Category: Tasmanian Periodical Elections

Tomorrow being the first Saturday of May, it’s time for the annual periodical elections for Tasmania’s Legislative Council, in which either two or three of the fifteen electoral divisions go to the polls according to a staggered cycle that plays out over six years. These are very often somnolent affairs, the chamber being uniquely dominated by independents who mostly come to their roles via local government. Members once elected are hard to dislodge, and the contests are usually only competitive when one retires. However, things are rather a lot more interesting on this occasion, with the Liberals making an aggressive move on a chamber where they have traditionally had little or no formal representation. This comes seven weeks after a 16-year stretch in opposition ended with a landslide election victory, and parallels Labor’s efforts to make its presence felt in the chamber when the electoral wind was in its sails during the early years of Jim Bacon’s government. The high-water mark for Labor came when it made it to five seats in 2001, all located in and around Hobart, to which could be added the notionally independent Silvia Smith, who had been Labor’s federal member for Bass from 1993 to 1996. All that remains to Labor now is the northern Hobart outskirts seat of Derwent, where Craig Farrell succeeded former Treasurer Michael Aird upon his retirement in 2011.

The Liberals had long been unrepresented in the chamber until 2009 when Vanessa Goodwin won a by-election held after Labor’s Allison Ritchie resigned in the eastern Hobart seat of Pembroke, which Labor ignominiously declined to contest. Goodwin was joined last year by Leonie Hiscutt, who won the Burnie-based seat of Montgomery upon the retirement of independent Sue Smith. The chamber has traditionally included a number of members with links to the Liberal Party despite their notional independence, a conspicuous recent example being Paul Harriss, who vacated his seat of Huon to make a successful run as a Liberal candidate for Franklin in the lower house. The Liberals now hope to formally move the seat into the fold by running a high-profile candidate, and are also gunning hard for independent incumbent Kerry Finch in the other seat up for election tomorrow, Rosevears. Reviewing the two electorates in turn:

Huon

Candidates in ballot paper order: Robert Armstrong; Jimmy Bell; Rodney Dillon; Peter Hodgman (Liberal); Helen Lane; Pavel Ruzicka; Liz Smith.

Huon covers the southernmost parts of Tasmania including Blackmans Bay and Margate on Hobart’s southern outskirts, small towns to the south including Huonville and Cygnet, and the unpopulated southern part of the World Heritage area in the state’s south-west. Recently elected as a Liberal member for Franklin in the lower house, Paul Harriss came to the seat in 1996 having run unsuccessfully in Franklin at the state election three months previously and, as Antony Green puts it, “retained enough name recognition to win Huon as an independent”.

The big news in Huon is that the Liberals now hope to secure the seat on the strength of the biggest brand name in Tasmanian politics. Peter Hodgman is the 67-year-old uncle of the current Premier and the younger brother of his father, the late Michael Hodgman. While his other relations are somewhat better known, Peter Hodgman boasts a considerable CV in politics in his own right, including a previous stint as the notionally independent member for Huon from 1974 to 1986, which began when he succeeded brother Michael after he quit to run for the federal seat of Denison (unsuccessfully at first, but he prevailed on the second attempt in 1975). This was followed by 15 years as a state member for Franklin in the lower house, during which time he served as a minister in the Groom-Rundle government of 1992 to 1998. In 2001 he quit to run against Labor’s Harry Quick in the federal seat of Franklin, a long shot that failed to come off.

Joining Hodgman on the ballot paper are six other candidates, all independents. The most obvious competitor to Hodgman would look to be Robert Armstrong, who has been the mayor of Huon Valley since 2001, winning election on five successive occasions. Also in the field is Liz Smith, who has been on the Huon Valley council since 2002 and was until recently aligned with the Greens. Other candidates are Jimmy Bell, the manager of Huon Valley PCYC; Rodney Dillon, who works for Amnesty International; Pavel Ruzicka, a “sawmiller and specialist timber provider”, and Helen Lane, who runs a computer consultancy business.

Rosevears

Candidates in ballot paper order: Kerry Finch; Don Morris (Liberal).

Rosevears includes the western suburbs of Launceston, which provide about 60% of its voters, extending north-westwards to the coast through rural territory on the western bank of the Tamar River, encompassing the mining town of Beaconsfield and nearby Beauty Point. It has been held since 2002 by Kerry Finch, who was well-known locally after 24 years as a presenter for ABC Radio in northern Tasmania. Finch’s only competition when he faced re-election in 2008 was a low-profile independent, but this time he has a Liberal opponent in Don Morris, a former chief-of-staff to Will Hodgman who has more recently worked as an adviser to Ted Baillieu and Denis Napthine. The strategy of the Liberal campaign has been to portray Finch as “just like the Greens”, citing his support for same-sex marriage and “the job-destroying forest deal”, and opposition to the contentious Tamar Valley pulp mill proposal – a message it has promoted through television advertising and automated phone calls.

