The campaign continues to be light on for news, with no published polling since Newspoll a fortnight ago, a deadening of interest arising from the certainty of the outcome, and rape allegations in the federal sphere sucking up much of the news media oxygen. This week’s assembly of campaign highlights accordingly casts the net a little wider than it ordinarily might:
• Mark McGowan was reckoned to have presented the Liberals with their first real opportunity of the campaign on Tuesday, when he suggested COVID-19 border control measures might be extended beyond the end of the pandemic. McGowan soon scotched the notion that this might mean maintaining the GTG (“good to go”) passes that require interstate visitors to disclose personal details when visiting the state, but said police might remain stationed at border crossing points due to their positive side-effect of preventing importation of methamphetamine.
• Joe Spagnolo of the Sunday Times reported last week on “long-running rumours” that Bill Marmion would make his seat of Nedlands available for Zak Kirkup if he lost his own marginal seat of Dawesville, which Kirkup denies. That assumes Nedlands, the party’s fifth safest seat, is not lost as well – which can’t be taken for granted if either Newspoll or second-hand accounts I’ve heard of Liberal internal polling are any guide, both suggesting the Liberal seat count could fall as low as four. Eliza Laschon of the ABC looks at the potential for the Liberals to lose their status as the official opposition and/or a parliamentary party.
• Joe Spagnolo offers a much rosier assessment for the Liberals in today’s Sunday Times, based on “the vibe I am getting from both Labor and Liberal camps”. Spagnolo suggests the Liberals will lose “three or four seats at worst”, with Hillarys and Riverton most likely to fall, Darling Range a “line-ball call” (though so apparently is Riverton), Labor-held Kingsley “an interesting one to watch”, and Zak Kirkup predicted to retain Dawesville.
• Low-level candidate issues continue to dog the Liberal Party campaign. The candidate for Collie-Preston, Jane Goff, has complained of Zak Kirkup’s failure to consult her over his keynote policy of closing Collie’s coal-fired power stations by 2025; and Jandakot candidate Mihael McCoy’s involvement with the Kings Chapel Church, which is run by his father, has tied him to viewpoints fully as extreme as those of the Republican Party and The Australian’s editorial page cartoonists. On the other side of the fence, an unidentified Labor candidate reportedly considered withdrawing over the dismissal of one of Deputy Premier Roger Cook’s electorate officers.
• The Sunday Times reports more than 210,000 pre-poll votes have been cast and 311,676 postal vote applications received, which compares with slightly more than 200,000 pre-polls and postals combined in 2017.
• You can hear my reading of the situation on last Tuesday’s edition of RTR-FM’s The Swing program here, starting at the 26:20 mark.
I’m concerned about Labor’s preference deal with the Shooters in some parts of WA. Labor voters who vote above the line in these areas could inadvertently end up having their vote go to a party that wants to water down our gun laws.
There are two ways around this. The first is by voting for a party of the left, such as the Greens. The other is to vote below the line – don’t let Labor give your vote to the crazy gun nutters.
Must be the first time in a couple of decades that anyone took anything printed in The Sunday Times seriously.
Yes Seadog. I forgot that The West Australian isn’t the only dissatisfying WA statewide paper.
If I lived in the Agricultural Region I’d much prefer voting for Labor and risking the Shooters over voting Green and risking an entirely unhinged anti-vaxxer.
Kevin Bonham lays out how easy it could be for this utter loon – and Craig Kelly booster – to be elected on Green preferences.
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2021/02/one-more-nightmare-group-tickets-and.html?m=1
3z: yeah, that’s probably the least worst way to vote out there. Rick Mazza seems mostly harmless from the eight years he’s been in politics. It’s a perverse decision to have to make if you’re on the progressive left: vote Labor instead of Green because the Shooters are less dangerously insane than the anti-vaxxers. FFS.
It’s possible for Labor and the Greens to get more than three quotas between them and end up with only two seats – it could end up something like 2 Nat, 2 ALP, 1 HAP, 1 Shooter. (No, I did not forget to put the Libs on that list.) Labor and the Nats will get two quotas each (assuming a swing from Lib to Labor), then the last two are between HAP, Shooters and Libs.
