Western Australian Politics – Page 22

Action-packed mid-week stop-gap thread

So much going on at the moment that it can’t wait for the next opinion poll post:

• Brendan Nelson’s announcement he will vacate his blue-ribbon northern Sydney seat of Bradfield at the next election could initiate another of the classic preselection clashes for the NSW branch of the Liberal Party has become justly famous in recent years. Party sources quoted by Imre Salusinszky of The Australian say the preselection will be “the most open and hotly contested since Bronwyn Bishop succeeded Jim Carlton in the neighbouring seat of Mackellar in 1994”, with no clear front-runner and neither Right or Left controlling the seat. However, it is also “understood party bigwigs are intent on avoiding a repeat of the preselection debacle in 2007 in the southern Sydney seat of Cook”. Salusinszky’s report floated the possibility of his paper’s conservative pundit Janet Albrechtsen taking the field, but she promptly ruled herself out. Live possibilities apparently include another connection with The Australian in Tom Switzer, former opinion page editor and staffer to Nelson; Arthur Sinodinos, John Howard’s legendary chief-of-staff; Nick Farr-Jones, former rugby union international; Julian Leeser, executive director of the Menzies Research Centre; Geoff Selig, former state party president; Alister Henskens, barrister and local party office-holder; David Elliott, former Australian Hotels Association deputy chief executive; Paul Blanch, a sheep farmer who ran in Calare in 2004; and, as always, Adrienne Ryan, former Ku-ring-gail mayor and ex-wife of former police commissioner Peter Ryan. The Sydney Morning Herald reports we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for a result:

A state executive meeting tomorrow is likely to discuss the timetable for the preselection race but because of a redistribution of seats in NSW, the final ballot will not be held until the end of the year. Because of that, most Liberal insiders believe the final candidate has yet to emerge.

• The Electoral Commissioner’s federal electoral determination has been published, confirming redistributions will need to occur to remove a seat from New South Wales and add one to Queensland. There seems to be some confusion abroard as to whether this scotches any chance of an election this year. As Antony Green explains, it is indeed the case that Queensland cannot be deprived of the seat which it is constitutionally entitled to at the next election now that the determination has been made, and it is indeed true that a redistribution process takes the better part of a year. However, the Electoral Act lays out a set of procedures for “mini-redistributions” in these circumstances, in which the two most or least heavily enrolled adjoining electorates in the state are either divided into three or merged into two. This has never happened before, and there would be obvious political difficulties in justifying an election held under such slapdash arrangements if it could possibly be avoided.

• Could Western Australia’s May 16 daylight saving referendum be the catalyst for a super Saturday of state by-elections? It certainly seems war clouds are gathering over the electorates of the two most powerful figures in the defeated Carpenter government: Jim McGinty, the member for Fremantle, and Alan Carpenter himself, who holds the neighbouring seat of Willagee (surely I have not so pleased the Lord that He would grant me neighbouring same-day by-elections in my own backyard?). According to Jenny D’Anger of the Fremantle Herald:

In the face of persistent rumours that veteran state Labor MP Jim McGinty is about to trigger a by-election for Fremantle by announcing his retirement, the Greens have called a war cabinet to talk tactics and anoint a candidate. It is all but certain they will choose South Fremantle’s Adele Carles, who came within a whisker of taking the seat at last year’s state election … Ms Carles says if the powerbroker is considering calling it quits he should do it so the by-election can coincide with the daylight saving referendum in May, saving thousands of dollars … The tom-toms have been beating for weeks that Fremantle mayor Peter Tagliaferri was the shoe-in as Labor’s choice to replace Mr McGinty. But more recently a senior union figure has emerged as a front-runner, which a Labor insider says had Mr Tagliaferri threatening to run as an independent (Word around the campfire is that this refers to Dave Kelly, one of McGinty’s successors at the LHMWU – PB). The Herald’s Labor source said Alan Carpenter also had to be taken into account: If the former premier decides to quit politics the union figure may prefer Mr Carpenter’s safe Willagee seat, which is not threatened by the Greens. This would leave Fremantle open for Mr Tagliaferri. But both Mr McGinty and Mr Tagliaferri are denying a by-election is imminent. “It’s no more than rumour-mongering,” Mr McGinty barked down the phone, adding he stood by the Herald’s report last November that he had no plans to go early but was unlikely to run again in 2013.

