New South Wales Politics – Page 44

Purported Pittwater party polling

Reports of "leaked" internal Liberal polling for next Saturday’s Pittwater by-election have provoked a frisson of excitement among those with an interest in talking up the contest. The poll reportedly has Liberal candidate Paul Nicolaou trailing his most fancied independent rival, local mayor Alex McTaggart, with a 46.5-53.5 split on two-candidate preferred. The results were a gift from "a senior Liberal who did not want to be named" to Lisa Muxworthy of the Manly Times, who smartly cultivated her source by reporting it exactly the way he or she would have wanted – a close race with the outcome to be determined by the undecided, and no luxury of a protest vote for those who normally support the Liberals. Anne Davies of the Sydney Morning Herald spruiked the contest by telling us "the parochial peninsula electorate has shown in the past that it can record large swings when a new candidate is endorsed, particularly if they are not a local". This was presumably a reference to surfer Nat Young’s strong performance against Jim Longley at a by-election way back in 1986, when sewage pollution on local beaches was a national news story. Christian Kerr of Crikey has also invoked the spectre of Nat Young while making plenty of space available for those predicting a Liberal humiliation, citing word-of-mouth evidence to suggest a swing not far shy of 20 per cent.

The Poll Bludger is not persuaded. It is axiomatic that leaked party polls are to be taken with a grain of salt, for reasons which hardly need explaining. Most of those reporting the Liberal figures seem to be conscious of this, with the Sydney Morning Herald providing a nice quote from Alex McTaggart about "a plot to scare the little old ladies into voting Liberal". I have a very particular theory on this occasion, which rests on two pillars – firstly, that the best lies are based on a foundation of truth; secondly, that political parties know this (and much else about the art of deception) better than anyone. On this basis, I suggest that the Liberals have indeed conducted polling that has them on 46.5 per cent, but that this is on the primary rather than the two-party preferred vote. This sounds about right – a sobering 12.9 per cent primary vote slump that would give the Liberals no cause for optimism about the 2007 election, but not enough to threaten their hold on so safe a seat. It would not be too hard to persuade an inquisitive journalist that all minor candidate votes should indeed be added to McTaggart’s two-candidate preferred score, since they will all "give" him their preferences. But in reality, 46.5 per cent would be enough for Nicolaou to win quite easily.

This brings us back to the Nat Young precedent. Leaving aside the fact that some who will vote next Saturday were not even born in 1986, it is worth noting that Young actually fell some way short with 46.9 per cent of the two-candidate vote – an excellent result, but still a clear victory for the Liberals. More importantly, this was in the days when the opportunities of optional preferential voting had yet to catch on. Young gathered 72 per cent of preferences from the 33 per cent who voted for other candidates, with an exhaustion rate of just 4.1 per cent. These days, a third of that vote can be expected to disappear courtesy of those who "just vote one". Even assuming the Liberal poll results are not completely fictitious, it would be quite astonishing if they honestly accounted for this.

Pittwater form guide

The campaign for Saturday week’s Pittwater by-election limps on uneventfully, although some observers remain excited at the prospect of John Brogden’s demise causing a backlash sufficient to endanger the Liberal candidate, former party fund raiser Paul Nicolaou. Local ratepayers association types have been penning letters to the editor and badgering suburban newspaper journalists to vent their outrage that Nicolaou was until recently a resident of Lane Cove, scoring particularly well with last week’s revelation that he moved into his new Mona Vale address too late to get on the roll for the by-election. However, history suggests suburban voters don’t get terribly excited about this kind of thing and that a messy preselection outcome was the real prerequisite for a Liberal defeat, and this the party has managed to avoid. They are also boosted by a field of rival contenders that includes the mayor, two former mayors and another councillor besides. Since New South Wales has optional preferential voting, preference exhaustion from the scattered anti-Liberal vote will make it very difficult for any of the independents to cause Nicolaou real trouble.

The candidates in ballot paper order:

Alex McTaggart (Independent). Widely perceived as the main threat to the Liberal Party due to his current status as Pittwater Mayor. Despite his forceful denials, McTaggart has been subject to repeated suggestions that he is receiving help from the Labor Party. The most interesting was a small item in the Sun-Herald noting that postal vote applications sent out by McTaggart suggested access to the electronic electoral rolls, which are apparently available "only to the major parties". For what it’s worth, Piers Akerman reckons Pittwater Council is "significantly on the nose with ratepayers and is perceived as arrogant and uncaring", and that McTaggart is "seen as a councillor elected on a single NIMBY (not in my back yard) issue – a ban on television crews at his local beach, Avalon".

Paul Nicolaou (Liberal). The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Nicolaou would shed as little as 5 per cent of the Liberal vote, according to "Labor polling" – though why they would bother to conduct any was not made clear.

Patricia Giles (Christian Democratic). The former Pittwater mayor’s electoral record is better than incumbent Alex McTaggart’s, but she would surely be better off without the Fred Nile brand.