Out of those three: the Libs get prefs from the Nats, some indie named Parminder Singh (runs a bakery in Kojonup) and nobody else. The Greens, AJP, Legalise Cannabis and another indie have them ahead of Shooters; Aus Christians have them ahead of HAP. All other tickets have them behind both. (ALP, NMV (ehh?), Waxit, One Nation and GAP have Shooters ahead of HAP.)
Basically the Libs need either a quota in their own right, or them plus the Nats to be at least three (42.9%). They got 49.3% in 2017, so a combined 6.5% swing against Nats and Libs tips them out. Shooters get their quota from Labor and the minor right; HAP get theirs from the Greens (fkn idiots) and the Druery “parties”. I haven’t tried this in the ABC calculator (the 12% One Nation vote from last time gets in the way), but it seems likely.
Liberals for Climate and the Liberal Democrats have done something very cute with their GVT: most of the Libs are about halfway down the ticket (ahead of Nats, Labor and Greens), with the single exception of Steve Martin, who’s dead last. Since Martin’s the Lib #1, that makes them anti-Lib tickets in the strongest possible way.
Oh, and here’s something scary. Plug the 2017 vote into the ABC calculator, then adjust it up to 100% (the main party missing from 2017 is Family First). You can consider this a baseline to compare 2017 with 2021 using current GVTs.
This gives a 5-1 right-left result in Agricultural region. One Nation get the fifth seat instead of Labor #2. Be frightened.
Other regions, doing the same thing:
South Metro is bizarre. 3 for Labor, 1 each for Libs, Green and One Nation. (Yep, with the 4% the LDP accidentally got, they still lose!) Basically Labor and Libs get their seats straight off the bat; the Greens get up with AJP, Socialist and the Labor surplus; then the minor right cluster (ON plus AC, Waxit, Shooters) ends up ahead of both Lib #2 and the microparty cluster (LDP etc), and easily beats the Libs on LDP prefs (they don’t even need the rest of the snowball, just LDP).
North Metro: One Nation instead of Lib #3.
Mining and Pastoral: Shooters instead of Greens.
South West: Lib #2 instead of the Nats.
East Metro: status quo .
Overall, that’s ALP 13 (-1), Grn 4 (0), Lib 8 (-1), Nat 3 (-1), ON 6 (+3), Shooters 2 (+1), LDP 0 (-1). A significantly more right-wing upper house than the one we actually got.
Bird of paradox says:
Sunday, March 7, 2021 at 6:15 pm
3z: yeah, that’s probably the least worst way to vote out there. Rick Mazza seems mostly harmless from the eight years he’s been in politics. It’s a perverse decision to have to make if you’re on the progressive left: vote Labor instead of Green because the Shooters are less dangerously insane than the anti-vaxxers. FFS.
It’s invariably the case that to vote for the left it makes sense to vote Labor ahead of the Greens, who are nothing more than trolls.
Theo Andelini says:
Sunday, March 7, 2021 at 7:38 am
I’m concerned about Labor’s preference deal with the Shooters in some parts of WA. Labor voters who vote above the line in these areas could inadvertently end up having their vote go to a party that wants to water down our gun laws.
There are two ways around this. The first is by voting for a party of the left, such as the Greens. The other is to vote below the line – don’t let Labor give your vote to the crazy gun nutters.
Bollocks. Voting Green will result in the election of the loony Right. This is no accident. It is deliberate.
@Bird of Paradox: That’s by design. Glenn Druiery’s design, to be precise – the preference-whisperer gets ‘better’ (i.e., more skilled) with every election he successfully games, and he was a Libs for Forests & LibDems candidate in NSW politics years ago. Besides being a malapportioned embarrassment, the WALC is host to people like Aaron Stonehouse – who was elected on 3.9% of the vote over the incumbent Greens MLC with 9.3% of the vote…thanks to Druery.
At the very least, adopting the Senate’s partial-preference ticket reform would reduce Druery’s outsized clout by no small margin. Ideally, reduce the degree of malapportionment too; Perth is home to 80% of WA’s population, but elects just 50% of the WALC.
I am hopeful that the Labor party can pick up the ~4% swing in Agricultural to ensure two seats. Otherwise let the cards fall how they may.
What’s interesting will be how much of a swing, if its on, comes from Liberals or the Greens.
