Category: South Australian Politics

Tasmanian election and Dunstan by-election late counting

Progressive updates on counting from the Tasmanian state election and the South Australian by-election for Dunstan.

Click here for full display of Tasmanian results.
Click here for full display of Dunstan by-election results.

Thursday

With some fairly solid updates to the count today, the most likely outcome in Tasmania looks to be Liberal 15, Labor 10, Greens five, Jacqui Lambie Network three and independents two, although Labor might take extra seats at the expense of the Greens in Clark and JLN in Lyons. Kevin Bonham also notes “complicated if seemingly unlikely scenarios” in Braddon involving the Liberals dropping a seat to the Greens or (less likely) independent Craig Garland, which would make life particularly interesting. The door remains bolted in Dunstan, the latest batch of declaration votes breaking only 321-281 in favour of the Liberals, leaving Labor 347 votes ahead with next to nothing still to come.

Wednesday

Labor’s win in Dunstan is now beyond doubt, the latest batch of declaration votes having broken 898-878 their way.

Tuesday

The links above will continue to offer latest results that I will update off the data feed a couple of times a day, such that they may lag a little behind the electoral commissions and the ABC. I tend not to follow late counting in Tasmania too closely, as the big picture is generally clear enough by Monday and the questions that need answering are down to preference distributions that won’t be conducted until next week. Excellent commentary is available from Ben Raue and Kevin Bonham.

The Liberals continue to cling on to a vague hope in Dunstan, although the latest from The Advertiser is that “Liberal hopes for a miracle win are fading”. The Liberal win probability on my results page was calculated at 1% once I had revised the estimate of outstanding votes on Saturday night, perked up to a little bit over 10% when the first batch of declaration votes have added, and fell back to 6% with the addition of the second.

The situation is rendered a little opaque by the fact that “declaration votes” bundles together postals, pre-polls and provisionals, which would be reported separately in other states. The first of the two batches broke 1404-1063 (I don’t have the exact figures but that would be a close estimate) to the Liberals, giving them 57% where Antony Green and myself had separately calculated they would need 56%. However, the second batch went 2039-1724, or only 54.2% to Liberal.

That leaves only about 1500 to come, although a report in The Advertiser speaks of scrutineers noting “at least 600 extra votes than Electoral Commission records”. Going off the former figure, the Liberals will need about 62% to close a gap that now sits at 9688-9321. An extra 600 votes would bring it to a bit below 59%.

Tasmanian election and Dunstan by-election live

Live coverage of the count for the Tasmanian state election and the South Australian state by-election for Dunstan.

Click here for full display of Tasmanian results.
Click here for full display of Dunstan by-election results.

End of Saturday night

Labor leads by 6852 to 5875 in Dunstan, with upwards of 7500 votes to come — the Liberals will need about 56.5% of these to overhaul the Labor lead, the chance of which my system puts at 1%.

In Tasmania, contrary to the general assumption of a Liberal minority government, there are still live scenarios where Labor and the Greens get to sixteen with a natural ally in David O’Byrne making it seventeen, making the magic eighteen achievable through a deal with either independent Kristie Johnston or the Jacqui Lambie Network. But perhaps the most likely scenario is that the Liberals get to fifteen and the JLN gets to three, with the latter naturally gravitating to the option with the least moving parts in which the biggest party forms government. My read of the situation is that there is a bedrock thirteen seats for Liberal, ten for Labor, four for the Greens, two for the Jacqui Lambie Network and two independent, to which can be added a likely fourteenth Liberal and a third JLN. In greater doubt are two seats in Franklin, to go between Liberal, ex-Labor independent David O’Byrne and the Greens, and a seat in Clark that could go to Labor or the Greens.

Bass. Despite dropping 21.5% from a Peter Gutwein-fuelled 60.0% in 2021, the Liberals have clearly won three quotas with two for Labor and one for the Greens. Beyond that, the Jacqui Lambie Network has 0.63 quotas, though postals may reduce this, while I’m projecting a Labor surplus of 0.34 above their two quotas. That would seem promising with respect to Rebekah Pentland, the strongest performing JLN candidate. Michael Ferguson and newcomer Rob Fairs are clearly elected of the Liberals — the third incumbent, Simon Wood, holds only the slenderest of leads over controversial colleague Julie Sladden. The two Labor incumbents, Michelle O’Byrne and Janie Finlay, are both returned, and the Greens member will be Cecily Rosol.

