Call of the board: Tasmania

Some overdue insights into what went wrong for Labor in Tasmania, whose five seats accounted for two of the party’s five losses at the federal election.

Welcome to the penultimate instalment of the Call of the Board series (there will be one more dealing with the territories), wherein the result of last May’s federal election are reviewed in detail seat by seat. Previous episodes dealt with Sydney (here and here), regional New South Wales, Melbourne, regional Victoria, south-east Queensland, regional Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia.

Today we look at Tasmania, which has long been noted as a law unto itself as far as federal electoral politics are concerned. The Liberals managed clean sweeps of the state amid poor national results in 1983 and 1984, and the state likewise went all-in for Labor at their losing elections in 1998 and 2001. The state’s form more recently, and especially last May, suggest a normalising trend – in this case, Labor’s defeats in the northern seats of Bass and Braddon were emblematic of their poor show in white, low-income regional Australia (and they can probably count themselves likely that Lyons wasn’t added to the list).

Conversely, another easy win for independent Andrew Wilkie in the central Hobart seat of Clark (formerly Denison) confirmed the uniquely green-left nature of that seat, while a predictable win for Labor in Franklin typified the party’s ongoing hold on low-income suburbia. It may be worth noting in all this that the state’s economic fortunes appear to be on an upswing, and that this coincides with one of its rare periods of Liberal control at state level. It’s tempting at this moment to speculate that the state has a big future ahead of it as a haven from climate change, with electoral implications as yet unforeseeable.

In turn:

Bass (LIBERAL GAIN 0.4%; 5.8% swing to Liberal): Bass maintained its extraordinary record with Labor’s defeat, changing hands for the eighth time out of ten elections going back to 1993. The latest victim of the curse of Bass was Ross Hart, who joins Labor colleagues Silvia Smith, Jodie Campbell and Geoff Lyons and Liberals Warwick Smith (two non-consecutive terms), Michael Ferguson and Andrew Nikolic on the roll call of one-term members. The only exception to the rule has been Michelle O’Byrne, who won the seat in 1998 and was re-elected in 2001, before losing out in 2004 and entering state politics in 2006. Labor also retained the seat in 2010, but their member at the time, Jodie Campbell, resigned after a single term.

Braddon (LIBERAL GAIN 3.1%; 4.8% swing to Liberal): Northern Tasmania’s other seat has been a slightly tougher nut for the Liberals since Sid Sidebottom ended 23 years of Liberal control in 1998, having been won for party since on three occasions: with Mark Baker’s win in 2004, as part of the famed forestry policy backlash against Labor under Mark Latham (who may have taken the episode to heart); with the heavy defeat of the Labor government in 2013, when it was won by former state MP Brett Whiteley; and now with Gavin Pearce’s win for the Liberals. Also in this mix was the Super Saturday by-election of July 28, 2018, at which the now-defeated Labor member, Justine Keay, was narrowly returned. Such was the attention focused on the Coalition’s weak result in the Queensland seat of Longman on the same day that few recognised what was a highly inauspicious result for Labor, whose 0.1% swing was notably feeble for an opposition party at a by-election. Much was made at that time of the performance of independent Craig Garland, who polled 10.6% at the by-election before failing to make an impression as a candidate for the Senate. Less was said about the fact that another independent, Craig Brakey, slightly exceeded Garland’s by-election result at the election after being overlooked for Liberal preselection. Both major parties were duly well down on the primary vote as compared with 2016, Liberal by 4.1% and Labor by 7.5%, but a much more conservative mix of minor party contenders translated into a stronger flow of preferences to the Liberals.

Clark (Independent 22.1% versus Labor; 4.4% swing to Independent): Since squeaking over the line at Labor’s expense after Duncan Kerr retired in 2010, independent Andrew Wilkie has been piling on the primary vote with each his three subsequent re-elections, and this time made it just over the line to a majority with 50.0%, up from 44.0% in 2016. This translated into a 4.4% increase in Wilkie’s margin over Labor after preferences. For what it’s worth, Labor picked up a 0.8% swing in two-party terms against the Liberals.

Franklin (Labor 12.2%; 1.5% swing to Labor): The tide has been flowing in Labor’s favour in this seat since Harry Quick seized it from the Liberals in 1993, which was manifested on this occasion by a 1.5% swing to Julie Collins, who succeeded Quick in 2007. This went against a national trend of weak results for Labor in outer suburbia, which was evidently only in that their primary vote fell by 2.9%. This was almost exactly matched by a rise in support for the Greens, whose 16.3% was the party’s second best ever result in the seat after 2010. The Liberals were down 4.0% in the face of competition from the United Australia Party, which managed a relatively strong 6.7%.

