Author: William Bowe

Labor’s routine late-campaign line that the result will be closer than expected has been delivered with an extra urgency in the past few days. All-conquering Kevin Rudd was enlisted to warn voters "not wake up on Sunday morning, having engaged in a protest vote, a protest vote which went wrong, with a state Liberal government elected as a result". John Watkins just told Steve Price on 2UE that he expected a swing against Labor of between 5 and 7 per cent. Their concern is understandable, as Labor faces the situation campaign managers dread the most: a universal expectation of victory for a government that deserves to lose. Some might argue that Peter Beattie performed well in similar circumstances last year, but his government was eight years old rather than 12, and had a shorter (though by no means insubstantial) list of disasters for which it could not escape responsibility. It also had a more talented leader, which makes it all the more remarkable that Morris Iemma has built an apparently successful campaign on his superiority to the alternative.

I have thus made a slight reassessment to my predictions, based on the premise that today’s opinion polls will boost the anti-Labor protest vote. The Hunter seat of Port Stephens and the new seat of Wollondilly in Sydney’s outer south-west have been moved into the Liberal column; I would also be surprised if they did not win one out of Penrith, Drummoyne, Menai and Miranda, but I rate Labor’s chances at a little over 50 per cent in each case. However, I have also been shamed into a change in the other direction by Charles Richardson of Crikey and Geoff Robinson of the South Coast (in comments), who both think it odd of me to have picked Tweed for the Nationals in an otherwise grim assessment for the Coalition. Charles notes I have tipped "Nationals in Tweed and Labor in Murray-Darling, but if incumbency is powerful enough to keep Murray-Darling Labor I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in Tweed as well, where the demographics are better". The answer is that I think Peter Black might prove popular with the new voters brought into his electorate by the redistribution, but this might be due to my cartoon-ish view of rural life. However, I am persuaded that changing demographics will be enough to give Labor’s Neville Newell a very narrow win in Tweed.

Taken together, this puts my prediction at 51 seats for Labor, 23 for the Liberals, 11 for the Nationals and six for independents.

Two polls today point to a clear Labor victory in New South Wales, but differ in their extent: ACNielsen has it at 56-44 in the Sydney Morning Herald, while it’s 53-47 in the Daily Telegraph‘s Galaxy poll. ACNielsen might have more value as a brand name, but a good word should be put in for Galaxy, which has performed extremely well on each of its three previous entries:

Both agencies took advantage of the public mood of disaffection by asking respondents if they thought either side deserved to win, knowing full well the response they would receive. According to Galaxy, 59 per cent said Labor did not deserve to win against 67 per cent for the Coalition; ACNielsen encountered a slightly more contended sample, with figures of 52 per cent and 57 per cent. It’s also interesting to note that both polls indicate a solid increase in the non-major party vote, both compared with 2003 and polls from the start of the campaign. The sense of disenchantment is echoed in each of of the major newspapers’ editorials, although most have given reluctant backing to the Coalition; the exceptions are the Sun-Herald, which alone backed Labor, and the Financial Review, which vaguely indicated a preference for the Coalition without providing an explicit endorsement:

Sydney Morning Herald: "As the Opposition Leader, Peter Debnam has run a disappointing campaign … Yet on the Coalition benches sits a core of talent that could form the nucleus of a good government. In Victoria, Steve Bracks came to power with a similarly small pool of front-bench talent to draw on. By concentrating power in that restricted group, his Labor Government was able to run that state effectively – to the point where, with fewer natural endowments its economy now outperforms NSW. Given the same opportunity, the Coalition could be expected to do the same here. As for inexperience – the argument has no force. In any democracy it stands to reason that a new government will be less experienced than the one it replaces. So what? In any case, Labor’s experience of government has been of repeated and widespread failure. Its supposed experience should be seen, if anything, as a liability. Labor’s best talent resigned soon after Bob Carr. When Michael Egan, Craig Knowles and Andrew Refshauge also quit the scene, Labor lost its edge in ability. Labor and the Coalition now face each other as equals in talent. It is, we admit, an uninspiring choice for voters, but when they enter the ballot box a choice must be made. As voters look from Labor after 12 years – tired, talentless and arrogant – to the Coalition’s untried and patchy team, they must assess the risks each represents. We believe the re-election of Labor is simply one risk too many".