• Killjoy Harry Quick has gone back on his threat to run against Treasurer Michael Aird as Greens candidate in the looming upper house election for Derwent. According to the ABC, Quick says “his family has played second fiddle to his political aspirations for too long”. An earlier report said he was “understood to be ready withdraw his nomination due to family pressure to stay true to the Labor Party”.

Essential Research: 61-39

The latest weekly Essential Research survey has Labor’s two-party lead steady on 61-39. As promised, there is also voluminous material on attitudes to the economy and stimulus package:

• 62 per cent are “concerned” about job security over the coming year, although 60 per cent are “confident” Australia can withstand the crisis.

• The opposition’s approve-disapprove split on handling of the crisis has widened from 31-35 to 35-44, while the government’s is little changed.

• Labor is more trusted to handle the crisis than the Coalition by 55-25.

• A somewhat unwieldy question about which leader’s approach to stimulus is preferable has Rudd leading Turnbull 51-33.

• Opinion is also gauged on five individual aspects of the package, with free ceiling insulation rated significantly lower than the rest.

• Perhaps most importantly, Peter Costello outscores Malcolm Turnbull in a head-to-head preferred Liberal leader contest 37-26.

What’s more:

• Last weekend’s Sunday Telegraph reported that Malcolm Turnbull is supporting preselection moves against former NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam in the blue-ribbon Vaucluse, which is wholly contained within Turnbull’s federal seat of Wentworth. Those named as possible successors are “restaurateur Peter Doyle, barrister Mark Speakman, UNSW Deputy Chancellor Gabrielle Upton, barrister Arthur Moses and former Optus spokesman Paul Fletcher”. Debnam quit shadow cabinet last May in protest against his party’s support for the government’s attempt at electricity privatisation, and was left out in December’s reshuffle despite reportedly angling for the Shadow Treasurer position. Also rated as a possible starter is Joe Hockey, who might have other ideas now he’s Shadow Treasurer. Alex Mitchell writes in Crikey that Hockey might also be keeping an eye on Jillian Skinner’s seat of North Shore, and muses that Tony Abbott might also consider the state premiership a more achievable objective than a return to government federally.

• Former Howard government minister Richard Alston has nominated for a Liberal federal electoral conference position, which is reportedly a gambit in the keenly fought contest to replace retiring Petro Georgiou in the blue-ribbon Melbourne seat of Kooyong. Described by The Age as a “patron” of long-standing hopeful Josh Frydenberg, Alston will attempt to gain the position at the expense of incumbent Paula Davey, who is associated with faction of Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu – which would prefer that the seat go to Institute of Public Affairs director John Roskam.

• Yesterday’s Sunday Times reported that long-serving Fremantle mayor Peter Tagliaferri has been sounded out by Labor as a possible successor to Jim McGinty as state member for Fremantle. The report raised the prospect of McGinty going sooner rather than later, thereby initiating what could prove a very interesting by-election in the Poll Bludger’s home electorate. While Fremantle has been in Labor hands since 1924, McGinty received an early shock on election night when it appeared Greens candidate Adele Carles might overtake the Liberals and possibly win the seat on their preferences. Carles was ultimately excluded at the second last count with 28.6 per cent of the vote to the Liberal candidate’s 32.1 per cent.

• Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett rates himself “extremely pleased” that Winnaleah-based school principal Brian Wightman will seek Labor preselection for Bass at the March 2010 state election. Labor narrowly failed to win a third seat in Bass at the 2006 election, being pipped at the post by the Greens for a result of two Labor, two Liberal and one Greens. The likelihood of a swing against Labor next time means Labor is all but certain to again win two seats: one seems certain to stay with former federal MP Michelle O’Byrne, while the other is being vacated by retiring member Jim Cox. Also in the field will be CFMEU forests division secretary Scott McLean, reckoned by The Mercury to be a “star candidate” despite having been “condemned by many diehard members of the Labor Party in 2004 when he backed Liberal Prime Minister John Howard over Labor’s then-federal opposition leader Mark Latham”.

