Ready, set, go

As I type, Peter Beattie is speaking at a press conference announcing a Queensland state election for September 9. Following a very late night last night, I have knocked into shape a partially completed election guide that might be wanting for a bit of proof-reading. At this stage it is limited to outlines of the electoral history of each seat, which will be fleshed out in due course with further detail on the areas covered by the electorates and commentary on the main candidates. Completion of this will probably limit the amount of blog commentary in the first week or so of the campaign, but we’ll see how we go.

For Pete’s sake

Word around the campfire is that Peter Beattie will pay a visit to Government House on Tuesday to call a Queensland state election for September 9. While this may yet prove to be the product of elaborate bluffing on Beattie’s part, the speculation is being taken very seriously by the Courier-Mail and the ABC, and also by Antony Green, whose election guide is now open for business. I am currently very hard at work whipping my own effort into shape and hope to have it up by next weekend.

Redistribution latest

Apologies for the inactivity – been a bit busy lately. Those who are interested will already be aware that Malcolm Mackerras has published his calculations of post-redistribution margins, answering (more or less) many queries raised on this site’s comments threads when the proposals were first made public. His figures offer a few surprises: Labor’s newly acquired seat of Parramatta has moved back into the Liberal column; John Howard has only lost 0.3 per cent from his margin in Bennelong; and Mackerras gives the Nationals a margin of 7.9 per cent in the new Queensland seat of Wright, whereas my own calculation (and reportedly that of the Nationals) had it at about 5.5 per cent. The following tables indicate which seats have shifted in which direction and by how much.

NEW SOUTH WALES
Coalition seats NEW OLD SHIFT MEMBER
Parramatta 1.1 0.7 1.8 Julie Owens
Wentworth 2.6 5.6 3.0 Malcolm Turnbull
Lindsay 2.9 5.3 2.4 Jackie Kelly
Eden-Monaro 3.3 2.2 1.1 Gary Nairn
Bennelong 4.0 4.3 0.3 John Howard
Dobell 4.8 5.9 1.1 Ken Ticehurst
Page 5.5 4.2 1.3 Ian Causley
Cowper 6.6 6.4 0.2 Luke Hartsuyker
Paterson 6.8 7.0 0.2 Bob Baldwin
Robertson 6.9 6.8 0.1 Jim Lloyd
Hughes 8.8 11.0 2.2 Danna Vale
Gilmore 9.5 10.0 0.5 Joanna Gash
North Sydney 10.1 10.0 0.1 Joe Hockey
Greenway 11.0 0.6 10.4 Louise Markus
Macarthur 11.1 9.5 1.6 Pat Farmer
Warringah 11.3 10.0 1.3 Tony Abbott
Hume 12.9 14.1 1.2 Alby Schultz
Berowra 13.1 12.3 0.8 Philip Ruddock
Cook 13.7 13.8 0.1 Bruce Baird
Lyne 14.1 13.0 1.1 Mark Vaile
New England 14.2 13.2 1.0 Tony Windsor
Farrer 15.4 19.9 4.5 Sussan Ley
Mackellar 15.5 15.9 0.4 Bronwyn Bishop
Bradfield 17.5 18.7 1.2 Brendan Nelson
Parkes 18.8 14.4 4.4 John Cobb
Riverina 20.7 20.7 0.0 Kay Hull
Mitchell 20.7 20.6 0.1 Alan Cadman
Labor seats NEW OLD SHIFT MEMBER
Macquarie 0.5 8.9 9.4 Kerry Bartlett
Richmond 1.5 0.2 1.3 Justine Elliot
Lowe 3.1 3.3 0.2 John Murphy
Banks 3.3 1.1 2.2 Daryl Melham
Prospect 6.9 7.1 0.2 Chris Bowen
Werriwa 7.1 9.3 2.2 Chris Hayes
Barton 7.6 7.5 0.1 Robert McClelland
Calare 7.9 21.2 13.3 Peter Andren
Charlton 8.4 8.0 0.4 Kelly Hoare
Kingsford-Smith 8.6 8.9 0.3 Peter Garrett
Newcastle 8.7 10.0 1.3 Sharon Grierson
Shortland 9.3 9.5 0.2 Jill Hall
Hunter 11.2 13.8 2.6 Joel Fitzgibbon
Cunningham 11.7 11.5 0.2 Sharon Bird
Reid 12.0 12.8 0.8 Laurie Ferguson
Chifley 12.1 13.0 0.9 Roger Price
Fowler 13.5 21.4 7.9 Julia Irwin
Throsby 13.9 15.0 1.1 Jennie George
Watson 14.6 15.1 0.5 Tony Burke
Blaxland 15.3 12.9 2.4 Michael Hatton
Sydney 17.3 16.4 0.9 Tanya Plibersek
Grayndler 21.3 22.6 1.3 Anthony Albanese