Liberals, obviously. How would you get a 4% swing out of the Greens when they got 3.6% last time? There’s some hysterically tribal Labor partisans on PB who’d love it if the Greens got a negative percentage of the vote, but maths doesn’t work like that.
Don’t forget One Nation. They got 12% last time – if Pauline’s star is fading, there’s at least half a quota up for grabs just from them.
@Bird of Paradox:
Indeed; as PHON’s star fades, most of her punters will go to the Coalition – but not all.
@ N, on the main thread you’ve enquired about whether there had been any mention of Porter with voters. In Friday, four voters enquired about whether Mr Porter was in his office that day.
Their tone and demeanour suggested they did not wish him well. I have no wish to incur Mr Bowen’s wrath so won’t elaborate further on the nature of the enquiries about Mr Porter’s presence.
Ellenbrook EVC, covering Swan Hills and West Swan has been reasonably quiet.
Cheers, grim. I’ll be on duty on polling day….curious to see how the Libs are conducting themselves…
Interesting that McGowan has come out so forcibly against significant reform of the Legislative Council Voting. Once he has a stonking victory I expect he will change his mind and reinterpret what he was actually promising in order to ram through change.
I’m fully supportive of making the voting the same as the Federal Senate and removing the District nature of the LC- that’s what we have the Legislative Assembly for.
Bird of Paradox
I, obviously, meant the swing more broadly than the Agricultural region.
But thank you for the maths lesson.
Bucephalus @ 11:16,
I agree that upper houses ought to be elected on a state-wide vote akin with the Senate vote. Bugger districts, regions or whatever. Lower houses are the place where voting is localised with a version of preferential voting to suit – just like Tassie. As governments are formed in lower houses, only dingbats would want a local ratbag holding the BOP. Naturally some could name a few notable exceptions, but generally local no-hopers offer nothing to their region or their state. However, I do support PR as a voting system with all members elected to 4-year terms; i.e. no 8-year terms with a 50-50 split from one parliament to the next. Clean the lot out! ‘A contemporary parliament’ as Gough used to say about the born-to-rule Senate. Upper houses ought to be a house of review, not a brake on progress.
I would go even further and suggest an upper house PR vote with, say, a 4-5 % threshold on primary votes – akin with Germany. Those minors and indies who can’t jump the bar would have their vote automatically distributed. Who needs these recalcitrants? They just game the system. That would end the snowball effect, especially if you also offered a 10-vote minimum preferential vote. Job done!
Ooooh what I wouldn’t give for some polling data.
I too would prefer a statewide voted Upper House but non-malapportioned regions are better than the current ones. The fewer regions though the better.
With 36 people elected statewide any group that gets less than 1/36th of the vote should be excluded. Then you divide the remainder proportionally. And on. No need to preference.
But voter decided above the line preferencing is OK.
Ozmikey, I could live with a 1/36th threshold, but preferencing is part of our voting culture. I’d like to retain it, but simplify it with a 10-vote minimum and an appropriate threshold. All we need now is for those who are born-to-rule to wake up on Sunday morning with a severe maths problem. Then we can all have fun pontificating on whose system is best.
Just been polled again. First question was what was I worried most about if labor won total control of the parliament.
Five or six options, usual liberal accusations about poor management of the economy, unemployment , chaos in hospitals etc.
None of the above wasn’t an option so I hung up.
Drongo. However it is done, it is the preference harvesting of tickets that arises from having registered preference distributions that needs to end. Voters must decide who they want to elect. And then the votes exhaust.
I keep on seeing ads on Facebook from some mob called Advance Australia (apparently a right-wing version of GetUp), basically saying “don’t vote Labor in the upper house” without mentioning any other party.
Also quite a few ads for the Christians in East Metro. They can’t be that well targeted… a little bit of data mining could let you know that I follow John Carey (Perth MLA, Labor) and Alison Xamon (North Metro MLC, Green), so (a) I’m unlikely to vote for the god-botherers and (b) I probably don’t live in the eastern suburbs.
I’m a little concerned the Liberal campaign message about not giving the ALP too much power is working. Could see an election night where not much changes hands. If you’d told me that pre covid I’d have been happy but I really want to wipe out the Liberals and get rid of Liza Harvey and others.
The lack of decent (or any) polling has triggered my usual pre election nerves.
Sue Ellery refused to promise not to reform the LC yesterday.
