Author: William Bowe

Roy Morgan’s fortnightly face-to-face poll comes in at the lower end of market expectations for Labor, whose two-party lead has narrowed to 54.5-45.5 from 58.5-41.5 a fortnight ago. Labor’s primary vote is down from 49.5 per cent to 46 per cent, and the Coalition’s up from 36.5 per cent to 41 per cent. This is from a sample of 1271 voters, which is unusually small for a Morgan face-to-face.

On my list of concerns about the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2006, the removal of the vote from prisoners serving full-time detention ranked pretty low. Nonetheless, the measure’s disproportionate impact on the Aboriginal population gave it an unpleasant edge, so there is good reason to be pleased with the High Court’s decision to strike it down (Brian Costar of the Swinburne University of Technology offers a more sophisticated critique of its jurisprudential shortcomings). The case was brought by Vickie Lee Roach, an Aboriginal woman serving a six-year sentence in Victoria for burglary and recklessly causing serious injury, with the support of former Federal Court judge Ron Merkel. The reasons for the court’s decision will not be published for several months, but are known to revolve around the constitution’s requirement that MPs be “chosen directly by the people”, and to have been influenced by similar rulings in Canada and South Africa.

Women inmates debate the merits of the single transferable vote

For most of the federal parliament’s history, prisoners were disqualified from voting if serving an offence punishable by imprisonment for one year or longer. This was eventually relaxed to five years or longer in 1983, then to apply only to prisoners serving terms of five years or longer in 1995. The Howard government first attempted to introduce a blanket ban before the 2004 election, but were only able to persuade the Senate to reduce the required sentence from five years to three years. A few years earlier, Poll Bludger regular Graeme Orr calculated that the government’s proposal would have increased the number of prisoners affected from around 11,000 to 17,875; my own back-of-an-envelope calculation suggests the Senate’s amendment reduced this to about 14,500 (Graeme will no doubt correct me if I am wrong). Then came what Nationals Senator Ron Boswell unwisely but accurately described as “open slather” following the Coalition’s Senate election triumph in 2004. The effect of the High Court ruling is to restore the previously existing three-year sentence limit.

UPDATE: A good assessment of the judgement and the whole “chosen directly by the people” thorny potato from Ken Parish at Club Troppo.

My ongoing effort to spice up the election guide with preselection argybargy has recently led me into the quagmire of Cook, where the Liberals finally settled on a candidate last Thursday after months of factional brawling. The drama began in April when Bruce Baird, who turns 66 in February, announced he would not seek another term. A former minister in the Greiner-Fahey state government, Baird had himself come to Cook in eventful circumstances. He was installed as a compromise candidate in 1998 after one-term member Stephen Mutch was challenged by Mark Speakman, a local barrister who had been best man at Mutch’s wedding eight years earlier. Baird’s nomination was a victory for his moderate faction over a member described by Irfan Yusuf as a “small ‘c’ conservative”. The demise of Mutch did not please the Prime Minister, who pointedly failed to promote Baird at any point in his nine years in Canberra. It also did not help that Baird was close to Peter Costello, and was spoken of as his potential deputy when fanciful leadership speculation emerged in early 2001.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Baird’s retirement was influenced by the prospect of a preselection challenge from the Right, which was exerting growing control over the Cronulla and Miranda branches. There had already been talk Baird would be succeeded by Scott Morrison (right), former state party director and managing director of Tourism Australia. Morrison left the latter position last year after a falling out with Tourism Minister Fran Bailey; a travel industry news site talks of rumours the Prime Minister promised Morrison support in Cook as “payback” for agreeing to go quietly. According to Steve Lewis in The Australian, Morrison boasted “glowing references from a who’s who of Liberal luminaries, including Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, former Liberal president Shane Stone, Howard’s long-time chief of staff Arthur Sinodinos, and Nick Minchin, the Finance Minister and another close ally of Howard”. However, it quickly became clear that such support would not avail him without the backing of the Right. Unfortunately for Morrison, much of the Right’s local strength was achieved by courting energetic local numbers man Michael Towke, who was himself intent on running. Imre Salusinsky of The Australian reported that Morrison was further starved of support when the Left resolved to resist Towke by digging in behind its own candidate, Optus executive Paul Fletcher.

Towke went on to defeat Fletcher in the final round by 82 votes to 70, with Morrison finishing well back in a field that included PBL executive David Coleman (who had the backing of Left-aligned state party president Geoff Selig), economic consultant Peter Tynan, 2004 Barton candidate Bruce Morrow and the aforementioned Mark Speakman. Towke’s success over what Imre Salusinszky of The Australian described as “a Rolls-Royce field of candidates” enraged opponents of the Right’s growing ascendancy, and doubts soon emerged as to whether the party’s state executive would ratify his nomination. Allegations of wide-ranging branch-stacking activities soon filled the media, as did reports of extravagant claims in his CV concerning his barely-existent security business. Towke had also said he had quit the ALP at the age of 18, but “other documents” emerged to suggest he was a member at 23. There was also talk of a whispering campaign surrounding Towke’s Lebanese heritage (his surname is a recently adopted Anglicisation of Taouk), and how this would play in the white-bread electorate that played host to the 2005 Cronulla riots. With the Prime Minister’s voice joining the anti-Towke chorus, the 22-member state executive voted to remove him by 11 votes to nine, with two abstentions.

