Month: April 2022

This weekend brings us to the half-way point of a six-week campaign. The Australian Electoral Commission is receiving its first returned postal votes of them (738 of them as of Thursday evening, according to its figures), but there is still another week to go before pre-poll booths open, thanks to the reduction of the early voting period from three weeks to two.

Miscellaneous news:

• One Nation will in fact direct preferences to the LNP ahead of Labor in every seat in Queensland, contrary to reports yesterday that it would not do so in Longman. The Courier-Mail reports it is “understood” that Nationals Senator Matt Canavan brokered the deal, in which Pauline Hanson has been placed second on the LNP ticket.

• Matthew Killoran of the Courier-Mail reports that internal polling from Queensland shows Longman, Leichhardt and Brisbane to be “real contests”, with “the off-chance of a shock result in what should be the safe LNP seat of Ryan”.

• The latest monthly Ipsos Issues Monitor survey on issue salience finds cost of living has risen from fourth place to first since the start of the year, with 50% of respondents picking at as one of the top three issues out of nineteen on offer. Health care has edged down over the same period from 48% to 39%, the economy has fallen from 36% to 32%, and housing has gone from 33% to 32%.

• On the day One Nation posted a satirical video about voter fraud that wasn’t funny because it wasn’t true (the \Age/Herald reports it has been pulled from TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, but not YouTube), one of its candidates has been referred to Australian Federal Police because he had been nominated to run in two different seats for two different parties, which would have involved making a false declaration. Malcolm Heffernan says One Nation submitted his application for the Sydney seat of Banks after telling him his “services were no longer required”, by which time he had nominated instead for the Australian Federation Party in the Perth seat of Brand.

• Other candidates facing difficulties of one sort or another are Jo Dyer, independent candidate from Boothby and friend of Christian Porter’s rape accuser, who seems likely fall foul of Section 44 in the seemingly unlikely event that she’s elected; Robbie Beaton, Liberal candidate for the Melbourne seat of Isaacs, who has admitted he lives in Camberwell and not at the address of a hotel he used to own in Mordialloc, as per his enrolment; and Ingram Spencer, United Australia Party candidate for Higgins, who has been arrested on charges using a carriage service to menace or harass.

• Redbridge’s polls of Wentworth and Parramatta for Equality Australia, which were covered in Thursday’s post, can be downloaded here.

With the first postal votes being sent out this week, crunch time is arriving for parties to determine their how-to-vote cards, a much overrated yet not entirely insignificant feature of Australian election campaigning. First out of the block are the Liberal Party, whose how-to-votes are featured on the candidate pages of its website. These are in most cases tokenistic, since the preferences of Liberal candidates are usually not distributed, but it’s interesting to note that teal independents have been put last in Warringah, Goldstein and Kooyong, and behind Labor in North Sydney and Curtin (though not Wentworth). More consequentially, though not unpredictably, the party’s how-to-vote cards have Labor ahead of competitive Greens candidates.

The Liberal Senate tickets have the United Australia Party among the six parties recommended for numbering in every state except (wait for it) Western Australia: Palmer’s party is placed second in Victoria and Tasmania, third behind the Liberal Democrats in New South Wales and third behind One Nation in Queensland (the taboo against preferencing that party being very much a thing of the past). Pressed about the matter by The West Australian last month, Scott Morrison said: “I don’t believe there will be a deal and that is certainly not my expectation and it is certainly not my request.” However, he conceded it was a “matter for the party organisation”, and certainly didn’t stake his authority on the matter.

The party’s Queensland ticket offers a useful boost to Pauline Hanson, placing her ahead of Clive Palmer at number three and Campbell Newman at number four. Nonetheless, One Nation is directing preferences to Labor ahead of the Liberal National Party in Longman, which helped swing the result Labor’s way when the party last won the seat in 2016. Conversely, preferences are being directed to Warren Entsch in Leichhardt, contrary to suggestions he would be among a number of Liberal moderates targeted in relation for a sixth placement on the Liberals’ Tasmanian ticket. Those have turned out to be Bridget Archer in Bass, James Stewart in Sturt, Tim Wilson in Goldstein and Trent Zimmerman in North Sydney, with only the former seeming like a seat where the party is likely to attract much support. It is not clear from media reports if the teal independents are ahead of the Liberals in Goldstein and North Sydney.

