Winners and losers

Reading between the lines of the Liberal Party’s post-election reports for the federal and Victorian state elections.

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.

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.

2,754 comments on “Winners and losers”

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  1. This week’s forecast is for temps up to 39, winds, rainfall up to 1mm, and thunder storms – presumably with lightning strikes.

    #PredictedweatheronPB.

  2. Meryl Swanson:

    https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/miners-dont-want-40k-a-year-renewables-jobs-labor-mp/news-story/44eabf54d7b724721d3b88e24462abc0

    Labor MP Meryl Swanson has delivered strident defence of the coal sector, declaring miners did not want to leave their jobs to “screw solar panels on roofs for $40,000 a year”.

    The MP for the coal electorate of Paterson hit out at “bullshit” claims the coal sector only employed 3800 in her region in the NSW Hunter Valley and declared workers “hate” being told they need to transition into the renewables industry.

    Declaring “we have built our nation off the back of coal”, Ms Swanson said the industry should be treated with respect and the resource should never be labelled “dirty”.
    :::
    “I’ve got coal miners who were once respected members of the community, earning $100,000 a year, some of them with bonuses when times are good getting up to $120,000,” Ms Swanson told a conference in Sydney organised by the Chifley Research Centre.
    :::
    Ms Swanson’s defence of the coal sector came in a “Labor visions for regional Australia” session chaired by Queensland Labor senator Anthony Chisholm, with other panellists being Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill, Broken Hill Mayor Darriea Turley and journalist Gabrielle Chan.

  3. The Greens have yet to provide a satisfactory solution for why they delivered Bush over Gore.
    What a different world we would have now… if only.

  4. Pegasus @ #2020 Saturday, December 7th, 2019 – 6:45 pm

    Meryl Swanson:

    https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/miners-dont-want-40k-a-year-renewables-jobs-labor-mp/news-story/44eabf54d7b724721d3b88e24462abc0

    Labor MP Meryl Swanson has delivered strident defence of the coal sector, declaring miners did not want to leave their jobs to “screw solar panels on roofs for $40,000 a year”.

    The MP for the coal electorate of Paterson hit out at “bullshit” claims the coal sector only employed 3800 in her region in the NSW Hunter Valley and declared workers “hate” being told they need to transition into the renewables industry.

    Declaring “we have built our nation off the back of coal”, Ms Swanson said the industry should be treated with respect and the resource should never be labelled “dirty”.
    :::
    “I’ve got coal miners who were once respected members of the community, earning $100,000 a year, some of them with bonuses when times are good getting up to $120,000,” Ms Swanson told a conference in Sydney organised by the Chifley Research Centre.
    :::
    Ms Swanson’s defence of the coal sector came in a “Labor visions for regional Australia” session chaired by Queensland Labor senator Anthony Chisholm, with other panellists being Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill, Broken Hill Mayor Darriea Turley and journalist Gabrielle Chan.

    Labor on a unity ticket with Canavan.

  5. @Pegasus

    If we had laws, which allowed workers to adequately organize and strike. Along with scrapping enterprise and reintroducing enterprise wide bargaining, which would ensure that adequate wages were achieved. Then a job for example; screwing in solar panels would be a paying equivalent wage to that of a Coal Miner.

  6. “ The Courier Mail has a “UComms Poll of almost 700 South Brisbane residents” which shows Jackie Trad trailing the Greens in her seat of South Brisbane: GRN 29.4%, ALP 27.5%, LNP 26.6%, Other 6.1%, Undecided 10.4%.”

    Even with a largish margin of error, Jackie is clearly stuffed. The LNP has decided to preference the Greens so unless labor’s primary vote is above 40%. She is gone (unless the greens finish third. Unlikely IMO, given that it’s likely that savvy LNP voters are likely to cast a primary vote for the Greens to ensure that they finish above Labor when it gets down to the final 3 candidates).

    Trad is a polarising person who has taken a lot of stick lately. I wrote off her seat a year ago.

  7. Honestly, the only way we are going to achieve significantly higher wages in my opinion, is to implement the following,

    Legislative action to address the gender pay gap, by focusing on increasing wages in female-dominated industries, at least to those in industries where the genders are equally represented.

