The Poll Bludger

Denison essentially covers all of Hobart west of the Derwent River, plus some hinterland beyond. It is the strongest electorate in the state for the Greens, having elected Bob Brown at the 1986 election and returned the party’s only member at the 1998 election, when representation was first reduced from seven members per electorate to five. The electorate also produced Tasmania’s only state Democrats MP when Norm Saunders (who later became a Senator) won a seat in 1980 and retained it in 1982. The former election was another unique feature of Denison’s history, having been held after the election of three Labor members from 1979 was ruled invalid due to breaches of a silly rule capping campaign expenditure at a mere $1500, which had hitherto been politely ignored. This led directly to the introduction of Tasmania’s joyous system of Robson rotation, which ought to be the envy of the democratic world. Wayne Crawford explained the episode thus in The Mercury in 2002:

Labor had held a conference on the West Coast to officially endorse its candidates for the by-election. The Left faction in control of the party decided to run a how-to-vote ticket in the poll and endorsed northern suburbs Left-wing lawyer John Green at the top; fellow Denison MHA and Deputy Premier and Treasurer Neil Batt – then also a federal heavyweight as the party’s national president – was put No 4 on the ticket, which he took as a snub, given his seniority … Originally, the order of candidates’ names on ballot papers was alphabetical. Thus, because of the "donkey vote" (by which many electors simply chose their favoured party and voted straight down the list) the House was full of people whose names began with A, B and C. When I started covering Parliament in the late 1960s, 15 MHAs (of the 35) had names beginning with A, B or C.

For years, a Liberal MHA for Bass, former Launceston banker Neil Robson (an intelligent man and a member of Mensa, the organisation for people with very high IQs) had been arguing for a system of "rotating" the order of names on ballot papers to give all candidates a share of "favoured" positions – that is, positions at the top or bottom of the paper or positions under well-known or popular candidates … and for years he had been dismissed (not only by Labor but by members of his own party) as "the mad professor". After the Left’s perceived snub to Batt in the lead-up to the 1980 by-election, Robson, as he recalls, abruptly went from "mad professor" to "man of vision". The government suddenly saw the wisdom of his system as a means of trumping the Left’s how-to-vote ticket. Under the Robson system, a how-to-vote card would be worthless because it would be nothing like the ballot papers, which would be printed in batches of many various forms and shuffled.

The upshot of the February 1980 by-election was that Green lost his seat and Neil Batt topped the poll (helped by not only Lowe but also Bob Hawke, then ACTU president, campaigning for him).

As the chart below indicates, the emergence of the Greens initiated a period of electoral stability that ended with the Liberals’ calamitous performance at the 2002 election, at which Bob Cheek became the first Tasmanian party leader since 1903 to lose his seat. His personal vote fell to 7.7 per cent from 12.9 per cent at the previous election – still the highest vote for a Liberal candidate, but preferences from Liberal supporters as well as opponents pushed veteran Michael Hodgman ahead of him.

Labor’s electoral slate has been wiped clean by the exit of Jim Bacon, who polled a massive 35.5 per cent in his own right in 2002. Most of his preferences went to the other senior member in the electorate, Attorney-General Judy Jackson, who surprised many when she announced her retirement last year. The dearth of established sitting members led to talk that the void might be filled by local federal MP Duncan Kerr, whose plans to move to state politics at the 2002 election were scotched by then Labor leader Simon Crean (who feared a repeat of the Cunningham by-election). Labor’s sitting members are the two candidates who fought it out for Labor’s third seat in 2002 – the eventual winner, Graeme Sturges, and David Bartlett, who entered parliament through the recount held when Jim Bacon quit due to terminal ill-health in early 2004. Sturges is a member of the Left faction and is rated by Sue Neales of The Mercury as the only Labor member certain to hold his seat, on the grounds that he is "regarded as an outstanding member representing local constituents". Bartlett is a former IT worker for the state Treasury, who copped flak during the last election campaign after he put his computer skills to use by spamming local constituents. He is thought to face a tougher assignment than Sturges, as is often the case with members elected at mid-term recounts.

