Do as you’re told

Even before the Prime Minister formally scotched the idea, it was clear that Liberal Party advocates for voluntary voting should not have been holding their breath. The implacable opposition of the non-government parties would have required united Coalition support to get it through the Senate, but the Nationals (not to mention many Liberals) are no more keen on the idea than Labor. No doubt the National Party knows its own business, but I am puzzled by their apparent conviction that voluntary voting would damage them. It is true that much of their support comes from rural and small-town areas where incomes are no higher than in urban Labor seats, but it’s also true that voluntary council elections attract far higher turnouts on the National Party’s turf than in the cities. Why would federal elections be any different?

The Australian Election Study has been asking respondents if they would have voted if not compelled to since the survey after 1996 election, providing a one-to-five ranking from "definitely would have voted" (chosen by about 70 per cent of respondents) to "definitely not". Combining results from the four surveys from 1996 to 2004 allows us to cross-tabulate these responses with voting intention for nearly 7000 respondents, including 2976 who voted for the Liberal Party, 2607 for Labor, 333 for the Nationals, 332 for the Democrats and 305 for the Greens. The following table combines responses of "probably would have voted" and "might, might not" into a "maybe" category, and "probably not" and "definitely not" (the latter accounting for only 2.6 per cent in 2004) into "unlikely". The Democrats and Greens vote has also been combined because patterns for the two were very similar.

This makes it clear enough why Labor is united in opposition to voluntary voting, and bolsters Liberals who support it on the basis of realpolitik. But it doesn’t explain why the Nationals are less keen, since their own pattern is no different from the Liberals?. It’s also interesting to note that the Democrats and Greens appear to do well out of reluctant voters. This doesn’t surprise me, since minor parties have traditionally absorbed protest votes from the politically disengaged. However, it runs contrary to Bob Brown’s argument that his support for compulsory voting must be founded purely on principle since his party has "the highest proportion of tertiary-educated voters who are most likely to vote without compulsion". I might have marked that down as self-serving spin, but Antony Green also reckons that "the only party certain to benefit from voluntary voting would be the Greens, who have by far the highest ratio of members to voters of any Australian political party". I hesitate to say that an argument of Antony’s does not persuade me, but I still need to be sold on this one. While it is true that the party has a large activist support base, this does not preclude the possibility that just as many of its voters are alienated and disengaged, and that it receives relatively little support from those who fall in between.

One thing past experience makes clear is that electoral reform is governed by the law of unintended consequences, as demonstrated by the parties’ repeated failures to skew the system in their favour. Malcolm Mackerras notes in Crikey that the last two substantial changes to the system – the expansion of Parliament in 1984 and the introduction of semi-proportional representation to the Senate in 1948 (note the eerie Orwellian inversion of those two dates) – were introduced by Labor governments acting out of perceived self-interest, but they have resulted in fairly regular Senate majorities for the Coalition and none for Labor. By the same token, the conventional wisdom that Labor would suffer under voluntary voting might well be misplaced. Antony Green observes that turnout at this year’s British election was especially low in Labour strongholds, suggesting compulsory voting would have boosted their share of the national vote without having much effect on seat totals. By extension, voluntary voting in Australia could cut margins in safe Labor seats without having a substantial impact in marginals.

There are countless other imponderables, such as the impact it would have on the way parties operate. The need to mobilise voters might even compel Labor to re-engage with the world beyond its internal culture and the attendant bastardry and skulduggery that we’ve been hearing so much about lately.

Poll Bludger Version 2.0

Welcome to the new-look, WordPress-powered Poll Bludger, which comes complete with comments and automatic archiving and sundry other delights that I wrongly thought I woudn’t need when I got the ball rolling. I have ironed out the site’s kinks to the extent that it looks okay on Internet Explorer 6.0, but past experience suggests there might still be problems with other browsers. Any issues that could be brought to my attention would be much appreciated. Comments are open on this post and the one previous, so please drop in and say hi.