QUEENSLAND
Coalition seats NEW OLD SHIFT MEMBER
Bonner 0.6 No change Ross Vasta
Moreton 2.8 4.2 1.4 Gary Hardgrave
Blair 5.7 11.2 5.5 Cameron Thompson
Herbert 6.1 6.2 0.1 Peter Lindsay
Longman 6.6 7.7 1.1 Mal Brough
Wright 7.9 New electorate
Petrie 7.9 7.9 0.0 Teresa Gambaro
Hinkler 8.8 4.8 4.0 Paul Neville
Bowman 8.9 9.1 0.2 Andrew Laming
Dickson 9.1 7.8 1.3 Peter Dutton
Dawson 10.2 10.4 0.2 De-Anne Kelly
Leichhardt 10.3 10.0 0.3 Warren Entsch
Ryan 10.4 No change Michael Johnson
Kennedy 10.5 9.0 1.5 Bob Katter
Wide Bay 12.2 12.9 0.7 Warren Truss
Fisher 13.0 13.0 0.0 Peter Slipper
Forde 13.0 13.0 0.0 Kay Elson
Fairfax 13.3 11.1 2.2 Alex Somlyay
McPherson 14.0 13.9 0.1 Margaret May
Fadden 15.3 15.3 0.0 David Jull
Groom 19.0 19.0 0.0 Ian Macfarlane
Moncrieff 19.9 20.1 0.2 Steven Ciobo
Maranoa 21.0 20.8 0.2 Bruce Scott
Labor seats NEW OLD SHIFT MEMBER
Rankin 3.0 3.3 0.3 Craig Emerson
Capricornia 3.8 5.1 1.3 Kirsten Livermore
Brisbane 4.0 3.9 0.1 Arch Bevis
Lilley 5.4 5.3 0.1 Wayne Swan
Oxley 7.2 9.7 2.5 Bernie Ripoll
Griffith 8.5 8.6 0.1 Kevin Rudd

Musical chairs (part two)

The New South Wales federal electoral redistribution that was unveiled yesterday is of more than usual significance, at least if one school of thought regarding the prime ministerial succession is to be believed. It had been widely surmised that the Prime Minister was awaiting its impact on his precarious electorate of Bennelong, which he carried by an uncomfortable 4.3 per cent in 2004, before deciding whether to lead the party into the next election. Some hypothetical redistribution scenarios had Bennelong either being abolished or shifting westwards into Labor territory as part of a wholesale shake-up of Sydney electorates. The more dramatic of these scenarios were predicated on the assumption that a metropolitan seat would be abolished, but former Nationals leader John Anderson’s electorate of Gwydir has instead been nominated for the chop, cancelling out the good turn done to the Nationals by the Queensland redistribution. This means that adjustments in Sydney have been relatively modest, but they have been sufficient to make life somewhat less comfortable in Bennelong. According to an early estimate by Malcolm Mackerras (cited by Imre Salusinszky in The Australian), the electorate’s absorption of the Ermington area from Labor-held Parramatta will cut Howard’s margin to about 3 per cent.

