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
False equivalence.
Labor is trying to get in and make a difference.
Labor might fuck that up in various imaginative ways, but at least Labor understands that the main game is the numbers in the House.
Not enough numbers and it is goodbye and no thanks for coming.
The Greens are trying to ensure that Labor and Liberals both lose equally so that the Greens can play around at the margins with their Senate BOP.
For what? To assuage their RDS.
Hard to deliver that one.
The Greens have failed for the vast majority of the last 30 years.
But the Greens now face competition in the Senate from a crowd of other minor Party spivs, sleeve tuggers, crooks, liars, main chancers, racists and other assorted maniacs in the Senate.
And how is the BOP working out?
Saving us from Global Warming by Zero/2030?
Tantric honey?
I might just patent that.
Should go well in the Inner Urbs.
Trying not to breathe so that the smoke does not go into your lungs simply does not work.
Boerwar @ #2600 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:06 pm
“But the Greens now face competition in the Senate from a crowd of other minor Party spivs, sleeve tuggers, crooks, liars, main chancers, racists and other assorted maniacs in the Senate.”
Yet Labor are reaching out to the voters of those competitors …?
Jeremy Rifkin, author of ‘The Green New Deal’ agreed to speak at the Labor -aligned Per Capita conference. I doubt he would bother speaking to the ineffectual Greens.
C@tmomma @ #2599 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:06 pm
So you will acknowledge you lost your bet?
C@tmomma @ #2604 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:11 pm
Yet it’s Labor who has mostly been falling into line with the Govts neo-lib legislative agenda.
Boerwar
says:
Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 5:07 pm
Tantric honey?
I might just patent that.
Should go well in the Inner Urbs.
___________________
without the greens you will be free to murder wombats and make sex slaves of octopi to your hearts content.
Rex
Your type gave us Bush over Gore.
In terms of global warming, the greatest single political tragedy of all time.
The Greens learned nothing and forgot everything.
Player One, I don’t give a flying fig about your silly little gotchas. OK? I am well and truly over the sort of juvenile parlour games you like to play.
“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.”
***
Wouldn’t have anything to do with something about working 24/7 under Keevin would it?
‘Gotta get the numbers to replace him, shouldn’t boi that hard, half the Caucus wants to mace em!’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ5z89CtIlA
Evidently there is a new ALP strategy to launch a coordinated series of attacks on the election review, with a particular focus on discrediting the recommendation to “discuss the cost of not acting on climate change or the job opportunities a transition to a renewable energy future could bring”.
If I were Weatherill, I’d be pretty cheesed off with the party for wasting my time like that. (I doubt Emerson cares.)
Whether or not Albo himself supports this new “me-too the Libs on climate change” stance is a moot point: he is captive to a partyroom which overwhelmingly endorses Fitzgibbon’s post-election behaviour (notwithstanding the planting of some laughably transparent fake leaks about him being read the riot act for it). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Albo will only remain leader for as long as the party can be assured that they’re in no danger of actually winning under him.
Circa August 2018, there were many predictions made, including by ALP figures, that the Liberal Party was irrevocably riven by ideological tensions which were soon to culminate in a formal split. Now we see that those ALP figures must have been looking in a mirror. Frankly, a repeat of the 1955 exodus can’t come soon enough; it would benefit the centre-left in the long run (or at least it couldn’t possibly make things any worse).
nath
We share our tree plantings with the wombats. Live and mostly let live.
We plant a thousand trees and they dig out or bite off 500.
We share our soil with them as well.
They dig majestic holes, cave in the banks, and send it all off to South Australia.
Can’t say fairer than that.
But, but, but…on your other point… if you have ever tried to shag an eight-armer you wouldn’t be saying that.
Boerwar @ #2601 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:06 pm
Labor is still trying to walk both sides of the street. And still blaming those pesky 10% Greens for the fact that they can’t get seem to get more than about 1/3 of the other 90%.