Prospective Pittwater preselection participants

The Poll Bludger has been regrettably quiet during the current period of ferment owing to other commitments, one of which has been the overhaul of the site which will be unveiled very shortly. Commentary on proposed electoral reforms will have to wait until I’ve had more time to think about it – the first order of business is the less mentally demanding matter of the Pittwater by-election.

Antony Green led us through the electorate’s convoluted history in Tuesday’s Crikey email:

Pittwater has never seen an orderly handover of MPs at a general election. Bob Askin won Pittwater in 1973 (it had previously been known as Collaroy), but retired and caused a 1975 by-election, when he was succeeded by Bruce Webster. Webster quickly tired of serving in an ineffectual opposition and resigned in mid-1978. The only reason a by-election was not held on this occasion is because after Labor’s victory at the Earlwood by-election, Neville Wran used the vacancy and two others in Cessnock and Wollondilly to call an early election. Max Smith won Pittwater and retired in 1986 causing another by-election. His successor Jim Longley also retired in 1995 after the defeat of the Fahey government and caused the by-election at which Brogden was elected. By-elections have also been the chosen way for MPs to depart the blue blood eastern suburbs seat of Vaucluse. Since 1936, only Keith Doyle in 1978 has retired at a general election. Murray Robson caused a by-election by dying in 1957, and his successor Geoffrey Cox also died causing a by-election in 1964. After Doyle’s resignation, by-elections continued, with Rosemary Foot resigning in 1986, Ray Aston dying in 1988 and Michael Yabsley resigning in 1994. For those interested, current Liberal Leader Peter Debnam won that by-election, having first defeated John Brogden for Liberal pre-selection.

The present Liberal preselection is living up to high expectations, with an enormous field of aspirants emerging against a backdrop of open factional warfare. The Poll Bludger hears talk of senior Liberal wets complaining that 100 new members have suddenly joined the Pittwater branch, although Brad Norington of The Australian reported last Friday that a moderate candidate (Paul Nicolaou) was the front-runner. Factional heavies will want to be careful, since those wronged by flawed preselection processes have a habit of winning as independents and holding their seats for years or decades to come. This danger would appear especially pronounced given local disaffection over the party’s treatment of their popular former member.

Those who have been mentioned as contenders, rightly or wrongly, are as follows:

Paul Nicolaou. A confirmed starter, Nicolaou is chief executive of the Millennium Forum, the NSW Liberal Party’s fundraising arm, and a Greek community bigwig who formerly chaired the Ethnic Communities Council. He contested John Watkins’ electorate of Ryde at the 2003 election and suffered a 9.0 per cent swing. Despite his reputation as a moderate, the Daily Telegraph reported that Nicolaou would have the support of the Right, who are perhaps demonstrating consciousness of the limitations of their power. A nudge from the Prime Minister might have been a factor here – Jonathan Pearlman of the Sydney Morning Herald reported he was keen to see Nicolaou compensated for losing the upper house seat he was promised as a result of factional realignments favouring the Right.

Robert Webster. Webster is a former National Party member and Planning Minister in the Fahey Government who left politics in 1995, but now apparently wants back in with the Liberal Party with a view to assuming the leadership. Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald (who the Poll Bludger remembers as a young buck with Perth’s Community Newspaper Group) reported that Webster would not run if Paul Nicolaou did, which it seems he is going to. Jonathan Pearlman of the Sydney Morning Herald reckoned him a potential leadership aspirant if Peter Debnam did not perform well.

Jason Falinski. Much of the early talk centred on Falinski, whose credentials as a member of Brogden’s Left faction include state presidency of the Australian Republican Movement and a background working for John Hewson and Malcolm Turnbull. So it was hard to know what to make of the Daily Telegraph‘s revelation that Falinksi asked party headquarters to transfer his membership to Pittwater a week before Brogden’s leadership implosion. Christian Kerr at Crikey asked: "Have the left in the NSW Liberal Party heeded the Prime Minister’s call and stopped fighting the right – only to turn on each other? Or is this just the latest claim in a ruthless campaign of undermining where the facts all too often are going missing?" Unnamed Liberal MPs quoted in the Daily Telegraph (why do I get the feeling I’ve typed those words before?) said Falinski had "previously been positioning himself to challenge for preselection in Vaucluse, held by new Liberal leader Peter Debnam". That would not seem feasible at present, and he also ruled out nominating for Pittwater.