Another leading Liberal to feel the pinch is Malcolm Turnbull, whose electorate of Wentworth will now extend westwards beyond blue-ribbon beachside suburbs and into the green-and-red inner city, reducing the return on his not inconsiderable investment. Turnbull won the seat with a 5.6 per cent margin in 2004, although the result was distorted by Peter King’s attempt to hold his seat as an independent (King won by 7.9 per cent in 2001). The addition of Woollomooloo and Kings Cross is reckoned by those in the know to have cut his margin to about the same level as Howard’s. It has been a much better redistribution for another Sydney Liberal newcomer, Greenway MP Louise Markus, who trades Labor-leaning outer urban areas for the Shire of Hawkesbury, formerly part of Macquarie. After winning the seat at Labor’s expense in 2004, Markus should now be fairly safe. Jackie Kelly has not done well out of the adjustments to her seat of Lindsay, where a move east into St Marys (formerly in safe Labor Chifley) will bite into her 5.3 per cent margin.

On Labor’s side of the ledger, Parramatta has been substantially redrawn so that the Parramatta town centre is now in neighbouring Reid. Opinion seems divided on who this will benefit, so it seems safe to conclude that Julie Owens’ 0.7 per cent margin will be little changed. Labor should get a boost in its other precarious Sydney seat, the southern suburbs electorate of Banks, which expands northwards to take Bankstown from Blaxland. Their other loseable seat, the inner west electorate of Lowe (3.3 per cent), has undergone a number of adjustments that should largely cancel each other out. Member John Murphy will suffer slightly from the loss of more than 10,000 voters in the Ashfield area to Grayndler to the south-east, and perhaps make a net gain from extensions to the south that add Liberal-voting Strathfield South and Labor-voting Croydon Park.

All of Sydney’s electorates have been altered to some degree, but the decision to abolish Gwydir means that the biggest changes are in country seats that are off Labor’s radar. Most of Gwydir’s geographical area has been absorbed by the already substantial seat of Parkes, which now accounts for about half the state’s territory and has only Dubbo for a large population centre. The most significant knock-on effects are on Calare, which moves inland beyond the Bathurst base of independent member Peter Andren (UPDATE: Andren’s electorate office is in Bathurst, but as Mountainman notes in comments, he is more closely associated with Orange which will remain in the electorate), and Macquarie, which fills Calare’s void by moving west beyond Sydney’s outskirts. Poll Bludger comments regular Geoff Robinson notes on his blog The South Coast that this roughly returns these electorates to the areas they covered before 1977, when Calare was a safe seat for the Nationals and Macquarie mostly held by Labor. Macquarie has since been won by Labor only in 1980, 1983 and 1993 (the current member, Kerry Bartlett, won by 8.9 per cent in 2004), while Calare was held by Labor from 1983 until Andren’s debut in 1996. Robinson notes that Andren must now decide “whether to go for Macquarie and hold it against Labor or to fight the Nationals in the new Calare”. It should not be inferred that Macquarie is out of bounds for the Coalition, but Labor won the corresponding state seat of Bathurst by 6 per cent more than the state average at the 2003 election, and the consensus view is that it’s a Labor-leaning marginal.

The redistribution has inevitably brought changes to the state’s rapidly growing and electorally sensitive north coast, though none are headline-grabbers. The northernmost coastal seat, Richmond, was one of three Labor gains at the 2004 election, when Nationals member Larry Anthony was voted out by the narrowest of margins. The redistribution has reunited the electorate with the northern part of the Shire of Lismore, which it last contained before the 1993 election. At the centre of this area is Nimbin, and it is accordingly noted for its strong counter-cultural element. This area has been added in exchange for Wollongbar and Alstonville in the electorate’s south, which split nearly 60-40 in the Nationals’ favour in 2004. While these areas only account for about 7000 voters each out of a total of 94,333, Labor member Justine Elliot will presumably enjoy a slight boost to her margin. However, this is a case of swings and roundabouts for Labor, since both areas have been exchanged with its very marginal neighbour Page, held for the Nationals by Ian Causley on a margin of 4.2 per cent. Page also gains about 5500 voters around Yamba from its southern neighbour Cowper, which is unlikely to make much difference. Cowper itself is potentially winnable for Labor, currently being held for the Nationals by Luke Hartsuyker with a margin of 6.4 per cent, which will not be much changed by its exchange of Yamba in the north for Kempsey in the south. The Hunter region seat of Paterson, where the Liberal margin inflated from 1.5 per cent to 7.0 per cent in 2004, exchanges a Labor area north of Newcastle for an even more Labor area further along the Hunter Valley, which should cut the margin slightly.

