Category: Western Australian Politics

The spoils of defeat

A changing of the guard among what remains of the conservative forces in Western Australia.

After a weekend of convulsions among what remains of the parliamentary ranks of the Liberals and Nationals in Western Australia, both parties settled on new leaders yesterday, with Moore MP Shane Love taking the mantle of Opposition Leader as head of the Nationals, who have four seats in the lower house, and Vasse MP Libby Mettam emerging leader of the Liberals, who have two. To deal with the developments in turn:

• The ball began to roll when Mia Davies, who has led the Nationals and hence the opposition since the 2021 election, unexpectedly announced her resignation on Friday, though she will serve out her term as member for Central Wheatbelt. With North West Central MP only having served in parliament since a by-election in September, this left the the party’s other two lower house members, Moore MP Shane Love and Roe MP Peter Rundle, as the only plausible successors (the party has a further three seats in the Legislative Council). Rundle declared himself a “potential contender” on Sunday, but in the event Love was chosen unopposed, with Rundle replacing him as deputy.

• Hours after Mia Davies’ announcement on Friday, Vasse MP Libby Mettam launched her long-anticipated challenge against her only Liberal lower house colleague, Cottesloe MP David Honey. This left the matter effectively to be determined by the party’s seven Legislative Council members, with weekend reports suggesting five were lining up behind Mettam (Tjorn Sibma from North Metropolitan region, who uniquely went on the record, together with Peter Collier from North Metropolitan, Steve Thomas from South West, Steve Martin from Agricultural and Donna Faragher from East Metropolitan), with Honey claiming the support only of Nick Goiran from South Metropolitan and Neil Thomson from Mining and Pastoral. Honey duly conceded defeat and left Mettam to take the position unopposed. Steve Thomas was also elected unopposed to succeed Mettam as deputy.

Liberal internal affairs have been dominated over the past 18 months by controversy over the machinations of “the Clan”, a loose factional grouping including Nick Goiran and Peter Collier, together with Mathias Cormann before he quit federal politics in October 2020. Mettam sought to seize the initiative yesterday by announcing that Goiran, a religious conservative with an extensive network of support in the party’s southern Perth branches, would be excluded from the shadow ministry, which since the 2021 election has found places for all Liberal and Nationals members.

On the other side of the aisle, Labor is negotiating a less consequential but electorally noteworthy difficulty arising from the retirement of high-profile former minister Alannah MacTiernan and the resulting vacancy for her South West region upper house seat. Such vacancies are filled through a countback of ballot papers from the previous election and not with the favoured nominee of the party, as in the Senate. The top three of Labor’s six candidates on the South West ticket were elected in 2021, and in the normal course of events the countback would elect the next candidate along. However, The West Australian reports the candidate in question, John Mondy, is “understood to be reluctant” to tear himself away from a successful Bunbury signwriting business to spend two years as a parliamentarian.

That puts the focus on the fifth candidate, Narrogin lawyer Ben Dawkins, who faces dozens of charges of breaching a family violence restraining order, which he says relates solely to “emotive” language in emails he sent to his estranged wife. Dawkins is said to be interested in taking up the vacancy, but would do so as an independent given his legal troubles have caused him to be suspended from the ALP. The situation does not threaten Labor’s upper house majority, which inclusive of MacTiernan consisted of 22 seats in a chamber of 36.

Polls: federal and WA leaders, budget response, foreign policy (open thread)

Familiar results on the budget and federal politics generally, plus a finding that Mark McGowan continues to reign supreme in Western Australia.

Fair bit of polling doing the rounds this week, as is generally the case in the wake of a budget:

• The Age/Herald had further results from the Resolve Strategic poll on Tuesday, including ratings for the two leaders, which had 57% rating Anthony Albanese’s performance as very good or good compared with 28% for poor or very poor, with Peter Dutton respectively at 29% and 41%. The poll also found 40% supported allowing multi-employer bargaining, with 24% opposed; 26% supported mandatory multi-employer bargaining, with 32% opposed; and an even 29% favoured higher wages at the cost of higher prices and vice-versa.