Adrienne Ryan. Not for the first time, the high-profile Ku-ring-gai councillor and ex-wife of former Police Commissioner Peter Ryan has been spoken of as a potential Liberal candidate. Ryan told the Manly Daily she hadn’t ruled it out, apparently without swearing.

Ross Cameron. Scott Howlett of the Parramatta Advertiser (another Poll Bludger associate from his Perth days) reported last week that the defeated Federal Member for Parramatta might be considering Pittwater as a vehicle for a comeback. However, he is apparently more keen on assuming the ultra-safe Federal seat of Mitchell when Alan Cadman finally retires, and has not been heard of since in relation to the preselection.

Paul Ritchie. Chief executive of employer group Australian Business Ltd and a former senior advisor to Brogden.

Robert Stokes. The Manly Daily reports that Stokes is the favoured candidate of Brogden, for whom he worked as an advisor. He isn’t getting much press though.

Julie Hegarty. The Pittwater councillor told the Manly Daily she had been "approached by many".

Other names tossed around include local police officer Bob Goymour; lawyer David Begg; former Young Liberals federal president Tony Chapell; Crown Insurance Group general manager Jonathan O’Dae; local party member Stephen Choularton; and Michael Darby, arch-conservative son of former Manly MP Douglas Darby. The Manly Daily reports the preselection is likely to be decided on October 29; the by-election itself is most likely some way off, as the Government would want tensions in the Liberal camp to simmer for as long as possible.

Gone to the Brogs

Recent events have amply illustrated that politics is a brutal game, in which practitioners are subjected to relentless acts of bastardry from ambitious rivals, muck-raking journalists and sundry other scumbags and bottom-feeders. Worst of the bunch are the psephologists, who spend their time between elections anticipating the next health crisis or personal breakdown that will bring on an eagerly awaited by-election. So it has been with the protracted demise of former New South Wales Opposition Leader John Brogden, who has today pulled the plug on his political career a month after the dramatic events that ended his leadership. The result will be a by-election in about two months for the leafy northern beaches electorate of Pittwater. Of itself, this is unlikely to be particularly interesting given the 20.1 per cent Liberal margin and the certainty that Labor will not field a candidate. But given the fault lines that Brogden’s fall exposed in the New South Wales Liberal Party, the preselection could be a doozy, and this site will be over it like a rash.

In other news, the Poll Bludger has been hard at work on a redesign through WordPress that will make the site up to 70 per cent less clunky and stupid-looking, as well as furnishing it with a comments facility and other blog-related bells and whistles.

Helen back

The Poll Bludger caught about 45 minutes of the coverage of the New Zealand election on Sky News before casting his mind to the New South Wales by-elections, by which time he had developed an clear picture of a looming National Party victory. This was because the service Sky was using operated on raw early figures from conservative rural and small town booths without comparing them with equivalent booth results from the previous election – a matter simple enough that your humble correspondent managed it quite effectively on this site during today’s by-election count through Microsoft Excel and a lot of cutting and pasting.

The situation looked quite different by the close of play, with Helen Clark being able to deliver what effectively amounted to a victory speech at the end of the evening. The key to the situation was Labour’s ultimate lead over the Nationals of one parliamentary seat and 1.1 per cent, since both New Zealand First and United Future New Zealand had resolved to support whichever party led on these measures. Had the National Party remained ahead, their support of these parties along with ideological fellow travellers ACT New Zealand would have produced 62 seats compared with the opposing bloc’s 60. The other close shave, the Green Party’s narrow surplus over 5 per cent, was less consequential – a Labour-dominated coalition could have been constructed even if they had been wiped out, so long as Labour remained ahead of the Nationals. As it stands, there seems little chance that there will be a significant change in the current results, with the National Party looking more likely to drop an existing seat than Labour.