In a potentially bad omen for Labor, the famously marginal seat of Eden-Monaro has extended westwards into Farrer in exchange for the loss of its anomalous territory to the north of the Australian Capital Territory, a knock-on effect of Farrer’s gain of Broken Hill at the expense of Parkes. With the addition of the Shires of Tumut and Tumbarumba, Liberal member Gary Nairn should enjoy some extra padding on his current margin of 2.2 per cent.

UPDATE: Malcolm Mackerras has posted his calculations of post-redistribution margins at Crikey.

Musical chairs

The Australian Electoral Commission has just released its proposed boundaries for the redistribution of New South Wales federal electorates. The main item is the abolition of former Nationals leader John Anderson’s seat of Gwydir. I’ll be poring through this for the rest of the day and will hopefully have something substantial up early this evening.

Banana bending

Such has been the scale of Queensland’s population explosion in recent years that the state’s share of House of Representatives seats is set to increase for the second election in a row. That means Queensland MPs are once again experiencing the excitement of a redistribution, a process which reached a milestone with yesterday’s release of the Australian Electoral Commission’s preliminary boundaries. Should the proposal proceed without substantial revision there will be a new electorate called Wright (named in honour of poet Judith Wright on the recommendation of the Greens), a peculiar looking beast extending from Winton deep in central Queensland all the way eastwards to Gladstone on the coast. However, the AEC report points out that the redrawn electorate of Hinkler could just as easily be said to be the “new” electorate, as Wright will contain fractionally more voters from the old Hinkler than the new. It was determined that the interior electorate should get the new name on the sensible basis that the name of Hinkler is “intrinsically linked to the City of Bundaberg”, which remains part of Hinkler.

For reasons the Poll Bludger can’t understand, the Nationals don’t sound happy. Maranoa MP Bruce Scott told the ABC the Wright proposal was “crazy”, raising commendable objections about roads and communications, communities of interest and local government linkages. He also said he hadn’t “looked at the political impact”; normally such a claim would have me in hysterics, but I really do think he may be telling the truth. Nationals state director Brad Henderson calls Wright “a classic Nats versus Labor seat” due to Labor’s strength in Gladstone and hinterland mining towns, but it looks very much like a Nationals seat to me. By my count, Labor scored only 51.8 per cent on two-party preferred from the 11,606 votes in Gladstone in 2004, and it seems clear the remaining 76,000 would tip the scales in the Nationals’ favour (UPDATE: See below). Furthermore, the removal of Gladstone has weakened Labor’s position in Hinkler, which Paul Neville held for the Nationals by 4.8 per cent in 2004. Hinkler will be compensated for the loss of Gladstone with Hervey Bay and its surrounds, which split 60-40 in the Coalition’s favour. The resulting electorate is smaller, more coastal and at greater threat from the Liberals in the long term, but that shouldn’t become an issue until Neville retires.

Elsewhere, no seat has moved from one party’s column to the other, although there are as always a number that have been made more or less interesting. By far the biggest loser from the redistribution is Liberal member for Blair Cameron Thompson, whose win upon the seat’s creation in 1998 put an end to Pauline Hanson’s parliamentary career. Blair is in an interesting position, having originally covered the conservative hinterland of safe Labor Ipswich. Unfortunately for Thompson, the last two redistributions have drawn the seat into Ipswich itself, from which it will now absorb more than 20,000 new voters. The corresponding loss of territory comes in the Kingaroy-Nanango area – Joh country – which split 67-33 in Thompson’s favour in 2004. By my rough reckoning, that could cut his margin from 11.2 per cent to as little as 4 per cent (UPDATE: See below).

