Category: New South Wales By-Elections

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.

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.

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.

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.

I was recently reading through my earlier posts on the triple-M by-elections and was pleased to see I had been early off the mark in poking fun at the Daily Telegraph over its rough handling of John Brogden. This was prompted by a number of articles in the week before his career implosion which savaged his decision not to run in two of this Saturday’s three unwinnable by-elections. When news of his indiscretions at the Australian Hotels Association function became public the following Monday, the Telegraph ran an item peppered with quotes from "senior Liberal sources" who spoke of long-standing "concerns over Brogden’s political judgement", with the by-election decision listed as a key example. As I said at the time, the widespread currency of this assessment surprised me. But viewed in the context of an internal campaign against Brogden facilitated through a media with a demonstrated fondness for stirring the pot, it starts to make a little more sense.

Antony Green helps us put the decision in a more constructive context with a paper for the New South Wales Parliamentary Library on the last 40 years of the state’s by-election history. It tells us that a sharp upturn in the incidence of one-sided by-elections can be traced to the final re-election of the Wran/Unsworth Government in 1985. Neatly, Green’s study covers 40 by-elections before this point and 40 since, the number of one-sided contests skyrocketing from three in the earlier period to 25 in the latter. Quite why this shift has occurred is not clear, but in terms of recent practice there was obviously nothing remarkable about Brogden’s decision. As Green puts it, "it is understandable why the Liberal Party has chosen not to contest all three seats. While there were dramatic swings in Bass Hill and Rockdale following the retirement of Premier Wran, swings of this size are the exception. All three seats being contested on September 17 are substantially safer than any of the seats that saw dramatic swings during the period of the Unsworth Government".

Marrickville (Labor 10.7% vs Greens): The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Labor has been asking voters if they agree with Greens candidate Sam Byrne’s assessment of Anthony Albanese and Carmel Tebbutt as "the king and queen of Marrickville", which Byrne says he can’t remember saying. Most of the publicity generated by the Greens’ campaign has related to Tebbutt’s actions as Education Minister, the highlight being a desultory slanging match about homophobia. The Sun Herald tells us that an advisor to Tebbutt, Penny Sharpe, will fill Tebbutt’s upper house vacancy if she succeeds in her bid for the lower house. The vacancy has been left open since Tebbutt’s resignation so that she may resume it if she fails.

Macquarie Fields (Labor 23.5%): New Liberal leader Peter Debnam showed an early aptitude for the gentle art of understatement when he was recently heard "playing down the Liberals’ chance of winning". With a dissolute Opposition confronting an unpopular Government, expect a pronounced surge in support for independent and minor party candidates.

Maroubra (Labor 22.5%): Two entries back, I speculated as to whether Michael Daley’s preselection margin over Penny Wright of 140-110 included Wright’s affirmative action bonus. The answer is that it did, so Daley’s victory was more comfortable than I suggested.

As you are all no doubt aware, a fair bit has changed in New South Wales since the last by-election campaign update. John Brogden’s travails have so dominated media coverage of state politics that this site has been left with very little to report, except to note that the turmoil has obviously been to Labor’s advantage in Macquarie Fields. Nominations closed last Friday, and the ballot papers are ordered as follows:

Macquarie Fields: Bob Vinnicombe (One Nation); Ben Raue (Greens); Ken Barnard (Independent); Steven Chaytor (Labor); Denis Plant (Christian Democratic); Nola Fraser (Liberal); Janey Woodger (Australians Against Further Immigration).

Maroubra: Michael Daley (Labor); Kerri Hamer (Independent); Beth Smith (Christian Democratic); Nick Stepkovitch (Independent); Anne Gardiner (Greens); Victor Shen (Fishing Party).

Marrickville: Saidi Goldstein (Christian Democratic); Malcolm Woodward (Independent); Chris McLachlan (Independent); Carmel Tebbutt (Labor); Sam Byrne (Greens); Michelle Bleicher (Australian Democrats); Alasdair MacDonald; Lorraine Thomson (Independent); Pip Hinman (Socialist Alliance).

Last night’s Labor preselection for Bob Carr’s seat of Maroubra produced a surprise result, with Randwick councillor Michael Daley defeating Penny Wright 140 votes to 110. It is not clear if Wright’s 110 votes include her affirmative action weighting – if not, the margin would have been a narrow 140 to 132. Most reports suggested that the main threat to Wright was another Randwick councillor, Chris Bastic, with whom he had a deal to exchange preferences. Yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald has much, much more.

In New South Wales, the Iemma Government has used the opportunity of Labor’s defeats in Queensland to talk up the swings they will suffer at the triple-M by-elections, now set for September 17 (the same day as the New Zealand election). State secretary Mark Arbib added substance to the argument by telling the Sydney Morning Herald that "the last election was a high water mark in seats like Macquarie Fields and Maroubra" – although there was in fact a slight swing away from Labor in Macquarie Fields. A Liberal source quoted in the article may have hit the mark when he or she said Labor wanted to "sucker-punch us into running in all three". Cutting across all such speculation is Morris Iemma’s surprisingly positive Newspoll debut this week. The poll was full of surprises, most of them pleasant for Labor – their vote was up 37 per cent to 39 per cent on primary and 49 per cent to 50 per cent on two-party preferred, and Morris Iemma’s approval rating of 43 per cent was higher than anything recorded by Bob Carr in recent memory.

Maroubra (Labor 23.5%): The exciting tussle for Labor preselection comes to a climax tomorrow, an event with far higher stakes than the Liberal-free rubber-stamp by-election. Labor has been engulfed in disputes over the eligibility of preselectors, with Bob Carr himself being disqualified due to his branch meeting attendance record. Most of the fuss relates to the eligibility of the party’s Maroubra South branch, said to favour candidate Penny Wright. Wright is associated with the NSW party’s Catholic tendency, whose chief powerbroker Johnno Johnson (a former MLC) wields great influence in the Maroubra branches. Outsider candidate Anthony Andrews has questioned the validity of no fewer than 150 out of 267 preselectors, while Wright has disputed eight. Few reckon Andrews a serious chance, but if upheld his challenges would aid fellow Randwick councillors Chris Bastic, who has been widely rated a favourite, and Michael Daley, who hasn’t been. Lest it be concluded that he is acting as their stalking horse, Menios Constantinou of the Southern Courier reports that Andrews has also challenged members of Bastic’s and Daley’s families. Labor’s credentials committee has been grinding through the challenges since Tuesday; this morning’s Daily Telegraph reports that just five of nearly 170 complaints processed have been upheld, suggesting the Maroubra South branch has emerged unscathed and that Wright has the whip hand.

Marrickville (Labor 10.7% vs Greens): The Liberals are getting a surprisingly hard time in the media over their failure to field candidates in Marrickville and Maroubra, with the Daily Telegraph going in particularly hard against John Brogden. Today the paper took his statement that Liberal supporters should "vote against the Labor party" to indicate support for the Greens (whose "less known" policies include "decriminalising drugs and legalising marriages for same-sex couples") and "other fringe parties".

Macquarie Fields (Labor 22.5%): Last Monday Crikey reported that the Liberals would nominate one of the "whistleblower nurses" who troubled Craig Knowles during the Camden and Campbelltown hospital controversies. So it has proved with yesterday’s unveiling of candidate Nola Fraser. The Daily Telegraph reports that Fraser joined the party "earlier this week".