South Australian Politics – Page 3

South Australian election minus one week

With a week to go until polling day, further intelligence to the effect that it’s not looking good for Steven Marshall’s Liberal government.

John Ferguson of The Australian has the following to relate:

The most senior members of the government have been warned that unless there is a dramatic turnaround in sentiment in the next week Mr Marshall will lose on March 19, with community anger over the way the state was reopened late last year and ongoing virus anxiety still driving the backlash. Ominously for the federal government, Scott Morrison is seen privately as a significant drag for a section of voters in SA, who will refuse to vote for Mr Marshall simply because of their distaste for the Prime Minister, sources said.

In other developments, the electoral process has also had a hiccough with the Electoral Commission having to withdraw 80 votes cast in the first hour of business at the Christies Beach pre-poll centre, owing to the fact that an old version of the electoral roll was being used. The commission now has the task of chasing down the 80 voters and getting them to vote again.

For my part, I have now added a Legislative Council guide to my election guide, although I don’t regard it as being in a fully complete state, as it’s lacking in such features as candidate photos and proper proof-reading. Those will hopefully follow at some point over the weekend.

South Australian election minus eleven days

With less than two weeks to go, such polling as is available doesn’t look good for Steven Marshall in South Australia.

Less than a fortnight to go in what’s been a fairly subdued South Australian election campaign, which has struggled for media oxygen in the face of international events. Early voting is under way as of yesterday, with record numbers of voters assuredly set to avail themselves of that option. A leaders debate will take place on Wednesday, although these tend not to generate a huge amount of public interest these days.

South Australian election latest

Publication of candidates reveals a number of familiar names under new guises.

With the closure of nominations on Monday, candidates lists in ballot paper order are now available on my election guide, at least for the lower house, my guide to the upper house still being a work in progress. Details of candidates and parties for the lower house are summarised by blog post by Antony Green. The Greens are unusually sitting it out in four rural seats, One Nation are running in 19 seats, and the Nationals are making their biggest showing in a while with eight. The new incarnation of Family First is putting considerable effort in with 34 candidates, but it faces competition for the “family” vote from the Australian Family Party, associated with former Senator Bob Day.

Interestingly, the Liberal Democrats have drawn top spot on the Legislative Council ticket, just as David Leyonhjelm did when elected to the Senate in New South Wales with 9.5% of the vote in 2013, maximising the party’s windfall from confused Liberal supporters. Others of note include former Labor MP Tom Kenyon at the head of the Family First ticket, Bob Day doing likewise for the Australian Family Party, and Annabel and Greg Digance running jointly on an independent ticket ahead of their looming trial on charges of having attempted to blackmail Peter Malinauskas.

Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor in South Australia

The first South Australian state poll in a year suggests Steven Marshall has a lot of work to do over the next three weeks if his government is going to make it to a second term.

Three weeks out from the election, The Australian offers a Newspoll result from South Australia with a striking headline figure of 53-47 to Labor on two-party preferred, amounting to a 4.9% swing to Labor compared with the 2018 result. The primary votes are Coalition 37%, Labor 39% and Greens 10%, compared with previous election results of Coalition 38.0%, Labor 32.8% and Greens 6.7%, with much of the residue accounted for by SA-Best. The poll is particularly encouraging for Labor leader Peter Malinauskas, who unusually for an Opposition Leader holds the lead on preferred premier, by 46-39. He also records a 51% approval rating, with disapproval at 31%. Steven Marshall is at 48% approval and 47% disapproval.

The poll was conducted Friday to Thursday from a sample of 1015. For a whole lot more on the election, my South Australian election guide can be found here.

South Australian election guide

Introducing the Poll Bludger’s guide to a South Australian state election now slightly less than four weeks away.

UPDATE: InDaily reports on the first published statewide opinion poll result in a year, conducted by Dynata for the Australia Institute. It shows Labor with a 51-49 lead, but as you can see from the primary votes, that’s heavily dependent on speculative preference flows: Liberal and Labor have very modest primary votes of 35% and 37% respectively, hardly better than they collectively managed in 2018 with SA-Best accounting for 14.2% (Liberal polled 38.0% and Labor 32.8%). The Greens are on 7% and SA-Best 4%, though I’m not sure if they will actually be fielding any candidates. This leaves fully 17% going to “others”. The poll was conducted online from February 1 to 14 from a sample of 602.