Lyons (Labor 5.2%; 1.4% swing to Labor): Demographically speaking, Lyons was primed to join the Liberal wave in low-income regional Australia. That it failed to do so may very well be down to the fact that the Liberals disassociated themselves mid-campaign with their candidate, Jessica Whelan, over anti-Muslim comments she had made on social media, and directed their supporters to vote for the Nationals. The Nationals duly polled 15.7%, for which there has been no precedent in the state since some early successes for the party in the 1920s. However, that still left them astern of Whelan on 24.2%. Labor member Brian Mitchell, who unseated Liberal one-termer Eric Hutchinson in 2016, was down 3.9% on the primary vote to 36.5%, but he gained 1.3% on two-party preferred after picking up around a quarter of the Nationals’ preferences. With a further boost from redistribution, he now holds a 5.2% margin after gaining the seat by 2.3% in 2016, but given the circumstances he will have a hard time matching that performance next time.

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.

1,795 comments on “Call of the board: Tasmania”

Comments Page 26 of 36
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  1. sprocket_ @ #1242 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 6:06 am

    Summary of PM&Speers:
    No change to climate policies
    Didn’t know it was going to be so bad, but contradicts that by saying govt was prepared
    Wanted to focus on the defence force involvement above all else
    Anger at him is diverting attention on response.
    Defensive bluster.

    I loved how Speers trapped him on the preparedness by asking in response to his ‘unprecedented’ excuse, ‘so there’s nothing your government could’ve done to better prepare for the bushfires?’

  2. Bingo

    Evan McMullin
    @EvanMcMullin
    ·
    1h
    If Bernie Sanders is the Democratic nominee, I think Trump will be re-elected and it won’t even be that close. Why risk it?

  3. Morrison will not do interviews with unfriendly interviewer , so i do not know why people expected ex-sky hack Speers would be putting pressure on Morrison to answer questions.

    If it was going to be a tough interview Morrsion would not have been on the ABC

  4. Boerwar:

    I keep saying that the only way Australia is going to have effective GHGE reduction policies is via a Labor govt.

  5. It would appear that what was NOT said by Morrison is as important as what he said

    – nothing on arsonists
    – nothing on hazard reduction fuel loads
    – no blaming of states for refusing assistance

    Doesn’t he read Murdoch press anymore? Or does the polling and analytics show this attempt at diversion is going down like a lead balloon?

  6. Chris BowenVerified account@Bowenchris
    36m36 minutes ago
    Scott Morrison claiming on Insiders that this is the first time there have been calls for the Federal Gov to be involved in bush fires. I’m sure that’s not how @MrKRudd remembers Black Saturday.

  7. Scott

    He didn’t need to worry. He’s already brushed off all criticism and rehearsed his answers with the media. He knew Speers probably couldn’t think of anything else to ask. Every word seemed familiar to me – except his gracious refusal to blame the states for failure. Normal language can’t cover this arrogance.

  9. The general consensus is that Morrison just owned Speers.

    And that Barrie Cassidy has choked on his steel cut oats watching the ‘new normal’ of the Murdification of the program he created.

  11. lizzie

    if there were competence and non corrupt people in the media , the questions which would be put to Morrison claims that he and the liberal party always accepted climate change

    1-Why did Morrison and the rest of the liberal/national party voted to repeal the carbon price

    2- Peta Credlin the then chief staffer of the PM(Abbott) ,admitted there was never a carbon tax.Will Morrison and the liberal/national party apologise for deliberately lying and spreading propaganda that there was an carbon tax,

  12. sprocket

    Nothing new. His approach to addressing unprecedented bushfire crisis is to “improve resilience” by building new dams, allowing grazing in national parks & permitting unfettered land clearing. He kindly reminded Speers that not only fire but cyclone and drought needed a response.

  13. For all the reasons mentioned above it’s a car crash nervier for Morrison.

    Convinced no one. Could have got his denier pals offside with agreeing to Royal Commission.

  14. Scott

    He also assured us that there would be no new taxes to deal with the “new normal” and that he would keep energy prices down. No doubt his quiet Australians are raising a beer. “Thanks, Scomo. No change, that’s reassuring.”