• This fortnight’s Essential Research survey features the monthly prime ministerial ratings, which now involves directing respondents to give Anthony Albanese a rating from zero to ten. Forty-five per cent gave him between seven and ten, down one on last month; 28% gave him from four to six, down three; and 20% gave him zero to three, up three. Questions on the budget turned up one finding missed by the others: 45% said they had paid it little or no attention, around ten points up on the last three budgets, while 55% said a little or a lot, around ten points down. Fifty-two per cent expect economic conditions to worsen over the next twelve months, up twelve since June, while 24% expect them to improve, down eight. Respondents were asked to pick first and second most important contributors to energy price increases, which had excessive profits and efforts to fight climate change leading the field, international circumstances and a worn-out energy network somewhat lower, and too many restrictions on exploration well behind. The poll was conducted Saturday to Wednesday from a sample of 1058.

• Roy Morgan’s regular weekly video has included primary votes from its latest federal poll, conducted from October 24 (the day before the budget) to October 30, rather than just two-party preferred as per its usual form. This shows Labor on 38.5% (down half on the previous week), the Coalition on 37% (up one-and-a-half), the Greens on 12% (up one), independents on 6% (down two) and One Nation on 3% (down one-and-a-half). Labor led 55.5-44.5 on two-party preferred, out from 54.5-45.5.

• The quarterly-or-so True Issues series from JWS Research is a “special release” on the budget, as opposed to its usual focus on issue salience. It finds 14% of respondents saying the budget would be good or very good for them personally compared with 36% for average and 31% for poor or very poor; for the national economic impact, the respective numbers were 20%, 38% and 25%. However, respondents provided highly positive responses when asked about fifteen specific budget measures, all but one of which attracted a favourable response – the distinct exception being “axing” the low-and-middle income tax offset. The most popular spending measures involved health and the least popular (relatively speaking) involved parental leave and childcare subsidies.

• The University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre has results of a YouGov poll it commissioned encompassing 1000 respondents in each of Australia, the United States and Japan, conducted from September 5 to 9. It found 44% of Australians would support responding with force if China invaded Taiwan, compared with 33% of Americans; 36% of Australians felt the US alliance made Australia more secure, with 58% of Americans holding a reciprocal view, up from 44% in December; 52% of Australians felt China was “mostly harmful” in Asia, with 20% rating it “mostly helpful”; an interestingly even 28% and 31% felt the same way about the United States, in dramatic contrast to results of 7% and 52% among Japanese respondents; 36% approved of the federal government’s handling of the relationship with China, with 19% disapproving; 52% supported the nuclear submarines plan, with 19% opposed; and “one in two”. Thirty-six per cent of Australians felt it would be good for the country if Joe Biden won another term compared with 19% for bad, while 50% felt a return of Donald Trump would be bad compared with 26% for good.

• In a rare bit of interesting polling news from Western Australia, a Painted Dog Research poll for The West Australian finds Mark McGowan with an approval rating of 70%, up two from March, and a disapproval rating of 18%, down seven, suggesting a consistency of popularity beyond any Australian politician I could name. David Honey, leader of what remains of the state parliamentary Liberal Party, had an approval rating of just 9%, with 31% disapproving, 40% neutral and 19% oblivious. The poll also found stage three tax cuts supported by 53% and opposed by 32%. It was conducted from October 19 to 21 from a sample of 637.

North West Central by-election live

Preview and live commentary of today’s North West Central state by-election in Western Australia.

Click here for full North West Central by-election results updated live.

Live commentary
8pm. All the booths are in on the primary vote and now, in one great flood, on two-party preferred as well, and we also have 413 postals and 381 pre-polls (the latter on primary vote only as I type). Raw figures are as good as projections at this stage, and they show the Nationals winning by a margin of 8% to 9%. However, their primary vote has not improved, which you might say is despite the absence of a Labor candidate or because of the absence of Vince Catania. The Liberals can take a certain amount of heart from the fact that their primary vote is up from 7.9% to 25.8%, but again, that may just reflect the fact that a lot of conservative support was hitherto locked up with Catania. Similarly, the Greens are up from 4.1% to 14.3%, but with a 40.2% Labor vote last time up for grabs, that’s not necessarily a particularly outstanding result.