It has also been noted in comments that The Advertiser reported a fortnight ago on two uComms polls conducted for the SA Forestry Products Association for Stuart and Mount Gambier. The former suggested independent Geoff Brock will not be competitive in his bid to move from Frome, with Liberal member Dan van Holst Pellekaan recording 45.1% of the primary vote to Labor’s 17.4% and Brock’s 11.3%, with the Greens on 6.6%, others on 12.7% and 7.0% undecided, and Liberal leading Labor 60-40 on two-party. In Mount Gambier, independent Troy Bell looks safe on 35.7% to Labor’s 22.5% and the Liberals’ 20.2%, with the Greens on 4.2%, others on 8.0% and 9.4% undecided and Bell leading Labor 58-42 on two-party preferred. The polls were conducted from January 31 to February 3, presumably by automated phone polling, with modest sample sizes of 402 and 406 respectively.

The South Australian election campaign officially began on Saturday when Steven Marshall visited the Governor to advise the issue of the writs for an election on March 19, as ordained by the state’s fixed term legislation. Which makes now, give or take a day or two, the ideal time to launch my state election guide, featuring all the attractions familiar from my past work in this field: individual guides to each of the 47 lower house electorates, including written summaries, interactive maps displaying booth results from the previous election, and chart and table displays of past election results; and an overview page that sets the general scene. What it doesn’t have yet is a page for the Legislative Council, but I’ll attend to that over the coming week or so.

The following excerpt from the overview page provides a useful summary of where things stand:

The Liberals lost three seats and their parliamentary majority over the course of 2020 and 2021, with two members leaving the party after becoming embroiled in scandals and a third complaining that the government had failed to address concerns in his electorate, while also likely being aggrieved at having been overlooked for promotion. Conversely, Labor’s parliamentary line-up has remained intact since it retained two seats at by-elections held in February 2019 after the retirements of Jay Weatherill and his deputy, John Rau. The redistribution has weakened the Liberals in two key seats, but has not had the effect of moving any seat to the opposite party’s column, in contrast to the one before the 2018 election. Consequently, the current numbers in parliament are Liberal 22, Labor 19 and independents six.

Labor thus needs five extra seats to gain a majority, and likely has one in the bag after the redistribution prompted Frances Bedford to abandon her naturally safe Labor seat of Florey for its finely poised Liberal-held neighbour, Newland. The shortest path to victory for Labor would involve a uniform swing of 2.0%, which would net the metropolitan seats of Newland, Adelaide, King and Elder. Beyond that lies a big gap in the electoral pendulum out to the Liberals’ next most marginal seat of Colton, where the required swing is 6.2%.

Each of the four ex-Liberal members will be seeking re-election as independents, meaning the Liberals have to either unseat at least two of them or win as many from Labor to recover their majority. They also have an opportunity to gain a seat from the other independent, Geoff Brock, who like Frances Bedford has been confronted by a troublesome redistribution. Brock will now run against deputy Liberal leader Dan van Holst Pellekaan in Stuart, which has gained his home base of Port Pirie from his existing seat of Frome.

One important question the guide leaves unaddressed is who’s going to win. For what it’s worth, Sportsbet is offering $1.75 on the Liberals and $2 on Labor, which if nothing else makes clear that nobody thinks a Western Australian or even a Tasmanian scale landslide is on the cards. Beyond that we’re flying blind owing to the evaporation of state-level polling in recent times, particularly outside the two biggest states. The last published poll that I’m aware of was fully a year ago, by YouGov for The Advertiser, showing a very modest Liberal lead of 51-49. The closest thing to a more recent result was an Essential Research poll covering 443 respondents in October which credited Steven Marshall with a seemingly very healthy 61% approval rating, with only 27% disapproving.