  15. Very interesting read.
    http://danwang.co/2019-letter/
    He talks about china, the depth of technology, the advantage of knowing how stuff is put to together.
    Couple of interesting quotes:
    The saying I picked up when I worked in California is that knowledge travels at the speed of beer. Engineers like to share, and it’s hard to stop technical knowledge from diffusing. There wouldn’t be technological clusters like Silicon Valley in the first place if that principle were not true.
    I wonder if poll bludger makes the dozen:
    The conversations one has in San Francisco and New York now feel so limited, to no more than a dozen topics that people turn over and over again.
    Reading his letter leads to the reading of his other work.
    https://danwang.co/how-technology-grows/
    Interesting quote in there:
    “Take out Greater London—the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree on a willingness to provide services to oligarchs from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union—and the UK is one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.”

  16. nath @ #1235 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 9:19 am

    Why study Astronomy when you can study Astrology. The worlds oldest con artists.

    I don’t expect someone who hasn’t been to Uni to comprehend the link between Predictive Analytics, Astronomy, Mathematics, Geometry, the Large Hadron Collider, the Apollo Missions and Astrology. Although being a tool I thought you might recognise another tool.

  17. Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen’s landslide re-election a massive blow to Xi Jinping

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-12/taiwan-president-tsai-ing-wen-woman-china-cant-topple/11860746

    Around 57 per cent of Taiwan’s voters have re-elected President Tsai Ing-wen for a second term, who ran partly on a platform to protect the island’s democracy and autonomy from the superpower across the water.
    :::
    For four years, China’s state media has mocked her, China’s foreign ministry has thwarted her efforts to maintain a Taiwanese presence at international forums, and Chinese nationalists have gleefully pursued any international brand that dared to list Taiwan separately on their websites.
    :::
    In the lead up to the vote, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu accused China of orchestrating online disinformation campaigns, on top of more traditional ways to meddle.
    :::
    They may be on the wrong side of the cross-strait power imbalance, but they have the vote — and they’re determined not to have their destiny written for them.

  19. This is the kind of gaslighting that is so arrogant that an interviewer could be forgiven for being temporarily stunned into silence while Morrison marches on.

    Kate M @ComissionerKate
    ·
    26m
    Morrison says he went to Hawaii because he was going to be on his way to India (to talk about coal).

    There are many beachside destinations that are ‘on the way’ to India – Bali, Thailand to name two. But Hawaii is unequivocally NOT on the way to India.

  21. Terrible interview by Scotty. What was the point, except to be shown up on national TV as everything people already associate with him? Things his interview simply reinforced for viewers:

    – he wont’ take responsibility at all for the crisis or the govt slow response to it.
    – his party is the party of AGW denial, even given the urgency of evidence
    – yet a fresh excuse for his Hawaiian holiday – this time it was the Indians what made me!
    – motormouthing all over the place to make excuses and blame shift
    – nothing new to announce, no changes to policy, or new ideas
    – his govt did nothing in response to the fire chiefs report
    – his position on the NEG is simple partisan politics

  22. Peter Clarke
    @MediaActive
    ·
    13m
    Very successful #PR outing for @ScottMorrisonMP ? He almost visibly ticked off his crafted talking points. Used his well practised tactics of deflection, avoidance, obfuscation infused w anodyne tone.
    @David_Speers followed, didn’t shape #interview.

  24. lizzie @ #1244 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 9:29 am

    This is the kind of gaslighting that is so arrogant that an interviewer could be forgiven for being temporarily stunned into silence while Morrison marches on.

    Kate M @ComissionerKate
    ·
    26m
    Morrison says he went to Hawaii because he was going to be on his way to India (to talk about coal).

    There are many beachside destinations that are ‘on the way’ to India – Bali, Thailand to name two. But Hawaii is unequivocally NOT on the way to India.

    So….he planned to be away from Australia for a VERY long time then? While it was burning down to the ground? O…..K…..

  26. Liberal MP Craig Kelly outperforms Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese on Facebook

    https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/liberal-mp-craig-kelly-outperforms-scott-morrison-anthony-albanese-on-facebook-20200109-p53q5n.html

    The effect is more pronounced when it comes to the number of “shares” Mr Kelly’s content receives. Since July 1, his posts have been shared 447,000 times – nearly six times more than Mr Morrison’s 81,000 shares, and more than three times Mr Albanese’s 128,500 shares.
    :::
    Carrington Brigham, managing director of digital at communications agency Agenda C, said Mr Kelly had “cultivated a multi-conservative following” including One Nation voters and “extreme conservatives”.

    “He does this with rich meme content that is stimulating, share-able and attractive to his base voters’ inherent views on particular polemic issues such as climate change, political correctness and President Trump,” said Mr Brigham, who formerly worked for Liberal-aligned research firm Crosby Textor.