Bartlett faces what Sue Neales of The Mercury describes as "two high-profile and younger female candidates" who "have been keenly headhunted to fill the gap left by long-term fixture Ms Jackson". They are Tasmanian Small Business Council president Louise Sullivan (whose preselection appeared in doubt when Labor Left union official and state executive member Nicole Wells refused to endorse it in December 2005 on the grounds that she was not a financial member of the party) and Lisa Singh, a manager for Arts Tasmania and a former Hobart citizen of the year. Sue Neales reported on the weekend that internal Labor polling showed Singh was likely to win at Bartlett’s expense. Also on the Labor ticket are Julie Collins, a former Labor state president who has worked as a staffer to premiers Jim Bacon and Michael Field and Senators Carol Brown and Sue Mackay, and her Left faction colleague Joe Ritchie, who is the brother of Pembroke MLC Allison Ritchie.

Justice cannot be done in the space available to the state and federal parliamentary career of Michael Hodgman QC, which goes back to 1966 when he was elected to the upper house seat of Huon. He won the federal seat of Denison from Labor at the 1975 election and held it until defeated by Duncan Kerr in 1987, before returning to state politics in 1992. Hodgman lost his seat at the 1998 election but recovered it on a recount in 2001 after the retirement of former Premier Ray Groom. He was the only Liberal to win a seat in Denison in 2002, narrowly running down party leader Bob Cheek after preferences. In his tell-all book published last year, Cheek described Hodgman as "the darling of the Sandy Bay blue rinse set" (with "more front than Dolly Parton") and said he had "entered every leadership contest state or federal, without being asked … and rarely got more than one vote". One of Hodgman’s legal clients, noted Melbourne poet Mark "Chopper" Read, forced a rhyme from his surname by rating him "a master of the legal twist/a shrewd and artful dodge-man". Now 67, he lives out his leadership ambitions vicariously through his son, Franklin MP Will Hodgman, which are likely to be realised in the not-too-distant future.

Martine Healy reported in The Mercury last year that the initial announcement of only four candidates led to speculation that a spot was being held for a high-profile recruit – believed to be "Federal Hotels spruiker" Brendan Blomeley, who in April 2005 denied reports he had been recruited by Senator Eric Abetz. The spot ended up going to Fabian Dixon, a prominent lawyer and former Law Council of Australia president. A suspiciously short time after his nomination was announced, news reports emerged of a Law Society of Tasmania investigation into Dixon over allegations of overcharging and negligence. According to The Australian, the complainant claimed Dixon had told him that the judge hearing his case, Michael Hannon, was "an ex-partner of mine and I usually get what I want from him", and said he did not inform him that Hannon was notorious for taking years to deliver judgements (although in the Poll Bludger’s experience, taking forever to achieve bugger all at ruinous expense is par for the course in the legal system). Despite this, Sue Neales of The Mercury reported on the weekend that Dixon is well in contention to win a seat, perhaps even at the expense of Hodgman.

The other fancied Liberal newcomer is Richard Lowrie, a former rugby player and manager with Incat whose father served for 18 years in the Legislative Council. Also on the ticket is Elise Archer, yet another lawyer and the wife of state party president Dale Archer. Heather Low Choy of The Mercury included Archer (along with Michael Hodgman) in a list of the ten best-dressed Tasmanians in July 2004 for her "sharply tailored professional attire with an edge" and "beautiful accessories". Blind to the precedent of Imelda Marcos, Archer unwisely nominated shoes as as her "wardrobe fetish" and confessed to having "lost count of how many pairs I have, it’s that bad". The remaining candidate is John Klonaris, a Hobart small businessman and a figure in the local Greek community.