This did not resolve the issue of Right control of local branches, which would still have been the decisive factor in any straight preselection re-match. It was reported that the seat was set to go to state upper house MP Marie Ficarra, a close ally of Right powerbroker and fellow MLC David Clarke. Ficarra’s Legislative Council vacancy would in turn be filled by Scot MacDonald, the party’s rural vice-president. MacDonald’s nomination for Senate preselection earlier in the year was rejected by the party’s nomination review committee, a body designed to vet candidates on grounds of character or ethics. This decision was reportedly prompted by Senator Bill Heffernan’s fierce lobbying at the direction of the Prime Minister, who wished to protect Left faction incumbent Marise Payne. However, Towke instead agreed to a deal in which a new preselection process would involve only those who had nominated the first time around, in return for the dropping of disciplinary action against him (which perversely enabled him to sit on the preselection panel).

The new preselection saw Morrison defeat Peter Tynan by 26 votes to 14, from a panel consisting of 26 representatives of local branches and 17 of the state executive. Imre Salusinszky reported that Morrison owed his win to Right delegates from the executive who persuaded local branch delegates to fall behind him. Fletcher and Speakman withdrew at the last minute, while Morrow ran but failed to secure any votes.

Sky News is broadcasting four “Voters Verdict” programs each night until Friday at 9.30pm EST. These feature American blow-in Frank Luntz and a 24-member focus group divided evenly between Labor-leaning and Coalition-leaning undecided voters. These voters will participate in “instant audience response dial sessions” that will measure their reactions to statements made by the two leaders. As you may have guessed, the instant audience response dial procedure is better known in this part of the world as “the worm”. Luntz was in the news yesterday after describing the Prime Minister as “a world leader for invective”, which suggests he is taking his time to acclimatise to Australia’s political culture. A preview program which aired last night can be viewed at The Australian site.

Grattan says:

JOHN Howard now appears seriously under threat in his seat of Bennelong, according to Liberal sources. As the Government is hit by more bad polls, the Prime Minister’s electorate, where Labor’s Maxine McKew is challenging, is considered by Liberals to be in greater danger than Malcolm Turnbull’s Wentworth.

Not entirely sure what to make of this, but I have received a media release giving results from a Burson-Marsteller survey of 1156 voters conducted on Friday. Respondents were asked if they had firmly decided who they will vote for, to which 77 per cent answered yes. Of that 77 per cent, 56 per cent said they would vote Labor and only 34 per cent would vote Coalition. For the purposes of tying up loose ends, I also note reports on the weekend that an IPSOS Mackay poll indicated that Labor had taken a lead on the question of who would better manage the economy, by 39 per cent to 36 per cent.

The News Limited stable today brings us a poll from Galaxy, an outfit that has traditionally given the Coalition more cause for optimism than its rivals. Not this time though: after rising into the 40s in June and July, the Coalition primary vote is back down to 39 per cent, while Labor is up from 44 per cent to 47 per cent on last month. Labor’s 57-43 two-party lead likewise returns to the situation in May, and compares with 54-46 last month. Attitudinal questions find respondents more likely to attribute the budget surplus to high taxes than good management, and overwhelmingly inclined to think Rudd a “normal bloke” on account of the strip club incident. However, it appears that not all of the 1,004 interviews were conducted over the past weekend (note the bottom of the press release: “These surveys were conducted by Galaxy Research. The most recent survey was administered on the weekend of 24-26 August”). It therefore cannot be stated with confidence how timely these figures are, or whether the entire sample was in a position to pass judgment on the strip club affair or the budget surplus.

Today’s lesson in electoral history takes us all the way to the top: to Darwin, focal point of the electorate of Solomon, held by David Tollner of the Country Liberal Party on a margin of 2.8 per cent. The top end’s history of federal parliamentary representation goes back to the creation of the Northern Territory electorate in 1922, but the seat did not come with full voting rights in parliament until 1968. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was granted shortly after it fell to Sam Calder of the Country Party after a long period of Labor control. Calder was involved with the foundation of the Country Liberal Party in 1974, a local alliance of Liberal and Country Party members formed to contest elections for the newly established Northern Territory parliament. Grant Tambling succeeded Calder as CLP member in 1980, going on to lose the seat to Labor when the Hawke government was elected in 1983 (he would return as a Senator four years later). Northern Territory subsequently changed hands with great frequency: former Chief Minister Paul Everingham recovered it for the CLP in 1984, Warren Snowdon won it back for Labor in 1987, Nick Dondas held it for the CLP for one term from 1996, and Snowdon returned in 1998.