The electorates on the Sunshine Coast have been substantially shuffled around, but the only one of interest to non-psephologists (UPDATE: See below) is Mal Brough’s dicey seat of Longman, where the Liberal margin inflated from 2.5 per cent to 7.7 per cent at the 2004 election. Longman has been sucked into Brisbane’s orbit with the loss of its territory in the Glasshouse Mountains and to the west of Caboolture, which it has traded in for the outer Brisbane centre of Kallangur and its surrounds. This area produced more modest Liberal majorities of around 4 per cent, so their addition should add slightly to Brough’s discomfort. The better part of this area from Brough’s perspective, around North Lakes, comes at the expense of party colleague Teresa Gambaro in suburban Petrie to the south. The 11,500 voters Gambaro is losing here split about 59-41 in the Liberals’ favour in 2004, compared with an overall margin that was up from 3.5 per cent to 7.9 per cent. Petrie was over quota going into the redistribution and will only be compensated for its loss with a few thousand voters in the neighbouring Labor-held seats of Lilley and Brisbane, which will have a small but potentially significant drain on her margin.

The Liberals’ other three naturally marginal seats in Brisbane, Bonner (0.5 per cent), Moreton (4.2 per cent) and Dickson (7.8 per cent), are a mixed bag. Bonner will be wholly unchanged, while Dickson will be made safe by the addition of the safely conservative Shire of Esk, a development which has made the seat largely rural. However, it has not been a good redistribution for Gary Hardgrave in Moreton, who is set to trade more than 12,000 voters in one of his best areas, Algester in the south-west, for 4000 voters in inner-city Annerley to the north and 5000 around Karawatha to the south-east. Given that the respective two-party Liberal vote in the three areas in 2004 was about 57 per cent, 38 per cent and 47 per cent, my rough estimate is that his margin will be cut to 2.5 per cent.

In terms of the Labor-versus-Coalition contest the only electorate of interest in the remainder of Queensland is the Townsville-based seat of Herbert, held for the Liberals by Peter Lindsay on a margin of 6.2 per cent (up from 1.5 per cent in 2001). The electorate has undergone small changes with the addition of just under 3000 voters in Thuringowa and the loss of about 5500 in Townsville, which I do not believe are likely to affect the margin much. Labor’s only seat outside of the Brisbane area, Capricornia, has undergone significant changes, providing Wright with 17,000 of its voters and gaining 14,000 new voters just outside of Mackay. These changes are a mixed bag and are unlikely to account for Labor’s 5.1 per cent margin, in a seat where Rockhampton remains the decisive factor.

UPDATE (25/6/06): I may have spoken too soon when I said the Sunshine Coast boundary changes were unlikely to matter: according to the ABC, Fairfax MP Alex Somlyay is suggesting the Liberals might run a candidate against senior Nationals MP Warren Truss in Wide Bay now that it’s moving into Noosa. Also, earlier generalisations about likely margins can now be clarified. Sacha in comments, who has done the numbers properly, says the new Liberal margin in Blair is 6.4 per cent. I have now crunched the numbers in the booths that will make up the new electorate of Wright and concluded that the Nationals margin from 2004 would have been 5.2 per cent, which compares with a statewide result of 7.1 per cent. Labor could therefore be expected to win the seat if the statewide result was 50-50, although as this graph at Mumble makes clear, that doesn’t happen very often. Other things being equal, there would have been 15 wins for the Coalition since 1949, six for Labor and two cliffhangers. I hope you enjoy the following figures, because they did not come easily. Bear in mind that this does not include pre-polls, postals and the like (not that this should make too much difference), and no doubt contains a few errors.