    Scrapping enterprise and reintroducing industry-wide bargaining.

    Roll-back of laws implemented that have restricted workers to organize and strike.

    Introduce a living wage, which the level of would be measured in the same way, that the first award wage was through the Sunshine Harvester case in 1907.

    Comprehensive reform of the immigration program, focusing on the abolition of temporary workers visas, which provide employers with a cheap, easily exploitable source of labor. All holders of temporary worker’s visas would be transitioned into the permanent category.

  8. Meryl Swanson did say that miners, despite hating their coal mining jobs, were doing it so that they were able to send their kids to Uni so they would never have to do what they were doing. To go to a lesser paying job, say installing solar panels for 40k per year wouldn’t allow them to do that.

  9. Andrew_Earlwood @ #2199 Saturday, December 7th, 2019 – 7:11 pm

    “ The Courier Mail has a “UComms Poll of almost 700 South Brisbane residents” which shows Jackie Trad trailing the Greens in her seat of South Brisbane: GRN 29.4%, ALP 27.5%, LNP 26.6%, Other 6.1%, Undecided 10.4%.”

    Even with a largish margin of error, Jackie is clearly stuffed. The LNP has decided to preference the Greens so unless labor’s primary vote is above 40%. She is gone (unless the greens finish third. Unlikely IMO).

    Trad is a polarising person who has taken a lot of stick lately. I wrote off her seat a year ago.

    Kevin Bonham doesn’t support the wailing interpretation.

    Kevin Bonham
    @kevinbonham
    These kinds of robopolls in inner city seats with high Green votes have a track record of severe inaccuracy so treat these numbers as +/- 10 or so. #qldpol

  10. C@tmomma

    So in Australia you need to have a family earning more than 95% of the population to afford to go to uni ? If so then why the silence of Labor, the party of Gough, on such an outrageous situation re higher education ?

  11. Jackie Trad is my local member and while the poll isn’t good she has a habit of winning. She needs the LNP to do well (and the Greens to wilt a little) and that is a real possibility given that the area is becoming richer. I’d say its 50:50. But it’s true that people don’t like her, and that’s in her own electorate let alone regional Queensland.

    As to the current poll’s accuracy – yeah it seems about right to me.

  12. sprocket_

    Ah,I see Albo is on the be “Quiet Australians” train 😆

    What we need is a little less anger and a little less outrage.
    We could also do with a little less volume.

  13. poroti, if you want to send them to Uni from the country and pay the Residential College fees, which have nothing to do with Labor, then, yes you do. As well as support your family at home, pay the bills and stuff like a mortgage.
    Honestly, wth has it got to do with Labor? They aren’t in government, in case you haven’t noticed. Btw, would you take a $60000/year pay cut as a noble gesture?

  14. L’arse,

    Albo says not to troll..

    Coping with the future is going to require difficult choices.
    To succeed, broad interests, concerns and ideas must be heard.
    We must examine things as they are, rather than as we want them to be.
    Expert knowledge must be treated with respect.
    Let’s talk to each other with level heads.
    With reason,
    not anger.
    With respect,
    not condescension.
    And let’s take a step back from the social media precipice.
    Think before we tweet.
    Take some heat out of our debates.

    Passion is good.

    Trolling is bad.

  15. C@t @3:09

    They were told by the NZ Minister and by Craig Emerson to KISS and concentrate on only a few major themes in the run-up to the next election.

    That rather misses my point. Sure, when it comes close to the election campaign you do need to keep the messaging simple. BUT…

    What I’m talking about is how Labor disabuses the “low information voters” of bad and wrong ideas. Often this boils down to points of fact. Particularly on Labor’s economic record. If you can’t educate voters on key facts, it doesn’t matter how simple your campaign is, you’re just not going to win on policy. Cheap, manipulative, populist policies maybe. But not ones that require people to understand the facts.

    For example. Labor could have won the last election on the simple theme of jobs. But to do so means educating voters that, for instance, renewable energy means jobs. That we could for instance design our own electric vehicles. Labor mostly got the policy right. But then it sat there and waited for the election. It should have been educating voters every minute of every day.

    Labor also made the mistake of not actually being big spending. It gets perceived as being big spending but instead it tried to look “sensible”. In other words, it could have turned the “tax and spend” messaging to its advantage. It could have given voters something to positively vote *for*.