Braddon. Other than the JLN gouging 11% out of the Liberals, this was a similar result to 2021. There is no doubt that the Liberals have won three seats, returning incumbents Jeremy Rockliff, Felix Ellis and Roger Jaensch; Labor has won two, returning incumbents Anita Dow and Shane Broad; and the Jacqui Lambie Network has won one, which could be either be Miriam Beswick or James Redgrave. To that the Liberals seem likely to win a fourth seat with a 0.69 quota surplus, barring some impressive preference-gathering from independent Craig Garland on 0.40 quotas or a late-count surprise for the Greens on 0.52.

Clark. The only division without the JLN running, the 4.4% drop in the Liberal vote is perhaps pointing to how the election might have looked in their absence. Also a bright spot for Labor in that their primary vote was up 9.7%, with the independent vote down despite a seemingly strong selection of contenders. The Liberals have a clear two quotas, ensuring re-election for Simon Behrakis and Madeleine Ogilvie, as does Labor, with Ella Haddad re-elected and Josh Willie moving successfully from the upper house, while Vica Bayley of the Greens has been re-elected. The contestants for the two final seats are independent incumbent Kristie Johnston, with 0.64 quotas; the Greens, with a surplus of 0.57 putting former Hobart Lord Mayor Helen Burnet in contention; and Labor, whose surplus of 0.54 gives newcomer Stuart Benson a chance. Johnston will presumably coast home as around 10% for various other independents are distributed, leaving the Greens and Labor vying for the last seat.

Franklin. Labor can also take something out of the result in the other Hobart electorate: the 6.2% drop in their vote doesn’t look so bad when David O’Byrne’s 9.0% is taken into account, and the 8.0% Liberal vote exceeded the JLN’s 4.9%. Eric Abetz and Jacquie Petrusma were closely matched on the Liberal ticket, and both will be elected; Dean Winter is returned for Labor and will likely be joined by Meg Brown; and Rosalie Woodruff was re-elected for the Greens with a quota in her own right. In the race for the last two seats, O’Byrne has 0.72 quotas, and I’m projecting the Liberals to have a 0.74 surplus over their second quota (keeping incumbent Nic Street in contention) and the Greens to have 0.57 over their first (Jade Darko being the leader out of the party’s minor candidates), with preferences likely to favour the Greens.

Lyons. The Liberal vote fell 13.5% here, in part because of John Tucker unproductively draining 3.3%. They nonetheless have a clear three quotas, re-electing Guy Barnett and Mark Shelton and facilitating Jane Howlett’s move from the upper house, while Rebecca White and Jen Butler are re-elected for Labor. For the remaining two seats, the Greens have 0.84 quotas, the Jacqui Lambie Network has 0.67, and Labor has 0.64 over the second quota. Preferences will presumably be unfavourable for Labor, so the situation is encouraging for Tabatha Badger of the Greens and one of two closely matched JLN candidates, Andrew Jenner and Troy Pfitzner.

Election night

9.22pm. I now have a bug-free Dunstan page — all two-candidate preferred numbers are in and it’s calling it for Labor.

9.13pm. Labor’s position in Tasmania, while not great, has looked less bad as the evening has progressed — I now have them holding steady on the primary vote, with the Liberals down by double-digits. The JLN hasn’t matched the polling, but it looks well placed in the three non-Hobart divisions.

9.01pm. Dunstan is looking a bit less dramatic with the latest update, which cuts my projection of the Labor swing from 7% to 3%. I believe my system isn’t making a probability determination because it isn’t sure the Greens won’t make the final count, but I suggest it should be. All the booths are in on the primary vote — the TCP booth results don’t seem to be firing in my results system, so my read is based on preference estimates, which are likely to be pretty accurate.

8.57pm. I’ve found the error that was causing my system to read a Liberal-Greens result in Dunstan. Now it’s pointing to an emphatic win for Labor, erasing the 0.5% Liberal margin with a 7% swing. The Greens are up 8.7% on my reckoning and having a good night in Tasmania, seemingly on track for two seats apiece in Clark and Franklin and one each in Bass and Lyons, while striking out in Braddon.

