it is all the Greens have done for 30 long, long years.
Doogie was right. The Greens are political narcissists. They can do no wrong. They are always right. In this respect they are Trump without the orange.
What does count is votes and the Greens spent an energetic six years Killing Bill. What fools they were! They got themselves a Morrison.
Democracy.
To be governed by the informed consent of the governed.
Remember when you endorse secrecy you are saying citizens cannot give informed consent.
Labor and the Greens and and all Cross Benchers should be hammering the government on secrecy.
It links directly to accountability and corruption opportunities
There would be no poor bastard on Manus or Nauru if the greens had voted in favour of the Malaysia solution. Instead , just as they did with the CPRS, they voted with the coalition. And just as with their self righteous bleating over climate policy the hand wringing and shouting from the roof tops from some of the greens warriors about how bad and complicit labor is once again personifies hypocracy writ tall.
The greens played politics with climate and AS and they must shoulder the blame as much as anyone for where this country now sits on both issues.
Tristo says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 9:55 am
@Firefox
The General Election Prediction on this website here
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html is predicting a 34 Seat Tory majority.
————————————————-
That lead has narrowed, only a few weeks ago it showed a 50 seat majority.
If I had to pick a result then it would be for a minority or very slim majority for the Conservatives but Labour would be encouraged by how the polls are moving.
‘Nicholas says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 2:19 pm
Kamala Harris is dropping out of 2020 presidential race: CNN
If a neoliberal centrist candidacy implodes in a forest, at 3 percent in national polls, did the candidacy every really happen?’
UK Greens are hoovering up all of 3%. No doubt British Labour could do with that 3% to defeat Johnson.
But, no. The Greens idiots will gift Johnson the prime ministership.
Doyley
If you want to do what if. There would be no prisoners in detention if Labor opposed detention. There would certainly be less chance for secrecy and avoiding accountability with Onshore detention.
Labor might lose in the short term. However as the Democrats have shown the truth comes out with Onshore and calling human rights abuses what they are.
To rant on it again
Great leaders lead not follow. Labor need to get a leader with guts and communication skills urgently. Sorry as nice a bloke as Albo is, he is no Bob Hawke.
Somewhat surprisingly, Folau and RA have reached a settlement:
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-union/rugby-australia-reaches-settlement-with-folau-20191204-p53gr6.html
lizzie:
The crux of the matter is what was the nature of the deal between Lambie and the Tories to get her vote:
https://www.news.com.au/national/federal-election/australian-politics-live-wednesday-december-4/live-coverage/8c20801ae2c4ee4d89f71689876402fc
There is a deep seated problem, I knew a university lecturer that could only use one type of calculator, and if asked to do a calculation process on a different type he couldn’t handle it.
Doyley
What a load of utter Horse Sh#t, so being held in a detention camp in Malaysia is better than Naru or Manus!!!! what planet are you on????????????
Fact – Labor sent them off shore, fact both Labor and Liberal support off shore detention and suppression of the media in relation to reporting on boat people.
Stop blaming others to try and ease your own conscience Doyley
guytaur
Once upon a time we had an “interin” measure 😆 and the rest is history.
Mandatory detention of asylum seekers …………. established by the Keating Government……….. came into operation on 1 September 1994. It was originally intended as an interim measure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_detention_in_Australia
Nader was onto the Greens path.
Did his best to donate the POTUS to the Republicans.
The rot of narcissism runs deep amongst the professional righteous ones.
There is ash falling in Ashfield.
This really is completely farked.
guytaur says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 1:50 pm
BW
No you just keep using the LNP talking points labelling the Greens extreme.
The ones who have argued for empathy the most. No matter what you think of their tactics.
guytaur : the Greens campaigned hard for the return of the Liberal party, you are winding up for the Liberal campaign for 2022. I notice heaps of practice from you today. Be happy with the outcome.
In the end the Greens sanctimonious crap amounts to a Liberal government, accept it and wallow in the misery, be happy.
Poroti
Yes. Mandatory Detention was the thin edge of the wedge. It allowed law and order to be argued.
Always always a meme the LNP run on. National Security is the peak excuse. Slam down comes the secrecy. Bye bye informed consent of the governed.
I am so pleased Victorian voters saw through it with African Gangs in Restaurants.
FredNK
I see you are still running the Murdoch/LNP talking points.
Steve777 @ #608 Wednesday, December 4th, 2019 – 11:02 am
Politics has its effects at the margins. It’s simplistic to generalise about “LNP voters” and it’s inevitable there will be some on the point of giving up on the LNP. This will be a factor for them, along with all the other factors in play. At some point all of this can be reinforcing and you get a surge to one side or the other.
lizzie @ #673 Wednesday, December 4th, 2019 – 2:06 pm
It was ever thus ❗ One step forward – two steps back ❗
General George S. Patton
After consultation with my latest political advisor (local plumber) I understand that ………….. (insert harsh punishment) politicians, while a worthy aim, is illegal and not to be thought of. 😵😵
Peace ☮Afternoon tea 🍰 ☕
Guytaur
Part of the reason the African Gangs didn’t register was because it was up against a well run government that makes no reference to class or envy while delivering large scale projects.
There is some learning in that.
Jeff,
I have no problem with my conscience.
Instead of being pure as the driven snow perhaps the greens and their squealing supporters may wish to consider where ten years of the greens political party playing politics and seeking out the holy grail of perfection has left this country.
The greens have achieved nothing for the climate and AS over the last ten years. Not one thing and the reason for that is the greens are so wrapped up in perfection, politics and bashing labor they have lost their reality compass on what can be achieved.
Perhaps the greens political party is so opposed to pragmatic, real world solutions to the vexing issues of climate and AS simply because they are scared that by supporting such solutions the two issues would be taken off the table as political weapons the greens use to bash labor ? Or perhaps the greens are simply scared of becoming irrelevant ?
Perhaps a bit of conscience review by the greens may be in order ?
Does any one else think the ABC news channel overuses the red ‘breaking’ heading? It seems to be a constant stream of not-so earth shattering news:
“Breaking: Israel Falau reaches settlement”
“Breaking: Some body found”
“Breaking: Some dude sentenced”
“Breaking: Scott Morrison scratches his arse”….