Daily Telegraph: "It’s hard to envisage a more tired, rotten, arrogant, useless government than this lot. Equally, it’s hard to remember a worse campaign than that run by the tragi-comic NSW Liberals and their Speedo-clad leader, who decided five weeks ago to unleash himself on the voters without any pants on … However, today The Daily Telegraph recommends a vote for the Liberals. We happily endorsed Labor in 1999, with qualifications in 2003, but we cannot do so again – at the state level – this time. Labor has now shown it is a demonstrably bad Government – an irretrievably bad Government – with a talent pool shallower than our parched rivers, incapable of becoming a force for genuine good regardless of its future configuration. They simply do not deserve another four years. There is a chance that, despite the misgivings over his campaign methods and past judgment, that Peter Debnam and the Liberals could, in power, deliver a break with the drift and paralysis which mars this current Labor administration, and become a new, fresh, good government.".

The Australian: "The choice that presents itself to voters going into the polling booths tomorrow is not an enviable one. On the one hand incumbent Morris Iemma looks likely to fall over the line by running not just against his opponent but, cynically, against his Labor predecessor Bob Carr as well. On the other is Peter Debnam, a man who should be in the box seat but who has been unable to bring excitement, or policy, to the table … Despite the wealth of ammunition available to it, the Opposition has not been able to push even the most simple message, that the NSW Labor Government has passed its use-by date. But this is clearly the case. At the previous election, we endorsed Labor before the full extent of the state’s woes was known. In hindsight, voters were entitled to feel ripped off at the result. This time we recommend voters suspend their natural suspicion of Mr Debnam and punish the Government. We do so in the full knowledge that it won’t happen and that NSW will wake up on Sunday to the same horror it has today".

Australian Financial Review. "The Labor governments of Morris Iemma and Bob Carr before him have mishandled every important aspect of economic policy under their control, squandering the ‘premier state’ inheritance that fell into Mr Carr’s lap when Labor won government 12 long years ago. Twelve years of autopilot have left NSW with the slowest growth in the country for the past two fiscal years and the slowest growth of any state for the past eight years. Thousands of train passengers were stranded in peak hour in the middle of Sydney Harbour Bridge last week, hospitals and schools are crumbling, NSW has been, with Queensland, the worst manager of water resources, and its bizarre approach to energy markets and privatisation has frustrated the development of an efficient national electricity market. The roads system makes extensive use of private capital but the process has been poorly planned and managed … If the opposition were vaguely competent, Labor would be voted out tomorrow. Sadly the opposition Liberal Party and its leader, Peter Debnam, do not appear to be even vaguely competent. The party is riven by factionalism and in thrall to a right-wing cabal led by upper house MP David Clarke that prizes its own power above the party’s political success and has actively discouraged moderates such as former leader John Brogden. NSW voters are – perhaps understandably in the circumstances – showing themselves to be more forgiving than The Australian Financial Review".

Sunday Telegraph. "It’s impossible to document all of Labor’s failures here. We’ll list a few instead: the economy, land tax, the vendor tax, the Cross City Tunnel, Campbelltown Hospital, hospital waiting lists, everything to do with water, Milton Orkopoulos, Carl Scully, Stephen Chaytor, the Queen Mary 2 visit, trains, buses, school air-conditioning, police numbers, Cronulla riots, the M5 tunnel … Debnam hasn’t been able to sell himself as a viable alternative, and the electorate is right to be suspicious. His policies are wafer-thin, designed exclusively for seven-second television and radio news grabs … the Sunday Telegraph has agonised over the decision confronting voters, but believes a vote for change is necessary. The Coalition could hardly do any worse".

Sun-Herald. "Neither the Government nor the Opposition deserves to win next weekend’s state election. And no doubt many voters will find themselves struggling to put one side ahead of the other as they wait at polling booths on Saturday. The exercise of any real democratic choice seems almost impossible given that this is a two-party contest in which the ALP’s appalling track record is matched only by the Liberal Party’s abject failure to prove itself as a credible alternative … What Debnam has failed to show is that he can do any better on health, transport, education, the environment or service delivery. It has not helped that he’s been a lone voice – seemingly unsupported by a ministry that has remained in the shadows. The result is that the ALP, incredibly, looks to be the better option".