7.21pm. The veil has now been lifted on two-party numbers, for which we have results from four booths. They suggest a roughly 60-40 split in preferences between the Nationals and the Liberals, which is similar to what happened when they finished first and second in 2013. This means the Liberals have no chance of winning from second on the primary vote in a context where they have no chance of finishing first, hence the probability dial hitting 100% for the Nationals.

7.05pm. Now the Kalbarri booth is in, with an above-par result for the Nationals. My probability gauge keeps getting stuck for some reason — it’s still on 98.0% when it should be at pretty much 100%.

7.02pm. The Exmouth booth and, to a lesser extent, Carnarvon Woolshed have almost doubled the vote count, giving the Greens a boost at the expense of the Nationals. In two-party terms though the picture is as it was in that the Nationals are well ahead of the Liberals and I expect them to do better on preferences.

6.53pm. I think that problem will fix with the next update, so consider me just about calling it for the Nationals. I’d forgotten that the WAEC has a peculiarity of not reporting two-party numbers until it’s confident it’s picked the right candidates, which is why we’re not seeking any action yet on that score.

6.46pm. My probability reading is stuck on 72.5% for the Nationals when it should be 98.0%. Looking into it.

6.41pm. We’ve got a relatively big booth in Onslow Primary School — all of 151 votes. The big picture is that the Nationals are down a little on the primary vote while the Liberals are up around 20% on their single figure result; that the Nationals retain a handy primary vote lead in a context where they’re likely to do better than the Liberals on preferences; and that we still don’t have any two-party numbers.

6.40pm. There’s an issue in the WAEC’s data feed for the Coral Bay booth, which is missing the line that’s supposed to record the Liberal result.

6.35pm. A sixth booth in now — probably Meekatharra Shire Hall, because that’s the best one for the Nationals and the dial just moved in their favour.

6.32pm. Problem fixed. Five booths in now, one of them small and four of them tiny, and while my speculative preference estimates point to a Nationals winning margin of 5% to 6%, there are far too few votes for me to call it.

6.23pm. Now we’ve got two booths in, the follow-up being 102 votes from Carnarvon Community College. The Nationals are well down on last time, but still with just over 50% of the primary vote. There is a problem with my two-party projection though, which I’ll look into.

6.22pm. In any case, I can tentatively say that my results facility is working, and that it’s coming through with the goods quicker than the WAEC site.

6.20pm. We’ve got 11 votes in from Wiluna Remote Community School. Presumably the fact that none of them are for the Liberals explains why my projection is sticking with 50-50.

6pm. Polls have closed. Now to see if my live results page is going to work. Results should come in reasonably shortly given there are some very small booths involved, although twelve candidates on the ballot paper should slow things up a bit. The WAEC will provide updates at leisurely five minute intervals.

Preview
Today is the day of Western Australia’s state by-election for North West Central, resulting from the retirement of Nationals MP Vince Catania, which likely looms as a contest between the Nationals and Liberals in the absence of a Labor candidate, albeit that there are twelve candidates in all. My own perspective on the matter is laid out in my by-election guide. Note that a mere 7741 formal votes were cast in 2021: not only does the seat have markedly below average enrolment due to the “large district allowance” that applies to seats of more than 100,000 square kilometres, it also records unusually low turnout, which is sure to be lower still at a by-election.

My live results page can be found here, awaiting numbers that will start to come through from 6pm. Given that Antony Green has “tickets to the Swans versus Collingwood AFL match … so won’t be able to publish any results until I get home from the match”, I think I can get away with saying that my results facility and accompanying commentary will be the best available.

My results display will feature two-party swing figures working off a rather artificial set of Nationals-versus-Liberal numbers from last year based on the assumption that Labor and minor party preferences would, if distributed, have split between the two in the same proportion as in 2013, when Labor obligingly finished third. On this basis, the Liberals need a 20.5% swing to poach the swing from the Nationals, having polled but 7.9% at the March 2021 election compared with 39.7% for the Nationals (and 40.2% for Labor).

