Category: State Redistributions

Weekend miscellany: duelling pendulums, Tasmanian seat polling and more (open thread)

Summarising federal redistributions ahead of the looming election, polling pointing to a status quo result in Tasmania’s federal seats, and various other electoral news.

Antony Green has published a pendulum display of post-redistribution seat margins for the federal election along with some explanation of what this entails. He did so exactly as I was finalising my own parallel effort, which I present here in the shape of a mock-up of the entry page for the federal election guide I’m hoping to publish around mid-January (a Western Australian election guide will precede it by a couple of weeks).

The margins shown are simply those from the 2022 election where no redistribution has been conducted, but the redistributions for New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory require a process of distributing the votes from 2022 across the redrawn electorates. The Northern Territory redistribution is still in the public consultation phase, but I have taken a punt on the proposed boundaries (in this case simply a matter of drawing the line between Solomon and Lingiari) being adopted as they seem impossible to argue with, and it appears Antony Green has reached the same conclusion.

I believe the redistribution calculation methods used by Antony and me are identical with respect to how they handle ordinary votes, (i.e. those cast on election day or at pre-poll voting centres), but we have presumably adopted different methods to deal with the difficult question of “non-static” vote types, such as postals, which are published in aggregate for the whole electorate with no indication of geographic variation. I haven’t crunched the numbers too thoroughly, but the biggest anomaly I can see is that we have landed 0.5% apart in the substantially redrawn seat of Chisholm. We are in agreement that the margin in Deakin is a tiny 0.02%, but where he has it in favour of the Liberals, I make the seat to be notionally Labor.

Where we substantially differ is in seats where an independent is part of the equation. Calculations here are necessarily speculative, as independents will not have been on the ballot paper in newly added areas (where transfers have been conducted between teal seats, this can be dealt with by treating them as a collective). Antony has a method involving comparison of House and Senate vote shares which he says is “imperfect, but so are all alternatives”. The imperfection of my method, which gives independents no primary votes from newly added areas and allocates only the preference flows they might have expected from the other candidates, is that it’s very harsh on the independents, a fact most apparent with respect to Kooyong, where my 0.1% margin for Monique Ryan compares with Antony’s 2.2%.

Complete accountings of my redistribution calculations can be observed through the following links, for New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Northern Territory.

Polling and electoral developments of note:

• This week’s Roy Morgan poll had the Coalition leading 52-48, out from 51-49 a week before, from primary votes of Labor 28% (down two, their worst result of the term), Coalition 38% (down half), Greens 13% (up half) and One Nation 6.5% (steady). The previous election two-party measure was a dead heat, unchanged on last week.

• The Australian reported last Saturday that a EMRS poll covering all five seats in Tasmania pointed to a status quo result of two Labor, two Liberal and one independent. In Labor’s precarious seat of Lyons, a generic party-based question has Labor on 34%, Liberal on 31%, the Greens on 11% and Jacqui Lambie Network 4%, while a separate question specifying candidates had 40% for Labor’s Rebecca White, 31% for Liberal candidate Susie Bowers and 9% for the Greens. The Liberals were well ahead in Braddon, leading 44% to 27% on the primary vote with the Greens on 9% and JLN on 7%. In Franklin the results were Labor 36%, Liberal 35% and Greens 11%, suggesting Labor would survive a substantial swing.

• Liberal MP Paul Fletcher announced this week that he will not recontest his seat of Bradfield. Fletcher retained the seat by 4.2% in 2022 in the face of a challenge from teal independent Nicolette Boele, who will run again at the coming election. His announcement comes shortly after teal independent MP Kylea Tink said she would not contest the seat following the abolition of her existing seat of North Sydney, much of whose territory will be transferred to Bradfield. The Sydney Morning Herald reports on two contenders to succeed Fletcher as Liberal candidate: Gisele Kapterian, an international trade lawyer and former staffer to Julie Bishop who shares Fletcher’s moderate factional alignment, and Penny George, director of corporate affairs at AstraZeneca and wife of state upper house member Scott Farlow. Kapterian was endorsed last year as the candidate for North Sydney, but had the rug pulled from under her with the seat’s abolition.