Labor wins when they have a strong and coherent message. Labor loses when they dither, whine and blame everyone else for their own failures.
itsthevibe
Remind me. How’s Labor going in the regions? Lack of the old leftism knocking them for six out in the boonies?
Or is Labor getting caned out in the regions.
C@tmomma @ #2610 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:18 pm
You made the ridiculous bet, not me.
You thought you were being clever.
You lost.
Clearly, you are such a sore loser you can’t even admit you lost.
BW,
Step out of the Dutch oven?
Taking a look at Jeremy Rifkin’s ‘The Green New Deal’
In an interview for DW, US economic and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin looks at what industry’s move away from investment in fossil fuels means for policymakers and curbing climate change at large.
https://www.dw.com/en/taking-a-look-at-jeremy-rifkins-the-green-new-deal/a-50752788
If Rifkins was a Greens saying what he says here in this interview how would he be received by the usual suspects?
Your not ur usual jolly late afternoon self c@t, hope everything’s ok? I hope you’ve avoided temptations.
P1
The Greens are promising Zero/2030.
Not possible.
90% of the electorate said so five months ago.
And even if the Greens had won government five months ago, Zero/2030 would not happen.
Not practicable.
So the Greens are not even on the road.
They delivered us Bush for Gore, Morrison for Shorten and are busy trying to deliver Johnson for Corbyn.
Still, as the welsh lass in Van Leeuwin’s excellent article said, at least she votes for ‘what she believes in’.
Johnson must be thrilled that the UK Greens are giving HIM the same old same old Bush and Morrison treatment.
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-oceans-oxygen-loss-dead-zones-cop25-madrid-iucn-a9237116.html
Our mother is the sea, but we have been treating it as a rubbish bin.
Boerwar @ #2608 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:15 pm
Nonsense. Bush voters gave the world Bush.
Peg
Rivkin a Greens?
Bwhahahaha
“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.”
***
Guess what? There’s roughly twice as many Labor voters in the city as there is in non-metro areas too! And guess who has the highest percent of metro voters? It’s not the Greens and not the Liberals either. Hmmm who does that leave I wonder? Yup. Labor is the party of the inner urb elites.
And I’ve been backing Corbyn since he got the job years ago. You don’t get to be relentlessly negative about the left as you and others here have and then jump on the bandwagon when it suits you. You even admitted to favouring the Lib Dems in the other thread.
citizensays:
Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 4:52 pm
Isn’t this sort of action something his Government wants to make illegal?
Nader pinched a million votes from Gore who lost by less than a thousand votes.
Nader could have supported Gore.
The world would be a much, much better place.
But no. The Greens helped Bush defeat Gore.
Shame.
RD
Indeed. It’s all about cynical politics.
Leadership – pffft.
BiTJ
Nice pick up, IMO. Nasty secondary boycotts.
Boerwar @ #2620 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:24 pm
The fact is, Bush and Morrison voters gave the world Bush and Morrison.
This latest angle of attack from you is just lazy nonsense.
Firefox
Stop trying to disavow honest wealthy knowledge economy Inner Urban Greens hipsters!
They are real people, too!
Pegasus says:
Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 4:40 pm
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?
There has been no coal mining boom in WA. Iron, gold, nickel….other minerals…but v little coal
Boerwar @ #2621 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:24 pm
As usual, and like almost all the Labor partisans here, you are obsessed by the Greens. Who gives a rats about the 10% Greens? Yes, their policies are crap. Almost as bad as Labor’s, if the truth be told.
But in any case, Labor gets 80% of the Greens votes back in preferences anyway. So you are obsessing about just 2%.
Concentrate on the 90%. You don’t even have to convince half of them to win office.
But you can’t do that with your current “blithe” lies.
Learn from your recent loss, stop trying to repeat it.
“Firefox
Stop trying to disavow honest wealthy knowledge economy Inner Urban Greens hipsters!
They are real people, too!”
***
Boer – defender in chief of the inner urbs!
C@t,
Jeremy Rifkin will talk to whoever is willing to pay his speakers fee.