  LNP # LNP % ALP # ALP %
Hinkler 18,297 53.3 16,033 46.7
Maranoa 9,087 64.6 4,974 35.4
Capricornia 7,581 50.1 7,545 49.8
Wide Bay 561 70.6 234 29.4
TOTAL 35,526 55.2 28,786 44.8

UPDATE (26/6/06): Turns out I’m not totally stupid after all. According to Mark Vaile, "early indications suggested (Wright) would, based on the last election, deliver a Nationals candidate about 55 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, compared to 45 per cent for a Labor candidate".

The fix is in

Back-bench revolt may be the flavour of the month in Liberal ranks, but that didn’t stop the government’s nefarious Electoral and Referendum (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Bill emerging from the Senate unscathed yesterday. Jack Lang never spoke a truer word than when he told his young pupil Paul Keating, “always put your money on self-interest, son, it’s the only horse that always tries”. The main features of Australia’s brave new electoral landscape are as follows:

Earlier closure of the electoral roll. Traditionally, voters have had a full week after the announcement of the election date to enrol or update their details. The Australian Electoral Commission uses this week to conduct extensive advertising campaigns informing the public of the looming deadline, which is also widely publicised in news reports. During the first week of the 2004 election campaign, the AEC received approximately 78,000 new enrolments and 345,000 updates. Now that the government has a Senate majority with which to do as it pleases, it has seen fit to require that new enrolments be made by 8pm on the day the election is called and enrolment updates be made within three days, assuming the Prime Minister doesn’t give advance notice before the issue of the writs. Their motives here could not be plainer. Most new enrollers are young people who, on any reasonable assessment, overwhelmingly vote for parties of the left (despite misguided talk of a generation of “South Park Republicans” backing John Howard at the last election). Furthermore, many of those who need to amend their enrolments are renters, most of whom vote Labor for economic reasons.

The government argues that this is necessary because of the burden the rush of enrolments places on the AEC, and the accompanying threat of electoral fraud. In regard to the AEC’s workload, it can only be said that it has had many opportunities over the years to register any concerns it might have and has never seen fit to do so. Instead, it has repeatedly argued against suggestions the rolls should be closed earlier – in this submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters’ Inquiry into the 2001 Federal Election (“the AEC considers it would be a backward step to repeal the provision which guarantees electors this seven day period in which to correct their enrolment”), and this one to JSCEM’s Inquiry into the Integrity of the Electoral Roll in 2000 (“the expectation is that the rolls for the election will be less accurate, because less time will be available for existing electors to correct their enrolments and for new enrolments to be received”). As for electoral fraud, the only substantial public claim regarding election rigging that the Poll Bludger is aware of came from noted Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones, who was – with all due respect to him – talking out of his arse. While the Shepherdson inquiry unveiled all manner of enrolment irregularities among ALP members in Queensland, it was never sensibly suggested that this amounted to an attempt to rig an election involving millions of voters, as opposed to a preselection involving a few dozen.

The government has also attempted to justify the amendment with reference to early closure of rolls for most state elections. But as numerous speakers in the Senate pointed out, they neglected to mention that these states have fixed terms, and hence a predictable deadline for enrolling in time for an election, or – in Tasmania’s case – a required period of five to 10 days between the dissolution of parliament and the issue of the writs, which effectively amounts to a week’s grace no different to the existing system for federal elections. It was also argued that the government was merely overturning a self-serving amendment made by the Hawke Labor government in 1983. This was refuted by Emeritus Professor Colin Hughes, a former Australian Electoral Commissioner, who noted in a parliamentary inquiry submission that “the statutory period set in 1983 did no more than regularise what had previously been unchallenged practice … prior to 1983 there was always a period of some days, usually more than seven, between the announcement of polling day and the close of the rolls at 6pm on the day the writs were issued”. The 1983 amendment was prompted by Malcolm Fraser’s opportunistic failure to observe an existing convention (a habit of his) at that year’s double dissolution election, when he advised the Governor-General to issue the writs at the earliest opportunity so Labor would not have time to replace Bill Hayden with Bob Hawke – which unbeknownst to him had already happened. According to Labor Senator John Faulkner (though I hesitate to take his word for it), this caused “complete pandemonium right across the length and breadth of Australia” on polling day.