• Liberal MP Ian Goodenough, who lost preselection in his northern Perth suburbs seat of Moore to former Stirling MP Vince Connelly, has surprised nobody by announcing he will seek re-election as an independent. Connelly was the member for Stirling, part of which is now the southern end of Moore, from 2019 until its abolition in 2022. Goodenough claims to have been told that “opportunities might arise that would be of benefit” if he didn’t run.

• The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reports former Senator Joanna Lindgren is “poised” to be preselected as the LNP’s candidate for the Ipswich region seat of Blair, held for Labor by Shayne Neumann on a margin of 5.2%. Lindgren served in the Senate for a year after filling a casual vacancy but failed to win re-election at the 2016 double dissolution. Trevor Evans, who lost Brisbane to the Greens in 2022, is expected to again be chosen as the party’s candidate for the seat at a preselection to be held today, though he faces an opponent in Fiona Ward, a past federal and state candidate and regular preselection aspirant. Two contenders are named for the party’s preselection for Lilley, held for Labor by Annika Wells on a 10.5% margin: Kimberley Washington, a former staffer to LNP-turned-independent Senator Gerard Rennick, and Dylan Conway, an army veteran and founder of a mental health charity.

• Sarah Elks of The Australian reports Clive Palmer has launched a High Court bid to overrule a section of the Electoral Act that disallowed him from re-registering his United Australia Party for the next election after his voluntary deregistration of it in September 2022. The report quotes electoral law expert Graeme Orr saying the section exists to prevent newly deregistered parties having their names poached and did not reckon seeking to de-register and re-register, the “obvious reason” for which was to avoid having to make financial disclosures.

• The Victorian state by-election for Prahran will be held on February 8, with the ballot paper draw to be held on January 17. Tony Lupton, who held the seat for Labor from 2002 to 2010, has announced he will run as an independent, calling his former party’s decision to forfeit the contest “cowardly”. The Liberals will choose their candidate in a preselection ballot today.

• South Australia’s state redistribution has been finalised. Ben Raue at The Tally Room has taken a much closer look than I have, and concludes that the already minimal changes from the proposal have become even more conservative in the final determination. One change is that the seat of Frome will become Ngadjuri, owing to concerns raised that the seat’s namesake had been involved in a retribution attack on an Aboriginal encampment.

• Poll Bludger regular Adrian Beaumont offers an overview of results for last month’s US presidential and congressional elections with a more optimistic take for Democrats than most commentators, especially their prospects at the November 2026 midterm elections.

South Australian Liberal leadership change and state redistribution

South Australia has a new Opposition Leader as of Monday, and now a proposed new seat of electoral boundaries.

Two developments in state politics from South Australian, which continues to go unserviced by opinion polls. The first is a change in management in the Liberal Party, with Vincent Tarzia winner Monday’s leadership ballot by eighteen votes to four over Shadow Attorney-General Josh Teague. This followed the resignation last Thursday of David Speirs, who said he lacked the motivation for what he appeared to acknowledge would be a “fight” for the leadership, while also faulting “the papers and the Twitter-sphere” for reporting “speculation based on speculation based on nothing”.

Vincent Tarzia served as Speaker and later Police Minister during the Liberals’ term in office from 2018 to 2022 and has racked up an impressive electoral record in his eastern suburbs seat of Hartley: he gained it from Labor in 2014, saw off the highest-profile of challengers in Nick Xenophon in 2018, and retained it in the face of the government’s defeat in 2022. Both he and Josh Teague are factional moderates, but Tarzia reportedly won the favour of the conservatives, who constituted a “disciplined” block of nine votes. Remaining as deputy is another moderate, John Gardner, who chose not to contest after canvassing support over the weekend, after some initial reports rated him the front-runner. Also not a contender was Shadow Health Minister Ashton Hurn, who has been touted as the parliamentary party’s most promising prospect, but is presently on maternity leave and focused on other priorities.

Speirs did not not attend the party room meeting to choose his successor, and told FIVEaa radio he would “find it difficult to remain in the Liberal Party” if the “two or three people” who undermined him were elected to leadership positions. Labor enforcer Tom Koutsantonis said it was “pretty clear” that Tarzia was among those he had in mind, and Paul Starick of The Advertiser rated it “more than a fair bet” that he was right. The latter further cited a view among “many Liberals” that Speirs would soon quit the party.

