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.
P1
True. A tad insensitive of me. I apologize.
Pegasus says:
Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 4:32 pm
Jeez why would anyone care what RDN says or does or doesn’t do.
As his policies are pages and pages of destruction that is a dam good question. Why anyone would defend his policies is the question I would like answering.
C@tmomma @ #2547 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 1:33 pm
The vast majority of it is trolling and is best ignored.
“Your 470k voters account for 8% of the vote. This is not something to be touting as an achievement or as evidence of the Greens’ deep understanding of regional Australia.
Any party that thinks running a Convoy of Privilege to central Queensland either has no understanding of people in these regions or, much more likely, couldn’t care less about them.
Also the non-metro numbers, in the stats you yourself linked, do include cities. All those provincial cities, five of which are bigger than Hobart and seven bigger than Darwin. The Greens do well (by Green standards) in a few seats defined by the AEC as being rural, such as Richmond, Forrest and Fisher, and this is no doubt down to the concentration of the vaccine-free communes and the wealthy tree changer set in these areas. Otherwise, the performance is dire.”
***
Dismiss almost half a million Australians if you wish but the stats from the AEC utterly destroy the myth that all Greens are from the inner-city. A post on One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts’ Facebook page describes Green environmental activists as “inner city, latte sipping, yoghurt knitting socialist” [sic] and tells them to “go home”. The funny thing is there are more non-metro Greens voters (472,400) than there are One Nation voters in total (438,587) from both metro and non-metro areas.
Non-metro = All divisions situated outside capital cities. That means no inner-city areas, which where uninformed right wingers accuse us of all being from.
The inner-city Greens myth has been shattered! We – The 472,400 – won’t be silenced!
Here is one for Nicholas
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/dec/08/turning-the-economic-tide-could-a-radical-monetary-theory-fix-australias-woes
‘The catch is that a lot of economists think it won’t work.’
Now, everyone knows that at least 50% of economists are wrong at any one time, so that is not really a catch.
C@tmomma @ #2546 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 4:33 pm
Was she sneering and smirking at the time …?
Labor aren’t paralysed, or in denial, Pegasus. The sold out conference I was at this weekend, where people paid good money to attend and came from all over Australia to be there, says the opposite of your glib put-down.
I bet The Greens couldn’t get two men and a paying dog to attend a conference they put on.
The RFS says there’s no significant rain forecast till Feb March. And Bunnings is only just keeping up with stocks of those P2 masks (I was rabbiting on about). The ones Gladys should be handing out on street corners.
Gladys ..hello Gladys. Guess Gladys is too busy being vigilant.
In case there are any Hillsong supporters here, we must be fair and recall that the extremely rich Roman Catholic Church is no more generous.
When the coal workers were earning their huge salaries during the WA mining boom, did they give a rats about all the other low-earning workers and the unemployed?
Many of the these same coal miners p$ssed away their earnings feeding their aspirations and greed as they bought, and continue to buy, into the dream of climbing the heap as promulgated by the two major parties. The ladder of opportunity is just a mirage for the majority.
I see that the Inner Urbs Greens elites have convinced Firefox that he is ‘normal’.
C@tmomma @ #2557 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 4:39 pm
You might suggest to Tanya to eliminate the glib put-downs in future addresses.
Rex
What you are showing is exactly why the pro taking action on climate change struggle to connect with the wider electorate. The question of being willing to take an $80,000 year pay cut has nothing to do with the industry or job type and the reason for that pay cut. To the workers it is a fair question and if the pro taking action crowd cannot understand why pay matters then they will continue to struggle to connect because it feeds into why workers don’t see environmentalist as workers with real worker concerns.
Rex Douglas,
No, it was a serious and considered speech which lasted for 40 minutes. More than you are obviously capable of, as you prove here every day.
And, no, I am not saying throw the coal miners to the wolves, so to speak. To continue to delude coal miners their jobs will remain for decades to come is not doing them a service.
Firefox
….
The 472,400 – won’t be silenced!
Pity because all they represent is a block on climate change action and other random acts of political vandalism. The political world’s graffiti artiest ( painting tags and nothing more)
C@tmomma says:
Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 4:42 pm
Rex Douglas,
No, it was a serious and considered speech which lasted for 40 minutes. More than you are obviously capable of, as you prove here every day.
Do you know were you can read the speech, I suspect there is a lot of context missing.
Mexicanbeemer @ #2563 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 4:42 pm
“The question of being willing to take an $80,000 year pay cut has nothing to do with the industry or job type and the reason for that pay cut.”
Don’t be ridiculous, of course it does. Otherwise the question is illogical.
Boerwar
Are you ‘normal’? Are you a ‘rural elite’?
I wonder how many Greens actually make a good living out of making something that people eat? Most farmers know that the Greens are out to destroy them, so not many, I suppose.
Still, the Green know all about farming and are ready to form citizens’ committees to tell farmers how to farm when Der Tag arrives.
Rule No 1 will be no potting your bunnies for a spot of relaxation.
Ah, another glib put-down of Tanya by Rex Douglas, not even original enough to use his own words to do it.
Rex Douglas, it was said more in sorrow than in anger. Like an adult would.
Rule No 2 would be that farmers have to carry their horses around, not the other way around. After all, it is cruel to expect horses to do all the hard yards.
C@tmomma @ #2564 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 4:42 pm
That’s just a typical glib put-down.
Rex Douglas says:
Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 4:42 pm
…
You might suggest to Tanya to eliminate the glib put-downs in future addresses.