My guess would be that that’s not going to happen: homeless Labor voters are probably more likely to swing behind the Nationals candidate Merome Beard, proprietor of the Port Hotel, which is by some distance the best pub in Carnarvon (the one that was infamouly run by Wilson Tuckey back in the day). Should Liberal candidate Will Baston pull off an upset, the Nationals and Liberals will be deadlocked at three seats apiece in the Legislative Assembly, raising the question of whether Nationals leader Mia Davies will retain the status of Opposition Leader.

Hawks and doves (open thread)

A new poll from the Australia Institute poses many a hard question on the potential for conflict with China.

The Australian has today published a Newspoll result of state voting intention in Victoria, which I have added as an introductory note to my earlier post covering general electoral developments in the state. I am not sure what the deal is with Newspoll’s federal polling – plainly it has not returned to its earlier schedule of a poll every three weeks, as there would otherwise have been one on Monday.

We do have two new attitudinal polls from the Australia Institute, one posing an array of stimulating questions on the potential for conflict with China. This encompassed both an Australian sample of 1003 and a Taiwanese sample of 1002, the survey work being conducted by international market research firm Dynata.

Among many other things, the Australian end of the survey found 47% expecting a Chinese armed attack on Australia either soon (9%) or “sometime” (38%), with only 19% opting for never and 33% uncommitted. Twenty-one per cent felt Australia would be able to defend itself from China without international assistance, compared with 60% who thought otherwise, and 57% anticipate such support would be forthcoming from the United States compared with 11% who didn’t and 19% who opted for “it depends”. Thirty-five per cent would back the US and Australia to win such a conflict compared with 8% for lose and 26% for a draw of some description.

Thirty-seven per cent felt the Australian people would be prepared to go to war if China threatened military action against Australia, effectively equal to the 38% who thought otherwise. Twenty-six per cent were prepared for Australia to go to war to help Taiwan gain independence compared with 33% who weren’t and 41% for uncommitted. Framed a little differently, 14% strongly agreed and 23% less strongly agreed that Australia should “send its defence forces to Taiwan to fight for their freedom … if China incorporated Taiwan”, compared with 20% for disagree and 9% for strongly disagree.

The Taiwanese end of the survey is beyond this site’s scope, thought it’s interesting to note that 41% felt optimistic with respect to the future for Taiwan compared with 40% for neutral and only 20% for pessimistic. The survey was conducted between August 13 and 16 – Nancy Pelosi’s visit was on August 2 and China’s military exercises followed from August 4 to 7.

A second report from the Australia Institute provides results of a poll conducted back in April on the seemingly less pressing subject of “wokeness”, a concept that meant nothing to 43% of those surveyed, ranging from only 22% of those aged 18 to 29 to 59% of those aged 60 and over. Forty-nine per cent of the former cohort owned up to being woke, decreasing with arithmetic precision to 9% for the latter, while around 30% for each of the five age cohorts identified as “not woke”. Interestingly, Coalition and Labor voters produced similar results, with Greens and One Nation voters deviating in the manner you would expect. The poll was conducted from April 5 to 8 from a sample of 1003, so the sub-sample sizes for the results cited above are not great, however intuitively likely the results might be.

Also:

• Anthony Galloway of the Sun-Herald identifies possible successors to Scott Morrison in Cook: Mark Speakman, moderate-aligned state Attorney-General and member for Cronulla; Melanie Gibbons, state member for Holsworthy, who unsuccessfully sought preselection for the Hughes at the federal election; Carmelo Pesce, the mayor of Sutherland Shire; and Alex Cooke, identified only as a “party member”.

• The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has called for submissions to its inquiry into the 2022 federal election. Matters specifically touched up on by the terms of reference include political donation and truth-in-advertising laws, enfranchisement of New Zealand citizens living in Australia and “proportional representation of the states and territories in the parliament”, the latter seemingly referring to the possibility of adding extra seats for the territories in the Senate.