8.51pm. Franklin also looks three Liberal (Eric Abetz, Jacquie Petrusma and Nic Street, with incumbent Dan Young squeezed out), two Labor (Meg Brown likely joining Dean Winter), two Greens (Rosalie Woodruff plus a lottery for second) and one independent, the independent in this case being David O’Byrne.

8.47pm. Clark looks three apiece for Labor, Liberal and the Greens plus with incumbent Kristie Johnston returned, and none of the other independents in contention unless preferences behave in a manner I’m not anticipating.

8.43pm. Braddon looking like three Liberal, two Labor and one JLN, with the last going to either independent Craig Garland or a fourth Liberal. The three Liberal incumbents and two Labor incumbents are returned.

8.40pm. So then, some overdue commentary on what we’re seeing in Tasmania, starting with Bass. Three Liberal, two Labor, one Greens, one in doubt. Rob Fairs a clear second elected Liberal after Michael Ferguson, open race for the third. Labor’s two seats will stay with the incumbents. Cecily Rosol elected for the Greens. Presumably JLN to take the third, which candidate is unclear.

8.34pm. Continuing to bash away at technical issues, but it looks like a boilover in Dunstan. My projections are seemingly not to be relied upon in that they are pointing to a Liberal-Greens contest, but it seems what we’re actually looking at is a surge to the Greens, a drop in the Liberals and a win for Labor.

8.05pm. My Dunstan display at least seems to be going okay — looking like a big vote for the Greens. My projected TCP has the Liberals ahead, but it’s a bit speculative at this stage.

7.55pm. I’ve been trying and failing to fix an issue that is making the parties in the booth results table appear in the wrong order.

7.35pm The big swing against the Liberals in Bass looks to be extending to Launceston. Perhaps some of this reflects the loss of Peter Gutwein’s vote.

7.31pm. The booth results maps you can find on my Tasmanian election results pages are a good way of discerning regional patterns, and it doesn’t seem the booths around Burnie are doing anything special for the JLN. The main story in Braddon remains that Labor is down more than Liberal.

7.28pm. There are 11 booths and 3.7% of the enrolled vote in from Bass, and it suggests the Liberals have taken a big hit with the JLN in double figures. However, almost all of this is outside Launceston — there the JLN vote may be lower and less damaging to the Liberals as a result. Lara Alexander making little impression so far.

7.23pm. Early numbers are a bit unspectacular for the JLN in its presumed stronghold of Braddon, but it can’t be stressed enough that results will be heavily regionalised here and in Lyons — Burnie booths may bring them up. Similarly, it may be too early to read reach conclusions from John Tucker being outpolled by Shooters in Lyons.

7.18pm. Still a bit busy with bug-squashing, but both major parties looking well down in Lyons, Labor doing badly in Braddon, first numbers (very small in this case) in Franklin consistent with the trend except that the Jacqui Lambie Network is as expected weaker here.

7.08pm. So far, Tasmania looks consistent with the polls in that the Jacqui Lambie Network is on about 10% in the non-Hobart seats which has come at the expense of the Liberals — except in Lyons, where it’s come at the expense of Labor. A few more booths might establish if the latter is an early count anomaly.

7.01pm. I’ve ironed out my Lyons bug, and I believe the Dunstan feed is starting to work.

6.55pm. Not sure why the ABC has numbers for Lyons and I don’t. I do have numbers for Bass and Braddon though, which are obviously from very small rural booths.

6.45pm. For reasons I’m unlikely to be able to solve, my Tasmanian pages are sometimes loading properly but sometimes not, either failing to load the map or falling over altogether. So you will likely need to hit refresh a fair bit to follow them properly. So far I’m unable to upload the feed for Dunstan at all, but that may be because it isn’t live yet.

6.30pm. Polls have closed for South Australia’s Dunstan by-election, which on reflection I think would be best dealt with on the same post as this one.

6pm. Welcome to the Poll Bludger’s live coverage of the Tasmanian state election count. Polls are now closed and we should be getting the first results from small rural booths fairly shortly. Through the link above you will find live updated results throughout the night and beyond, inclusive of an effort to project party vote shares in each of the five divisions through booth-matched swings. Also note that coverage of South Australia’s Dunstan by-election will commence when polls close there in half an hour.