No shortage of news around the place – starting with polling and the general state of the horse race:

• Samantha Maiden at news.com.au reports on Redbridge Group seat polls conducted for Equality Australia showing independent candidate Allegra Spender leading Liberal member Dave Sharma by 53-47 in Wentworth, and Labor’s Andrew Charlton leading Liberal candidate Maria Kovicic by 55-45 in Parramatta, held by retiring Labor member Julie Owens on a 3.5% margin. Primary votes in Wentworth, after exclusion of 4.3% undecided, are Dave Sharma 38%, Allegra Spender 25%, Labor 17%, Greens 7% and United Australia Party 7% (the latter have been coming in a little high in some of these seat polls for mine); in Parramatta, after exclusion of 11.5% undecided, it’s Andrew Charlton 37%, Maria Kovacic 30%, Greens 12%, and the United Australia Party and Liberal Democrats on 8% apiece. Equality Australia is keep to emphasise findings that 67% in Wentworth strongly agree that “trans people deserve the same rights and protections as other Australians” and 62% in Parramatta strongly agree that schools should not be allowed to expel students for being transgender, although the former question especially rather soft-pedals the issue. LGBTIQ+ equality and transgender participation in women’s sports were ranked dead last in both electorates as “vote determining issues”. No indication is provided as to sample sizes or field work dates.

• Further results from the Ipsos poll published in Tuesday’s Financial Review that previously escaped my notice: Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese were both deemed competent by 42%, Morrison led on having a clear vision by 41% to 37% and a firm grasp of economic policy by 48% to 31%, and Albanese led on having the confidence of his party by 52% to 44% and being trustworthy by 41% to 30%. Forty-two per cent expected Labor to win the election compared with 34% for the Coalition.

• Two sophisticated new forecast models have been launched over the past week. That of Armarium Interreta “combines voting-intention polling with a sprinkle of leadership approval polling and economic fundamentals” and factors in extra uncertainty when the pollsters are herding, as they certainly did in 2019 but appear not to be this time. It currently rates Labor a 60% chance of a majority and the Coalition 13%. Australian Election Forecasts is entirely poll-based and features probability estimates for each electorate, including their chances of being won by independents or minor parties. It has a 67.2% chance of a Labor majority and 13.1% for the Coalition.

• Kos Samaras of Redbridge Group observes that demographic trends raise concerns for Labor in Greenway, which combines established Labor-voting territory around Seven Hills in the south with newly developing suburbs in the north. The increase in the electorate’s enrolment from 110,343 to 119,941 since the 2019 election will have been concentrated in the latter area: Samaras notes the median house price here is around $800,000, which is around $250,000 higher than comparable houses in Melbourne growth corridors that have been strengthening for Labor.

• I had a piece in Crikey yesterday that looked booth deep and wide at the One Nation and United Australia Party vote, the conclusions of which I riffed off during an appearance on ABC TV’s Afternoon Briefing program yesterday, which also featured Ben Oquist of the Australia Institute.

Local-level brush fires and controversies:

• Video has emerged of Simon Kennedy, the Liberal candidate for Bennelong, providing obliging responses to members of anti-vaxxer group A Stand in the Park when asked if he would cross the floor to oppose vaccination mandates and breaches of “your community’s individual freedoms”. Kennedy responded with a statement to the Age/Herald saying he was “a strong supporter of the COVID vaccination effort”.

• A candidates forum in Kooyong was held last night without the participation of incumbent Josh Frydenberg, who objected to it being staged by climate advocacy group Lighter Footprints. However, Frydenberg and independent candidate Monique Ryan eventually agreed to Ryan’s proposal for a one-on-one town hall-style debate on Sky News after Ryan turned down a proposal for a mid-afternoon debate broadcast live on the Nine Network, which had been pursued by both Frydenberg and Nine political reporter Chris Uhlmann.

• Writing in the Age/Herald, Chris Uhlmann of the Nine Network quotes a Labor strategist saying the Katherine Deves controversy is playing “90/10 in Deves’ favour” in “the suburbs and the regions”. Lanai Scarr of The West Australian goes further, reporting that Liberal internal polling defies conventional wisdom (and the Redbridge polling noted above) in showing the issue is even playing well in Warringah.