Tighter proof of identity requirements. Enrolling voters must now prove their identity by providing a drivers’ licence or, failing that, a “prescribed identity document” or, failing that, a form signed by two witnesses who are not related to the enroller, who have known him or her for longer than a month, and who can confirm their own identity with a drivers’ licence number. Voters casting provisional votes will be required to provide a drivers’ licence or prescribed identity document by the Friday after polling day. Given the paucity of genuine concerns about vote fraud (more from the AEC, who should know: “It has been concluded by every parliamentary and judicial inquiry into the conduct of federal elections, since the AEC was established as an independent statutory authority in 1984, that there has been no widespread or organised attempt to defraud the electoral system”), it’s hard to see why these changes were necessary. It has been argued that the greatest impact will be on aboriginal and itinerant voters, and it will accordingly provide marginal benefit to the Coalition.

Higher threshold for declaring political donations. This has been brazenly lifted from $1500 to $10,000, which has been partly justified on the grounds that the existing figure has been locked in place since 1983. The $10,000 figure will henceforth be indexed to the inflation rate. As several speakers noted in the Senate, $1500 in 1983 only equals $3400 in today’s money. The disparity is justified with reference to the equivalent figures in New Zealand ($A8,500) and Britain ($A12,200). But as Labor Senator Anne McEwen argued, both countries impose campaign spending limits on parties and candidates, which do not apply in Australia. Even more importantly, the threshold only applies to any given state or territory party branch, so it is possible to make nine secret donations to the ALP totalling just under $90,000. This is even better for the Coalition as donations can be made to eight Liberal and six Nationals branches (the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party having recently merged with the Nationals so it could preserve benefits that stood to be lost following Senator Julian McGauran’s defection to the Liberal Party).

Increased tax deductibility of political donations. As if the above weren’t bad enough, much of the influence being purchased will be paid for out of your pocket. Previously, individuals making donations to political parties of up to $100 could claim it as a tax deduction, no different from if they were donating to charity. Not only has that figure been lifted to $1,500, the deduction will now also apply to companies as well as individuals. It is expected that this measure will cost the taxpayer $5 million at the next election.

Extension of the definition of an ‘associated entity’. An associated entity is “an entity controlled by, or operating wholly or to a significant extent for the benefit of, one or more registered political parties”, which are required to lodge financial disclosure returns to the AEC. The controversy surrounding the “Australians for Honest Politics” trust, through which Tony Abbott and others assisted legal actions against Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, hinged on whether it constituted an associated entity and was thus obliged to disclose its backers. The AEC’s verdict was that it did not.

Temporary deregistration of minor political parties. Parties that have never been represented in federal parliament will be deregistered and required to register again under the “current requirements in the Electoral Act”, which now include measures preventing “misleading party names”. This is apparently aimed specifically at Liberals for Forests (who would prefer to be spelt all in lower-case letters, but can go to hell as far as I’m concerned), whom the Coalition blames for Larry Anthony’s defeat in Richmond.

Higher deposits for nomination. They were bound to get something right. Previously, candidates were required to place a deposit of $350 for the House of Representatives or $700 for the Senate, to be redeemed only if they scored more than 4 per cent of the vote. These sums have been raised to $500 and $1000 respectively. Anything that reduces the number of nutters running at elections is fine by me – they should have upped the vote threshold as well.

Removal of prisoners’ right to vote. This previously applied only to those serving sentences of three years or more, but will now apply to anyone in full-time detention. Greens Senator Kerry Nettle reckons it “perhaps the most appalling and draconian proposal in this legislation”. I can’t get quite so excited personally, and I suspect most prisoners can’t either.

UPDATE (25/6/06): Mr Mumble joins in with the consensus view outlined above: “Both sides of Australian politics believe that if lots of members of certain groups – young, in jail, don’t always have a drivers’ licence handy, change residence a lot or live overseas – drop (or stay) off the electoral roll, the net beneficiary will be the Coalition. And they’re right.” But interestingly, Graeme Orr in comments is not so sure. If he’s right, it would not be the first time a party’s attempt to skew the electoral system in its favour backfired. Elsewhere, Alan Ramsey cuts and pastes highlights from Robert Ray’s Senate speech into a Sydney Morning Herald op-ed piece, and is paid for it.