Moving right along, the Electoral Boundaries Commission of South Australia today published the draft report for the redistribution that is conducted roughly in the middle of each term. A feature of South Australia’s redistributions is that the commission goes to the trouble of calculating revised two-party margins, a hangover from the days when it was legally obliged to take into account the elusive notion of “electoral fairness”.

The biggest proposed change is to place Port Augusta, which is divided between Giles in the west and Stuart in the east, entirely within Giles. Stuart is to be compensated through a gain of interior territory from Giles and, closer to the orbit of Adelaide, the northern end of Frome, which in turn is to gain the northern edge of Gawler from Light. This turns Stuart from having a Labor margin of 1.8% in two-party terms to a Liberal one of 1.5%, though it is in fact held by independent Geoff Brock. Brock says he will contest the next election despite the fact that he will then be 75, and resigned his cabinet position in April citing health reasons. Frome’s gains at Gawler make it less safe for the Liberals, reducing their margin from 8.2% to 3.3%, while Giles and Light remain safe for Labor.

Electorally consequential changes are proposed for two marginal seats in Adelaide, both favourable to Labor. One is David Speirs’ southern coastal seat of Black, which is to lose territory in the north to Gibson and gain it in the south from Reynell, cutting his margin from 2.8% to 1.0%. The other is in the northern suburbs seat of King, which Rhiannon Pearce gained for Labor in 2022 with a margin of 2.9%. That now becomes 5.7% with the proposed gain of Craigmore from the Labor stronghold of Elizabeth, balanced by the loss of Salisbury East to Wright in the south.

Western Australian state redistribution finalised

Analysis of the boundaries that will apply at the next Western Australian state election in March 2025.

The Western Australian state redistribution has been finalised, leaving undisturbed the basic scheme from the draft proposal in which the regional seats of Moore and North West Central are merged into Mid-West and a new seat of Oakford is created on Perth’s south-eastern fringe. A geospatial file has not yet been provided, so the analysis below is based on eyeballing the published maps and reports, leaving open the possibility I may have missed a few things.

The main change from the draft is that the commissioners have thought better of their plan to turn the coastal northern suburbs seats of Carine and Hillarys into elongated north-south electorates of Hillarys and Padbury, the former covering the coast and the latter the area further inland. I calculated that the proposed Padbury had a Labor margin of 12.9% while the revised Hillarys had 9.6%, whereas now I get 18.9% for Hillarys (19.0% at the election) and 4.0% for Carine (2.5%).

The West Australian recently reported that Caitlin Collins, Labor’s member for Hillarys, was being tipped for Padbury – presumably she will now be more than happy to stay put. It was also reported in The West that Padbury was of interest to Liam Staltari, who was “viewed as a rising star within the Liberal Party” and had recently moved to Duncraig – now at the heart of the highly tempting prospect of Carine.

Two Liberals were said to be eyeing Hillarys as proposed by the draft boundaries: Tony Krsticevic, who held Carine before 2021 and will surely now wish to do so again, and Scott Edwardes, son of party powerbrokers Colin and Cheryl Edwardes and candidate in 2021 for Kingsley, the seat formerly held by his mother. Krsticevic has been linked with the “Clan” faction, while Edwardes is part of a northern suburbs bloc that includes his parents and upper house aspirant Simon Ehrenfeld.

Other changes from the draft include the reversal of alterations to Balcatta, a marginal seat in normal circumstances, that would have reduced the margin from 25.8% to 24.5%. Balcatta was to gain part of Gwelup from Scarborough and lose part of Westminster to Morley. To balance this revision, Scarborough no longer stands to gain a part of Scarborough and Doubleview from Churchlands – I now have the Labor margin there at 9.3%, hardly changed from 9.4% in the draft, but down from the actual Labor margin of 10.4%. Churchlands will in turn no longer gain part of City Beach from Cottesloe, boosting the Labor margin to 1.6% from 0.8% at the election and 0.1% in the draft. Cottesloe, one of two seats won by the Liberals, will in turn not gain part of Floreat from Nedlands, and thus emerge unchanged.

Further afield, Albany will gain all of the Shire of Plantagenet, which is currently in Warren-Blackwood but stood to be divided between Albany and Roe. Warren-Blackwood will surely return to the conservative fold at the next election come what may, but a further addition of rural territory to Albany is unhelpful for Labor in a seat they have held against the odds since 2001. Labor won the seat by 13.7% at the election, which I had coming down to 11.3% on the draft boundaries, and now to 10.8%.