The safest bet going in Denison is the re-election of Peg Putt, who succeeded Bob Brown as member in 1993 and single-handedly carried the party’s banner after a changed electoral system reduced it from five seats to one at the 1998 election. The Greens have long fantasised about winning two seats in Denison, but recent polling suggests this is likely to remain beyond their reach. The most fancied of their remaining candidates is Cassy O’Connor, who has attracted attention because she worked until recently as an adviser to Labor’s Duncan Kerr. This was seen to indicate that gap that has opened between the Labor Left and the party’s pro-business, pro-forestry industry state hierarchy. O’Connor earlier made herself known as the public face of a campaign against a controversial housing and marina development at Ralphs Bay east of Hobart. Writing in The Mercury, Greg Barns took her nomination to mean that Peg Putt plans to retire mid-term so that her seat, and perhaps also her party leadership, might pass on to O’Connor (at the expense of ambitious rival, Franklin MP Nick McKim). Rounding out the ticket are social worker Marrette Corby, teacher Bill Harvey and ambulance communications officer Toby Rowallan.

The electorate of Braddon covers the north-western coastal areas of Tasmania plus King Island in the Bass Strait, and is dominated by Burnie and Devonport. Smaller centres include Currie, Penguin, Savage River, Smithton, Stanley, Ulverstone, Waratah and Wynyard. This is an electorally mixed area in which timber and mining industries that traditionally provided a solid working-class base for Labor were balanced out by conservative small towns and farming districts. The economic decline that buffeted the area’s industries, along with the political upheaval caused by the Franklin Dam controversy, dramatically tilted the balance in the Liberals’ favour in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Recent years have seen a return to the good old days from Labor’s perspective, barring the 2004 federal election when a backlash against Mark Latham’s conservationist forestry policy returned the seat to the Liberals with a 7.0 per cent swing. As this result indicates, this is a relatively weak area for the Greens who have uniquely failed to win seats in the two elections held since the number of members in each electorate was cut from seven to five. It has also raised Liberal hopes that they might gain a seat from Labor, despite the lengths gone to by the state party to quarantine themselves from Latham’s policy.

As Antony Green notes, the electorate’s diversity encourages parties to "balance their tickets with candidates from different areas":

In 2002, Burnie-based MPs Steve Kons and Bryan Green pulled in most of Labor’s vote in Burnie and areas to the west, while Devonport’s Brenton Best and Mike Gaffney from Latrobe helped Labor’s vote in the east of Braddon. Based in Sassafras, Jeremy Rockliff similarly dominated the Liberal vote in the east of the electorate, while Burnie based Brett Whiteley polled well in Burnie and surrounding councils.

Bryan Green is a member of Labor’s Left faction with a background in the Forestry Union, and is reckoned by Greens leader Peg Putt to be a "dyed-in-the-wool" advocate for the industry. He assumed ministerial responsibility in this area when he was promoted from Primary Industries Minister to Infrastructure, Energy and Resources Minister in the reshuffle after Treasurer David Crean’s retirement in February 2004. Green achieved a personal victory at the 2002 election when he outpolled Steven Kons to become the electorate’s strongest performing candidate (after polling 7.3 per cent to Kons’ 17.6 per cent when both were first elected in 1998), and he was mentioned as a potential rival to Paul Lennon when talk of a leadership challenge briefly surfaced after the 2004 federal election debacle. Shortly after Jim Bacon’s retirement, Ellen Whinnett of The Mercury reported that "the generally good-humoured Green has been anointed Labor’s hard man after Paul Lennon became Premier and began to soften his image", prompting the Liberals to label Green as Labor’s "attack puppy". Whinnett listed Green’s strengths as being a "charismatic parliamentary performer, excellent public speaker (and) rising Labor star", while his weaknesses were that he was "easily provoked, prone to intemperate comments (and) perceived as unyielding".