She basically hit the nail in the head, for a serious matter we have had 10 years of Greens stunts and destruction. The Greens have basically been of no value.
“I see that the Inner Urbs Greens elites have convinced Firefox that he is ‘normal’.”
***
Your “inner urbs” propaganda myth has been shattered. We – The 472k – will not be silenced!
Firefox.
Where it is doesn’t matter, it is 10% of the population blocking climate change action.
Rex
A paycheck is a paycheck and that paycheck pays the bills and covers the cost of living and that is what gets most people up in the morning to go off to work for. If environmentalist do not understand why such questions are important in the minds of workers then they might as well give up because all they will be doing is keeping the Liberals in office.
frednk @ #2574 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 4:48 pm
When the Greens had some legislative power, emissions dropped.
frednk,
Yes, it was one line from a long, thoughtful speech. You may be able to find it on the Per Capita website. I also think it was filmed. At least I saw cameras there, on or off I don’t know. 🙂
Does Littleproud have shares in Woolworths? Honestly, he is days late in commenting on this issue and anyway, what is he as Drought Minister doing about the drought? Tackling the causes of climate change? No, of course not.
Kevin Bonham says:
Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 12:40 pm
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2019/12/in-search-of-australias-most-ratioed.html
In Search Of Australia’s Most Ratioed Political Tweets
I find that even Joel Fitzgibbon’s offering this week doesn’t quite crack the top ten.
Twitter is not dominated by the left, it is dominated by the young. I think political parties would do well to remember that along with the long term voting patterns of the old.
After The Greens forced Labor into adopting their Carbon Tax, with their ‘legislative power’, they gave Tony Abbott an opening big enough to drive a Mack truck through to victory at the next election.
Gosh that wouldn’t be market interference would it? 😆
Rex Douglas says:
Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 4:51 pm
….
When the Greens had some legislative power, emissions dropped.
Didn’t stick did it Rex, and the cost to Labor was enormous, you can rest assured they will not be going there again.
frednk @ #2577 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 4:50 pm
Instead of blaming the 10% you cannot convince because your policies are so incoherent, how about you concentrate on the other 90% that you may still be able to convince?
Either that, or change your policies to ones that more people will support.
Radical ideas, I know 🙁
Erin Watt is the National Secretary of the Labor Environment Action Network. Erin is a National Political Coordinator for United Workers Union. She runs national strategy around member engagement in politics, and coordinates NSW/ACT politics.
Our planet is burning and we still have no plan
https://www.chifley.org.au/our-planet-is-burning-and-we-still-have-no-plan/
So, C@t – willing to admit you lost your bet yet?
Or are you just going to pretend you still have me blocked? 🙂
Firefox
We know that there are a few ex Inner Urbs wealthy seachangers and wealthy treechangers, assorted vegans and anti-vaxxers and hippy leftovers here and there who are amenity greens out in the sticks.
We know all that. You will find THEM concentrated in salubrious sea side locations, country properties, tree houses and the like. You will not find them actually running a thousand cattle, growing ten thousand tonnes of wheat or anything that people can eat. Some tantric honey, maybe. Niche stuff like that. But not the real thing that feeds and clothes tens of millions of people.
And here is your rub: there are a million urban Greens and they are most heavily concentrated in the Inner Urbs.
Now, why don’t to trot off and give Johnson a leg up so that you can knock off Corbyn.
Like Nader and the Greens gave Bush a leg up to knock off Gore.
Like Di Natale gave Morrison a leg up and knocked off Shorten.
Is there no shame among the Greens?
frednk @ #2584 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 4:56 pm
It would have stuck had revenge and destruction not taken hold in Labors ranks.
Boerwar
Sometimes you are heavily boring and repetitive, but when you lighten up you can be very humorous. Cheers.
Peg
‘Our planet is burning and we still have no plan’
That is not true. We have the Green New Deal aka Zero/2030.
The Plan is there. Your problem is that 90% of the peeps knocked your Plan back.
Think about it. You failed.
Boerwar @ #2589 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:00 pm
Why should there be? There is clearly none among Labor supporters!
Player One says:
Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 4:58 pm
frednk @ #2577 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 4:50 pm
Where it is doesn’t matter, it is 10% of the population blocking climate change action.
Instead of blaming the 10% you cannot convince because your policies are so incoherent, how about you concentrate on the other 90% that you may still be able to convince?
Either that, or change your policies to ones that more people will support.
Radical ideas, I know
Trouble is the 10% block is very very effective, either it gets removed or we a fcked. Any ideas on how we get rid of it.
frednk @ #2594 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:01 pm
Maths is clearly not your strong suite 🙁
These LEAN get-togethers seem to be just a group of Labor partisans trying to ease their own tortured consciences, nothing more.
The problem with my last post was that I wasn’t quick enough, so it looks pointless. 🙁
Rex Douglas says:
….
It would have stuck had revenge and destruction not taken hold in Labors ranks.
As has been pointed out many times, the revenge and destruction occurred because the polls went south when it was introduced.
Labor will not go there again.
Player One,
Sadly, I am on my phone on the train on my way home from the conference and am unable to block you.
Player One says:
Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 5:02 pm
frednk @ #2594 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:01 pm
Trouble is the 10% block is very very effective, either it gets removed or we a fcked. Any ideas on how we get rid of it.
Maths is clearly not your strong suite
No but being able to count the damage they have done in the senate is.