Live commentary

8.18pm. Final results for the night have Jim Wilkinson re-elected with 48.8% in Nelson, and Vanessa Goowdin comfortably home with 51.2% of the vote in Pembroke to 35.9% for Allison Ritchie. Postals are still outstanding in Montgomery where Liberal candidate Leonie Hiscutt is on 45.6% with second-placed Cheryl Fuller on 30.0%.

7.53pm. Kevin Bonham observes a “very horrible result” for the Greens in Pembroke (12.8% with one booth to spare) but a “fairly good one” in Nelson (24.9%). Though presumably the lack of an alternative for Labor supporters in Nelson had a lot to do with this.

very horrible result in #Pembroke but a fairly good one

7.35pm. With all but three booths in, Liberal candidate Leonie Hiscutt is down a little to 48.1% in Montgomery. Still a very clear winner though.

7.33pm. Better looking numbers now for Vanessa Goodwin in Pembroke: 52.7% to Ritchie’s 34.4%. Very good night for the Liberals.

7.21pm. More good results for Montgomery Liberal candidate Leonie Hiscutt in two big booths. A clear win for her, and a big result for the Liberals. Expect federal Labor’s prospects in Bass and Braddon to feature heavily in the after-match commentary.

7.12pm. Five booths in out 13 in Pembroke and the result is settling in at around 50% for Goodwin, 37% for Ritchie and 12% for the Greens. Without having given the matter too much thought, this is a softer result for Goodwin (and a stronger one for Ritchie) than I would have expected.

7.06pm. Wilkinson’s vote down 13.2% according to Antony Green, although he may have faced a less competitive field last time.

7.03pm. Jim Wilkinson has faded to 49.0% in Nelson with four booths reporting out of 13, but he’s still home and hosed.

7.01pm. Lots of booths now from Montgomery, and while the biggest ones are still outstanding, the Liberal candidate is polled strongly in the South Burnie booth and is now looking a clear winner on 50.8% of the vote to 27.1% for Cheryl Fuller in second place.

7.00pm. And now the large (1890 votes) booth from Lindisfarne Village is in, and Goodwin’s vote edges up to 51.5%. Ritchie is down to 35.3%, but Lindisfarne was a strong booth for the Greens who are up to 13.3%.

6.59pm. In Pembroke, the Agfest booth is better for Goodwin than the Mornington booth, as I guess you’d expect it to be, and she now leads Ritchie 50.9% to 41.9%.

6.56pm. I failed to notice that there were 1079 postal votes in that result as well. So Wilkinson definitely in the clear.

6.55pm. One small booth in from Nelson provides no indication that independent member Jim Wilkinson will be troubled (59.1% of the vote from 155 votes counted).

6.53pm. Antony Green’s projection for Pembroke, going off the previous upper house election, is even more favourable for the Liberals: 49.4%.

6.49pm. First booth in Pembroke (Mornington) has what looks to my eyes a surprisingly strong result for Allison Ritchie, who is on 46.8% to 44.7% for Liberal member Vanessa Goodwin. Perhaps this booth is a Labor stronghold?

6.47pm. On the basis of the result just noted, Kevin Bonham’s model, which works off 2010 state election results, projects Hiscutt’s primary vote at 44%. If so, that should be enough for her. That would mean a second seat for the Liberals in the Legislative Council. Can any local scholars tell me when there were more official Liberal than Labor members in the chamber?

6.44pm. Nine booths in from Montgomery (one of those is the mobile booth, if you think that doesn’t count as a booth), and Hiscutt’s vote has faded only slightly to 50.4%. However, all are small rural booths (324 votes at most) and the ball remains in Burnie’s court. Cheryl Fuller is a clear second place on 29.9%.

6.34pm. Three admittedly small booths in from Montgomery, and Liberal candidate Leonie Hiscutt is polling very well indeed on 55.8% of the vote. You would want to see some booths in from Burnie though before drawing any conclusions.

6pm. Polls have closed, so welcome to the live coverage. I imagine the very first booths will report in half an hour or so.

Overview

As happens on the first Saturday of every May, there will be a partial election today for Tasmania’s Legislative Council. This chamber is composed of 15 representatives of single-member districts which face election over a six-year cycle, with either two or three seats up for election each year. This year is the turn of three electorates, two in and around Hobart and the other in the state’s north. The Legislative Council is overwhelmingly dominated by independents, with elections being subdued and locally oriented affairs that have more of the flavour of local than state government elections. However, the major parties sometimes win seats in Hobart especially. Labor held five seats at its electoral high-water mark from 2001 to 2007. Four of those have since fallen by the wayside, and the Liberals gained their one and only seat at a by-election in 2009. That was in the electorate of Nelson, which is one of the three up for election today. The other two are held by independents, of whom one is retiring and one seeking re-election.