Till death us do part

It’s been a long-standing article of faith at this site that Queensland state politics will be dominated by Labor until the Liberals elbow the Nationals aside and assume their rightful place as the senior coalition partner. But given the Nationals’ use of their institutional dominance to defend the status quo, it was hard to see how this was supposed to happen. For this and other reasons, the news that the two parties have been engaged in two weeks of secret merger negotiations has come as a profound shock.

The Nationals’ seniority in the Queensland Coalition is a legacy of circumstances that have ceased to apply: the state’s traditionally decentralised population, the rural malapportionment that was abolished when Labor came to power in 1989, and the personality cult of Joh Bjelke-Petersen. The first of these factors is disappearing due to the prolonged boom in the urban south-east, where the population has grown 65 per cent in the past 20 years, from 1.7 million to 2.8 million. This is double the rate of growth in the rest of the state, where the population has risen from 900,000 to 1.2 million in the same period. Just as significantly, the growth in the south-east has been largely driven by interstate migration, which has drawn in voters who have no historical affinity with the Nationals. These newcomers have erased the memory of Bjelke-Petersen’s great political successes: his incursion into suburban Brisbane at the 1983 and 1986 elections, and his maintenance of the National/Country Party stranglehold on the Gold Coast despite the area’s post-war urbanisation.

As a result, the urban branch of conservative politics is becoming more important to the Coalition’s electoral prospects with every passing year. But this has not been reflected in the parties’ representation in parliament, where the Nationals have maintained the greater numbers throughout the electoral convulsions of the post-Fitzgerald era. In large part, this is the result of a vicious cycle in which the Liberals suffer electorally because they are seen as subordinate to their country partners, who have the advantage of a support base in areas impervious to challenge from Labor. This has deprived the Liberals of bargaining power in the important negotations to determine which seats are contested by which party. Such agreements are necessary because Queensland’s system of optional preferential voting does not compel voters to direct preferences, making three-cornered contests lethal for the Coalition. These agreements continue to freeze the Liberals out of important seats in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast, despite their overwhelming dominance there at the federal level.

The attraction of a merger is that it resolves these problems without demanding a surrender from the Nationals, whose state parliamentary leader will remain as Leader of the Opposition (though Graham Young at National Forum notes that the move will “structurally mean the dissolution of the Queensland National Party, with its assets and members being transferred to the Liberal Party”). But the effective disappearance of the Nationals also raises serious electoral problems that may yet queer the deal. Not for the first time in Australian political history, it became fashionable a few months back to talk of the Nationals’ impending demise following Victorian Senator Julian McGauran’s defection to the Liberals. I wasn’t persuaded then and I’m still not now. The urban/rural divide is the most important cleavage in Australian electoral politics and probably always will be, owing to Australia’s unique concentration of people and power in a small number of state capitals. Country voters have never been willing to suffer representatives they perceive as subordinate to the dominant city interests, and they are not about to start doing so now for the sake of Coalition unity. Their desire for a distinct voice will continue to find expression in one way or another, and the Liberal Party would be better off having it harnessed by a coalition partner than surrendering it to external forces.

I don’t think Peter Beattie meant to be helpful in saying so, but he hit the nail on the head with his assessment (as quoted in the Courier-Mail) that a merger “would spark the re-emergence of One Nation-style parties and independents”, who would exploit the perception that the Nationals had “sold out the bush”. Not surprisingly, this point is well understood by the Prime Minister, who the Courier-Mail reports is “yet to be convinced about the merits of a merger and may seek to oppose it”. If he does so, things could get very messy very quickly – so much so that Graham Young raises the possibility of Peter Beattie cashing in on the turmoil with a snap election.

UPDATE: Graham Young reports that the “New Queensland Liberal Party” “appears to be still-born”.