As the mayor of Burnie, Steven Kons brought a high profile to parliament upon his election in 1998 when he achieved a quota in his own right on debut. Kons is a member of the Right faction and is known to have frosty relations with factional opponent Bryan Green – The Mercury reported in June 2004 that "it was common knowledge that before the last election, former premier Jim Bacon and his former chief of staff had spoken to the pair over their bickering". Kons was promoted to the front bench with the primary industries and water portfolio in the reshuffle that followed Treasurer David Crean’s retirement due to ill health in January 2004, which occurred a month before Jim Bacon quit in similar circumstances.

Brenton Best of the Left faction was first elected at the 1996 election with 4.4 per cent of the vote and has been a consistent improver since, lifting to 7.3 per cent in 1998 and 10.6 per cent in 2002. However, Labor’s overall strength on the latter occasion meant he only won narrowly over a party colleague, Latrobe deputy mayor Michael Gaffney. In May 2002 Best became the third Tasmanian MP in one month (after former Labor-turned independent Senator Shayne Murphy and Rumney Labor MLC Lin Thorp) to be charged with drink driving, recording a blood-alcohol reading of 0.13 after side-swiping a parked car. Labor has copped heat at Best’s end of the electorate over the removal of accident and emergency and obstetric services from Mersey Hospital; he was spared having to vote on a Liberal motion calling for their reinstatement because he was acting as Speaker due to David Polley’s absence from the chamber, a circumstance his opponents found more than a little convenient.

The newcomers on Labor’s ticket are Peter Hollister, who served as mayor of Devonport from 2002 to 2005 when he lost the position to Lynn Laycock, and Leonie Batchelor, a staffer to Senator Nick Sherry. Antony Green argues that Hollister presents a particular threat to Brenton Best, who was able to dominate the Devonport vote in 2002.

At the 2002 election, neither of the sitting Liberal members (Carole Cains and former Premier Tony Rundle) sought re-election. With the Greens failing to get a member up, they succeeded in maintaining their two seats despite a 9.2 per cent dive on the primary vote. The star performer was 32-year-old Jeremy Rockliff, whose family have been farmers in the Sassafras area for 150 years. Rockliff was the state Young Liberals president from 1994 and 1995 and now holds the shadow primary industries, water and environment and arts portfolios. He was elected with 13.1 per cent of the primary vote, by far the strongest showing of the five Liberal candidates.

The other successful Liberal candidate was Brett Whiteley, a Burnie councillor and state party vice-president, who polled 7.4 per cent. Whiteley might not have recovered from a charge laid against him for breaching the Electoral Act during the 2002 campaign, after he issued his own Liberal how-to-vote cards that listed and pictured the party candidates in his own order of preference. Defeated Liberal leader Bob Cheek later wrote that he had "never seen four men so angry" as when he discussed the matter with the other Liberal candidates, each of whom considered taking it to the Court of Disputed Returns (which was considered unlikely to succeed). Whiteley pleaded guilty and was placed on a 12 month good-behaviour bond by the court and fined $5000 by the Liberal Party, whose Devonport branch called for his expulsion. However, Ellen Whinnett of The Mercury wrote in June 2003 that his promotion from Shadow Infrastructure Minister to Shadow Police Minister followed strong parliamentary performances, and was "the clearest sign yet that he has been forgiven".

The enormous amount of adverse publicity generated by Whiteley’s bungle has created an opportunity for rivals within the party. The likeliest candidates from this remove appear to be John Oldaker, a farmer, Vietnam veteran and Circular Head councillor who polled a respectable 21.2 per cent as an independent candidate at last year’s election for the upper house seat of Murchison, and Leon Perry, a staffer to Senator Richard Colbeck who Antony Green says is "very well known in Devonport as coach of the East Devonport Swans". Rounding out the ticket is Heather Woodward, a hairdresser from Smithton (which produced the biggest anti-Labor swing of any booth in the country at the 2004 federal election).

Paul O’Halloran, an assistant principal at a Devonport college, is rated as the best chance to end the Greens’ lockout in Braddon. The ABC reports that the remaining candidates are "youth worker Scott Jordan, physiotherapist Andrea Jackson, artist Di Ransley and activist John Coombes".