    Another case in point. Had the ordinary voter understood what Turnbull was actually doing with the NBN – not making it cheaper but actually forcing us to pay twice over – there’s every chance that Labor could have won the few extra votes in the right places and retained office in 2013. One thing “regional” voters do get is when the government is incompetent – and it was incompetent on a monumental scale on the NBN

  16. And Albo has a message for the Greens…

    In a world that’s being revolutionised by science and technology, and threatened by a changing climate,
    what sort of country treats its scientists, educators and firefighters like enemies of the people?

    The answer is:
    one that will have fewer jobs, a lower standard of living and a more dangerous environment in the decades to come.
    On the other side of the argument, I think those of us who advocate change need to understand the viewpoints of those who will feel insecure by that change.

    We must consider
    their point of view,
    their interests,
    their security,
    their future,
    their solutions.
    The convoy into Clermont was not helpful.

    We can’t afford to let culture wars dominate our politics and our discussions like this.

  17. Robopoll or not it does sound a warning bell for Labor. Attacking the Greens is not so popular in some seats it needs.

    Past Deputy Premiers have survived in Safe Seats. Note the safe seat bit.

    Embracing coal has its price for Labor as the Green vote increases.

    As some here have pointed out the LNP are trying to use tactical voting.

    Remember it was South East Queensland that was the vital base for Labor. So much so during the campaign Labor turned its back on Adani.

    That’s Labor’s self wedge. It loses for being seen as fake on the environment by one side. On the other being fake on providing jobs.
    It will continue this while it tries to appease the deniers and not convince them because of past history and declaring they are for science.

    The cold hard reality is that Labor can only come off the fence and be believed by stopping Adani.

    That’s the political reality in my view. I know the coal huggers want to deny this pretending they can do both. They can’t. Adani supporters are going to believe the LNP.

    Just like they did in the Federal election. No amount of denials separated Labor from the Greens protest. That’s how much Labor has made its bed.

  18. Bob Sprocket, you sound like a joyous cadre tonight after the dear leader has delivered the latest iteration of the party line at the struggle session.

    Bully for you!

  19. Bob Sprocket did you enjoy nath-an Rees comparison of the NSW ALP with the night parrot?

    Very truthful article by a former NSW Premier into the fundamental rottenness of the NSW ALP.

  20. L’arse, I can see you are enjoying Albo’s speech. Here is some more…

    The end of the year has been an Angus Horribilis for the Government.

    First there was the Angus Taylor scandal involving water buybacks.
    Then an inquiry which found that Angus Taylor “consciously used his position as an MP and Minister” to try to influence an investigation into the clearing of critically endangered grasslands at a property he and his family part-own.
    If that wasn’t enough, Angus Taylor has also been involved in the extraordinary fake document concerning the City of Sydney’s travel budget.
    The Minister has simply refused to come clean about its origins – for months.

    I know that when people hear about this sort of behaviour,
    they often think it has nothing to do with them – something that concerns what the Prime Minister likes to denigrate as “the Canberra bubble”.
    But it has everything to do with regular people.
    Because political abuses like these undermine the capacity of government to make change in the interests of these people.

    This sort of behaviour has to stop.

    https://anthonyalbanese.com.au/speech-address-to-the-chifley-research-centre-conference-sydney-saturday-7-december-2019

  21. L’arse

    We thank Nathan Rees for his service. He has every right in our free society to comment as he wishes.

    It is beyond good manners for others to try to purloin his name for their anti-Labor Jihad.

  22. Bob Sprocket do you disagree with these noble sentiments from Former Premier nath-an Rees:

    “The current factional approach to serious decision-making is slowly but surely choking the NSW branch to death. Worse, where malfeasance has occurred it exposes these party officers to serious sanction. The Labor Party is not a corporation, but ordinary branch members, and the broader public, have a right to expect transparency, consistency and compliance with the law.”

    He seems like a truth teller to me?

  23. poroti
    Saying a group of workers iss on better pay than 95% highlights the left’s problems with using statistics.

