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.
Jeff
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????????????
————————————–
I’d say planet earth, not the stupid Greens fantasy one that they cling to. For the record, the people going to Malaysia were to have work and other support guarantees from the Australian government and NOT held in detention camps like the hell hole on Manus or the other on Nauru. But those facts don’t gel with a political party whose adherents place more belief in what they want to believe than in reality (a bit like a Trump supporter when you think about it).
Big A Adrian
Yep all the major 24 hour news channels seem to overuse it, there was a time when it meant something but now it seems to be more about drawing your attention to the top news item or news theme and in some cases its called breaking news despite being known for several hours.
AJM
Wentworth proved you can expose the monstrosity and have LNP incumbents voted out even in the safest of blue ribbon seats.
Morrison tried to use racism to stop paying the price of dumping a PM. He failed.
There are certainly Liberal voters that can be persuaded that we can end medieval cruelty of no medical care. They showed empathy does count.
Hopefully, we will have a return to what preceded the Medevac legislation which was the refugee advocacy operations linking with well meaning lawyers, including Mrs Shellbell, to bring cases to the Federal Court for evacuation from Manus or Nauru which were met by the Commonwealth along the lines that they have met the Robodebt claims ie benign capitulation
Wentworth was more a reaction to the dumping of a popular local MP.
Mexican
I see you cherry-picking to avoid the point.
I will repeat it for you. The appeal to racism did not prevent Morrison paying the price for dumping that local MP.
Jeff
“”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????????????””
The point was if anybody getting on a boat and knowing they would end up in Malaysia, at the end of a QUEUE, would be an idiot to get on a boat in the first place, dah!.
Mavis
Maybe in the whole history of border protection this will be only a footnote but I am angry because the LNP have had another “victory” by pressuring Lambie from all sides and repeating “strong borders” or some other mantra. I don’t believe she is very bright, but suspect that the effective bullying by Cormann? Ruston? Pauline? Dutton? or any of their staff, would have been hard to ignore.
She really seems to believe that she is preventing any more deaths at sea.
1934
The point is no Offshore Detention no need for Malaysia to host the prisoners.
guytaur says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 2:21 pm
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
Lambie doesn’t have much of a plank to stand on.
The problem is the structure of First Past The Post voting, not the individuals who contest elections.
Focus on systems and structures – that is the main game. Mocking individuals is a self-indulgent distraction.
guytaur says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 2:59 pm
1934
The point is no Offshore Detention no need for Malaysia to host the prisoners.
Just more of the same, the Greens stood with the Liberals, and got what he Liberals offered. Be happy with what you voted for and campaigned for.
FredNK
Yes exactly.
I still don’t know what National Security threat New Zealand poses to Australia.
FredNK
I am not a “Green”. That’s your attempt to smear and discredit.
You must know it’s a weak argument
guytaur!
No one get on boat, none to send to Malaysia. !
Guytaur
Had Phelps said she supported the ALP’s negative gearing policies she would not have won Wentworth and she had an very high profile for an independent candidate. Running a race based campaign would be ineffective in a Wentwroth type electorate because its demographics are more interested in economics than race issues.
The frogs wont notice.
Mexican
Exactly
guytaur
I am smear and discrediting you by calling you a Green?
Or
I am smearing and discrediting the Greens by pointing out what the Greens done don
1934
If we don’t put people in prison their is no delay in processing and bottlenecks.
If we don’t excise migration territory people don’t drown in front of television cameras. We end up with the EU debate not the Australian one.
I note the question of what would happen in a Double Dissolution is being analysed in the context of the approximate current standing of the parties. If the distribution of votes shifts somewhat to the “left” nationwide, you could easily see Labor + Greens picking up half or half+1 of the seats in each state. Yes, even in Queensland. Half the seats in a DD takes about 46.2%
If the current government stumbles on with no real policies and only symbolic gotchas on Labor, with more ministerial scandals and perhaps a recession, their support could collapse quite dramatically. Think NSW in the period 2008-2011. I actually think that is a pretty likely scenario, though not guaranteed.
In that case the LNP will do anything to avoid a DD. of course that will mean they have even less of a policy impact as moving coalitions in the existing Senate frustrate their policies. if they start losing ministers and members because of scandals their majority in the HoR could also evaporate, leaving them open to defeat on issues in the lower house as well.
guytaur
Why the government will not do the NZ deal was revealed a while back. So pathetic are they that the fear was the blighters would eventually gain NZ citizenship. THE HORROR being that they could then come to Australia and we promised they would never set foot in Australia. NZ said they will not create two classes of citizenship that would stop that. Something that was ‘helpfully’ suggested by some wally in Aus. as a solution to the impasse.
Body language.
I hope I’m wrong but it looks more like Lambie was threatened rather than persuaded to vote the way she did in Medevac.
Poroti
A flow of people with no delays causing crowded prisons means no scarey bogeyman of a flood of boats.
The LNP can’t have that. Better to have medieval medical care.
SK, what?
lizzie:
[‘… by pressuring Lambie from all sides and repeating “strong borders” or some other mantra.’]