• The Australian Parliamentary Library has published a “quick guide” on the technicalities of when the next federal election might be held, together with a handy calendar showing when state and local elections are due through to 2006.

• No fewer than twelve candidates have nominated for Western Australia’s North West Central by-election on September 17, with Labor not among them, for a seat with only 11,189 voters. As well as the Nationals and the Liberals, there are two candidates of the Western Australia Party, one being hardy perennial Anthony Fels, plus the Greens, One Nation, Legalise Cannabis, Liberal Democrats, No Mandatory Vaccination, the Small Business Party and two independents. My guide to the by-election can be found here.

North West Central by-election and other WA news

A date set for WA’s first state by-election in over four years, plus news from the Liberal Party’s ongoing struggle to put the pieces back together.

I have knocked together a guide to Western Australia’s state by-election for North West Central, the date for which was set on Monday at September 17 following the official resignation of Nationals member Vince Catania. Nominations close August 26 – what’s known at present is that it will not be contested by Labor, likely making it a contest between Nationals candidate Merome “Mem” Beard, who has owned and run the Port Hotel in Carnarvon for two decades, and Liberals candidate Will Baston, owner of a pastoral property 150 kilometres east of Carnarvon and nephew of former Barnett government minister Ken Baston. The Nationals currently have four seats in the Legislative Assembly and the Liberals only two, giving Nationals leader Mia Davies the status of Opposition Leader, which would raise questions with no simple answer if the by-election result happened to make it three-all.

Other recent electorally related Western Australian state politics news:

• The Liberal Party’s state conference voted the weekend before last for a new preselection model that will grant a vote to all party members, replacing a system in which delegates were elected by each branch. However, the reform’s effectiveness in discouraging branch stacking has been limited by a failure to exclude non-branch delegates from the process, as had been recommended by the review conducted after the 2021 election debacle. This would have prevented it receiving the support of the factional leaders identified as “The Clan”, notably Peter Collier and Nick Goiran, whose power base rests largely on recruitment of members from suburban Pentecostal churches. Such support was required to clear the 75% bar required for changes to the party rules. Critics further complain that no action was taken against widespread payment of party memberships on single credit cards exposed by an audit in June.

• Suggestions that the party might be able to draft a saviour in the shape of former test cricketer Justin Langer having fallen through, more recent reports have suggested that one of the two Liberal lower house members, Vasse MP Libby Mettams, might topple party leader David Honey, Cottesloe MP and Mettams’ only lower house Liberal colleague. Rounding out the Liberal party room are seven members of the Legislative Council, including the aforementioned Collier and Goiran.

• Two cabinet ministers have announced they will not be contesting the next election: Alannah MacTiernan, following a career going back to 1993 in which she has served in federal and local as well as state politics, serving in the latter capacity in both houses of parliament and two different Legislative Council regions; and Sue Ellery, who has served in the upper house since 2001 and is currently Education Minister.

Monday miscellany (open thread)

Return of the vexed question of expelling elected members of parliament, an improbable set of state voting intention numbers from Victoria, and more.

I would guess that Newspoll will return on the eve of the resumption of the parliament, which is still three weeks away. This is an off week for Essential Research; there may be a Roy Morgan poll, or there may not. Until then:

• Kylea Tink, the newly elected teal independent member for North Sydney, says she believes a new federal integrity commission should have the power to sack parliamentarians for sufficiently serious breaches of a parliamentary code of conduct; David Pocock, newly independent Senator for the Australian Capital Territory, says he would have “real concerns about an unelected body being able to dismiss elected representatives”. The federal parliament denied itself of the power to expel representatives through legislation passed in 1987, such power only ever having been exercised in 1920, when Labor MP Hugh Mahon made “seditious and disloyal utterances” regarding British policy in Ireland. Mahon then re-contested his seat of Kalgoorlie but was narrowly defeated, which remains the only occasion of a government party winning a seat from the opposition at a by-election.

