Category: Western Australian By-Elections

Owing to other distractions, I have yet to remark on the fact that February 3 has been set as the date for the by-election in Peel, the Western Australian state seat left vacant after the embarrassment surrounding Small Business Minister Norm Marlborough. It so happens that Peel is entirely located within the federal electorate of Brand, held for Labor by one Kim Beazley. If Beazley has his eye on a quick exit from the political stage – which few would begrudge him under the circumstances – the irritation of a by-election would be greatly reduced were it to coincide with the state poll. This would also offer dividends for a state Labor Party that would not be looking forward to the Peel by-election, given the difficulties that have recently bedevilled the Carpenter government. Simultaneous by-elections would muddy the state-federal waters and allow state Labor to benefit from the honeymoon period that awaits the new federal leadership team, potentially limiting the extent of the swing. There may be difficulties with this scenario that I am missing – for one thing, the timing of a by-election in Brand would be dictated by the Howard government rather than Labor (though a politically inspired decision to hold it on a separate date would not win them any friends). Nonetheless, the coincidence of the Peel by-election presumably shortens the odds on Beazley calling it a day sooner rather than later.

A week of high drama in Western Australian politics has culminated with confirmation that Norm Marlborough, who resigned as Small Business Minister yesterday following sensational revelations of his dealings with former Premier Brian Burke, will also quit his seat in parliament. This will precipitate a by-election in his safe southern suburbs seat of Peel, which the ABC reports could be held as early as December 16. Labor’s margin at last year’s election was 13.5 per cent; given the government’s many difficulties in recent months, that might be close enough to make it worth the Liberals’ while to field a candidate, despite the shellacking former leader Matt Birney copped for doing the same at the Victoria Park by-election in March. Otherwise, the Labor preselection threatens to be of greater interest than the poll itself. It may also have federal implications, given that the electorate is entirely within Kim Beazley’s seat of Brand.

.	Primary	Swing	2PP	Swing
LABOR	49.4	-8.1	60.5	-5.5
LIBERAL	31.0	3.0	39.5	5.5
Greens	8.4	0.2
Christian Democratic	3.5	-0.2
One Nation	2.8	0.1
Family First	1.0	–
Others	4.0	–	87% COUNTED

9.15pm. To wrap up for the evening, some recent historical perspective. In Queensland last year, Labor lost Chatsworth with a 13.9 per cent two-party swing and Redcliffe with an 8.3 per cent swing. In Chatsworth, Labor’s primary vote was down 13.8 per cent and the Liberals’ up 13.3 per cent. In Redcliffe, Labor was down 10.5 per cent and the Liberals up 5.6 per cent. Of last year’s four New South Wales by-elections, only one was contested by both parties – the safe Labor seat of Macquarie Fields, where they won easily despite an 11.4 per cent swing. Labor’s primary vote was down 10.8 per cent and the Liberals were up 7.1 per cent.

8.53pm. The WAEC has Labor’s notional two-party preferred vote at 61.2 per cent, meaning preferences favoured them slightly more than last time. Presumably some of the 8.1 per cent of the primary vote that went missing came back via minor candidate preferences.

8.45pm. Bug located. In my hurried patch-up job to include pre-polls and postals in the table, the numbers got left out of the total primary vote calculations. So it looks like Labor will definitely have to go to preferences.

8.40pm. The WAEC has the Labor primary vote at 49.4 per cent, so either they know something I don’t or there might be a little bug in my calculations. There are a few smaller deviations in our numbers for the other parties.

8.36pm. And I believe that might be it for the evening. I gather you don’t have absent votes at by-elections (correct me if I’m wrong), which just leaves provisional votes (are these declaration votes?) of which there were a grand total of nine at the 2005 election. Stay tuned though for a bit though, I might find something to write about before 9pm.

8.34pm. Homestead Seniors Centre is in, and Labor’s primary vote is back below 50 per cent.

8.32pm. That’s with just the Homestead Seniors Centre booth and absent votes to go, which as you might expect were slightly less favourable to Labor than others at the last election.

8.28pm. So I guess the big question is – will Labor need to go to preferences? Of only psychological importance, but a nail-biting back-and-forth struggle for those looking for excitement from the count.

8.27pm. East Victoria Park Primary School (9 per cent) is now in.

8.25pm. Special Institutions, Hospitals and Remotes votes (all 84 of them) are now in.

8.23pm. Gibbs Street Primary School (worth 3 per cent) is now in.