Similarly, Geraldton will now gain Kalbarri and the rest of the northern end of the Shire of Northampton, which the draft had in Mid-West. Labor won the seat by 11.7% at the election, which I had down to 10.0% on the draft boundaries and 9.2% on the final ones. The Shire of Victoria Plains will be entirely within Central Wheatbelt and not split between it and Mid-West as proposed in the draft, which is unlikely to factor into anyone’s calculations. Last and probably least, the commissioners have thought better of renaming Swan Hills as Walyunga.

My two-party preferred estimates of the final boundaries are as follows:

UPDATE: My full final accounting of the new party votes shares and margins can be found here. I land within 0.3% of Antony Green’s two-party preferred estimates in 53 of 59 seats, the biggest imbalance being Kalgoorlie with 0.8%. Ben Raue has two-party and primary vote estimates at The Tally Room.

Weekend miscellany: NSW Liberal preselections, Voice polling and more (open thread)

Four federal Liberals face preselection challenges as factional tensions in the NSW branch reignite.

It was noted here last week that the Liberals had opened nominations in eight of the nine federal seats they hold in New South Wales, making an exception for Scott Morrison’s seat of Cook so as not to put him in an awkward spot as the party gently persuades him to bring forward his retirement. The Guardian reports that challengers to incumbents have come forward in four of these seats, three of which have been gestating since before the last election. They were largely thwarted on that occasion by the designs of one of their targets, Mitchell MP Alex Hawke, who was able to clog up the process long enough to compel the party hierarchy to resolve the matter in favour of the incumbents just weeks before the onset of the campaign.

Hawke is a close ally of Scott Morrison and a leading figure in the centre right faction, which had been left marginalised by deals between moderates and conservatives, and was weakened still further by the election defeat. Relatedly, Hawke faces a conservative-driven motion before the party’s state council to expel him over his tactics before the election. A recurring theme of the current round of challenges is that conservatives who were thwarted last time are now hopeful that Hawke and his faction will be too weak to fend them off. The aspirant in Hawke’s own seat of Mitchell in Sydney’s north-west, then and now, is Michael Abrahams, a lieutenant-colonel in the Army Reserve.

Also under pressure are two senior front-benchers, including no less a figure than the deputy party leader, Sussan Ley. Ley had variously been associated with the moderate and centre right factions, and appeared to be under pressure in her rural seat of Farrer before the last election following a conservative recruitment drive in local party branches. On that occasion her prospective challenger was Christian Ellis, a public relations specialist noted locally as a campaigner for water rights, who like Abrahams was thwarted by the national executive intervention. This time she will reportedly be opposed by Jean Haynes, a Deniliquin school teacher who appeared to have a seat in the state upper house lined up in December after the party hierarchy intervened to dump three male incumbents and replace them with women. However, a revision to the plan saw her make way for Rachel Merton, in part due to moderate objections over her role in Ellis’s challenge to Ley.

The other senior figure who faces a rival nominee is Paul Fletcher, former Communications Minister and member for the northern Sydney seat of Bradfield, where he was run uncomfortably close at the election by unheralded teal independent Nicolette Boele. However, the challenge from Paul Nettelbeck, described by The Guardian as a “communications expert who previously worked for the Menzies Research Institute”, is understood to be “primarily a defensive manoeuvre to prevent Fletcher retiring and passing his seat uncontested to a NSW moderate”. In the wake of the Aston by-election defeat in April, Niki Savva of the Age/Herald related that both Ley and Fletcher, together with Dan Tehan and Angus Taylor, had been “openly displaying their wares” in anticipation of a possible move against Peter Dutton’s leadership.

Also facing a challenge is the centre right-aligned Melissa McIntosh, whose success in increasing her margin in the difficult seat of Lindsay last year has seemingly failed to mollify local conservatives. McIntosh is again opposed by Mark Davies, Penrith councillor and husband of state Mulgoa MP Tanya Davies, who called off his challenge before the last election under the terms of a factional deal.