Some acknowledgements are clearly due for the election guide, which leans heavily on a few particular sources. Naturally this includes the traditional news media outlets, notably The Advertiser and the ABC. However, even more valuable was the local online news publication InDaily, which I cannot praise enough: thanks to its efforts, the country’s fifth most populous state is the best served for coverage of state politics. Or to put the case more persuasively than I ever could myself: the Donald Trump-wannabe Liberal Senator Alex Antic reckons the site to be “fake news”. In addition to that, all my election guides draw heavily on the Political Chronicles feature in the Australian Journal of Politics and History, wherein local academics have provided learned summaries of contemporary events twice yearly for every Australian governmental jurisdiction since I-shudder-to-think-when. These have been dutifully compiled over the past term by Andrew Parkin, Rob Manwaring and Haydon Manning.

Finally, some observations worth noting about the rather lackadaisical attitude of the Marshall government towards updating its electoral legislation, and the impact they will have on voting and vote counting. It has been noted previously that the government has failed to legislate to deal with the problem that voters put into COVID-19 isolation after the deadline for postal vote application closes will not be able to vote. The Electoral Commission has cobbled together a fix whereby those thus affected will be able to collect ballot papers from COVID-19 test sites, which will be about the only places where they can legally go.

However, another pandemic-related issue remains unresolved: the fact that South Australia uniquely continues to treat pre-polls as declaration votes that must be lodged in signed envelopes, which precludes them being counted on election night. This means that only votes cast on the day will be counted on election night, which every indication suggests will be unprecedentedly few in number. As a result, it will only be possible to call the winner on the night if there is a particularly clear and decisive result. Even then, some may well point to late-count surprises after last weekend’s New South Wales by-elections as evidence that literally nothing can be taken for granted for as long as an actual majority of votes cast remain in their boxes.

Federal preselection and electoral law developments

Federal preselection news from New South Wales, not all of it about the Liberals, plus plans to lower the voting age to 16 in the ACT and much else.

The mercurial Roy Morgan organisation put out a newsletter this week saying its fortnightly poll had Labor leading 56.5-43.5 and would be published in full within 48 hours, but nothing more was heard. However, there is no shortage of other electoral news to relate, even without getting too deep into the developing situation of the New South Wales Liberals’ federal preselection tangle, which was covered in depth here. Note that I also have a separate post dealing with the imminent Super Saturday of four New South Wales state by-elections.

• The Liberals in New South Wales have at least resolved their dispute to the extent of proceeding with plans for a preselection ballot for Bennelong, which David Crowe of The Age reports is likely to be held in March. The candidates are Gisele Kapterian, former chief-of-staff to Michaelia Cash and current executive at software company Salesforce; Craig Chung, a City of Sydney councillor; and Simon Kennedy, a former partner at McKinsey.

• Labor also has a few loose ends in New South Wales, having yet to choose candidates to succeed retiring members Sharon Bird and Julie Ovens in Cunningham and Parramatta. A membership ballot for Cunningham will be held on February 19 between Misha Zelinsky, Australian Workers Union assistant national secretary and former criminal defence lawyer, and Alison Byrnes-Scully, staffer to Sharon Bird (and wife of state Wollongong MP Paul Scully). Zelinsky has been in the news over social media posts and an e-book he co-authored nearly a decade ago which featured jokes denigrating women. The Guardian reports that Labor is struggling to find a candidate in Parramatta that the party hierarchy considers up to standard, having lately been rebuffed by Cameron Murphy, prominent barrister and son of Lionel Murphy.

• Northern Territory Senator Sam McMahon, a Country Liberals member who sat with the Nationals in Canberra, resigned from the party last week and is leaving open the possibility of contesting the election either for a different party or as an independent. McMahon lost her preselection last June to Alice Springs deputy mayor and conservative media identity Jacinta Price.