Preferences:

• Matthew Denholm of The Australian reports that One Nation will retaliate against a Liberal decision to put the party behind the United Australia Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Jacqui Lambie Network on its Tasmanian Senate how-to-vote card, by directing preferences to Labor ahead of selected Liberals deemed not conservative enough. These are understood to include Bridget Archer in Bass and Warren Entsch in Leichhardt.

• In the Australian Capital Territory Senate race, Labor has announced it will put independent David Pocock second on its how-to-vote card. This is presumably based on a calculation that Liberal Senator Zed Seselja is more likely to lose if the last count comes down to him and Pocock rather than the Greens, since Pocock is likely to receive the larger share of preferences. Labor’s Katy Gallagher will be immediately elected in the likely event that she polls more than a third of the vote, having polled 39.3% in 2019 – direction of preferences to Pocock will maximise the share he receives of the surplus.

Campaign meat and potatoes:

• Nikki Savva writes in the Age/Herald today that “Labor insiders tracking Morrison’s movements are intrigued by his visits to seats they reckon he has no hope of winning”, although Savva retorts that “maybe he knows something they don’t, particularly around the Hunter in NSW”. A review of the leaders’ movements by David Tanner of The Australian notes both Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese have spent slightly more time in the other side’s seats than their own, a fact more striking in Morrison’s case. Only Bass and Gilmore have been visited by both. Morrison has spread himself evenly across the country, but has been largely absent from the inner urban seats where the Liberals are threatened by teal independents, both personally and in party advertising. Nearly half the seats visited by Albanese have been in Queensland, but notably not central Queensland, where Labor appears pessimistic about recovering the competitiveness it lost in 2019. Jacob Greber of the Financial Review notes that Barnaby Joyce has twice visited the Victorian rural seat of Nicholls, where the retirement of Nationals member Damian Drum has the party fearing defeat at the hands of independent Rob Priestly.

• The Age/Herald calculates that the seats most comprehensively pork-barrelled by the Coalition have been Boothby, McEwen and Robertson, which have respectively been targeted with a $2.2 billion upgrade of Adelaide’s north-south road corridor, a $1.2 billion freight hub and $1 billion in rail and road upgrades. The biggest target of Labor’s more modest promises has been Longman, with Boothby in fourth place – the others in the top five are the Labor-held marginals of Corangamite, McEwen and Gilmore.

• Nick Evershed of The Guardian has “written some code that takes the records of Google and YouTube advertising, then converts the geotargeting data into electorates based on the proportion of the electorate’s population covered”. This has yielded data and interactive maps on where the major parties are geo-targeting their ads, including a specific breakout for a Scott Morrison “why I love Australia” ad that presumably plays better in some areas than others.

• The Australian Electoral Commission will not be running voting stations at around three-quarters of the foreign missions where it been offered in the past due to COVID-19 restrictions, requiring those living there to cast postal votes. This leaves 17 overseas countries where in-person voting will be available, which are listed on the AEC website. The Financial Review reports the move “has infuriated some expatriates in cities that will be affected, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Toronto and Vancouver”.

State affairs:

• The result for the South Australian Legislative Council has been finalised, producing the anticipated result of five seats for Labor, four for the Liberals and one each for the Greens and One Nation. Including the seats carrying over from the last election, this puts Labor on nine, Liberal on eight, the Greens and SA-Best on two each and One Nation on one. The full distribution of preferences doesn’t seem to be on the Electoral Commission site, but Antony Green offers an analysis of it.

• In Tasmania, Peter Gutwein’s Liberal seat in the Bass electorate will be filled by Simon Wood, who won the recount of ballot papers that elected Gutwein ahead of party rival Greg Kieser by 6633 (61.0%) to 3132 (28.8%), with three non-Liberal candidates on 1116 between them.

The weekly Roy Morgan series continues to record a narrowing in what has always seemed an implausibly large Labor lead, the latest headline two-party result being 54.5-45.5, slightly in from 55-45 last time. Both major parties are unchanged on the primary vote, the Coalition at 35.5% and Labor at 35%, with the Greens down two points from a spike last week to 12%, One Nation steady at 4.5% and the United Australia Party steady at 1.5%. Applying 2019 preference flows to these factors, as opposed to Morgan’s respondent-allocated flows, produces a result in Labor’s favour of around 53-47.