8.19pm. The WAEC now has a notional two-party preferred figure with Labor on 61.11 per cent, based on almost as many votes as are included in the table above. So the non-major party preference split was almost identical to last time.

8.16pm. I missed Lathlain Primary School (worth 9 per cent of the electorate total) when the flood came in. Added now.

8.14pm. Table updated to include pre-polls and postals.

8.01pm. As predicted, a big flood all at once lifts the count from 7 per cent to 50 per cent, with just four large booths still to go. The swings haven’t changed much, which shows you what a useful tool booth-by-booth comparison is.

7.51pm. Pre-poll and postal votes, which accounted for about 7 per cent last time, are up earlier than I had reckoned on. Labor are down 57.1 per cent to 45.0 per cent on the primary vote and the Liberals are up from 29.8 per cent to 36.7 per cent. Unfortunately, I can’t factor that into the table at this stage.

7.42pm. Actually, it’s probably more likely the ABC are referring to the primary vote when they say there is a 7 per cent swing. Two-party is looking more like 4 per cent.

7.40pm. Okay, the Queens Park Primary School booth – slightly larger than the Bentley one – is up. The swing against Labor is slightly lower here so presumably the rumoured 7 per cent swing is coming from somewhere else.

7.39pm. The commenter also says there is a 7 per cent swing with 30 per cent counted. I will remember where I heard it first.

7.33pm. Another commenter notes that Ben Wyatt has declared victory on the ABC News, though to be honest that was never in doubt. What matters is the swing and its impact on Matt Birney’s fragile leadership, on which those of us who aren’t in contact with the scrutineers are essentially none the wiser. Ready when you are, WAEC …

7.23pm. Dum-de-dum-de-dum. I had hoped booth results would come in one at a time and not in three or four rushes, as has been the case in NSW by-elections, but it looks like this hope will not be realised.

7.17pm. Vic Park Local notes in comments that turnout in the Bentley booth was down from 661 to 471 – pretty steep even for a by-election.

7.09pm. Still waiting. Daylight saving is evidently an idea whose time has not yet come in WA – the Daylight Saving Party is on one vote out of 463. Also, as Kenny Everett used to say, the revolution has had to be postponed – zero votes for John Tattersall of the Socialist Alliance.

6.57pm. Now I think of it, the 2PP figure would be better off being based on relative booth results as well – this too has been amended. No other booths in yet.

6.49pm. Okay, a bit of a correction is in order – the primary vote swings were supposed to be comparing like booths and not the total result. They are doing so now.

6.45pm. First figures are in from the Bentley Community Centre. This is the smallest and most Labor-friendly booth in the electorate – for the latter reason, the figures above show Liberal well down on the primary vote but improving on two-party preferred.

6.25pm. Welcome to the Poll Bludger’s live online coverage of the Victoria Park by-election. Figures in the above table will be updated within about a minute of booth results appearing on the Western Australian Electoral Commission website. The columns show the raw percentage of the primary vote and a two-party preferred figure that will be based on the assumption that non-major party votes will divide the same way as at last year’s election (58 per cent Labor, 42 per cent Liberal) until notional preference figures become available, and swing figures based on comparison of the available by-election figures with those from the same booths at last year’s election. Based on past experience, the first results should be in at around 6.45pm.

This post exists for the benefit of a comments contributor called "Vic Park local", who has been providing excellent updates on the campaign for the Victoria Park by-election in Western Australia while the Poll Bludger’s attention has been elsewhere. His latest contribution expresses concern that the thread is about to drop off the bottom of the front page, and that this might defeat the purpose of further updates. VPL, and anyone else who wishes to join in, is invited to make himself at home in this new-and-improved location. The Poll Bludger might not have anything further to say on the by-election until polling day next Saturday, when the usual live coverage will be provided. In other news, this site’s silence surrounding the Tasmanian election will finally be broken over the weekend.

As if two state elections on one day wasn’t enough, the by-election for Geoff Gallop’s old seat of Victoria Park in Western Australia will be held one week earlier, on March 11. The poll has attracted a cricket team of 11 candidates, not all of whose reputations precede them. Further detail may be added to this entry at a later date, time permitting. The candidates in ballot paper order:

Andrew Owens (Independent). An independent with the good sense to link to the Poll Bludger on his well-designed website, Owens’ statement of principles suggests him to be broadly left of centre. An informed local tells the Poll Bludger he is a fan of Peter Andren, the independent federal member for Calare in New South Wales.