• If you can’t wait another three years for my 2025 federal election guide, Robin Visser offers an online geospatial tool for examining polling booth results at the recent federal election.

Victorian state news to go with that related in last week’s dedicated post on the subject:

• Roy Morgan has results of a “snap SMS poll” of state voting intention in Victoria, showing Labor with a rather inplausible two-party lead of 59.5-40.5 from primary votes of Labor 43.5%, Coalition 29.5%, Greens 12%, United Australia Party 2% and Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party 1%. The poll was conducted Thursday to Saturday from a sample of 1710. A similar poll in November produced the same two-party result.

• Morgan’s result is at odds with a detailed assessment of the state of play by pollster Kos Samaras, who expects Labor to struggle to maintain its majority in the face of four to five losses to the Liberals, two to the Greens and others yet to independents. However, it’s also “extremely difficult to see how the Coalition get anything north of 38 to 40 seats” in a chamber of 88.

• Jane Garrett, who held a seat in the Legislative Council for Eastern Victoria region, died on Saturday of breast cancer at the age of 49. Garrett moved to the chamber from the lower house seat of Brunswick at the 2018 election, which duly fell to the Greens. She resigned from cabinet in 2016 after a dispute with the United Firefighters Union in her capacity as Emergency Services Union brought her into conflict with Daniel Andrews. Garrett announced last December that she would retire at the election. Labor’s ticket in Eastern Victoria will be headed by incumbent Harriet Shing, who was last week promoted to cabinet, and Tom McIntosh, a former electrician and (at least as of 2019) electorate officer to federal Batman MP Ged Kearney, who is presumably well placed to fill Garrett’s casual vacancy in the interim.

Also:

• As detailed at length on my live commentary thread, South Australia’s Liberals copped a 6.0% swing in Saturday’s Bragg by-election to add to the 8.8% one they suffered at the March state election, leaving about 2% intact from a margin that was 17.4% after the 2018 election, and had never previously fallen below 12.8%. The next by-election off the rank is for the Western Australian state seat of North West Central, to be vacated with the retirement of Nationals member Vince Catania. The Nationals last week preselected Merome Beard, proprietor of Carnarvon’s Port Hotel, whose BLT comes strongly recommended. Labor is considered unlikely to field a candidate, but the Liberal state council voted last week to call for nominations.

Sticky wicket (open thread)

Schemes hatched by WA Liberals seeking a quick path out of the wilderness; a new Tasmanian state poll; nothing doing on the federal poll front.

I was hoping Newspoll might be back in the game three weeks after election day, but it seems normal service is yet to resume. Presumably Essential Research will have numbers of some sort tomorrow, but it remains to be seen if they will encompass voting intention. I hope to have more to offer shortly on whether other pollsters are still in the game in the immediate term, or whether they have pulled stumps for the time being. That just leaves me with the following miscellany to relate by way of a new open thread post:

• Joe Spagnolo of the Sunday Times reported yesterday on a plan within the Western Australian Liberals to have former test cricketer and national team coach Justin Langer lead the party into the next state election in 2025. The suggestion is that the current leader, David Honey, might be persuaded to relinquish his seat of Cottesloe, one of only two lower house seats the party retained at the 2021 election. It is an any case “widely accepted that Dr Honey won’t lead the WA Liberals to the next election”, with Vasse MP Libby Mettams “his likely replacement” – indeed his only possible replacement out of the existing ranks of the Liberals’ lower house contingent.

• Katina Curtis and Shane Wright of the Sydney Morning Herald have taken the trouble to compile the results of the 75,368 telephone votes cast by those in COVID-19 isolation, finding that Labor, Greens or independents candidates out-performed on them on two-candidate preferred relative to the overall results in all but eight lower house seats. Kevin Bonham is quoted in the article noting that infections are more prevalent of left-leaning demographics, namely the young and those employed in exposed occupations, though I also tend to think there may be a greater tendency for those on the right of politics to keep their illnesses to themselves.