    1) 5% of Australians on that income is equal to 600k (out of 12 million)
    2) Many jobs the left sees as working class are in the top 20%

    This leads to the ALP/left on one hand dismissing certain groups as insignificant yet in the next they try to cuddle up to the same people with polices. This is why the ALP/left need to update their understanding of what is rich & wealthy verses who the workers are.

  24. Another reminder for looking at things differently.

    One Nation and the Greens have a People’s bank as policy. Using the example of the Commonwealth Bank.

    All Labor has to do is to purchase or create a bank. The danger. State Banks are open to failure due to the same lax regulation that got Westpac in trouble.

    We all remember the state bank fiascos.
    It’s going to require Federal Ownership and regulationif it’s able to work at all.

    It’s looking at such policies that means Labor can beat the LNP from the left. Nick some of that agrarian socialism. Start with the NBN and high speed rail.

    Mexican

    NBN. Aspire to run your own business. Have the Rolls Royce speed so you can trade internationally in real time.
    It’s socialist but it appeals to those rural small business owners.

    Edit: That is a Labor Government is paying to open export markets.

  25. C@tmomma

    Sorry, violins being played for the 5% doesn’t quite do it for me. Good luck to them, they got a winning ticket in the work lottery, having to rejoin the rest of us would be scary but striking it lucky does not entitle you to remain ‘lucky”.

    .So where does this mythical $40k come from any way? Is that what the sainted tradies pay their exploited “457s” ? 🙂 Only half joking there. When it came to screwing workers over the tradies moving into being subbies with ABNs following Labor’s reforms back in the day were the biggest bunch of worker exploiters this side of the black stump. I dare say they have not changed one jot.

  26. poroti says:
    Saturday, December 7, 2019 at 8:15 pm

    Mexicanbeemer

    I did not say “insignificant” but FFS if you are in the top 5% then you are hardly a ‘battler’
    ———————————————–
    If that is how the left feels then it will need to reassess what it thinks the working class is because these people see themselves as workers and their job functions align with what has historically been counted as working class. This is why Albo is right to start talking about the aspirational because that is where many of the traditional workers are today because the real inequality is between those with skills (trade or uni qualifications) and those without.

  27. Re Sprocket @7:53.

    Angus Taylor will be allowed to get away with everything.

    Just imagine the almighty furore, the screaming headlines, had it been a Labor Minister. The Noise Machine cranked up to 11/10.

    But a conservative radical right wing Government holds power, doing Big Money’s bidding, so it will all be forgotten over the Long Break.

  28. Coal miners owe their high wages to the actions of unions over the last two centuries, not the generosity of mine owners.

    They are now covered by the CFMEU.

  29. Steve777
    Yes and thanks to unions many of today’s working class are in the top 20% of wage earners which renders the statistics misleading and shows why wages cannot be used to describe someone as rich.

  30. Looking at the ACL website, this group of “christians” has a pot of money, being the amount unspent from the circa $2 billion donated for Folau’s legal expenses. They say they will give each donor a pro-rata refund in due course.

    Perhaps they could show a little christian charity and donate that sum to one or more of the bushfire appeals. Of course that might be difficult as their website completely ignores the bushfires and is completely about sex and “freedom”.

  31. https://anthonyalbanese.com.au/speech-address-to-the-chifley-research-centre-conference-sydney-saturday-7-december-2019

    I am a bit mixed on this speech, because Albanese should have been talking as well as about strict hate speech and truth in media laws. Because our media and many public figures get away with incitement to all sorts of hatred, which has led to people being killed. Also, himself and the whole Labor caucus need to totally refuse to appear on shows or be interviewed by people who incite hatred.

  32. Nathan Rees is full of it, as usual. The NSW ALP has has a factional approach to decision making since it came into existence. He became Premier because of factional decision making. The problem is the reduced quality of the individuals concerned.

  33. sprocket_ @ #2222 Saturday, December 7th, 2019 – 4:36 pm

    I take it everybody has caught up with Albo’s speech today?

    If not, you should.

    https://anthonyalbanese.com.au/speech-address-to-the-chifley-research-centre-conference-sydney-saturday-7-december-2019

    Thanks sprocket. I’m slowly warming to him.

    But his speech is yet another reminder that Labor is the only party that can deliver a progressive policy agenda in the national interest.

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