The Poll Bludger

Stuck for a title for a new open thread, I thought I’d revive a beloved old brand name (royalties still owing to Adam Carr). You might like to discuss:

• The Australian statsmeister George Megalogenis‘s rundown on Mal Brough’s semi-rural Queensland seat of Longman. Megalogenis also elaborates upon his earlier identification of single mothers as an important demographic. The top 30 list for this group includes Wakefield (SA, Liberal 0.7%), Cowper (NSW, Nationals 6.5%), Lindsay (NSW, Liberal 2.9%), Dobell (NSW, Liberal 4.8%), Solomon (NT, CLP 2.9%), Page (NSW, Nationals 5.5%), Robertson (NSW, Liberal 6.9%), Kingston (SA, Liberal 0.1%) and Bass (Tas, Liberal 2.7%). Well down the order are Bennelong (number 119) and Wentworth (number 139).

• Bowman MP Andrew Laming and Moreton MP Gary Hardgrave getting tetchy about the six months taken by the Australian Federal Police and Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to resolve whether charges will be laid against them over the “printgate” affair (also of interest to Bonner MP Ross Vasta). The Courier-Mail ran an editorial criticising the AFP’s tardiness on this front way back on June 19.

• Still in Queensland, Possum Comitatus’s adventurous analysis of the safe Liberal (or is it?) Gold Coast seat of McPherson.

Professor David Flint, national convenor of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy and former chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, offered an eyebrow-raising assessment of the state of Australian democracy in yesterday’s subscriber-only Crikey email. Things started innocuously enough, with Flint making the perfectly sound argument that too much is read into opinion polls in this country (see below). He then made a strange insinuation that Galaxy had slanted its recent Bennelong poll in favour of Labor, but I was willing to let that one go. Then came this line of inquiry:

And how do the pollsters measure the impact of fraudulent voting? Redesigned late last century allegedly to “make voting easier”, the system is still wide open to fraud, even if closing the polls early will reduce fraudulent registrations.

Got that everybody? In John Howard’s Australia, electoral fraud is so out of hand it has a measurable impact on the parties’ shares of the aggregate national vote. This problem is on a scale sufficient to raise questions about opinion poll methodology, so we’re not just talking preselection shenanigans of the kind unearthed by the Shepherdson inquiry. On even the most conservative of interpretations, Flint must mean that well over 100,000 votes are being rorted at each election in favour of one party over the other. None of this has raised a peep from the Australian Electoral Commission, the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters or the Court of Disputed Returns – not to mention the parties themselves, one of which has a right to feel greatly aggrieved. Which is the culprit, one wonders, and which the victim? Well, the whole point of Flint’s article is that there is reason to think Labor will not do as well at the election as the polls suggest. So obviously this renowned crusader for the conservative cause has his finger pointed firmly at the Coalition.

I’m hearing it, but not quite yet believing it – Labor’s Newspoll lead has apparently widened to a breathtaking 59-41 (from 55-45 last time). Details to follow as they come to hand.

UPDATE: Kevin Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister has increased from 46-39 to 48-37.

UPDATE 2: Comments thread rumours tell of a Labor primary vote of 51 per cent, against 37 per cent for the Coalition.

‘Twas the night before Newspoll, and a new open thread was stirring.

Based around Penrith 50 kilometres west of Sydney, Lindsay was created with the expansion of parliament in 1984 to accommodate growth in the city’s outer west. It currently extends into conservative semi-rural territory to the north (Castlereagh and Llandilo) and south (Mulgoa and Orchard Hills), but most of the voters come from an urban concentration around Penrith. This area is stronger for the Liberals in the south and west (Glenmore Park and Emu Plains respectively) and for Labor in the east (Werrington). Before Lindsay was created, Penrith had shifted from Macquarie to Mitchell to Chifley, the general area becoming progressively stronger for Labor as it became more urbanised after the war. Lindsay had a notional Labor margin of 12.3 per cent when it was created, and the area remains a happy hunting ground for the party at state level: the corresponding seats are held by margins of 7.0 per cent (Londonderry), 9.2 per cent (Penrith) and 10.9 per cent (Mulgoa). My 2004 election booth result and swing maps for the electorate can be viewed at Crikey.