• One bit of poll news at least: the latest quarterly Tasmanian state poll from EMRS has been published, the first since Jeremy Rockliff succeeded Peter Gutwein as Premier. It finds the Liberals down two points since March to 39%, Labor down one to 30%, the Greens up one to 13% and others up two to 18%. Rockliff leads Labor’s Rebecca White 47-34 as preferred premier, compared with Gutwein’s lead of 52-33 in March. The poll was conducted May 27 to June 2 through telephone interviews from a sample of 1000.

• Lydia Lynch of The Australian reports that Julie-Ann Campbell, Queensland Labor’s outgoing state secretary and now associate partner with consultancy firm EY, is “expected to run for federal politics” – specifically for the seat of Moreton, which Graham Perrett has held for Labor since 2007.

There’s a fair bit going on at the site at the moment, so here’s a quick run-through the subjects of recent posts with on-topic discussion threads, as opposed to the open thread on this post:

• The future direction of the Liberal Party, with debate raging as to whether it should focus on recovering blue-ribbon seats from the teal independents or cutting them loose and pursuing a new course through suburban and regional seats traditionally held by Labor;

• The three state by-elections looming in the Queensland seat of Callide, the South Australian seat of Bragg and the Western Australian seat of North West Central;

• The ongoing count from the federal election, which remains of interest in relation to several Senate contests, with the pressing of the button looking reasonably imminent in South Australia and the two territories.

By-elections three

A quick run through the three state by-elections shortly to be held in Liberal and Nationals seats in Labor-run states.

There are now three state by-elections on the way, one imminent, another three weeks away, and a third on a date yet to be determined. I have election guides for the first two of these, linked two below. In turn:

Callide. A by-election will be held for this rural seat in Queensland on Saturday to replace Liberal National Party member Colin Boyce, who has now gone federal as the member for the corresponding seat of Flynn. Labor has not gone the usual path of forfeiting a seat in which it has never been competitive, at least notionally setting up a contest between LNP candidate Bryson Head and Labor’s Bronwyn Dendle. However, there seems at least as much chance that final count will be between the LNP and One Nation, whose candidate Sharon Lohse achieved as much when she ran in 2017. Lohse was also the party’s candidate in Flynn at the recent federal election. For whatever reason, the party sat it out in the seat at the 2020 state election. Also in the field are Legalise Cannabis, Katter’s Australian Party and Animal Justice – but not the Greens, who tend not to trouble the scoreboard much in this part of the world.

Bragg. This blue-ribbon Adelaide seat goes to the polls on July 2 to choose a successor to former Deputy Premier Vickie Chapman, who displeased her party by pulling the plug on her political career shortly after the March election defeat. Here too Labor is gamely taking the field in a seat it has never held, but given the Liberals’ form in comparable seats at the federal election and its all-time low margin of 8.2% after the state election, it’s easier here to see why they might think it worth a roll of the dice. The Liberals could have had particular trouble if disgruntled political staffer Chelsey Potter had followed through on her threat to don the teal independent mantle, but it seems she was persuaded not to. The by-election thus pits Liberal candidate Jack Batty, who until recently worked at the High Commission in London, against Labor’s Alice Rolls, head of policy and strategy at the Australian Pro Bono Centre. The Greens and Family First have also announced candidates; nominations close on Friday.

North West Central. One of only six seats out of the 59 in Western Australia’s lower house not held by Labor, North West Central is shortly to be vacated with the retirement of Nationals member Vince Catania. Catania began his political career with Labor as a member of the Legislative Council in 2005, transferred to the Legislative Assembly in 2008, defected to the Nationals the following year and comfortably retained it through to 2021, when he held out by 1.7% against a swing of 8.4%, one of the lowest in the state. Although anything would seem possible given the loss of Catania’s personal vote, which is of particular significance in a seat where only 8000 voters were cast at the last election, the consensus seems to be that Labor will not field a candidate as it fears a backlash over its one-vote one-value reform to the Legislative Council, expects the seat to be abolished at the next redistribution and already has more MPs than it knows what to do with. The seat could potentially develop into a contest between the Nationals and the Liberals, but the odds on the latter would presumably be rather long.