Other news:

• The Age/Herald has published results on the Indigenous Voice from this week’s Resolve Strategic poll, which found no leading 52-48 on a forced response question, compared with 51-49 a month ago. When an uncommitted option was included, 36% opted for yes (down six) and 42% no (up two). State breakdowns had no leading 51-49 in New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia and 58-42 in Queensland, with yes leading 52-48 in Victoria and 54-46 in Tasmania (with caution due for small samples sizes particularly in the smaller states). The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1610.

• Roy Morgan conducted one of its “snap SMS” polls this week in the wake of the Victorian government’s cancellation of the Commonwealth Games, which credited the state Labor government with a 53-47 lead on two-party preferred, compared with an implausible 61.5-38.5 at the last such poll in May. The primary votes were Labor 33% (down nine), Coalition 35.5% (up seven) and Greens 12.5% (steady). Forced response questions found Daniel Andrews with 45% approval and 55% disapproval, but leading John Pesutto as preferred premier by 52.5-47.5; and a 58-42 majority in favour of cancelling the games, leaving unanswered the question of whether it was a good idea to take them on in the first place. The poll was conducted Wednesday and Thursday from a sample of 1046.

• As for the weekly federal voting intention numbers from Roy Morgan, which I don’t focus on much due to the haphazard manner in which they are published, Labor holds an unusually narrow two-party lead of 53-47, in from 54.5-45.5 last time. However, the primary votes suggest the movement is largely down to preference flows, with Labor on 35.5%, the Coalition on 35% and the Greens on 12.5%, suggesting a 54-46 lead to Labor based on previous election preferences.

• Niki Savva’s column this week in the Age/Herald related that data collated from 2500 households during door-knocking of the Kooyong electorate by teal independent MP Monique Ryan and her supporters found 58.5% in favour of the Indigenous Voice, 45.1% strongly; 30.6% neutral or unsure; and only 11.3% opposed. Recent poll results hawked by Liberal Senator James Patterson showing no with its nose in front in Kooyong were credulously reported by Sky News.

• Simon Benson of The Australian reports JWS Research polling conducted for the Minerals Council of Australia initially found 46% in favour of the government’s “same job, same pay” industrial relations reforms, with 19% opposed — but many were said to have had misapprehensions that the reforms related to the gender pay gap. After being shown business lobby advertising attacking the reforms, the results were 26% supportive and 47% opposed. When further shown union advertising supporting the reforms, the result came out at 31% for and 34% against.

• As related in the previous post, draft new state boundaries for Western Australia proposing abolishing a Nationals-held regional seat, one of only six out of 59 not held by Labor, and the creation of a safe Labor seat in southern Perth. This has naturally infuriated the Nationals and supportive interests, coming as it does on the heels of upper house reforms that abolish a scheme that divides seats evenly between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas, despite the former accounting for three-quarters of the state’s population. In other redistribution news, I am indebted to Ben Raue at the Tally Room for paying attention to the redistribution for the Northern Territory parliament, which has been passing beneath my radar. An initial set of draft boundaries that was published in May has been scrapped altogether due to a surge of enrolment in remote communities ahead of the Indigenous Voice referendum, driven by a push in the Australian Electoral Commission’s direct enrolment campaign.

Western Australian draft state redistribution

Proposed new state boundaries for Western Australia abolish a Nationals-held regional seat to accommodate a new way in Perth’s southern growth corridor.

Draft boundaries have been published for a state redistribution in Western Australia, which happens roughly at the mid-point of every four-year parliamentary term. In a nutshell: the electorates of North West Central and Moore, both held by the Nationals, are to be merged into Mid West, and a new seat called Oakford is to be created in the outer southern suburbs, which would be fairly safe for Labor at a normal election. A substantially redrawn Carine becomes Padbury; Swan Hills is to be renamed Walyunga; Burns Beach becomes Mindarie; Mirrabooka becomes Girrawheen; Willagee becomes Bibra Lake; Warnbro becomes Secret Harbour. My preliminary estimates of the margins are posted below. I’ll be expanding on this post in detail over the coming hours.

UPDATE: Some general observations. By the distorted arithmetic of the 2021 result, this increases Labor from 53 seats to a notional 54, reducing the Nationals from four to three and leaving the Liberals on two. But to crudely balance things by deducting 20% from Labor in every seat, thereby approximating a 50-50 result, Jandakot would go from marginal Labor to marginal Liberal and Pilbara would go from marginal Labor to marginal Nationals.