Labour (40.7 per cent, 50 seats): Although down two seats on 2002, Labor look set to finish one all-important seat ahead of the Nationals. The way the votes are currently stacked means there is more prospect of the Nationals losing a seat in late counting than Labour. Since both New Zealand First and United Future New Zealand have stated they will fall in behind the party that wins the most seats, Helen Clark will be able to stitch together a precarious multi-party government.

National (39.6 per cent, 49 seats): As agonising as it must have been to have watched their early lead slowly disappear, the outstanding feature of this election has been the recovery of the National Party under Don Brash. The party’s vote rocketed to 39.6 per cent from a mere 21.1 per cent in 2002, with their representation up from 27 seats to 49.

New Zealand First (5.8 per cent, 7 seats): Winston Peters looks like he will narrowly lose the seat of Tauranga which he has held since 1984 (initially for the National Party), but the party’s success in breaking the 5 per cent barrier gives him a list seat to fall back on. The party has nevertheless dropped six seats from its 2002 performance, although realistically any minor party can feel relieved if it reaches the 5 per cent threshold.

Green Party (5.1 per cent, 6 seats): The Greens have cut it very fine indeed but they do not look in danger of falling below the 5 per cent threshold, going on the precedent of 2002 when they polled 12.0 per cent of postal, pre-poll and absentees votes compared with 6.5 per cent of normal votes.

Maori Party (2.0 per cent, 4 seats): The new parliament will enjoy its first ever overhang due to the near-exclusivity of this party’s support among those who vote in the seven Maori electorates, of which it won four – leader Tariana Turia easily retained Te Tai Hauauru and three colleagues also enjoyed comfortable victories. The remaining three remain with Labor. The Maori Party’s party vote would only warrant two seats, which is why the new parliament will have 122 rather than the usual 120, with 62 required for a majority rather than the usual 61. New Zealand tabloids are no doubt calculating the cost to the taxpayer even as we speak, and this is unlikely to be the only query raised over MMP in the election’s aftermath.

United Future New Zealand (2.7 per cent, 3 seats): Party leader Peter Dunne easily retained the seat of Ohariu-Belmont which he has held since 1984 (initially for the Labour Party) with 46.8 per cent of the vote against Labour’s 24.3 per cent and the Nationals’ 20.0 per cent. This meant his party was able to hold three of the nine seats it won in 2002 despite plunging well below the threshold, from 6.8 per cent to 2.7 per cent.

ACT New Zealand (1.5 per cent, 2 seats): This party looked gone for all money just one fortnight ago, but Rodney Hide has scored his first ever victory as an electorate MP and will get a bonus list seat for his trouble. This means that every minor party that won seats in 2002 has survived, though each has also lost seats. Hide scored 44.1 per cent against 33.6 per cent for National incumbent Richard Worth, who will remain in parliament through a list seat.

Jim Anderton’s Progressive (1.2 per cent, 1 seats): The Poll Bludger had earlier suggested that a Jim Anderton victory in his electorate of Wigram was not a foregone conclusion. This was not one of my better calls – Anderton in fact increased his vote from 36.0 per cent to 48.5 per cent. However, the party vote for his Progressive Coalition was down from 1.7 per cent of 1.5 per cent, costing it its bonus list seat.

Triple M by-elections live

. TWO-PARTY PRIMARY
ELECTORATE COUNT LABOR GRN/LIB SWING LABOR GRN/LIB
MARRICKVILLE 82.0 55.0 45.0 5.7 49.1 39.9
MAROUBRA 79.8 67.5 32.5 10.4 57.5 19.5
MACQUARIE FIELDS 84.4 59.2 40.8 10.7 51.4 34.4

9.50. Here they are – Labor’s two-party vote in Maroubra with all booths in is 68.2 per cent compared with my own estimate of 67.5 per cent, and the swing to the Greens 9.7 per cent rather than my estimate of 10.4 per cent.

9.41. Just waiting on notional preference results from Maroubra now. About a third of them are in, and presumably the rest will follow in one hit.

9.38. Randwick Girls School is on the board at last. It only has 2.8 per cent of the electorate’s voters, but I suppose there’s no harm in being thorough.