• The Hobart Mercury talks of upper house disquiet over Tasmanian government legislation for fixed terms, a draft of which is “currently out for consultation”. The government wants early elections for the House of Assembly to be allowed if the Legislative Council does so much as block a bill the Assembly has deemed to be “significant”. This sounds very much like South Australia’s “bill of special importance” exception, which I gather has never been invoked since it was introduced in 1985. Independent Council President Sue Smith says there is concern that “the provision could be used as a threat to pass controversial legislation or as an excuse to go to an early election”. Another exception, according to The Mercury, is that “the Lower House would also go to an election if the Upper House blocks supply of funds for a budget”. This seems to suggest that 1975-style supply obstruction would produce an instant election, though I suspect it’s not quite as simple as that. Nonetheless, Greens leader Nick McKim has “foreshadowed an amendment by which the Upper House would also have to go to the polls if it blocked budget supply”. This would be a significant development for a chamber that currently never dissolves, as its members rotate annually through a six-year cycle. Less contentiously, the legislation also allows for an early election if the lower house passes a no confidence motion.

Morgan: 59.5-40.5

Morgan’s latest fortnightly face-to-face poll shows a one point narrowing in the two-party gap from 60-40 to 59.5-40.5. Labor is down one point on the primary vote to 50.5 per cent while the Coalition is up one to 36 per cent. Elsewhere:

• Not sure how much of this is news, but there’s a lot of good stuff on the Western Australian Electoral Commission site: veteran academic Harry Phillips’ 149-page Electoral Law in the State of Western Australia: An Overview; Isla Macphail’s 388-page Highest Privilege
and Bounden Duty: A Study of Western Australian Parliamentary Elections 1829–1901; and comprehensive survey data on various aspects of the September state election.

• AAP reports that Jennifer Huppert, a lawyer with the firm Maddocks and “long-time Labor moderate”, has been “unanimously endorsed” by Labor’s national executive to replace Evan Thornley in the Victorian upper house region of South Metropolitan. A “senior Labor source” quoted in the report says “Ms Huppert was the Premier’s pick, chosen from four women candidates selected by Federal MP Michael Danby and state Treasurer John Lenders”. The Herald Sun earlier reported that “a list of six names – four women and two men – had been submitted to the Labor Party’s national executive”, with the Left-aligned Laura Smyth named as frontrunner.

• Rick Wallace of The Australian reports that a looming split in the Right of the Victorian ALP could produce “another round of bloody winner-takes-all preselections replete with branch-stacking, brawls and backstabbing”. The next Victorian opinion poll will be interesting to observe, given the stresses the present heatwave has placed on Melbourne’s infrastructure.

• Malcolm Mackerras muses on the recent history of by-elections and upper house vacancies in the Canberra Times.

• Annual financial disclosure returns for 2007-08 can be viewed at the Australian Electoral Commission site (UPDATE: … from Monday – thanks to Ruawake for pointing that out).

Westpoll: 56-44 to Liberal in WA

The West Australian reports the latest Westpoll survey of 400 voters has the state Liberals leading 56-44 on two-party preferred, up from 55-45 in early December. A question on preferred Labor leader predictably has Alannah MacTiernan in front with 26 per cent, ahead of Mark McGowan on 16 per cent, Michelle Roberts and incumbent Eric Ripper on 12 per cent and deputy leader Roger Cook (who entered parliament at the September election) on 2 per cent. Colin Barnett leads Eric Ripper as preferred premier 57 per cent to 13 per cent. The West’s Robert Taylor writes:

The problem Eric Ripper and Alannah MacTiernan have within Labor is that they both come from a Centre faction that no longer exists. Without factional backers, the more likely long-term scenario is that the next Labor premier will either be the Left’s Roger Cook or the Right’s Ben Wyatt. The problem Labor has is that neither of the two is ready to assume the leadership, and it must find someone capable of leading the party into an election, be it a by-election or general contest, at a moment’s notice, such is the knife-edge situation in the State Parliament …

After the election loss, (Ripper) was seen as more acceptable to the two factions, who were not impressed with Ms MacTiernan’s efforts to reform the factional system. But with the Ray report into the party’s election failings criticising its factional warfare, Ms MacTiernan’s reformist zeal might win her some favour at the national level. Few political observers believe Mr Ripper will lead Labor to the next election if the Barnett Government goes its full four-year term. It therefore comes down to a matter of when Mr Ripper will step down or be pushed aside in favour of the next leader, and whether that leader will be Ms MacTiernan or one of the new generation.