The state breakdowns have Labor leading 55-45 in New South Wales (out from 53.5-46.5, a swing of around 7% compared with the last election), 60-40 in Victoria (out from 58-42, a swing of around 7%), 61.5-38.5 in South Australia (out from 58-42, a swing of around 11%) and 64.5-35.5 in Tasmania. The Coalition leads 54.5-45.5 in Queensland (out from 51-49, a swing to Labor of around 3.5%) and 54.5-45.5 in Western Australia (out from 51-49, a swing to Labor of around 1%). The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1393.

As reported in the Financial Review today, a not dissimilar set of voting intention figures in the Ipsos poll that was published yesterday derives from distinctly different state breakdowns. Going off 2019 preference flows, the Ipsos results are similar insofar as they credit Labor with leads of 58-42 in Victoria (compared with 56-44 in the poll three weeks ago) and 65-35 off the particularly small sample in Tasmania. However, Ipsos has Labor’s leads at 52-48 in New South Wales (53-47 last time), 55-45 in South Australia (62-38) and fully 59-41 in Western Australia (54-46 last time), along with a 50-50 result in Queensland (54-46 to Labor last time).

Sample sizes are such that all state breakdowns are to be treated with considerable caution, with the partial exceptions of Ipsos’s results for New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, which respectively have sample sizes 756, 584 and 448 and error margins of 3.7%, 4.3% and 4.9%. This is even more so in the case of the Morgan poll, whose national sample of 1393 compares with 2302 from the Ipsos poll.

The Australian reports Labor’s two-party lead in Newspoll is unchanged from 53-47 a week ago, from primary votes of Coalition 36% (up one), Labor 37% (up one), Greens 11% (down one), United Australia Party 4% (steady) and One Nation 3% (down one). Scott Morrison is down one on approval to 42% and up two on disapproval to 54%, while Anthony Albanese is up one to 38% and down one to 50%, with Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister out from 44-37 to 46-37. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1538.

Also out this evening is the second Ipsos poll for the Financial Review finds no improvement in the Coalition’s position since its post-budget poll, continuing to credit Labor with a two-party lead of 55-45 based on 2019 preference flows after exclusion of the 8% undecided (otherwise Labor 50 and Coalition 42). Ipsos provides a further two-party measure based on respondent-allocated preferences that includes those undecided on either primary vote and preference choice as a separate component: this has Labor steady on 48%, the Coalition up one to 38% and undecided down one to 14%. After excluding 9% unaccounted for (7% undecided plus 2% not enrolled – the latter is no longer featured, perhaps reflecting the close of the rolls) in the previous poll and 8% for the current one, the primary votes have the Coalition up 0.7% to 34.8%, Labor down 1.5% to 37.0%, the Greens up 2.1% to 13.0%, One Nation steady at 4.3% and the United Australia Party up 1.1% to 3.3%.

Scott Morrison’s personal ratings are all but unchanged, his approval up one to 34% and disapproval steady at 48%. Anthony Albanese suffers little damage from his early campaign mishaps, with approval up one to 31% and disapproval up three to 35%. He maintains a lead as preferred prime minister of 40-38, out from 38-37. The pollster’s gender gaps remain substantial, with the Coalition’s primary vote six points lower among women than men, Labor’s two points lower and the Greens’ five point higher, respectively compared with three points, seven points and four points last time. Scott Morrison’s net approval rating is minus six among men, down from minus eight, and minus 19 among women, down from minus 22. Anthony Albanese also does worse among women (minus six net approval) than men (minus one). The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a large sample of 2302.

Note the post below from Adrian Beaumont on today’s momentous French presidential run-off election. Closer to home:

• As the Liberal Party divides on Warringah candidate Katherine Deves and her contentious pronouncements on transgenderism, Chip Le Grand of the Age/Herald observes a related debate as to “whether a Coalition government could be turfed out of its inner-city electorates in Sydney and Melbourne but take enough ground in the suburbs and regions to stay in power”. Whereas some rate this as “electoral madness”, an unidentified conservative is quoted as saying Kooyong is “just a seat” and “certainly not the jewel in the crown anymore”. Those of the latter view point to Boris Johnson’s success in the “red wall” of northern England and the epochal populist-driven realignments in the United States and France.