9.34. Typically, the majority of Macquarie Fields notional preference figures have come through in one rush. They have Labor’s two-party vote at 60.1 per cent compared with my own estimate of 59.2 per cent, which puts the swing just short of the psychological barrier of 10 per cent.

9.30. Randwick Girls School continues to hold out. The suspense is killing me.

9.23. Final primary vote booth results in from Macquarie Fields.

9.20. The last notional preference distribution from Marrickville is in, and Labor’s lead is still 4.2 per cent.

9.15. The SEO have corrected the Nagle Park booth error referred to earlier, which has lifted the swing to the Greens from 8.8 per cent to 10.2 per cent – but this measure is of limited value since the Greens came third to the Liberals in 2003.

9.06. The last booth in Marrickville is now in, so the results in the table above are final for the evening.

8.58. With more booths now in, the notional two-party preferred result in Marrickville is stable on 4.2 per cent – which is to say the discrepancy with my own figure has reduced.

8.55. The long-awaited Marrickville blurt has finally hit – the count goes from 27.4 per cent to 77.4 per cent and the swing to the Greens increases from 4.2 per cent to 6.0 per cent – not bad, but not enough. The Electoral Office could probably have done a better job of maintaining the suspense here. Tebbutt did will in the all-important Marrickville booth, winning 64.0 per cent of the primary vote and suffering only a 1.2 per cent swing.

8.44. Four more booths from Maroubra leave only Randwick Girls High to come. The meaningless swing to the Greens is up from 8.3 per cent to 8.8 per cent.

8.32. Marrickville continues to lag – 15 of 28 booths still to come, mostly the big ones, the grandaddy being the Marrickville booth which accounted for 8.6 per cent of the vote in 2003.

8.32. Seven new booths from Macquarie Fields lift the count from 39.9 per cent to 69.0 per cent, and reduce the swing to the Liberals from 12.1 per cent to 10.8 per cent.

8.25. Results continue to come through in occasional spurts – five or six large booths in Maroubra have lifted the count from 37.6 per cent to 62.6 per cent, with the swing to the Greens drifting out from 7.4 per cent to 8.3 per cent.

8.11. A flurry of notional preference results in Marrickville suggests my preference allocations might be flattering Labor – their lead is at 4.1 per cent rather than my own calculation of 6.5 per cent. Might get to work on that.

8.05. Things have got a lot more interesting in New Zealand while my back has been turned – both major parties around 40 per cent, the Greens fighting for their lives on 5.0 per cent, and the looming promise of some very intriguing coalition negotiations.

7.59. The drought breaks in Maroubra, lifting the count from 16.6 per cent to 37.6 per cent. Surely some mistake in the Nagle Park booth – 1009 votes for Labor, zero for the rest. For the time being the swing from Labor to the Greens is 7.4 per cent, but I think we can expect a correction on that one.

7.53. Only Macquarie Fields has made substantial progress on the notional distribution of preferences, which has Labor on 56.7 per cent compared with my own calculation of 57.8 per cent.

7.48. The trickle becomes a flood in Macquarie Fields – more booths than you can shake a stick at boosts the count from 12.3 per cent to 39.9 per cent. But the swing to the Liberals doesn’t change much – down from 12.3 per cent to 12.1 per cent.

7.41. A flurry of results in Marrickville boosts the count from 6.8 per cent to 27.4 per cent. The effect has been to pad the swing to the Greens out to 4.2 per cent, but unless there is something wrong with my calculation you would have be calling it for Tebbutt round about now.

7.26. Two more booths add 6.4 per cent to the total count in Maroubra and ease the swing to the Greens slightly, from 9.8 per cent to 9.6 per cent.

7.23. Two more booths from the Labor versus Liberal contest in Macquarie Fields – Glenfield East and The Grange – give the Liberals handsome swings of 12.8 per cent and 13.5 per cent, but nothing like enough to put Labor in danger.