The new seat of Oakford looks safe for Labor, taking a chunk out of their stronghold of Armadale together with the new suburbia of Piara Waters and Harrisdale from naturally marginal Jandakot and Aubin Grove and Wandi from Kwinana, plus semi-rural areas further south including Oakford proper. The changes cut 2.7% from the Labor margin in Jandakot and cause Kwinana to overtake Rockingham as Labor’s safest seat, since it loses the area east of the freeway that constituted its one weak spot.

The new northern suburbs seat of Padbury is created by redrawing Hillarys and Carine in such a way as to turn two roughly square-shaped coastal seats into elongated north-to-south ones, with Hillarys taking the entirety of the coast. This makes Hillarys a lot weaker for Labor and Padbury a lot stronger than Carine had been, which might make life interesting for the two Labor members for these normally Liberal seats.

Elsewhere in suburbia, the probable bellwether seat of Forrestfield becomes stronger for the Liberals by being pushed northwards, losing Kenwick and gaining Helena Valley; Riverton, which would be fairly comfortable for the Liberals at a normal election, becomes 2.0% stronger for Labor by trading Leeming for Parkwood; a number of minor changes make Scarborough, which will presumably be difficult for Labor to hold, 1.0% weaker for them; Balcatta awkwardly gains southern Gwelup on the western side of the Mitchell Freeway, slightly weakening Labor in a natural marginal; and Kalamunda, which had been marginal or perhaps Liberal-leaning, is pushed further to the east, adding a handy 3.3% to the Labor margin.

With the abolition of North West Central, Pilbara gains its northernmost territories including Exmouth, Onslow and the mining towns of Pannawonica, Tom Price and Paraburdoo, which cut 3.4% from the Labor margin in a seat that could go either way at a tight election. The regional city seats of Albany and Geraldton both become weaker for Labor by absorbing rural territory, the former gaining Mount Barker and the latter a large area that includes Northampton and Mullewa.

Miscellany: Fadden by-election, royal family opinion poll and more (open thread)

Stuart Robert calls time on his 16 year parliamentary career, initiating a by-election in a seat the Coalition should find a little harder to lose than Aston.

Recent developments of note, none more so than a new federal by-election hot on the heels of the boilover result in Aston on April 1:

• The second federal by-election of the parliamentary term looms, not as anticipated in Scott Morrison’s seat of Cook (at least, not yet), but in the Gold Coast seat of Fadden, where Liberal-aligned Liberal National Party member Stuart Robert is calling it a day. Robert held the seat with a 10.6% margin at last year’s election after a 3.5% swing to Labor, making the seat a good deal safer than Aston with its 2.8% margin post-election and raising the question as to whether Labor will find making a contest of it worth its bother. Robert has held the seat since 2007 and became embroiled in the robodebt affair through his carriage of the human services portfolio, a distinction he coincidentally shared with the former member for Aston, Alan Tudge.

• On a related note, James Massola of the Age/Herald reported prior to Robert’s announcement that a “major British company in the defence sector” had sounded out Scott Morrison for a job opportunity, potentially resulting in a by-election in Cook as soon as July.

• The Australian reports John Howard has backed James Brown, chief executive of the Space Industry Association, former RSL president and veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, to fill the New South Wales Liberal Senate vacancy arising from the death of Jim Molan in January. The report also relates that Brown is factionally unaligned, former husband of Malcolm Turnbull’s daughter Daisy Turnbull, and an opponent of the Indigenous Voice. The other confirmed starters are former state government minister and unsuccessful Gilmore candidate Andrew Constance and former state party president Maria Kovacic, but a number of other names have been mentioned as possibilities.

• The Australian had results of a YouGov poll on perceptions of the royal family, which found William and Catherine well ahead of the field with positive ratings in the mid-seventies, Charles up nine points since March 2021 on 52%, Harry down over the same period from 61% to 38% and Meghan down from 46% to 27%, with Andrew down seven from an already low base to 15%. Forty-three per cent of respondents professed themselves not at all interested in the coronation, with 24% a little bit interested, 19% fairly interested and 14% very interested.