• David Crowe of the Age/Herald reports front-benchers on both sides have identified the following seats as “still in play”: “Reid, Gilmore and Parramatta in NSW; Corangamite, McEwen and Chisholm in Victoria; Swan, Pearce and Hasluck in WA; Longman, Leichhardt and Brisbane in Queensland; and the Tasmanian trio of Bass, Braddon and Lyons”. This includes five seats held by Labor along with ten by the Coalition. A Labor source says they would “prefer to be us than them at this stage”, not least because the teal independent insurgency had the Coalition “fighting on two fronts”, but that defeat remained possible.

• Further to the above, former Queensland Labor state secretary Cameron Milner writes in The Australian that the Liberals are pursuing Labor-held Lilley in Brisbane, Lingiari in the Northern Territory (where Scott Morrison campaigned yesterday) and Corangamite in western Victoria. Milner also describes Scott Morrison’s support for Katherine Deves as “brilliant foghorn politics”, deployed to “virtue-signal their values” to One Nation and Clive Palmer voters whose preferences will be up for grabs. Phillip Coorey of the Financial Review likewise offers that “in the suburbs, the regions and the religious communities, the government – and Labor – believes the Deves issue is going gangbusters in Scott Morrison’s favour, messy as it may be”.

• A Labor online attack against Gladys Liu, who holds the Melbourne seat of Chisholm for the Liberals on a margin of 0.5%, has been described as a “desperate, dishonest, racist attack ad” by Josh Frydenberg and a “sewer tactic” by Scott Morrison. While these claims are receiving sympathetic coverage from the news media, the contentions raised in the ad do not seem especially misleading.

• Ben Raue of The Tally Room has interactive colour-coded maps recording the extent to which seats have swung towards one major party or the other since 2004. It can be observed that Labor has strengthened in the growth areas of Melbourne but weakened in central Queensland and Sydney’s inner west and south.

• Following the publication of full candidate details on Friday, I have finished fleshing out my federal election guide with further photos, candidate details and full lists of candidates in ballot paper order.

Ballot paper draws were conducted yesterday, and full candidate lists have been published by the Australian Electoral Commission and incorporated into my election guide. There are 1203 candidates for the House of Representatives, up from 1056 in 2019, an average of around eight per seat. The United Australia Party is again contesting every seat, and One Nation, which contested 15 seats in 2016 and 59 in 2019, is now contesting every seat but Kennedy and Higgins. Other parties making considerable efforts in the lower house are the Liberal Democrats with 100 candidates, the Australian Federation Party with 61 and Animal Justice with 48.

Conversely, the impact of the 2016 reforms continue to whittle away at the number of micro-parties running for the Senate: the number of columns on Senate ballot papers is down from 35 to 23 in New South Wales, 31 to 26 in Victoria, 26 to 25 in Queensland, 23 to 22 in Western Australia, 16 to 14 in Tasmania and nine to eight in the Northern Territory, though it’s up from 16 to 22 in South Australia and seven to 11 in the Australian Capital Territory.

Other news:

• With the announcement of nominations, it is confirmed that Liz Habermann, who came close to winning the safe Liberal seat of Flinders as an independent at last month’s South Australian state election, will run against Liberal member Rowan Ramsay in the corresponding seat of Grey.

• Shortly after the publication of candidate details, the Australian Electoral Commission issued a statement noting that Rodney Culleton, who leads the Senate ticket of the Great Australian Party in Western Australia, appeared to be an undischarged bankrupt, contrary to a declaration he signed when he nominated. It has referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police. Culleton was elected as One Nation’s Senator for Western Australia at the 2016 double dissolution, but was found to be ineligible the following February on the grounds that he was awaiting sentencing for a minor criminal conviction at the time of his nomination, which came two months after he was declared bankrupt.

• Phillip Coorey of the Financial Review cites unspecified sources who rate that the strongest possibilities for teal independents are Wentworth, North Sydney and, “to a slightly lesser extent”, Goldstein. A Liberal source is quoted saying these independents would be less at risk of backing a Labor government than Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott proved to be after 2010, having “developed their own network of voters”.

• Mark Riley of the Seven Network writes in The West Australian that Liberal internal polling “shows them coming back in Swan and Pearce, though still trailing Labor”. Similarly, Labor strategists cited by Tony Wright of the Age/Herald merely “hope” they can win Hasluck.