Wisdom after the event

The Western Australian branch of the ALP has posted an expurgated version of a report conducted by former Senator Robert Ray into its recent state election defeat. The highlights for mine are as follows:

• Ray cites various elections over the past year-and-a-bit to observe that the advantages of incumbency are clearly not what they used to be. In particular, “a formerly inviolable rule of politics was that if opinion polls showed the country or State ‘heading in the right direction’ by more than 55%, re-election was a certainty”. The Howard government was nonetheless defeated with 58 per cent supporting such a proposition, and Alan Carpenter’s Labor joined the club with the figure on 54 per cent. Trumping the statistic in the latter case (and no doubt the former as well) was the belief of 53 per cent that it was “time to give someone else a go”.

• “As a rule, the higher the voter turnout, the better Labor does.” This time it was 82 per cent compared with 85 per cent in 2005. “Was the Labor vote lower because of the reduced turnout or was the loss of community support for Labor a driver of lower turnout? So far, no plausible explanation has been offered.”

• “Too many in the electorate thought that the surplus was just sitting around, unused”, when it was in fact being committed to capital works programs. Voters “readily formed the view that they, as individuals, had not benefitted from the boom and were resentful that the Government was not spending some of the surplus on them.”

• Colin Barnett “looked like he had made a personal sacrifice to resume the leadership and had been unfairly ambushed by the calling of the election”.

• “Dream team” candidates who were defeated in decisive seats such as Mount Lawley and Morley were placed in the wrong seats – though it’s unclear where they should have run instead. Bumping Bob Kucera aside in Mount Lawley is universally recognised as an error, though I do wonder what role the Royal Perth Hospital played in Labor’s loss of that particular seat.

• Ray faults The West Australian for “displaying a bias not seen since the Murdoch excesses of 1975”, which “spread to the rest of the media as though it was the norm”. On the former count, I wonder if Ray remembers the role Murdoch’s Adelaide News paper was said to have played in the defeat of Des Corcoran’s South Australian government in 1979, an election which had many parallels with this one.

• Ray rightly complains that Labor did not run an ad responding to the Liberal effort which gave viewers 30 seconds of silence to think of “three good things Alan Carpenter’s Labor has done in eight years of boom”, which would have written itself. The West Australian reported shortly after the election that such an ad had been considered but rejected on the grounds it would have seemed “reactive”.

• The Nationals “had a simple message, promoted it for 18 months and were allowed to get away with the fiscal irresponsibility of their promises and the illusion of their independence from the Liberal Party”. Blame lay with a “Perth-centric” Labor campaign, which was no doubt inspired by the new electoral landscape ushered in by one-vote one-value.

Essential Research: 58-42

Essential Research has produced its final weekly survey for the year, ahead of a sabbatical that will extend to January 12. It shows Labor’s two-party lead down slightly from 59-41 to 58-42. I might proudly note that they have taken up my suggestion to gauge opinion on the internet filtering plan, and the result gives some insight into the government’s apparent determination to pursue this by all accounts foolish and futile policy. Even accounting for the fact that this is a sample of internet users, the survey shows 49 per cent supporting the plan against 40 per cent opposed. Also featured are questions on the government’s general performance over the year, bonuses to pensions and families, optimism for the coming year (surprisingly high) and the target the government should set for greenhouse emission reductions (only 8 per cent support a cut of less than 5 per cent). Elsewhere:

• The West Australian has published a Westpoll survey of 400 WA respondents showing 60 per cent believe the federal government’s changes in policy on asylum seekers have contributed to a recent upsurge in boat arrivals in the north-west. However, only 34 per cent supported a return to the Pacific solution against 48 per cent opposed. Sixty-nine per cent professed themselves “concerned” about the increased activity, but 54 per cent said they were happy for the arrivals to live on Christmas Island while they were assessed for refugee status. Fifty-one per cent were opposed to them being processed on the mainland. Westpoll also found that 62 per cent of respondents “definitely” supported recreational fishing bans to protect vulnerable species, with “nearly eight out of 10” indicating some support. I suspect The West Australian commissioned monthly polling in advance expectation of a February state election, and has tired of asking redundant questions on support for the new government.