Of course, as we all know, none of this The Donalds fault it’s just the nasty Chinese out to make him look bad because they’re jealous of him being the most popular leader the world has ever seen.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/08/us-business-leaders-in-hong-kong-detained-and-denied-entry-to-macau
Firefox
Yes, a fact I have pointed out on more than one occasion. How sad it doesn’t play into BW’s tedious and repetitive meme.
Is he suggesting those “inner-urbs elite Greens” possess some magical power to subvert our electoral processes, a power those “inner-urbs elite Laborites” lack?
Another reminder to congressional Republicans that the 25th Amendment is there for a reason.
Rex Douglas
While I assume Green get-togethers are just a bunch of partisans reveling in their own woke perfection despite their party’s decades of non-achievement.
I, mean, I can only assume given these things are held in complete secrecy after all.
#notacult
Fitzgibbons front bench now starting to take shape.
LOTO – Joel Fitzgibbon
Deputy – Terri Butler
Jim Chalmers
Meryl Swanson
Kimberley Kitching
Shayne Neumann
Mike Freelander
Milton Dick
…
…
3z @ #2638 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:37 pm
Seems more and more Labor partisans are adopting the right-wing derogatory term ‘woke’.
Boerwar
says:
But, but, but…on your other point… if you have ever tried to shag an eight-armer you wouldn’t be saying that.
_______________________
I just hope Bluey put up some resistance.
Rex Douglas @ #2641 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 5:43 pm
Perhaps Labor party members should be referred to as “dozy”? 🙂
nath
Never give a sucker an even break.
The ‘Weekend Australian’ had a comprehensive round up of Morrison’s real team. Many are not in Parliament. Some are.
There were some noteworthy elements of the team:
1. Only one woman, the other 20 all men. Morrison does not get the whole women thing.
2. No-one with an extensive background in the social side of government business. Lifters and leaners.
3. No creative person.
4. Overwhelmingly right wing.
5. Strong on China Hawks.
6. Not one with much environment experience.
7. The majority have indicated zero interest in climate change.
8. Strong on big business links, including mining.
As Insiders pointed out this is the team that is going to deliver policy advice to Morrison.
Morrison’s public service will then have the task of implement Morrison’s policies.
Morrison will sell them.
One observation is that Morrison simply does not do much discussion about policy alternatives. It is his way or the highway.
All this may work extremely well. Or it might just all go very, very pear shaped because there are no checks, no balances and no people around who will say to him… ‘Hey wait a minute….”
If the situation gets dire for the government in the opinion polls, I can’t see them going full-on Trumpian when it comes to incitement of hatred, especially racism. Because it would be electorally disastrous for the Coalition to engage in such a campaign, for example; it would risk the Liberals being wiped out in Melbourne for one.
Therefore; apart from intensifying the current demonization of various groups, in particular, those on Centrelink benefits, animal rights activists, transgender, and non-binary folks. The only thing I see the government doing is if there is especially a major economic downturn, is implement stimulus. Sure the government is going to be seen as hypocrites by the politically engaged. However, this government is more than willing to be seen as such, as long as the politically disengaged buy into the government’s narrative.
The whole secondary boycott thing is like religious freedom – very much a one way street.
Littleproud telling people to boycott Coles is GOOD.
Animal activists telling people to boycott some company is BAD.
Religious schools and charities sacking people who speak up in support of gays* is GOOD.
Sporting bodies sacking people for engaging in hate speech against gays is BAD.
* or any person who is not what they consider “normal”.
Tristo @ #2646 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 6:17 pm
The only real problem I might have with your comment is that you seem to be crediting them with a modicum of intelligence.
Player One @ #2529 Sunday, December 8th, 2019 – 4:21 pm
Is there any point to your drivel apart from everyone that doesn’t agree with your assertions and proposed actions is unworthy.
Political outcomes in this country are all about taking people with you.
If you’re attitude is you are right and everyone else must accept your omnipotence, then you have a real problem achieving anything worthwhile. But, I’m sure you’ll feel vindicated by your zealotry.