To tie up a few loose ends: five days ago, I promised that posts would be forthcoming summarising the main candidates for the upper house. Unfortunately I have not been able to fit this into my schedule. I will however take a punt on the outcome: nine seats for Labor, eight for the Coalition, two for the Greens, one for Fred Nile and one for Australians Against Further Immigration. The latter will benefit from a good position on the ballot paper, lower house candidates in most seats and the disappearance of One Nation and Pauline Hanson (who ran in 2003 as an independent); the three collectively accounted for 4.3 per cent of the vote in 2003, when 2.0 per cent was enough to win a seat for the Shooters Party. If I’m right, persistence will finally have paid off for the party’s perennial candidate, Janey Woodger. When taken together with ongoing members, this will put the numbers in the upper house at 19 for Labor, 15 for the Coalition (10 Liberal and five Nationals), four for the Greens, two for Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party and one each for the Shooters Party and Australians Against Further Immigration.

Finally, it’s worth noting that those of us outside the state will be getting a remarkably good deal in terms of election night coverage, provided we have pay TV. Not only will Sky News be providing its traditional coverage, but the ABC’s effort will also go to air nationally on ABC2. Failing that, there is also the ABC Radio coverage on News Radio and, best of all, live blogging here at Australia’s forty-fourth most loved political website.

Entries to the New South Wales election guide have now been appended with predictions; taken together, these point to comfortable Labor majority with 52 seats out of 93, down from 55 at the last election. The Liberals are tipped to go from 20 to 21, with the Nationals steady on 12; eight seats are down for independents, compared with six in 2003. I do in fact anticipate a fairly solid drop in the Labor primary vote, particularly in Sydney, and for a lot of fat to be trimmed from Labor two-party margins. However, this will not produce a big haul of seats because of the lack of low-hanging fruit. Camden is rated as the sole metropolitan exception, due to the profile of the Liberal candidate (local mayor Chris Patterson) and the substantial boundary changes that will curtail sitting member Geoff Corrigan’s incumbency advantage. By contrast, I am tipping the new seat of Wollondilly to go Labor’s way despite a smaller margin (4.6 per cent compared with 8.7 per cent), due to a) their coup in landing formerly independent mayor Phil Costa as candidate, and b) its location in Sydney’s semi-rural hinterland, which I imagine will make public transport less of a factor. Elsewhere in Sydney, the verdict on Penrith, Drummoyne, Menai, Miranda and Londonderry is "close but no cigar".

Outside Sydney, I am tipping the Nationals to gain Tweed while suffering a notional defeat in Murray-Darling, where Peter Black’s larrikin charm will reverse the effects of a redistribution that has put him 1.4 per cent behind the eight-ball. My assessment is that there will be a net decrease of one in the number of independents, if you include Steven Pringle in Hawkesbury and Bryce Gaudry in Newcastle (respective Liberal and Labor members who quit their parties after preselection defeats). Former Liberal member Peter Blackmore is marked down to win Maitland from Labor, while John Tate gets the nod in Newcastle (although it was a tough choice between him and Gaudry). The Liberals will finally recover Manly due to the appeal of their candidate Mike Baird and the low profile of the incumbent, David Barr. Sitting independents in Pittwater, Dubbo, Tamworth, Sydney, Northern Tablelands and Port Macquarie are tipped to be returned; I state this with great confidence in the latter three cases, but am less sure about the first three.

One more round of Campaign Update’s before I take the plunge tomorrow (by which I mean today, it being 3am) and post my predictions:

Lane Cove (Liberal 2.8%), South Coast (Liberal 1.6%) and Epping (Liberal 7.6%): Despite last week’s public transport nightmare, pundits are increasingly turning their attention to seats held by the Liberals. Anne Davies and Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald report that "a Young Liberals ‘flying squad’ has been sent in to help the seat of Lane Cove, as the party moves into damage control to protect its marginals in the final week of the election". Liberal member Anthony Roberts is said to have been "hurt by a report he was asked to leave the Longueville Hotel following an incident", which he denies. The report also says the Liberals are now concerned about South Coast, having rubbished confident talk from the Labor camp earlier in the campaign. The two parties have found a new source of disagreement further up the pendulum, in Epping; Labor reportedly believes vote-splitting between Liberal candidate Greg Smith and independent Martin Levine might deliver them an upset, which is "dismissed as fanciful by Liberal campaigners". Also mentioned are Terrigal and Goulburn; Simon Benson of the Daily Telegraph concurs that "MPs are talking about possible losses in Terrigal, South Coast and Goulburn".