Noteworthy matters of electoral law and administration at state and territory level:

• A headache looms in South Australia ahead of its March 19 state election, with no contingency in place for voters put in COVID-19 isolation who are unable to meet the deadline for a postal vote application. A bill to allow for voting to be conducted over the phone in this circumstance was passed by the lower house and amended in the upper, and the lower house had not considered the amendments when it rose in early December. The Advertiser reports that Labor says it would be a simple matter for the house to reconvene and agree to the amended bill, but Premier Steven Marshall says there is not enough time to pass legislation before the government enters caretaker mode ahead of the election. Marshall blames Labor for supporting the amendments, but it appears to me that the government chose to sit on the bill for the last three days of the session.

• The Canberra Times reports Labor has “indicated a willingness” to support a Greens bill to make voting compulsory for 16 and 17 year olds in ACT elections, notwithstanding the local electoral commission’s evident horror at the resulting administrative burden.

• Remy Varga of The Australian reports the Victorian government is taking a stand against the pernicious practice of political parties handling postal vote applications so they can harvest data from them.

A woman’s place

More on Pearce preselection prospects, another parliamentary retirement announcement, and a poll suggesting WA voters favour Tanya Plibersek over Anthony Albanese.

After an eventful conclusion to the year’s parliamentary sittings, more retirement announcements and preselection news, plus an opinion poll of sorts.

• The Financial Review reports there are two leading candidates to replace Christian Porter as the Liberal candidate in Pearce: Libby Lyons, former director of the Australian Government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency (and granddaughter of Joseph and Enid Lyons), and Nicole Robbins, a Melville councillor and high school teacher. No mention is made of Miquela Riley and Alyssa Hayden, who featured in a report in The West Australian on Thursday. Michael Read of the Financial Review reports former state Hillarys MP Peter Katsambanis has indicated he would have been a contender had not the state government’s “heavy-handed” border restrictions left him stranded in Melbourne, but he would have had to contend with the party leadership’s clear preference that a woman be selected to succeed Porter.

• Phillip Coorey of the Financial Review reports Christian Porter’s decision to jump ship was influenced by internal polling for his seat that was, according to a source familiar with the matter, “not good”. However, the remainder of the report emphasises Labor’s hard path to a majority: the Coalition “claim they will hold Bass and Braddon in Tasmania”, “feels comfortable in all-important Queensland but may lose at least one seat”, and “believe they can win Lyons in Tasmania and, if Andrew Constance is preselected, Gilmore in southern NSW”. Elsewhere in the Financial Review, Michael Read of the Financial Review reports both parties expect Labor to win the Melbourne seat of Chisholm from Gladys Liu.

• Damian Drum, who has held the rural Victorian seat of Nicholls (known before 2019 as Murray) for the Nationals since 2016, has announced he will not contest the election. Rob Harris of the Sydney Morning Herald reports the Liberals now hope to recover the seat, which Drum won upon the retirement of Liberal member Sharman Stone. Anticipated Nationals preselection candidates are Sam Birrell, former chief executive of the Committee for Shepparton; Michael Dobbie, former paralympian and staffer to Liberal MP Jane Prentice and Nationals MP Darren Chester; and Amanda McClaren, former Strathbogie Shire mayor. The only Liberal mentioned is Stephen Brooks, a “Cobram school teacher, irrigator and former international commodities trader”. Rob Priestly, Greater Shepparton deputy mayor and co-owner of an industrial laundry firm in Shepparton, recently announced he would run as an independent.

• The Katina Curtis of the Sydney Morning Herald reports the Liberals have pushed back the closure of nominations for the Warringah preselection to January 14, in the hope that Gladys Berejiklian might yet agree to run, and also in Parramatta, where the Liberals are hoping the retirement of sitting member Julie Owens will help them knock over the 3.5% Labor margin. State Parramatta MP Geoff Lee has thus far resisted entreaties to run, which have displeased Dominic Perrottet, who would sooner avoid further by-elections.

• The West Australian has a poll by Painted Dog Research in which 801 Western Australian respondents were presented with a four-way preferred prime minister question, putting Scott Morrison at 41%, Tanya Plibersek at 32%, Anthony Albanese at 22% and Peter Dutton at 4%. Plibersek led Morrison by 41% to 36% among women, while Morrison led 47% to 25% among men. When asked who they trusted more out of the Premier and the Prime Minister, Mark McGowan scored 78% and Morrison 22%. Here too there was a significant gender gap, with McGowan’s lead of 71-29 among men comparing with 86-14 among women.