Robert Dunn (Independent). A former mayor and Liberal Party member, Dunn told Lisa Muxworthy of the Manly Daily that he was running because he was "appalled" by the "contempt" the Liberal Party had shown Pittwater by nominating a Lane Cove resident. He is apparently no more pleased with the member for the corresponding Federal seat of Mackellar, Bronwyn Bishop, having scored a reasonable 7.7 per cent in his run against her at last year’s Federal election.

Natalie Stevens (Greens). Stevens became the first Greens member on Pittwater Council at last year’s election, winning a seat in the five-member Northern Ward with 18.6 per cent of the vote.

Mario Nicotra (Democrats). Nicotra was also the Democrats candidate for Mackellar at the Federal election. He tells the Manly Daily that Mona Vale Hospital "should be rebuilt as a showcase healing centre" incorporating, among other things, "complementary medicines, natural healing, homoeopathy, acupuncture and other services".

Pittwater preselection puts Paul in pole position

The New South Wales Liberal Party has followed the Poll Bludger’s orders and chosen Paul Nicolaou as its candidate for the November 26 Pittwater by-election. Former state and federal MP Stephen Mutch withdrew from the race late last week, presumably after concluding that he didn’t have the numbers, and Nicolaou prevailed over John Brogden staffer Rob Stokes with a healthy margin of 49 votes to 28. Nicolaou goes into the by-election with a 20.1 per cent Liberal margin and no challenge from Labor, although much is being made of Pittwater Mayor Alex McTaggart’s decision to run as an independent. McTaggart enjoys the happy circumstance of effectively identical electorate and municipal boundaries, but he has only been Mayor for a year and his council electoral record suggests he would have limited voter recognition. The group he led in Northern Ward last year won 25.7 per cent of the vote, a good deal less than the 49.2 per cent vote for Patricia Giles’s group in Central Ward. Giles’s claim that she was approached by Labor with an offer of assistance if she ran as an independent has a ring of truth about it, although Labor has vehemently denied it. She has instead entered the field as the candidate of Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party, effectively denying herself broad-based support. The other confirmed candidate is another Pittwater Councillor, Natalie Stevens, who will run for the Greens.

Mutch ado about something

The Liberal Party’s preselection for the Pittwater by-election has taken an interesting turn with the nomination of former Federal MP Stephen Mutch, who if successful could conjure an interesting election from what ought to be a straightforward Liberal walkover. Mutch threw his hat into the ring last week at a time when the preselection was looking increasingly like a lay down misere for Paul Nicolaou, favoured candidate of the "small-‘l’ liberal" faction known as "The Group" who nonetheless had cross-factional support. Other prominent figures who had been mentioned were progressively falling by the wayside, including Paul Ritchie ("close to the hard right and Christian fundamentalists", according to the Sun Herald), Robert Webster, Jason Falinksi and Adrienne Ryan, more than one of whom said they were withdrawing to give Nicolaou a clean run. Had he been given one, it seems clear the Liberals would have defused the threat of a rival independent getting enough traction to threaten the party’s hold on the seat.

Mutch threatens to make life interesting because he is an identifiable figure of the Right, having lost his Federal seat of Cook in 1998 when a coup by moderates delivered preselection to former Greiner-Fahey Government minister Bruce Baird. This was a major controversy at the time partly because it went against the wishes of the Prime Minister, who is now making it clear that he wants Nicolaou in Pittwater. It would not be hard to sell a Mutch preselection win as both an act of factional revenge and the coup de grace of a power grab that ended the career – and very nearly the life – of the popular former member. Whether this perception is fair or not is neither here nor there.

Community groups and writers of letters to the editor have been vociferous in their demands not only for a locally based candidate, which is predictable enough, but also for an ideological moderate, which is more telling. Saturday’s Manly Daily publicised a call by Harvey Rose and Jim Revitt, present and past holders of the title "Pittwater Citizen of the Year", for the election of an independent candidate in defiance of the "hard Liberal right", who stood "clearly against the widespread view of moderate Liberals throughout Pittwater". Rose said he was considering taking on the job himself. Another candidate who might have been of interest was Patricia Giles, a former Pittwater mayor who told Rebecca Woolley of the Manly Daily she had been approached by Labor with an offer of campaign assistance if she ran as an independent (which was denied by state general secretary Mark Arbib). She will instead run as the endorsed candidate of Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party, forestalling any possibility that she might harvest support from those who see the Brogden episode in terms of a takeover of the Liberal Party by the "religious right".

The Manly Daily names four confirmed candidates for Liberal preselection besides Nicolaou and Mutch – Robert Stokes, Stephen Choularton and Julie Hegarty, who were all covered in my earlier post, plus local businessman Mike Musgrave. The Sun Herald reports that the decision will be made by "a conference of 48 members from local branches and 48 from the state executive and the state council", of which the latter groups are often claimed to be under the control of the David Clarke/Opus Dei religious right. As much as the election buff in me wants them to pick Mutch, it will be Nicolaou if they have any sense at all.

UPDATE (19/10/05): Via Crikey, the Manly Daily reports that Pittwater Mayor Alex McTaggart is considering running as an independent.

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.

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.

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.