YouGov: 52-48 to Labor (open thread)

Another poll finds strong support for the government’s stage three tax cut changes have not shifted the needle on voting intention.

YouGov’s tri-weekly federal poll shows no sign of movement one way or the other in the wake of the stage three tax cuts rearrangement, with two-party preferred unchanged at 52-48 from primary votes of Labor 32% (steady), Coalition 36% (down one), Greens 14% (up one) and One Nation 8% (up one). The poll also has a question on the tax cuts which finds a 69-31 break in favour of the changes over the tax cuts as originally proposed. Anthony Albanese’s lead on preferred premier has narrowed from 45-35 to 45-38 and his net approval rating is out from minus 13 to minus 16, with Peter Dutton in slightly from minus nine to minus eight. The poll was conducted Friday to Wednesday from a sample of 1502.

Some notable electoral happenings at state level:

• There is the possibility of an early election in Tasmania as Premier Jeremy Rockliff pursues a demand that John Tucker and Lara Alexander, Liberal-turned-independent members who hold the balance of power in the lower house, agree not to vote for non-government amendments and motions. Further clarity may be provided after a meeting between the three at 1:30pm today.

• March 23 has been confirmed as the date for the South Australian state by-election in Dunstan, the highly marginal seat being vacated with the resignation on Tuesday of former Premier Steven Marshall.

• I also have by-election guides up for the Queensland state seats of Inala and Ipswich West, which will go to the polls concurrently with the local government elections on March 16.

Weekend miscellany: WA Liberal preselections, Queensland and SA by-elections (open thread)

A comeback lined up for a former WA Liberal Senator, plus candidates in place for state by-elections in Queensland and SA.

The biggest electoral news of the week was probably the annual release of electoral donations disclosures, which has been widely covered elsewhere. From the more narrow concerns of this site, there is the following:

• Ben Small, who served in the Senate from November 2020 to June 2022, has emerged as the only nominee for Liberal preselection in the regional Western Australian seat of Forrest. The seat will be vacated at the next election with the retirement of Nola Marino, who has held it safely for the Liberals since 2007. The West Australian also reports Mark Wales, an SAS veteran, Survivor winner and former McKinsey consultant, plans to nominate for Tangney, a normally comfortable Liberal seat that fell to Labor in 2022. Others known to be interested are Canning mayor Patrick Hall and IT consultant Harold Ong.

• The Liberal National Party has chosen its candidates for the looming Queensland state by-elections for the safe Labor seats of Inala and Ipswich West, respectively being vacated by Annastacia Palaszczuk and Jim Madden: Trang Yen, a 28-year-old public servant in the Department of State Development, and Darren Zanow, president of the Ipswich Show Society. The by-elections will be held concurrently with local government elections on March 16.

• With former South Australian Premier Steven Marshall saying he will formally resign from parliament “in the coming months”, the Liberals have preselected lawyer and former ministerial adviser Anna Finizio for the looming by-election for his seat of Dunstan, which once had the more instructive name of Norwood. Labor is again running with its candidate from March 2023, Cressida O’Hanlon, a family dispute resolution practitioner.

South Australian election minus two-and-a-bit years

An overdue round-up of state electoral developments in South Australia, most of them involving the internal affairs of the Liberal Party.

Peter Malinauskas’s Labor government in South Australia is approaching the mid-point of the four-year term it won in March 2022, and is yet to be tested by an opinion poll. While the government is struggling to deliver on its signature election promise of reducing ambulance ramping, it has otherwise kept out of trouble and presumably remains in the ascendant. Greater clarity about the next election must await a redistribution process that can be expected to begin shortly with a call for submissions.

This site’s last post about South Australian affairs came in July 2022 when Jack Beatty succeeded Vickie Chapman in the by-election for Bragg, where the safe Liberal margin was further whittled back by 2.5% following an 8.8% swing to Labor at the election. Defeated Liberal premier Steven Marshall remains in his marginal seat of Dunstan, but his low-key parliamentary activity and appointment to board and director positions are increasingly attracting comment. Paul Starick of The Advertiser suggests Marshall has “waited to trigger a by-election until the Liberals have a chance of victory”, and that the moment might soon arrive. Positioned to succeed him in Dunstan is Anna Finizio, former solicitor, state government media adviser, public policy and economics manager at PwC and federal candidate for Hindmarsh.