The territory was divided into two electorates at the 2001 election, Darwin and Palmerston forming Solomon and Lingiari taking up the vast remainder. This looked set to be reversed at the 2004 election, when the Northern Territory was found to be 295 residents short of the number required to maintain its second seat. Since both major parties felt they could win them both (a more sound judgment in Labor’s case), the second seat was essentially legislated back into existence. This was done through the expedient of adding “two standard errors” to the official calculation of the territory’s population, which is known to be underestimated in census counts, thereby boosting its quota determination from 1.498 to 1.517. The raw figures ahead of the current election had the population still further below the decisive 1.5 mark, but the second seat was again preserved when the standard error adjustment lifted it from 1.471 to 1.505. This has left the two Northern Territory electorates with by far the lowest enrolments in the country: at the time of the 2004 election, Solomon had 54,725 voters and Lingiari 58,205, compared with a little under 70,000 for Tasmanian seats and a national average of around 87,000.

Solomon’s distinguishing demographic characteristics are a high proportion of indigenous persons (10.3 per cent compared to a national figure of 2.3 per cent) and a low number of persons aged over 65 (5.3 per cent against 13.3 per cent). Darwin is divided between Labor-leaning post-war suburbs in the north, including Nightcliff, Jingili and Sanderson, and the town centre and its surrounds south of the airport, an area marked by higher incomes, fewer families and greater support for the CLP. Even stronger for the CLP is Palmerston, a satellite town established 20 kilometres south-east of Darwin in the 1980s. This area is somewhat less multicultural than Darwin and has a high proportion of mortgage-paying young families, and the booths here take votes from the nearby Robertson barracks (for a clearer view of the lie of the land, see my 2004 booth result maps at Crikey). At the time of the 2001 election, Solomon had a notional CLP margin of 2.3 per cent while Lingiari had a notional Labor margin of 3.7 per cent. Warren Snowdon naturally opted for Lingiari, and Solomon emerged as an extremely tight contest between Labor’s Laurene Hull and David Tollner (right) of the CLP. Tollner suffered a 2.2 per cent swing against the national trend, but was able to hang on by just 88 votes. He had a slightly more comfortable time of it at the 2004 election, picking up 6.9 per cent on the primary vote and 2.7 per cent on two-party preferred. The swing was especially strong in Palmerston, which accounts for just over a quarter of Solomon’s voters.

Close margins are not the only reason Tollner is lucky to be in parliament. Party colleagues had been gunning for his disendorsement in 2001, and failed to secure it only because party rules would not allow it so close to an election. At issue was a drink driving charge and an earlier cannabis conviction, which exacerbated ongoing hostility over his attempt to win the territory seat of Nelson as an independent in 1997. Running on opposition to gun control, Tollner had come within 41 votes of defeating the CLP’s Chris Lugg. Two significant figures in the CLP cited Tollner’s preselection as a factor contributing to their decision to quit the party – Nick Dondas, the member for the Northern Territory electorate from 1996 to 1998, and Maisie Austin, who went so far as to run against Tollner as an independent, but managed only 5 per cent of the vote. Austin later returned to the party and ran as its candidate for Lingiari in 2004. Tollner has continued to cut a colourful figure since entering parliament. In early 2004 he was forced to apologise for misbehaviour on a Qantas flight: he had reportedly “annoyed” Liberal colleague Christopher Pyne by “ruffling his hair”, and had to be told to sit down three times as the plane came in to land. In August, just weeks after the government announced its intervention in remote communities, Tollner was one of a number of party functionaries seen on a boat on which alcohol was consumed very near a dry Tiwi Islands community. As police investigated the discovery of empty beer bottles at the community’s airport, Warren Snowdon used parliamentary privilege to accuse Tollner and Senator Nigel Scullion of illegally taking alcohol on to the land.

Labor has nominated Damian Hale (left), who coached the Northern Territory Football League club St Marys to three successive premierships from 2003 to 2005. Hale made national news in June after an incident in a Darwin nightclub involving wayward AFL star Chris Tarrant. Hale says he expressed his “disappointment” with Tarrant after he “pulled down his trousers and bared his backside” at a female companion, to which Tarrant responded by punching Hale in the face. Tarrant copped a three-match suspension for his efforts, but Hale declined to press charges. Hale was preselected in February ahead of Darwin lawyer and rugby coach Wayne Connop, marine scientist Stuart Fitch, and two candidates associated with the territory branch of the Australian Nursing Federation: former president Denis Blackford, and organiser Matthew Gardiner. Darwin sports broadcaster Charlie King had earlier been named as the front-runner, having also contested preselection for the 2001 election (hats off to the Northern Territory News sub who came up with the headline “King: Solomon’s mine”). However, he withdrew from the race after what the Northern Territory News described as “pressure from ABC management”.