Labor’s Ross Free held Lindsay by margins of around 10 per cent throughout the Hawke-Keating years, having previously been member for Macquarie from 1980. He was most unpleasantly surprised to find himself voted out in 1996, following an epochal 11.9 per cent swing to Liberal candidate Jackie Kelly. Free was able to secure a re-match because Kelly, who did not expect to win, had failed to get her affairs in order before nominating (she was still serving as an RAAF officer, an “office for profit under the Crown”). Voters dragged back to the polls on a technicality rewarded Free with a further 6.8 per cent drop in the primary vote, and Kelly picked up another 5.0 per cent on two-party preferred. The combined 16.9 per cent swing to the Liberals meant the electorate’s demographic profile came to be seen as typifying John Howard’s constituency – high numbers of skilled workers on good incomes, low levels of tertiary education and a distinctly less multicultural flavour than suburbs closer to the city. Kelly was able to limit the Labor swing in 1998 to 0.3 per cent, one of a number of decisive marginal seat outcomes that ensured the return of the Howard government from a minority of the two-party vote. This secured Kelly’s status as a prime ministerial favourite, helping her win promotion to the position of Sport and Tourism Minister. Many thought this to be beyond her competence, and she did not return to the ministry after leaving it while pregnant immediately after the 2001 election. She nonetheless continued to perform well electorally, picking up a 2.4 per cent swing in 2001 and almost holding even in 2004.

Two events during the current term have given good cause to think that Lindsay might finally return to Labor at the coming election. The first was the unveiling of new electoral boundaries last July, which added Labor-voting St Marys, Oxley Park and Colyton in the east from Chifley, and transferred Liberal-leaning Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains foothills to Macquarie in the west. These changes cut the Liberal margin from 5.3 per cent to 2.9 per cent. The second came in May when Kelly announced her intention to retire, much to the Prime Minister’s dismay. Kelly immediately named Penrith councillor Mark Davies as her preferred successor, but he evidently found little support from the party. The Prime Minister and the Right faction hoped to enlist Penrith Panthers recruitment manager Peter Mulholland, but their approach was declined. The nomination instead went to Kelly’s electorate officer Karen Chijoff (right), who picked up a 6 per cent swing as candidate for Mulgoa at the March state election.

Labor’s candidate for the third successive election is David Bradbury (left), Blake Dawson Waldron lawyer, Penrith councillor and former mayor, who for all his campaign experience is still only 31. Bradbury was installed as candidate by the national executive using the power the national conference granted it in April to determine preselections in sensitive seats. This displeased the National Union of Workers, said by a number of sources to have been marshalling forces for union official Mark Ptolemy – although Brad Norington of The Australian reported in May that it was in fact backing Ptolemy’s fiancee, 23-year-old school teacher May Hayek. Ptolemy was Labor’s candidate for Macquarie in 2004, and turned his attention to Lindsay when it became clear the Macquarie nomination would go to Bob Debus. Norington reported the conflict in terms of a split in the Right, with Bradbury having “historical links” to the Transport Workers Union.

Roy Morgan’s fortnightly face-to-face poll comes in at the lower end of market expectations for Labor, whose two-party lead has narrowed to 54.5-45.5 from 58.5-41.5 a fortnight ago. Labor’s primary vote is down from 49.5 per cent to 46 per cent, and the Coalition’s up from 36.5 per cent to 41 per cent. This is from a sample of 1271 voters, which is unusually small for a Morgan face-to-face.

On my list of concerns about the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Electoral Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2006, the removal of the vote from prisoners serving full-time detention ranked pretty low. Nonetheless, the measure’s disproportionate impact on the Aboriginal population gave it an unpleasant edge, so there is good reason to be pleased with the High Court’s decision to strike it down (Brian Costar of the Swinburne University of Technology offers a more sophisticated critique of its jurisprudential shortcomings). The case was brought by Vickie Lee Roach, an Aboriginal woman serving a six-year sentence in Victoria for burglary and recklessly causing serious injury, with the support of former Federal Court judge Ron Merkel. The reasons for the court’s decision will not be published for several months, but are known to revolve around the constitution’s requirement that MPs be “chosen directly by the people”, and to have been influenced by similar rulings in Canada and South Africa.

Women inmates debate the merits of the single transferable vote

For most of the federal parliament’s history, prisoners were disqualified from voting if serving an offence punishable by imprisonment for one year or longer. This was eventually relaxed to five years or longer in 1983, then to apply only to prisoners serving terms of five years or longer in 1995. The Howard government first attempted to introduce a blanket ban before the 2004 election, but were only able to persuade the Senate to reduce the required sentence from five years to three years. A few years earlier, Poll Bludger regular Graeme Orr calculated that the government’s proposal would have increased the number of prisoners affected from around 11,000 to 17,875; my own back-of-an-envelope calculation suggests the Senate’s amendment reduced this to about 14,500 (Graeme will no doubt correct me if I am wrong). Then came what Nationals Senator Ron Boswell unwisely but accurately described as “open slather” following the Coalition’s Senate election triumph in 2004. The effect of the High Court ruling is to restore the previously existing three-year sentence limit.