• Imre Salusinszky on Bennelong in The Weekend Australian:

The experience of Labor in 1990, when Bob Hawke was mugged in Victoria by the unpopularity of former Labor premier John Cain, shows there are occasions when a Labor state government can throw an anchor around the neck of its federal counterpart. According to Newspoll figures published in The Australian yesterday, federal Labor’s primary vote in NSW is running at 41 per cent, nearly four points down on its level at last year’s federal election. Although this is still much higher than the 29 per cent primary vote recorded in a Newspoll last month for the state Labor government – which, as it happens, was precisely the party’s primary vote in Ryde – it certainly suggests Rudd has problems in NSW. Given Rees’s recent decision to scrap plans for a metro rail system linking central Sydney to the city’s northwest, some of those problems could manifest in Bennelong. And while Howard was a formidable adversary, it would be possible to argue his presence assisted McKew by encouraging every gibbering Howard-hater in the country – including the activist group GetUp! – to get involved in the battle for Bennelong.

The key, obviously, lies in the calibre of candidate the Liberals manage to put up. Two names that have been mentioned are former state leader Kerry Chikarovski and former rugby union international Brett Papworth. Chikarovski represented Lane Cove, which falls largely within Bennelong, from 1991 to 2003; Papworth is a son of the electorate who began his playing career there. But if there is one candidate who could give McKew a fright, it is Andrew Tink. Tink represented the state seat of Epping, which falls largely within Bennelong, from 1988 until last year’s state election. A true-blue local, Tink would be able to exploit a lingering perception of McKew as a celebrity blow-in. Tink appears to be enjoying his second career as a historian of NSW politics, but there have been approaches from senior Liberals who would like to see him make history of McKew.

• Noting the difficult position of the Canadian Liberals as they pursue power behind an interim leader, Ben Raue at The Tally Room looks at differing methods used overseas for selection of party leaders and offers a critique of Australian practice (part one and part two).

• Possum: “ETS – Why 5% in two charts”. Even shorter version: it all comes down to the Senate.

Newspoll minus three days

Some tidbits to tide you over through the middle of an agonising week-long federal poll drought.

• Chris Back, who narrowly failed to unseat independent Alfred Cove MP Janet Woollard at the September 6 state election, has been nicely compensated with the Western Australian Senate vacancy created by the retirement of Chris Ellison. It was initially expected that the position would go to Deidre Willmott, who stood aside as candidate for Cottesloe so Colin Barnett could cancel his retirement plans and lead his previously demoralised party to victory. However, Willmott withdrew from the race a few weeks ago when it became apparent she wouldn’t win, thereby continuing the state party’s sorry recent record on female representation. The West Australian reports that Back won the preselection vote “on preferences from party treasurer Dean Smith and the pre-contest favourite, senior vice-president Anthony Jarvis”. It also informs us that Back was “the veterinarian who controversially did not swab champion racehorse Rocket Racer after he won the 1987 Perth Cup by 10 lengths”. Back has more recently been “group managing executive of oil and gas company Equinox Energy”, but it’s “his role in the Rocket Racer affair which attracts the most attention”. Curious then that the paper didn’t say a single word about it prior to the state election.

• In case you missed it, George Megalogenis’s analysis of the grey vote in The Australian last week was essential reading like only Megalogenis number crunching can be.

• Courtesy of Possum comes a detailed breakdown of figures from Monday’s federal ACNielsen poll. Possum also weighs in on under-publicised Nielsen online polling.

• The recent Newspoll on issue perceptions inspired me to knock together the following chart based on its surveys going back to 1989. The chart averages the results for each year, in which time Newspoll usually publishes about three such surveys. Some issues are featured more frequently than others: immigration for instance is usually included once a year, so the spike to Labor in 2005 might not be all that meaningful. Note that “economy” wasn’t featured as a distinct category between 1991 and 2004.

Westpoll: 56-44 to Liberal in WA

The West Australian today brings us its monthly Westpoll survey of state voting intention from a sample of 400 voters. It finds the Liberals’ two-party lead narrowing slightly to 56-44 from 57-43 last month. Primary votes are Liberal 49.25 per cent, Labor 34.75 per cent, Greens 10 per cent and Nationals 4 per cent. Opposition Leader Eric Ripper is up two points to 19 per cent as preferred premier, while Colin Barnett is steady on 57 per cent.