7.20. They don’t muck about at Maroubra Junction – despite accounting for 9.9 per cent of the vote the booth is the second in Maroubra to post its results. There is a 10.2 per cent swing to the Greens, but still a 56.8 per cent primary vote for Labor.

7.12. In Marrickville, the swing to the Greens in Petersham North (worth 1.3 per cent of the total vote) barely registers; St Clemens (1.6 per cent) swings 3.2 per cent. I put the overall swing at a mere 1.0 per cent.

7.04. A third booth in from Marrickville – Prince Alfred Hospital – shows a further easing in the overall swing to the Greens, now 4.6 per cent.

7.04. First two small booths in Marrickville show a 5.0 per cent swing to the Greens, who need 10.7 per cent.

6.58. And they’re off! The West Hoxton booth swings 13.7 per cent to Liberal in Macquarie Fields; Randwick Hospital in Maroubra hardly budges in terms of the Labour versus Greens contest.

6.46. Still nothing.

6.15. Welcome to what I hope will be comprehensive live coverage of the NSW by-elections. It is not yet clear if the New South Wales Electoral Office will do the right thing by me and provide booth-by-booth results as they come through. If they don’t, I’m not sure that there will be very much to say. I might have to fall back on the New Zealand election, where Helen Clark looks to be in big trouble with 7 per cent of the vote counted.

Kiwi kapers

Going by the opinion polls (of which this campaign has had an over-supply), tomorrow’s New Zealand election promises to be a humdinger. Fairfax NZ’s Stuff website has been making life easier by publishing weekly aggregates of no less than six separate polls, the projections from which have run as follows:

The talk of the late campaign has been an apparent surge in support for the National Party, largely credited to the promised tax cuts that have formed the centrepiece of their campaign. While poll results have been erratic, most have shown the Nationals surging ahead of Labour in the final two weeks. Of course, a mere lead over one’s opponent is not enough in a system where majority government is all but impossible. Coalition outcomes should never be second-guessed, but the most likely scenario for a change of government – a partnership between Nationals and New Zealand First, whose support they cannot take for granted – looms as a definite possibility, particularly if they can get United Future New Zealand or ACT on board. A lot depends on the combination of minor parties holding the balance of power, and this is where life in New Zealand gets complicated for the casual election watcher.

The Poll Bludger has done his best to explain New Zealand’s silly electoral system once previously. The point to remember is that minor parties need either 5 per cent of the vote or at least one constituency seat to win seats proportional to their national party vote. This means minor parties usually fall into one of two categories, depending on which criteria they meet. The Maori Party, Jim Anderton’s Progressive Coalition and United Future New Zealand are all likely to win representation because they have members who in Australia would be entrenched as independents. The New Zealand system offers such people the incentive to maintain their own minor parties as they can usually win at least one bonus list seat. The type of party that relies on a 5 per cent party vote to win representation is more familiar from Australian experience, and currently includes the Greens and ACT. In the middle is New Zealand First, which has usually been considered likely to meet both criteria.

Polling over the long term shows that support for the Maori Party, founded last year by former Labour MP Tariana Turia, has faded after an early burst of enthusiasm. Huge leads recorded last year in Te Tai Tokerau and Te Tai Tonga have disappeared in recent polling. Party co-leader Pita Sharples is still ahead in Tamaki Makaurau, but by a much reduced margin. The party is still favoured to win in Waiariki and Turia’s electorate of Te Tai Hauauru, while Labour appears well in the clear in Ikaroa Rawhiti and Tainiu.

ACT looked gone for all money, but a Roy Morgan poll suggests Labour may have inadvertently thrown them a lifeline in the electorate of Epsom, home base of leader Rodney Hide. The party had been suggesting locals would rally behind Hide since he seemed certain to lose his list seat safety net, unlike National Party incumbent Richard Worth. To this end it furnished the media with extremely dubious poll results that had Hide in front, which wise heads saw as an attempt to strengthen the party’s weak hand in pre-election horse-trading with the National Party. Labour however took the threat seriously, despite polls showing Hide was no better placed to win the seat than in 2002 when he came third behind the Nationals and Labour. In an illustration of the absurdities of MMP, Labour thought it best to withdraw their candidate from the race (although he remains on the ballot paper) and encourage a vote for the National Party, since a win for Hide might also have delivered ACT up to two extra list seats. The Morgan poll shows that voters in the seat felt this was “inappropriate” and reacted by rallying behind Hide, who led Worth 39 per cent to 32 per cent.