David Speirs has been undisturbed in the Liberal leadership since succeeding Marshall after the election, apart from occasional suggestions he should watch out for Vincent Tarzia and, increasingly, Ashton Hurn (whose prospects were said by The Advertiser’s Paul Starick to have suffered from the party’s growing conservative ascendancy, on which more below). There is also a mounting expectation that former federal Boothby MP Nicolle Flint will seek to recover the rural seat of MacKillop from party renegade Nick McBride at the next election, ultimately in pursuit of leadership ambitions.

The Liberal Party’s conservative turn has been accomplished through a reported surge of 1000 new members, accounting for nearly 20% of the total. Much of this has been attributed to Trump-echoing conservative Senator Alex Antic, who boasts that “the days of the Liberal Party in South Australia being controlled by 25-year-old ABC-watching, Guardian-reading political staffers are over”. David Penberthy of The Australian further notes the moderate establishment that dominated the Marshall government alienated conservatives through abortion and euthanasia reforms, business through land tax reforms, and libertarians through its management of the pandemic.

The following changes in parliament have occurred since the Bragg by-election, only the first involving the lower house:

• MacKillop MP Nick McBride quit the Liberal Party in July, putting the lower house numbers at Labor 27, Liberal 15 and independents five. McBride said he believed his country seat would be better served by an independent, but also complained of “dark forces” who had moved the party from the “broad church” of John Howard and Bob Menzies. The move notably came a fortnight after local party positions were usurped by husband-and-wife Pentecostal pastors Matthew and Janine Neumann. There have been occasional suggestions McBride might form a breakaway rural conservative party with Mount Gambier independent Troy Bell.

• SA-Best MLC Frank Pangallo quit the party on December 1 to sit as an independent, saying he and his sole colleague, Connie Bonaros, “no longer share our once-aligned ideologies”. Paul Starick of The Advertiser reported the two had fallen out after Bonaros threw her support behind government legislation for the merger of University of Adelaide and UniSA, which Pangallo wanted more time to consider in detail. The SA-Best seats are a product of staggered terms and the peak of the Nick Xenophon wave in 2018, which crashed in 2022.

• Labor MLC Irene Pnevmatikos retired in October due to ill health and was succeeded by Mira El Dannawi, assistant director of Modbury Community Children’s Centre. David Simmons of InDaily reports El Dannawi was chosen by Labor’s executive after winning decisive backing from Pnevmatikos’s Left faction, becoming the first Muslim to serve in state parliament.

• Former Health Minister Stephen Wade retired from the Legislative Council in January, with Ben Hood chosen by the Liberal Party to complete the three years of his term. Hood is a former Mount Gambier councillor and unsuccessful candidate for the state seat of Mount Gambier, and the brother of Lucy Hood, the Labor member for Adelaide. He reportedly pursued preselection despite opposition from party leader and fellow conservative David Speirs, who wished for him to continue pursuing independent Troy Bell in Mount Gambier. Hood won 119 votes in the ballot of the party’s state council ahead of 87 for moderate-aligned Leah Grantham, state party vice-president and daughter of former Legislative Council President John Dawkins. An early contender was Hannah March, moderate-aligned former prosecutor and chief-of-staff to Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, but she withdrew amid a bid to expel her from the party and a defamation concerns notice from Senator Alex Antic, who accused her of “bullying”.

Bragg by-election live

Live coverage of the count for South Australia’s Bragg by-election.

Click here for full Bragg by-election results updated live.

Monday

4.50pm. A large batch of 4356 formal declaration votes just got unloaded into the count, and it’s caused my Liberal win probability to go from a shade under 95% to 100%. As compared with the total declaration votes from March, these have actually recorded a 0.6% swing to the Liberals. However, that might well be because these are largely or entirely postals rather than pre-polls, and that the declaration vote swing will move around quite substantially as different types of vote are added to the count.