Nelson. Hobart’s outer southern suburb of Sandy Bay and the satellite town of Kingston. Jim Wilkinson is seeking re-election after 18 years as independent member. He has attracted one Greens and two independent opponents. The independents are Helen Richardson, an Australian Education Union organiser who Labor presumably wouldn’t mind seeing get up, and Hans Willink, a former Liberal branch president and state election candidate who is running because of Wilkinson’s opposition to same-sex marriage legislation. The Greens candidate is Tom Baxter, an accountancy lecturer at the University of Tasmania. Kevin Bonham relates the results of the only opinion polling I’ve ever known to be conducted of a Tasmanian upper house election. Voting intention was not broached directly, and the results probably wouldn’t have been all that accurate if it had been, given the low intensity of Legislative Council contests.

Pembroke. The Hobart suburbs on the eastern shore of the Derwent River. This is the most intriguing contest from a partisan perspective, as it pits the chamber’s only Liberal member, Vanessa Goodwin, against former Labor member Allison Ritchie, who is running as an independent. Ritchie quit parliament in mid-2009 after enduring a storm of controversy over her appointment of several family members to her staff. Such were Labor’s diminishing stocks that they did not bother to field a candidate in the ensuing by-election, in which Goodwin won an easy victory from a crowd of eight candidates with 38.6% of the vote. Also in the field is Greens candidate Wendy Heatley, a legal aid lawyer.

Montgomery. Most of Burnie and the coast immediately to its east, including Penguin and Ulverstone. Sue Smith is retiring after 16 years as the seat’s independent member. The election has attracted an endorsed Liberal candidate and three independents. The Liberal is Leonie Hiscutt, a marriage celebrant and president of the Central Coast Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Hiscutt polled 4.2% as a candidate in Braddon at the 2010 state election. The independents are Cheryl Fuller, the deputy mayor of Central Coast; Kevin Morgan, a former Department of Premier and Cabinet adviser and former ALP member; and Ed Vincent, chief executive of the Tasmanian Forest Contractors Association.

Sunday. The Tasmanian Electoral Commission has provisionally reviewed the preferences and been unable to determine definitively that the Greens will finish ahead of Labor in Hobart, although it seems fairly clear that they will. Beyond that, only the margin of Valentine’s win over whoever finishes second is at issue. In Western Tiers, Greg Hall has 73.4% of the vote.

7.41pm. Four more booths in and three more to go, and we’re still looking at a result of about 36% for Valentine, 22% for the Greens and 20% for Labor.

7.15pm. Par for the course result from West Hobart booth.

7.14pm. 1235 pre-polls are very strong for Valentine (40.6%), very weak for Labor (15.5%) and status quo for Greens (23.6%).

7.09pm. Lenah Valley booth is Valentine’s strongest and the Greens weakest yet; but South Hobart the Greens’ strongest yet and Labor’s weakest. Greens looking very likely to finish second, unless James Sugden’s preferences flow heavily to Labor for some reason. The gap between Valentine and the Greens is now 37.0% to 23.1%, so if you weren’t calling it for Valentine before you would be now.

7.01pm. North Hobart relatively strong for Labor and weak for Valentine, though the Greens have still beaten Labor in every booth so far.

6.59pm. I defer to the superior judgement of Stephen Luntz in comments, who reckons Labor preferences will favour Valentine over the Greens, meaning he should win easily.

6.57pm. Mount Stuart is a relatively weak result for the Greens, with 19.5% only fractionally ahead of Labor on 19.4%, and Valentine on 35.8%. More results like that would put the issue beyond doubt.

6.54pm. The two Hobart city booths are now in, and the Greens candidate has a solid lead over Labor (26.3% to 20.4%), and remains close enough to Valentine (34.3%) to make life interesting – depending on the behaviour of preferences from Labor and strongly performing independent James Sugden (12.9%).

6.46pm. First result in from Hobart is West Hobart, and Rob Valentine’s has 31.8%, Labor’s looking bad with 22.9%, with the Greens in second place on 24.5%. At this early stage, you wouldn’t rule out a Greens win over Valentine on Labor preferences, even if your money would be on Valentine.

6.45pm. Half of Western Tiers’s booths are in before Hobart has got out of bed, and Hall is now on 74.6%.

6.31pm. Three more booths from Western Tiers, and Hall now up to 76.2%.

6.25pm. Four booths in from Western Tiers, and clearly no prospect of a boilover: Greg Hall 72.9%, John Hawkins 27.1%.

6pm. Polls have closed for the Tasmanian upper house elections for Hobart and Western Tiers. I presume we’ll be getting small rural booths in very shortly from Western Tiers, but will have to wait half to three-quarters of an hour for results from Hobart.