Another wild card is the possibility that the Green Party or New Zealand First will fail to win representation, which is unlikely but worth keeping an eye on because of the potentially momentous impact. Since they have no serious prospect of winning an electorate seat, the Greens will get six seats if they win 5.0 per cent of the vote and nothing if they get 4.9 per cent. In the latter case, the Nationals would be particularly well placed to put together a government. Conversely, there is the prospect that New Zealand First will not make the cut. The party has been on a pronounced downward trend in the past three months and is not assured of meeting the 5 per cent threshold. This will not matter so much if Winston Peters maintains his hold on the seat of Tauranga, but a poll last fortnight showed him well behind National Party candidate Bob Clarkson. For better or worse, that was before revelations emerged about Clarkson’s “earthy” sense of humour, which made it on to radio news bulletins as far away as the Poll Bludger’s home town of Perth.

As mentioned previously, the New Zealand Electoral Commission offers this MMP seat allocation calculator that lets you convert votes to seats – providing you pick the important electorate contests correctly. All and sundry are predicting that Jim Anderton of the Progressive Coalition and Peter Dunne of United Future New Zealand will retain their respective seats of Wigram and Ohariu-Belmont, although the Poll Bludger will keep an eye on them just in case. Beyond that, the only electorate seats that are likely to be worth your trouble are the aforementioned Epsom and Tauranga, plus all of the Maori seats.

The by-election gazette: final edition

The pace has quickened noticeably as the New South Wales triple-M by-election campaign has entered its final week – at least in Marrickville, the only one of the three seats where anything is at stake. For those who have a particular interest in the outcome, you could do worse than to log on to this site Saturday evening and hit "refresh" every minute or so. Booth results will be plugged into the Poll Bludger’s patented psephometer as they come through, so that adjusted swing results may be calculated and quick-time commentary maintained along the lines of my Queensland by-election coverage.

Marrickville (Labor 10.7% vs Greens): It was earlier believed that Carmel Tebbutt’s upper house seat was being left vacant so she could resume it if worst came to worst, but she has now announced that she will leave parliament if defeated on Saturday. There is nothing the Poll Bludger enjoys less than being perceived as cynical, but he can’t help interpreting this as a sign that Labor does not expect to lose. The pecularity of Tebbutt’s current position is starting to attract attention – she is still serving as Education Minister despite having resigned from her upper house seat on August 26. Political opponents and talk radio populists are making an issue of the ministerial salary she continues to receive, and of her absence from Parliament while a spate of arson attacks hits state schools – some of which are located in Macquarie Fields.

Macquarie Fields (Labor 23.5%): Something I hadn’t considered: Macquarie Fields is largely contiguous with the federal electorate of Werriwa, where voters were dragged back to the polls in February following Mark Latham’s retirement. Presumably the aggravation factor among those who do not care to have their weekends interrupted will be even more pronounced here, at the expense of Labor candidate Stephen Chaytor. This gives further reason to expect that both major parties will shed votes to independent and minor party candidates. They include: Greens candidate Ben Raue, 20 years old and already a veteran of two campaigns for Werriwa – first for the October 9 federal election, then for the February by-election; Janey Woodger, who has run in various elections over the past 10 years with Australians Against Further Immigration, doing well enough in the Werriwa by-election to get her deposit back; One Nation candidate Bob Vinnicombe, whose past efforts have been closer to the city in Blaxland (federal) and Auburn (state); independent Ken Barnard, who is running to protest against four-storey flats in Ingleburn; and Denis Plant of Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party, who appears to be an Anglican pastor.

Maroubra (Labor 22.5%): Who cares. Keep your eye open for my concluding summary of Saturday’s New Zealand election which I hope to post tomorrow evening.