Two matters at state level of note:

• As covered in the previous post, Tasmania held its annual Legislative Council elections yesterday in three of the chamber’s 15 seats, which gave Labor a rare spot of good news in the state with a resounding win for incumbent Sarah Lovell in the outer Hobart seat of Rumney. Lovell’s primary vote increased from 33.8% to 50.5% despite the fact that she faced a Liberal candidate this time and not last time (although more favourable boundaries may have helped). There were even more resounding wins for independent incumbents in the seats of Launceston and Murchison.

• Public suggestions have been published for the Western Australian state redistribution. Labor’s submission calls for the abolition of the regional seat of North West Central and the creation of a new seat in the metropolitan area, in line with ongoing population trends, proposing a rearrangement of the outer metropolitan area that would provide for new seats centred on the fast-growing urban centres of Ellenbrook and Byford. The Liberals would prefer that the commissioners stretch the elastic to maintain the status quo.

Liberals by any other name

Electoral law changes rammed through parliament, New South Wales state boundaries finalised, and some by-election news.

Significant electoral developments of the past few days:

• The federal government’s package of four electoral bills, which were explained in this earlier post, whizzed through parliament this week with the support of Labor (UPDATE: It’s been pointed out to me that one of the four, dealing with the threshold for registering as a political campaigner, was in fact not considered). Most contentiously, this will give the Liberal Party exclusive rights to the word “liberal” in their registered party name, with the effect that the Liberal Democrats and the New Liberals will have to change names before the next election. It is unclear what the former plans to do, but Victor Kline, leader and registered officer of the New Liberals, says the party will simply identify itself as TNL.

• The new laws also mean that parties will need to have 1500 members to maintain their registration unless they have a sitting member of parliament, which by the reckoning of Kevin Bonham could affect as many of 24 out of the 45 currently registered parties. Those privy to the sitting member exemption include Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party, thanks to former Liberal MP Craig Kelly’s decision join, along with the Centre Alliance, Jacqui Lambie Network, Katter’s Australian Party and Rex Patrick Team.

• The state redistribution for New South Wales has been finalised, without much change to the draft boundaries that were published last November. Antony Green has a pendulum with estimated margins for the final boundaries.

Two minor by-elections coming up:

• For the Northern Territory parliament: a by-election will be held on September 11 for the Darwin hinterland seat of Daly, where Country Liberal Party member Ian Sloan has retired due to ill health a year after an election at which Labor was returned to power. Sloan held out against Labor by 1.2% at the election, at which he succeeded retiring CLP member Gary Higgins. The CLP’s candidate is Kris Civitarese, a Barkly councillor; Labor’s is Dheran Young, a former advisor to Chief Minister Michael Gunner.

• For the Tasmanian Legislative Council: a by-election will be required for a yet-to-be determined date early next year for the seat of Huon, encompassing the southern edge of Hobart and its hinterland, after Labor member Bastian Seidel announced he would quit parliament at the final sitting for the year in December. Seidel has complained of a “toxic environment” and “obvious problems” in the party, which would appear to refer to the sexual harassment allegations against David O’Byrne, who was compelled to resign as party leader in July after just three weeks in the job and is now facing calls from within the party, including leader Rebecca White, to quit parliament.

A preselection, two redistributions and a by-election

An assemblage of random stuff to kick off the new week.

It being the mid-point of the year, we’re about due for Newspoll’s state and demographic aggregates and Essential Research’s dump of voting intention numbers, both of which come along quarterly. In the meantime, there’s the following:

• The Queensland Liberal National Party’s preselection for a successor to Andrew Laming in Bowman has been won by Henry Pike, media and communications director for the Property Council. Pike was the only male candidate in a field of five, and prevailed despite earlier urgings from the Prime Minister for a woman to be preselected. Madura McCormack of the Courier-Mail reports he won in the final round of the ballot of local preselectors with 107 votes against 88 for Maggie Forrest, a barrister. Pike said last week that comments he made on the subject of “f***ing a fat chick” in a group chat twelve years ago, when he was about 21, do not “reflect the person I’ve grown to be”.

• Antony Green has published a report calculating party vote shares for the draft state redistribution in Victoria. Finalised state boundaries for New South Wales will be along at some unspecified point in the probably not too distant future.

• I have published a guide to the by-election for the Queensland state seat of Stretton, to be held on July 24 to choose a successor to Labor member Duncan Pegg, who resigned in April due to ill health and died on June 10.

Page 1 of 4
1 2 … 4