Voters in two of Tasmania’s 15 Legislative Council divisions (or at least, those of them who can be bothered) will go to the polls on Saturday, a result of the quaint arrangement for that chamber in which elections are held annually for members who serve terms staggered over a six-year cycle. These elections have more of the feel of local government than state parliamentary elections, and outside Hobart (and to a considerable extent inside Hobart as well) are dominated by independents to the extent that the major parties rarely bother to field candidates.

Labor managed to secure five of the chamber’s 15 seats at the peak of its electoral cycle from 2001 to 2007, but it has been shedding them steadily ever since and is at risk of being reduced to one if things do not go their way in the division of Hobart – and the consensus view is that they won’t, given the retirement after 18 years of Doug Parkinson and the entry into the race of Rob Valentine, the long-serving former lord mayor. The other contest is in the northern and central Tasmania seat of Western Plains, where independent incumbent Greg Hall faces another independent challenger in John Hawkins.

The division of Hobart was known prior to the 2008 redistribution as Wellington, and is bounded to the south by the Sandy Bay Rivulet, a small waterway running south of the city centre. From there it extends north through South Hobart, West Hobart, North Hobart and Hobart proper, and on to New Town and Lenah Valley. This is ground zero for the Greens in Tasmania: their Senate vote in this area’s polling booths was 39.3% at the 2010 federal election, compared with 31.6% for Labor and 24.8% for the Liberals. At the last election for Wellington in 2006, Doug Parkinson received 43.1% against 26.3% for the Greens (then as now, the Liberals did not field a candidate).

The Greens’ position has evidently strengthened since then, and they have further benefited from a redistribution which exchanged the Labor-voting northern end of the electorate at Moonah and Lutana for Greens heartland in South Hobart. It would thus appear to offer the Greens an excellent chance of winning their first ever seat in the chamber, to supplement the five they hold in the 25-member lower house. However, the consensus is that the entry of Valentine will thwart them.

The candidates in ballot paper order:

Penelope Ann (Greens). A teacher and Eastern Shore bed and breakfast operator.

John Michael Forster (Independent). A “business analyst” who polled weakly in earlier runs for Rumney in last year’s Legislative Council election and for Franklin at the 2010 federal election. He tells the Mercury he has “spent the past 20 years working in accounting and IT for businesses small and large, Australian and multinational”, and is concerned with fiscal responsibility.

Paul Hiscutt (Independent). A Hobart nurse and former death penalty advocate who polled 8.2% when he ran in 2006. He is also described by the Mercury as a “former pop star”, though I suspect this may be laying it on a bit thick.

James Sugden (Independent). An industrial engineering consultant, who if nothing else has won the favour of Greg Barns.

Rob Valentine (Independent). Valentine first became an alderman in 1992 and began his epic stint as lord mayor in 1999, which continued until he declined to seek a fourth term at the elections held last year. Tasmanian gentleman psephologist Kevin Bonham relates at the Tasmanian Times that Valentine has “occupied a moderate position on the Council, more or less in between the endorsed Greens and the informal ‘blues’ cluster of pro-development/business lobby aldermen who sometimes have links to the Liberal Party”.

Dean Winter (Labor). A media adviser to the federal member for Franklin, Julie Collins. No doubt with the 61-year-old Valentine in mind, 26-year-old Winter has criticised the Legislative Council as a “retirement village for former town mayors or conservatives”, and received support from Bill Shorten, who went to so far as to describe the chamber as “nothing but a nursing home”. Winter’s entry into the “wildcard division” of Cleo’s Bachelor of the Award informs us that he looks for a woman with “intelligence, passion and nice eyes” (Kristina Keneally reportedly fits the bill), and that his best body part as his chest. Labor had originally planned to use the election to trial a preselection primary, but this fell through due to lack of interest at both ends: few locals registered interest in participating, and Winter was the only eligible candidate to nominate. Another hopeful, Denison state election candidate Madeleine Ogilvie, was ruled out on the grounds she was a non-financial member of the party.

A quieter contest is unfolding in Western Tiers, known before the redistribution as Rowallan, which mostly consists of territory inland of the northern population centres of Launceston and Devonport (plus a small stretch of coast east of Devonport), from where it extends deep into central Tasmania. Greg Hall is seeking a third term, having won 31.9% in a six-way contest in 2001 and 82.0% in 2006 when he was opposed only by the Greens. Kevin Bonham relates that Hall is “strongly supportive of the Tasmanian forest industry, so it’s no surprise that his opponent is a critic on forestry issues”. That opponent is John Hawkins, a Chudleigh businessman and farmer of apparently considerable means. Hawkins’ chief claim to fame to election watchers at large is that he launched but shortly withdrew a legal action against Eric Abetz’s Senate election in 2010, claiming that he was ineligible by virtue of having failed to renounce his German citizenship. He has resolved if elected to serve only one term.