End of Saturday

Liberal candidate Jack Batty ends the night with a lead of 6531 (50.9%) to 6289 (49.1%), which should be enough — it amounts to a 6.0% swing to Labor on the election day vote, whereas the overall margin is 8.2%. Rechecking will be conducted tomorrow, with the counting of the declaration votes — 5377 pre-polls and what will eventually be about 3500 postals — to begin on Monday. Declaration votes at the March state election favoured the Liberals by 60.1-39.9, compared with 57.0-43.0 for polling booth votes. This included absent votes, which are not a factor at a by-election, but their exclusion isn’t likely to make them any more favourable to Labor. South Australia uniquely does not report different types of declaration vote separately, one of many ways in which its electoral arrangements are badly in need of an overhaul. Another is that pre-polls are still counted as declaration rather than ordinary votes, which is why none of them could be counted this evening.

Election night

8.53pm. All booth results are now in. The swing to Labor is now up to 6.1%, but the Liberals have a raw lead of 0.9%, which will almost certainly increase on postals.

8.09pm. A sixth TCP booth result, not sure which, has nudged the raw Liberal vote up to 51.1%, a little closer to my projection.

8.03pm. All eight booths are in on the primary vote, with three more to come on two-party, which should be all we get for the evening.

7.57pm. Now the projection is behaving as it should be, but a flurry of new results has meant the Liberal scare has passed, at least so far as my projection is concerned. They have their nose in front on the raw count, and postals should increase it.

7.55pm. My projection is still stuck, but the raw TCP result has the Liberal margin down to 0.7%, where is about where it should be.

7.48pm. I believe I’ve worked out the problem, and it should fix the next time I get a results update. For the time being, whereas my projection has the Liberals ahead by 3.2%, it should have them ahead by just 0.4%.

7.45pm. There’s now a TCP result in from Burnside, and whereas I was projecting Labor to get 69% of all preferences, here they have landed 77%, such that Labor has very narrowly won the booth. Unfortunately, my projection is still working off my estimates for some reason. I’ll look into this.

7.30pm. Rose Park now in on the primary vote, making it six out of eight, with the situation otherwise unchanged. The Liberal win probability is creeping up towards 90% as the vote count increases, without the projection of a 3.2% winning margin changing.

7.24pm. Linden Park is the fifth of eight booths in on the primary vote, and it hasn’t changed my projection. Still waiting for a two-party result to give some indication of how accurate my preference estimates are.

7.14pm. Burnside and Glen Osmond primary vote results moderate my projected swing to 5.0%. This is still based on preference estimates though, which are giving the Liberals 20% from the Greens, 70% from Family First, 75% from the Liberal Democrats and 50% from an independent who I don’t know anything about. These will continue to be used until one of the booths reports at two-party preferred result.

7.06pm. Second primary booth result in from Tusmore, and it’s a bit better for the Liberals, with their primary vote down 6.8%.

7.03pm. The Wattle Park booth is in on the primary vote, and the result is big enough to make things interesting: I have the Liberals down 10.5% on the primary vote, which translates to a 7.0% swing to Labor off an 8.2% margin assuming my preference estimates are correct. The Greens are well up on the primary vote, and the other candidates are barely registering.

6pm. Polls have closed for South Australia’s Bragg by-election. Results will appear as they come in on the page linked to above, which features neat and tidy tables and charts, exclusive booth-level swings and a booth results map. There were only eight polling booths in operation today, with three from the March election that were split booths with neighbouring elections out of commission. Since these are all suburban booths that will have traded in large numbers of votes, it will probably be an hour or so before we start to see results. I also have a guide to the by-election profiling the electorate and main candidates and outlining how the by-election came about.

By-elections three

A quick run through the three state by-elections shortly to be held in Liberal and Nationals seats in Labor-run states.

There are now three state by-elections on the way, one imminent, another three weeks away, and a third on a date yet to be determined. I have election guides for the first two of these, linked two below. In turn:

Callide. A by-election will be held for this rural seat in Queensland on Saturday to replace Liberal National Party member Colin Boyce, who has now gone federal as the member for the corresponding seat of Flynn. Labor has not gone the usual path of forfeiting a seat in which it has never been competitive, at least notionally setting up a contest between LNP candidate Bryson Head and Labor’s Bronwyn Dendle. However, there seems at least as much chance that final count will be between the LNP and One Nation, whose candidate Sharon Lohse achieved as much when she ran in 2017. Lohse was also the party’s candidate in Flynn at the recent federal election. For whatever reason, the party sat it out in the seat at the 2020 state election. Also in the field are Legalise Cannabis, Katter’s Australian Party and Animal Justice – but not the Greens, who tend not to trouble the scoreboard much in this part of the world.