John Tattersall. Tattersall is the candidate of the Socialist Alliance, which does not have formal party registration.

Dee Margetts (Greens). Margetts provides the Greens with a recognisable face at the by-election, having been a Senator from 1993 to 1999 and a Member of the Legislative Council from 2001 to 2005.

Teresa van Lieshout (Independent). Also ran as a One Nation upper house candidate for South Metropolitan at last year’s state election and as an independent for the corresponding federal electorate of Swan at the 2004 election. Her personal page on the One Nation website was updated as recently as December.

Mike Ward (Independent). As the head of men’s rights group Men’s Confraternity, Ward is well known in Perth as a scourge of the feminist movement and a prolific writer of letters to the editor.

Sue Bateman (One Nation). Bateman is among the more high-profile members of One Nation’s band of WA die-hards, if only by virtue of her run-in last year with The West Australian’s Inside Cover. Columnist Gary Adshead said Bateman had been stood down as a party branch president due to her apparent contributions to a website that might politely be described as to the right of One Nation.

James Dunn (Daylight Saving Party). A self-explanatory single-issue candidate, who presumably hopes voters have changed their minds about a proposal that has been defeated at three referendums going back to the early 1970s.

Ben Wyatt (Labor) (right). More on Wyatt’s Labor preselection here, here and here.

Peter Greaves (Family First). Greaves is the party’s state director and was the candidate for Swan at the federal election.

Bill Heggers (Christian Democratic Party). Heggers was the party’s candidate for Cockburn at last year’s state election.

Bruce Stevenson (Liberal) (left). Stevenson is a real estate agent and deputy mayor of Victoria Park. The party’s decision to field a candidate has copped stern criticism from factional chieftain Noel Crichton-Browne.

Wednesday night’s ALP preselection for Geoff Gallop’s seat of Victoria Park did not pan out as predicted in the previous item, with Ben Wyatt taking the prize after a vote of the party’s 14-member Administrative Committee. Wyatt is a Director of Public Prosecutions lawyer and director of Indigenous Business Australia, and his father Cedric Wyatt was a one-time Liberal candidate for the federal seat of Kalgoorlie (at the 1996 election, when Graeme Campbell won as an independent after quitting the ALP). Peter Kennedy reported on ABC radio this morning that the intial ballot gave Wyatt and Helen Creed five votes each, with Simon Ward on four. All four of Ward’s votes went to Wyatt in the next round, giving him a clear-cut win of nine votes to five. This capped off a bad week for the Emily’s List cause in WA, with two cabinet vacancies going to men (Peel MP Norm Marlborough and Mandurah MP David Templeman) and senior female MPs Michelle Roberts and Sheila McHale suffering demotion in the ensuing reshuffle. The date for the by-election has been set for March 11.

News has just emerged that the two WA Cabinet positions formerly occupied by Geoff Gallop and Environment Minister Judy Edwards will be filled by Peel MP Norm Marlborough, of the long-spurned Old Right, and Mandurah MP David Templeman. Peter Kennedy of the ABC reports that the previous favourite, Wanneroo MP Dianne Guise, fell from favour after discussing her aspirations in public last week. He also says the election of two male candidates means the other big prize, preselection for Gallop’s old seat of Victoria Park, is certain to go to a woman when a formal decision is made this evening. Since the notion of Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich parachuting in from the upper house has dropped off the radar, this would appear to make it a lay-down misere for Helen Creed, the national president of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union.

UPDATE (1/2/06): Robert Taylor of The West Australian sees things very differently, reporting today that "because of the Left’s disintegration, neither the Missos’ Helen Creed nor Metalworkers’ Jackie Ormsby has much chance against the Right’s Ben Wyatt or New Right’s Simon Ward". The paper’s Graham Mason reports that the Metalworkers sub-faction did not participate in a meeting of the Left last night that endorsed Creed. This is the first the Poll Bludger has heard of Jackie Ormsby being in the mix – she is best remembered for her union-backed preselection win over Pilbara MP Larry Graham ahead of the 2001 election, and her subsequent defeat by him when he stood as an independent. She was also Labor’s candidate for the reasonably safe Liberal seat of Murdoch at last year’s election. Speaking on ABC TV last night, Peter Kennedy declared the race to be wide open between Creed, Wyatt and Ward, and tipped the by-election to be held on March 11. The ALP’s administrative committee will vote on the preselection this evening.