Affairs of state:

• Antony Green notes on Twitter that South Australia’s parliament has adjourned ahead of the election without having corrected the legislative anomaly that means pre-poll votes are not counted on election night, which is now unique to the state. As a result, the election night count will be “quick, over early, but will be very incomplete with no guarantee we will know the outcome until the declaration votes start being counted on the Monday after the election”.

• Yoni Bashan of The Australian reports Bridget Sakr, who has gained prominence as a victims support advocate since her daughter and three of her cousins were killed after in February last year after a ute mounted the kerb, is considering an approach from the New South Wales Liberals to run in the looming Strathfield by-election. The seat is being vacated with the retirement of ousted Labor leader Jodi McKay, who held the seat by 5.0% in 2019.

Crying Fowler

A plan to move Kristina Keneally from the Senate to the western Sydney seat of Fowler looks set to solve one problem for Labor while creating another. Also featured: a Senate vacancy and a state poll from South Australia.

Before we proceed, please note a) the post below on electoral developments in California, Canada and Germany courtesy of Adrian Beaumont, and b) the fact that tomorrow is the day of the by-election for the Northern Territory seat of Daly, where the Country Liberal Party is defending a margin of 1.2%.

Now to the week’s big item of federal election news, which is that Kristina Keneally is set to be parachuted from her current position in the Senate to the western Sydney seat of Fowler, which will be vacated with the retirement of Chris Hayes, who holds it on a 14.0% margin. The Australian reports this will be accomplished by fiat of head office, without a ballot of local party members.

Moving Keneally to the House of Representatives resolves a difficulty arising from the 2016 double dissolution, at which three of the four elected Labor Senators were allocated full terms of six years, which will expire in the middle of next year. This includes two members of the Right – Sam Dastyari, whom Kristina Keneally replaced after his resignation in February 2018, and Deborah O’Neill – and Jenny McAllister of the Left. Since factional arrangements reserve second position on the ticket for the Left, either O’Neill or Keneally faced delegation to third position, which has not been a winning proposition for Labor at a half-Senate election since 2007. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, the power of O’Neill’s backers in the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association appears likely to secure her the top spot, although The Australian cites unidentified Keneally supporters saying she was confident of beating her.

The use of Fowler as a backstop for Keneally comes with the substantial difficulty that the electorate boasts the nation’s highest proportion of non-English speakers, in large part owing to the presence within it of the Vietnamese enclave of Cabramatta. As such, Labor appeared to have a promising successor lined up in Tu Le, a 30-year-old lawyer and daughter of Vietnamese refugees. By contrast, Keneally lives in a $1.8 million property in Sydney’s northern beaches. Le had the backing of Hayes and, according to another source cited by The Australian, would have won a rank-and-file ballot if one were held. The ABC reports senior front-bencher Tony Burke shares Hayes’ displeasure at the development, although it also notes that others in the Right felt Hayes “had no right to try to act as a kingmaker or name his replacement publicly”.

In other Labor preselection news, Tom Richardson of InDaily reports the South Australian Senate vacancy created by the death of Alex Gallacher last week is likely to be filled by Karen Grogan, national political coordinator with the United Workers Union and convenor of the state branch’s Left faction. According to the report, a Senate seat was set to pass from Right to Left in the factional deals arising from the abolition of the federal seat of Port Adelaide at the 2019 election. Gallacher’s death may have had the effect of preserving Steve Georganas’s position in the seat of Adelaide, which might otherwise have been used to create the requisite vacancy by providing a refuge for Right-aligned Senator Marielle Smith.

Also from South Australia, the Australia Institute has published a Dynata poll of state voting intention, although it was conducted back in July from a modest sample of 599. It suggests Steven Marshall’s Liberal government might struggle at the March election, recording 38% support to 34% for Labor, 10% for the Greens, 5% for SA Best and 12% for the rest.