Bragg. This blue-ribbon Adelaide seat goes to the polls on July 2 to choose a successor to former Deputy Premier Vickie Chapman, who displeased her party by pulling the plug on her political career shortly after the March election defeat. Here too Labor is gamely taking the field in a seat it has never held, but given the Liberals’ form in comparable seats at the federal election and its all-time low margin of 8.2% after the state election, it’s easier here to see why they might think it worth a roll of the dice. The Liberals could have had particular trouble if disgruntled political staffer Chelsey Potter had followed through on her threat to don the teal independent mantle, but it seems she was persuaded not to. The by-election thus pits Liberal candidate Jack Batty, who until recently worked at the High Commission in London, against Labor’s Alice Rolls, head of policy and strategy at the Australian Pro Bono Centre. The Greens and Family First have also announced candidates; nominations close on Friday.

North West Central. One of only six seats out of the 59 in Western Australia’s lower house not held by Labor, North West Central is shortly to be vacated with the retirement of Nationals member Vince Catania. Catania began his political career with Labor as a member of the Legislative Council in 2005, transferred to the Legislative Assembly in 2008, defected to the Nationals the following year and comfortably retained it through to 2021, when he held out by 1.7% against a swing of 8.4%, one of the lowest in the state. Although anything would seem possible given the loss of Catania’s personal vote, which is of particular significance in a seat where only 8000 voters were cast at the last election, the consensus seems to be that Labor will not field a candidate as it fears a backlash over its one-vote one-value reform to the Legislative Council, expects the seat to be abolished at the next redistribution and already has more MPs than it knows what to do with. The seat could potentially develop into a contest between the Nationals and the Liberals, but the odds on the latter would presumably be rather long.

Honeymoon polling and state by-election news

The first embers of polling since the election record strong support for the new Prime Minister and his agenda.

US pollster Morning Consult, which conducts monthly international polling on world leaders’ domestic personal ratings, has found Anthony Albanese with an approval rating of 51% and a disapproval rating of 25%. Its final result for Scott Morrison was 40% approval and 54% disapproval. The poll was conducted May 23 to 31 from a sample of 3770.

Essential Research published its usual fortnightly poll this week, which had nothing to offer on voting intention or leadership ratings, although it did find that 23% rated themselves more likely to vote Coalition with Peter Dutton as leader compared with 27% less likely. Questions on attitudes to Labor policies found 70% support for increasing the minimum wage and 69% support for a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption, with only 9% opposed in each case. Fifty-two per cent felt Labor should “look for opportunities to rebuild relations” with China, with only 19% favouring a more confrontational position and 12% favouring the current set of policies. Support for the Uluru statement was found to have increased significantly since November 2017, with 53% supporting an indigenous voice to parliament in the constitution.

Some notable state news that got lost in the federal election rush:

• A by-election will be held on June 18 for the Queensland state seat of Callide after its Liberal National Party member, Colin Boyce, moved to federal politics as the Nationals member for Flynn. This is a very safe rural conservative seat, but Labor has nonetheless endorsed Bronwyn Dendle to run against Bryson Head of the LNP, a 26-year-old mining industry geologist. Also in the field are candidates of One Nation, Katter’s Australian Party, Legalise Cannabis and Animal Justice.

• The by-election to replace Vickie Chapman in the safe Liberal seat of Bragg in South Australia has been set for July 2. The ABC reports four nominees for the Liberal preselection: Jack Batty, adviser to the Australian High Commissioner in London; Sandy Biar, national director of the Australian Republic Movement and public affairs officer with the army; and Melissa Jones, a law firm director; and Cara Miller, former co-owner of a radiology business.

• Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff has announced he will introduce legislation this year to increase the size of the state’s House of Assembly from 25 seats to 35, reversing a change made in 1998. The move has the support of the Liberals, Labor and the Greens.