Sydney (Independent 15.0% versus Labor): Clover Moore continues to get a hard time from Imre Salusinszky in The Australian. On March 5, Salusinszky reported Moore had potentially breached parliamentary guidelines by using her electorate allowance to "spruik achievements from her other role as Lord Mayor of Sydney". This time she faces "a former campaign insider accusing her of hypocrisy over donations from property developers". In other inner-city news, an assault complaint brought by independent Malcolm Duncan against glamorous Liberal action man Edward Mandla has been given way too much media coverage. Writing in the gay and lesbian magazine SX, Sydney blogger Sam Butler describes the avowedly gay-friendly Mandla as "powerfully built, with exfoliated and moisturised skin, distinguished grey hairs and a handsome smile … an ideal ‘Daddy’ fantasy for many of the otherwise politically-ambivalent twinks residing in and around Stonewall". One wonders if the Stonewall twinks’ ardour for older authority figures extends to Fred Nile; as with all other Liberal candidates, Mandla’s how-to-vote card suggests voters might care to give him their second preference in the upper house.

Newcastle (Labor 15.4%): Morris Iemma was up against it yesterday when he visisted Newcastle to shore up the floundering campaign of his personally chosen star candidate, Jodi McKay. As well as being ambushed by ferals, the Premier had to face the embarrassment of McKay’s inability to identify the Premier of Queensland. The Poll Bludger had previously felt that McKay had a better chance than was commonly believed, due to the split in the independent vote and the likelihood that most of these votes would exhaust. This theory is now harder to sustain, presenting the dilemma of who to back out of lord mayor John Tate and Labor-turned-independent sitting member Bryce Gaudry.

The arrangements that govern public disclosure of how-to-vote cards for New South Wales elections have to be read about in depth to be believed. Antony Green explained it thus on this site yesterday:

If you are on the electoral roll for a NSW district, you will be allowed to visit your local Returning Officer on Saturday and examine registered material. But you cannot do it beforehand and you cannot look at it unless registered for that district. Parties are currently distributing pre-poll how-to-vote cards, but this does not mean the same preferences will be recommended on how-to-votes on Saturday. As for lower house preferences, you are only allowed to examine how-to-votes for your own district. The law prevents you from looking at how-to-votes in the other 92 districts. And access is only allowed on Saturday during the hours of polling.

Some further elaboration from Antony in today’s edition of Crikey:

Remember last November when the Liberal Party directed preferences against inner-Melbourne Green candidates in pre-poll voting, but on polling day recommended preferences to the Greens. Many candidates may play the same trick in NSW. As in Victoria, all how-to-vote material must be registered and approved. Unlike Victoria, there is no public access to the material before election day …

Now let me plead self-interest here. On Saturday, I’d like to know as much as I can about how preferences might flow. In other states that register how-to-vote material, the answer is to visit the Electoral Commission and examine the material. In NSW, that is not allowed. Instead, on Saturday I will visit the Returning Officer for my own electoral district of Marrickville, where I will be allowed to examine material registered for Marrickville, and registered material for the upper house. The law prevents me from examining material for any other electoral district, even if I visit those offices.

The stupidity of the laws may yet create a farce on Saturday. The problem is, how will party workers know that material being distributed by other parties and candidates is correctly registered? The answer is, they can’t. The only legal access to the material is in the office of each Returning Officer. The material cannot be examined in polling places. So if a candidate is handing out dodgy how-to-vote material in Deniliquin this Saturday, the only way anyone can check this material is registered is by checking with the Returning Officer in Broken Hill, several hundred kilometres away.