    “He cherry-picks the content that reinforces those views with these audiences, and they are then motivated to engage and share across their own social networks on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.”

  30. The interesting thing about the holiday and India is, he could find time to leave the Country during the crisis for a holiday, but now cannot find time to do so for work.

  31. Peter Clarke
    @MediaActive

    #insiders
    @david_speers
    tries to press
    @ScottMorrisonMP
    on federal #bushfires foresight & early responses. PM uses anodyne avoidance. #bushfires

    Thanks, lizzie, for the link to this guy on Twitter.

    That ‘Anodyne Avoidance’ technique really pushes my buttons! 😡

  32. poroti
    says:
    Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 9:28 am
    nath
    Could be worse, could be psephology or economics.
    ________________________
    A nephew has in interest in Chemistry. I’ll try and steer him towards Alchemy.

  33. C@tmomma
    says:
    Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 9:26 am
    nath @ #1235 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 9:19 am
    Why study Astronomy when you can study Astrology. The worlds oldest con artists.
    I don’t expect someone who hasn’t been to Uni to comprehend the link between Predictive Analytics, Astronomy, Mathematics, Geometry, the Large Hadron Collider, the Apollo Missions and Astrology. Although being a tool I thought you might recognise another tool.
    ___________________________________
    Is your son moving to the USA to work for NASA or to take advantage of the fact that 26% of Americans believe in Astrology?

  36. Like I said, the interview only reinforced the view that his govt is the party of AGW denial.

    Paul BongiornoVerified account@PaulBongiorno
    51m51 minutes ago
    Is it only me or has @ScottMorrisonMP shifted ground on every answer on our emissions? Says they’re going down, when told his own Dept says they are going up talks about our international contribution – not per head mind you. Clear take out doing nothing more is his policy.

  37. Have to agree. He’s caused so much damage already and his “millions for mental health” is just a cynical ploy.

    Paul Barratt
    @phbarratt
    1m
    I hope he takes those positions all the way to the next election. Would be dreadful if he adapted just enough to slither back into office.

    ***
    Quentin Dempster
    @QuentinDempster
    · 42m
    ⁦PM @ScottMorrisonMP⁩ holds hard line that he is doing enough on CO2 emissions; will not abandon Kyoto credit fudge; promises Royal Commission on climate change, resilience and adaptation, says NEG redundant as “reliability” element already implemented. Lost opportunity.

  38. C@t

    I don’t expect someone who hasn’t been to Uni to comprehend the link between Predictive Analytics, Astronomy, Mathematics, Geometry, the Large Hadron Collider, the Apollo Missions and Astrology. Although being a tool I thought you might recognise another tool.

    __________________________________________

    C@t, it’s not about being to Uni, it’s about being possessed of a genuinely open and inquiring mind. There are plenty of duds who have spend decades at uni and many examples of genuinely great minds who have never been near formal tertiary education.

    Put simply, a poorly made tool will never come up to scratch no matter how hard it is sharpened.

  39. Dutch State to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by the end of 2020

    https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-contact/Organisatie/Hoge-Raad-der-Nederlanden/Nieuws/Paginas/Dutch-State-to-reduce-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-25-by-the-end-of-2020.aspx

    The court order for the Dutch State to reduce Dutch greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by the end of 2020 remains in force. That is what the Supreme Court ruled today.

    A major cause of rapid global warming is the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This is a source of great danger to life on earth. Both the Urgenda Foundation and the Dutch State are of the opinion that greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced quickly, and ultimately be discontinued almost completely, but they disagree on the speed at which this is supposed to happen. The Dutch State has a EU target for 2020 of a 20% reduction compared to 1990 levels. Urgenda, on the other hand, believes that, given the serious risks of climate change, the Dutch State’s target is not sufficient. Urgenda demands a reduction in Dutch emissions by at least 25% in 2020 compared to 1990 levels.

    The The Hague District Court agreed with Urgenda. It ordered the Dutch State in 2015 to reduce Dutch greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by the end of 2020. This order was confirmed by the The Hague Court of Appeal in 2018. Today, the Supreme Court rejected the Dutch State’s cassation appeal against this decision.

    The Supreme Court based its judgment on the UN Climate Convention and on the Dutch State’s legal duties to protect the life and well-being of citizens in the Netherlands, which obligations are laid down in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the ECHR).