It could be easily fixed by just disbanding it. Queensland survives without one.
The Fitzgerald Report sheets home part of the blame of the Joh era to not having an upper house. For democracy a house of review is important.
Ozmikey says:
Tuesday, March 9, 2021 at 10:29 am
NZ copes without one.
@Bucephalus
NZ has a different electoral system which makes it very hard for one party to govern alone, thus meaning at least one other party being required to pass legislation.
It is a very weird election. The Liberal candidate where I have worked for the other side is literally imploring every voter going in to the booth to put her number one, to the point of it being embarrassing, even for her own volunteers.
There is definitely a sense that the “we’re doomed but vote for us anyway” tactic has worked to some extent. That said, I have rarely seen so many people march in saying they know what they’re doing and they don’t need input from anyone.
Labor has done very little to counter the negative campaign, especially the stop, don’t give Labor total control signage. Reminiscent of all the liar signs the Libs put up around booths at the federal election with no retaliation.
It must be one of the least polled election campaigns ever. You hear whispers of private polling showing huge Labor first preference numbers, but none gets published, so it is all speculative.
The AEC workers are doing a great job but they should have one line for out of seat voters and another for the locals so they can go straight through instead of queueing for ages waiting for staff to process all the out of seat voters.
Struck my blow for Democracy yesterday – Greens stone-motherless last behind all the other nutters.
Rossmcg, I think I might have got the same poll. The next question was even more biased. First question, five options on what I would be most worried about if Labor won both houses, options from memory were increased taxes, Roe 8 & 9 not being built, the G2G pass being kept after the pandemic, hospital ramping not being fixed, and I think the fifth option was something to do with unions. I went with the hospital ramping option because it was the most neutral, the next question was a yes/no question to the effect of did I know that if Labor get control of both houses then there will be no one to stand up to the unions’ most extreme policies or something like that. It was a very loaded question in how it was worded and with only the two options of yes or no. I didn’t answer, the question was repeated, then I got thanked for participating and hung up on.
Also had a more professional poll from I think Media Reach the other day, sounded like it could have been commissioned by the Liberals as well. Much more neutral wording though. Standard questions on how I’m voting, who I prefer on 2PP, then a few questions about the G2G pass being kept beyond the pandemic.
I’m sure One Nation are grateful for your vote.
Bucephalus, how do you suggest Labor members of the upper house could be persuaded to vote to end their careers and lifetime sinecures? I’m being serious! Further, if they need the support of the Greens, how do you suggest getting them on side? I suppose we could expand the lower house to be a repository for the unemployed, but what about the rural ALP members who could never win a first-past-the-post election?
Drongosays:
Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 9:13 am
Bucephalus, how do you suggest Labor members of the upper house could be persuaded to vote to end their careers and lifetime sinecures?
———————————
That is exactly how the Queensland upper house was eliminated.
In NSW Labor attempts to follow Qld and abolish the Legislative Council were stifled (firstly) by Labor appointees whose purpose was to ensure abolition.
Though Labor MLAs in WA did effectively vote for their abolition on the introduction of one vote one value, I cannot envisage the desire or the opportunity arising in WA to abolish the LC.
Reform should be pursued. A more democratic representation should be pursued.
Coming from someone who would have voted for a presidential candidate whose predictable reaction to an election defeat was turn a violent mob against Congress, the Greens have every right to wear this as a badge of pride.
I will always find it hard to understand the depth of hatred some people have for the Greens. To put them after PHON and antivaxxers is ,,, well it’s difficult to find an appropriate adjective. I understand why the conservatives do it. But….
@Bucephalus
Despite being someone who votes Greens first, I have noticed the prevalence of nutter candidates, especially in the LA.
IN East Metro, I think the Greens recommended Labor second and Liberal third in all but a couple of electorates.
And Greens like to encourage a bit more political diversity, but… nutters. Not having them.
Ozmikeysays:
Wednesday, March 10, 2021 at 2:26 pm
I will always find it hard to understand the depth of hatred some people have for the Greens. To put them after PHON and antivaxxers is ,,, well it’s difficult to find an appropriate adjective. I understand why the conservatives do it. But….
————————————-
Anyone who has been involved in a campaign with a Green’s opponent can understand the temptation to put them last. Fortunately most of us resist the temptation and do put them in front of the extremists.