Also on this site, Antony politely described as "silly" the contrast between how-to-vote card secrecy and the availability of each candidate’s four-page child-related conduct declaration form on the Electoral Commission website. Owing to a populist afterthought by some underworked legislator, the Commission has been required to waste hundreds of megabytes and God knows how many hours of labour in publishing 793 of these identical forms, which are of no conceivable interest to anybody.

Last Tuesday’s post on Peter Debnam’s pitch for sympathy by portraying himself as something less than an underdog might have been ahead of its time. He was then only going so far as to say the election should be seen as a chance to "send Labor a message". On Friday, he upped the ante by declaring: "the Labor Party is going to win the election in a week. If the polls today are correct, they’re about to win the election and you’re about to get another four years of the same". Compare and contrast this with the 1996 statement from Geoff Gallop, then the WA Opposition Leader, cited in the earlier post: "Information I have seen in the polls throughout this campaign indicates the Court Government will be returned comfortably on Saturday". Brad Norington and Imre Salusinszky of The Australian nonetheless felt able to report that "publicly admitting to likely defeat is unheard of in politics".

Reaction to the manoeuvre was perhaps not as Debnam would have hoped. An unnamed Liberal MP quoted in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph described the decision as "stupid". The ABC’s Quentin Dempster was even less charitable on Friday’s edition of Stateline, putting it to Debnam: "I now ask you, in the interests of restoring some healthy democratic competition to this election, to step aside immediately as leader, to allow Barry O’Farrell to lead the party to the election". Debnam has since been trying to have it both ways, arguing that he did not mean what he appeared to mean when he said that "the Labor Party is going to win the election". Yesterday a Liberal election rally was told: "I’m fighting to win this election. There is not one defeatist bone in my body and never has been".

Debnam can at least take heart from yesterday’s editorial in News Limited’s Sunday Telegraph, which made a torturously qualified call for a change of government. It correctly noted that the Liberals would be much better placed if O’Farrell was leader, but concluded that a Debnam-led Coalition "could hardly do any worse" than the incumbents. However, Fairfax’s Sun-Herald went the other way, with a verdict headlined: "Unfortunately, it has to be Labor".

A few more Campaign Updates for the election guide:

Camden (Labor 8.7%): Today’s Sydney Morning Herald carries an ACNielsen poll from an impressive sample of 952 voters in this seat in outer south-western Sydney. The results are relatively encouraging for the Liberals: a 53-47 two-party split in Labor’s favour, or a swing of nearly 6 per cent. The primary vote figures were Labor 47 per cent, Liberal 41 per cent, Greens 5 per cent, independents 3 per cent and other parties 5 per cent. However, the poll was conducted "last weekend" – before the politically bewildering double whammy of the Liberals’ transport policy failure and Wednesday night’s public transport fiasco. On Saturday, Caitlin O’Toole of the Financial Review reported that "polls" showed the Liberals were in fact ahead here: none had been published, so this presumably referred to party polling.

Pittwater (Independent 5.4% versus Liberal): Alex McTaggart, who won this blue-ribbon seat as an independent when John Brogden quit in late 2005, has obviously not been studying his election campaigning textbook. McTaggart modestly informed the Sydney Morning Herald’s Andrew Clennell that he need not bother coming to see him, as he was "going to win anyway". Clennell made the trip regardless and was told by McTaggart that he did not believe in doorknocking, which he considered "in your face" and unpopular with voters. McTaggart also said his own polling showed "a 2 per cent swing from him to the Liberals on primary votes", a hard statement to read given there was no Labor candidate at the by-election. Last Saturday’s Financial Review reported that Liberal polling had them trailing 57-43 on two-candidate preferred.

Hawkesbury (Liberal 14.6%): It seemed an awful stroke of bad luck for Liberal-turned-independent member Steven Pringle when another candidate bearing his surname drew top spot on the ballot paper. However, Steven Pringle says he smells a rat with respect to Australians Against Further Immigration’s Gregg Pringle, telling the Penrith Press: "I was surprised and somewhat flattered, but then discovered he doesn’t even come from within the electorate. Now you have to be suspicious. Why would anyone with the same surname, from outside the electorate, nominate for Hawkesbury, just two weeks out from an election?" One explanation might be that the AAFI, in its determination to field no fewer than 71 candidates, was relaxed about their connections to the electorates they were running in.