  40. nath,

    The article discussing astrology was a review of a book by Alexander Boxer on the influence of astrology on science which is being released in a couple of days…

    Despite a resurgence in popularity, horoscopes are generally considered to be pseudoscience today, but they were once a cutting-edge scientific tool. In this ingenious work of history, data scientist Alexander Boxer examines a treasure trove of esoteric classical sources to expose the deep imaginative framework by which – for millennia – we made sense of our fates. Astrology, he argues, was the ancient world’s most ambitious applied mathematics problem, a grand data-analysis enterprise sustained by some of history’s most brilliant minds, from Ptolemy to al-Kindi to Kepler.

    :::

    Alexander Boxer has a doctorate in physics from MIT, a master’s degree in the History of Science from Oxford and a bachelors in Classical Language from Yale. His technical research has appeared in journals such as Nature Physics. He currently works as a senior scientist at a small technology company just outside of Washington, D.C.

  43. With the Speer’s interview just aired, do we know whether it was at the ABC’s instigation or was it requested by Morrison’s office to help deal with the problem that his stocks have taken a substantial hit over his “bushfire” persona?

  45. nath @ #1257 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 9:40 am

    poroti
    says:
    Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 9:28 am
    nath
    Could be worse, could be psephology or economics.
    ________________________
    A nephew has in interest in Chemistry. I’ll try and steer him towards Alchemy.

    So nice to see you have a new hobby-horse to ride against me, nath! The ‘racist’ one didn’t seem to work out too well. 😉

  46. I’m still in hospital after coming at 5 am, not a fan of hospitals .

    First time I’ve been in one in 20 years

    Looking at poll bludger as a distraction

  47. bakunin
    says:
    Sunday, January 12, 2020 at 9:48 am
    nath,
    The article discussing astrology was an interview with Alexander Boxer, whose book on the influence of astrology on science is being released in a couple of days…
    _______________________
    No doubt it will be an interesting read. Astrology was our first attempt at Astronomy.

  48. 😆

    @shootin4love
    ·
    39m
    Seriously @abcnews I was expecting Jane Norman to pull out the pom poms and do the splits. What unabashed propaganda from the so called ‘political editor.’ More like Morrisons ‘editor’. Could she be any more obvious?

  49. TPOF @ #1288 Sunday, January 12th, 2020 – 9:47 am

    C@t

    I don’t expect someone who hasn’t been to Uni to comprehend the link between Predictive Analytics, Astronomy, Mathematics, Geometry, the Large Hadron Collider, the Apollo Missions and Astrology. Although being a tool I thought you might recognise another tool.

    __________________________________________

    C@t, it’s not about being to Uni, it’s about being possessed of a genuinely open and inquiring mind. There are plenty of duds who have spend decades at uni and many examples of genuinely great minds who have never been near formal tertiary education.

    Put simply, a poorly made tool will never come up to scratch no matter how hard it is sharpened.

    True dat. 🙂

  50. TPOF says:
    Saturday, January 11, 2020 at 1:48 pm

    And finally, just on this excerpt from a post above:

    “Given his criminal act in ordering the extra-judicial assassination that led to the plane crash”
    Absolutely absurd point.

    Whatever you think of what Trump did, any state whose military blows a commercial airliner out of the sky when that plane is lawfully taking off from one of its airports with full official clearance has no justification whatsoever to blame anyone else. There are lot of potentially ugly foreseeable consequences from Trump’s action, but this was not foreseeable – especially from such a well-managed military as the Iranians
    —————————————————————-

    And I suppose you think the 176 dead civilians would still be dead if Trump had not bumped off the Iranian general.

    What is it about collateral damage that you don’t understand?

    You must be particularly dense if you can’t see that they would all be alive today if Trump had not ordered the execution.

    “Not foreseeable?”

    I suppose you also believe the United States has nothing to answer for in creating the environment which led to the Iranians making their terrible mistake. At least they have owned up to their culpability.

    You can excuse the U.S. all you like, but Trump set off a chain events that was bound to end badly.
    And we have yet to see the end of this movie which could be a repeat of Bush’s Iraq fiasco where upwards of a million civilians and combatants died..

    The simple truth is the unfortunate 176 would be alive today if Trump had not decided to commit extra-judicial murder.

    You will not so easily remove their blood from his hands.

    “Whatever you think of what Trump did.” Are you kidding? You seem surprisingly blase about this new doctrine of using drones to dispose of people you don’t agree with.

    The passengers and crew of that Ukrainian airliner are dead because Trump thinks a U.S. President has the right to execute whoever he pleases. They are simply collateral damage.

    .

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