PS @ 11:07, Queensland managed to abolished the Legislative Council (LC) in 1922 because Red Ted Theodore objected to it rejecting so many of his bills. A decade earlier the House of Lords had been similarly rejectionist and, following objections from the Liberal Government of the time, agreed to permit the unobstructed passage of money bills only by the threat that the King would appoint sufficient progressive Liberal Lords if they didn’t. Good God! Can you imagine the damage that would cause? Is no institution sacred?!
So, Red Ted took aim at the Qld LC and used the Lords’ recalcitrance and subsequent backdown as his justification. His charisma and popularity at the time managed to appease the establishment. Therefore, sufficient ALP members were appointed to the LC to blow up the joint. Those appointees knew they had a singular mission of demolition and they did it. They were never promised a lifetime tenure. It’s important to contrast that situation to the WA LC of today. Crucially, the Qld LC was never elected, only appointed like the House of Lords. As WA MLCs are all elected – despite malapportionment – in all seriousness, how would a proposal to abolish the WA LC get through caucus? If it did, so many careers would be terminated. McGowan could expand the lower house to accommodate some of the newly unemployed, but not in rural areas. So it’s not gunna happen.
This is a good read. I used to teach this stuff many moons ago: https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/documents/explore/education/factsheets/Factsheet_3.20_AbolitionOfTheLegislativeCouncil.pdf
Has it ever gone to plan that when an elected Representative gives up the seat they have just won so a party leader who has just lost their own seat can try and get back into the house?.
A lot of voters will reject such shenanigans
ChrisC it’s very common in Canada. As a recent example, in 2013 BC premier at the time Christy Clark lost her seat, but her party won the election (with an increased majority!). She almost immediately contested and won a byelection in a safe seat within 2 months.
I think there was some talk that Campbell Newman would transfer to Moggill if he lost Ashgrove but the LNP won in 2015. Newman was of course not an MP when he took the LNP to victory in 2012.
In WA it seems like Libby Mettam (or Mia Davies in some scenarios) would be more than happy to be opposition leader. Even Kirkup holding Dawesville is no guarantee he won’t step down or be rolled.
Can’t remember the British Labour minister who lost his seat maybe 40 or 50 years ago and then lost a”safe” seat in the manipulated by-election. Hyphenated name? Highly regarded within the party but not by the hoi polloi. Maybe Smethwick was his original seat. Lost in a vile racist campaign.
ChrisC, I can’t recall it happening. Cases of leaders losing their seats are vanishingly rare.
I might have expected Newman to do it but he was so reviled I think he would’ve struggled to win Moggill even on the 8% margin at the 2015 election (a margin which has oddly retracted further at both subsequent elections). He would have found a much safer home in Kawana or Surfers Paradise.
Ultimately, resigning from politics was one of the most dignified things he ever did.
I know that betting sites are terrible predictors of election outcomes but I have never seen such unbalanced odds as in this WA election.
Sportsbet are giving the same odds (15-1) of the Liberals holding minority government as Labor winning every seat in the lower house.
Interestingly, Kirkup’s odds in Dawesville are better than some his counterparts in safer seats like Scarborough, Geraldton and even Kalgoorlie (good betting on the Nats there at 4-1 I reckon). Clearly the punters favour leadership too.
Fulvio
I’m sure you will be disappointed that there was no PHON candidate to vote for not that they would ever receive my first preference.
William,
If I was a US citizen I probably would have voted Trump in 2016 but I definitely would not have voted at all in 2020.
Toff:
Patrick Gordon Brown
St Antony of the Split Booth has done the assembling of postal and prepolls by electorate. Link attached
Does anyone want to make a call on why almost half of all Dawesville voters have already voted.
Red tide? Blue wall?
And will there be a big partisan difference between prepolls and on the day votes. I couldn’t live through Georgia Lite.
https://antonygreen.com.au/2021-wa-election-tracking-the-early-vote/
A referendum would be required to abolish the LC
Ozmikey
The on the day votes gave Sandringham , Caulfield and Brighton (Brighton!) to Labor. They all got pared back on the earlies.
Certainly we will have to wait to see if the safe seats are safe on day, buggery bollocksed or Joondalooped.
I remain hopeful for an ALP wipeout.