You’re kinder than me, lizzie. Lambie initially withstood the pressure over the anti-union bill, which she looks like backflipping on when it’s reintroduced in Feb. My view is that she’s been offered something down the line for her state. For me, she’s lost credibility over the Medevac legislation, giving Morrison and Dutton an early XMAS present at the cost of urgent medical/psychiatric treatment for refugees who’ve been detained for up to seven years.
Lambie implied when she returned to the Senate that she would negotiate on every vote to benefit her electorate (Tassie). All that means is that she dithers around and doesn’t take a stand.
Lizzie
Is that really what it means because I knew a manager that was always holding her hand across her upper body like that.
“Scott Morrison is asked how the government can claim it has done no deal with Jacqui Lambie, when she herself claimed such a deal was brokered.
I’m not aware of what the member is referring to. I have before me Jacqui Lambie’s comments… and it makes no mention of it.”
What bollocks. Lambie says she has done a deal, Morroscum say not. Seems pretty obious that whatever deal Lambie thinks has been done is not something the Lib/Nats will follow up on.
Has anyone made the “Lambie to the Slaughter” jokes yet??
Mavis
I do agree. Why can’t she see the suffering?
But Morrison assures us there was no deal. You mean you won’t take him at his word? 😆
‘Nicholas says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 3:01 pm
Nader was onto the Greens path.
The problem is the structure of First Past The Post voting, not the individuals who contest elections.
Focus on systems and structures – that is the main game. Mocking individuals is a self-indulgent distraction.’
The problem with Nader was that he was a lunatic who decided that since first past the post was not his desired form of democracy then the United States could just have to have Republican Presidents.
The Greens in the UK have first past the post voting. So, what do the self-indulgent Greens cretins in the UK do? Deprive British Labour of 3% of the vote. Only a Greens would think that since only 3% of the vote (or only 10% of the voters agree with us) we are happy to give Morrison and Johnson the prime ministership. Having pissed away 20% of the preference in Australia, and just to make sure that Morrison gets in, they spend a lot of political energy Killing Bill.
But, but, but… they wail. We are 100% pure. We will deliver Zero/2030 and anyone who disagrees with that is not worth our vote.
Doogie was right. Political narcissists abound.
guytaur
The whole idea behind the Malaysia Solution, was to discourage people getting on boats in the first place.
But some people were too thick to see that!.
Mexicanbeemer
I believe that Sara Jade does study the subject with psychology.
I used to doubt the popular books on body language until I tested the theory on myself and those near me. Not the ‘pop’ kind, though. Your manager must have lacked confidence in herself even if she kept it well hidden.
1934
Some people are too thick to see the way to stop the political football of immigration.
Don’t put people in prison. No bottle neck. No crowds of people behind barbed wire. No bogeyman of floods of boats. No turning immigration into a racist dogwhistle.
Juice Media’s latest. (Soz if already posted)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shBwf97O7zk&feature=youtu.be
lizzie:
[‘But Morrison assures us there was no deal. You mean you won’t take him at his word? ‘]
After he put his arm around Turnbull at the infamous presser, I have full faith in him to tell the truth(?).
guytaur
Your a dreamer guytaur, come down to Earth, and stop reaching for the MOON!.
In all things!.
Rugby Australia clearly realised that their religious discrimination was going to cost them a motza and cut their losses.
What a surprise. “He will remain”.
What a surprise.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/angus-taylor-staffer-named-as-document-leaker/news-story/f18ba3a91a161f427501ce2973badaa4
1934
You obviously don’t understand what Keneallyis doing highlighting plane arrivals.
It’s a big step in breaking down that image of prisoners crowded behind razor wire.
Instead people see others doing what they do. Flying to a destination. Not an other behaviour. Hard to demonise.
The Malaysian proposal would have been overrun by the people smugglers in short order because it was a very small number.
Anyone want to still claim that boats can’t be turned back and turnbacks will fail?
Dolly wants us to join NATO:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/let-australia-join-nato-summit-begins-with-plea-for-change-20191204-p53glp.html
Probably a good idea.
There is possibly more grounds for the UN Security Council to be enlarged with countries like Australia and a few others joining it than joining NATO.
The problem is the structure of First Past The Post, not the minor parties who contest elections in that system. Insisting that minor parties must not contest elections until the electoral system changes is dumb, nihilistic, and self-indulgent wankery. Focus your ire on the system that yields unrepresentative outcomes. The story here is not an individual morality play with good actors and bad actors. If you want to think politically you have to focus on structures and systems. The individuals are much less important.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/08/australia-on-track-for-record-number-of-asylum-seekers-arriving-by-plane
Looks like a failure to me, Brucelosis 🙂
Bucephalus says:
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 at 3:36 pm
The Malaysian proposal would have been overrun by the people smugglers in short order because it was a very small number.
Anyone want to still claim that boats can’t be turned back and turnbacks will fail?
The Liberals seem worried it doesn’t work, otherwise why the hell holes in our name still?
http://aqicn.org/city/australia/nsw/earlwood/sydney-east/
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/04/whistleblower-lodges-complaint-about-peter-dutton-in-case-of-drug-trafficker-spared-deportation
It seems that the news on Mr Manuatu was written by Alice Workman. So is it true?