UPDATE: A good assessment of the judgement and the whole “chosen directly by the people” thorny potato from Ken Parish at Club Troppo.

My ongoing effort to spice up the election guide with preselection argybargy has recently led me into the quagmire of Cook, where the Liberals finally settled on a candidate last Thursday after months of factional brawling. The drama began in April when Bruce Baird, who turns 66 in February, announced he would not seek another term. A former minister in the Greiner-Fahey state government, Baird had himself come to Cook in eventful circumstances. He was installed as a compromise candidate in 1998 after one-term member Stephen Mutch was challenged by Mark Speakman, a local barrister who had been best man at Mutch’s wedding eight years earlier. Baird’s nomination was a victory for his moderate faction over a member described by Irfan Yusuf as a “small ‘c’ conservative”. The demise of Mutch did not please the Prime Minister, who pointedly failed to promote Baird at any point in his nine years in Canberra. It also did not help that Baird was close to Peter Costello, and was spoken of as his potential deputy when fanciful leadership speculation emerged in early 2001.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Baird’s retirement was influenced by the prospect of a preselection challenge from the Right, which was exerting growing control over the Cronulla and Miranda branches. There had already been talk Baird would be succeeded by Scott Morrison (right), former state party director and managing director of Tourism Australia. Morrison left the latter position last year after a falling out with Tourism Minister Fran Bailey; a travel industry news site talks of rumours the Prime Minister promised Morrison support in Cook as “payback” for agreeing to go quietly. According to Steve Lewis in The Australian, Morrison boasted “glowing references from a who’s who of Liberal luminaries, including Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, former Liberal president Shane Stone, Howard’s long-time chief of staff Arthur Sinodinos, and Nick Minchin, the Finance Minister and another close ally of Howard”. However, it quickly became clear that such support would not avail him without the backing of the Right. Unfortunately for Morrison, much of the Right’s local strength was achieved by courting energetic local numbers man Michael Towke, who was himself intent on running. Imre Salusinsky of The Australian reported that Morrison was further starved of support when the Left resolved to resist Towke by digging in behind its own candidate, Optus executive Paul Fletcher.

Towke went on to defeat Fletcher in the final round by 82 votes to 70, with Morrison finishing well back in a field that included PBL executive David Coleman (who had the backing of Left-aligned state party president Geoff Selig), economic consultant Peter Tynan, 2004 Barton candidate Bruce Morrow and the aforementioned Mark Speakman. Towke’s success over what Imre Salusinszky of The Australian described as “a Rolls-Royce field of candidates” enraged opponents of the Right’s growing ascendancy, and doubts soon emerged as to whether the party’s state executive would ratify his nomination. Allegations of wide-ranging branch-stacking activities soon filled the media, as did reports of extravagant claims in his CV concerning his barely-existent security business. Towke had also said he had quit the ALP at the age of 18, but “other documents” emerged to suggest he was a member at 23. There was also talk of a whispering campaign surrounding Towke’s Lebanese heritage (his surname is a recently adopted Anglicisation of Taouk), and how this would play in the white-bread electorate that played host to the 2005 Cronulla riots. With the Prime Minister’s voice joining the anti-Towke chorus, the 22-member state executive voted to remove him by 11 votes to nine, with two abstentions.

This did not resolve the issue of Right control of local branches, which would still have been the decisive factor in any straight preselection re-match. It was reported that the seat was set to go to state upper house MP Marie Ficarra, a close ally of Right powerbroker and fellow MLC David Clarke. Ficarra’s Legislative Council vacancy would in turn be filled by Scot MacDonald, the party’s rural vice-president. MacDonald’s nomination for Senate preselection earlier in the year was rejected by the party’s nomination review committee, a body designed to vet candidates on grounds of character or ethics. This decision was reportedly prompted by Senator Bill Heffernan’s fierce lobbying at the direction of the Prime Minister, who wished to protect Left faction incumbent Marise Payne. However, Towke instead agreed to a deal in which a new preselection process would involve only those who had nominated the first time around, in return for the dropping of disciplinary action against him (which perversely enabled him to sit on the preselection panel).

The new preselection saw Morrison defeat Peter Tynan by 26 votes to 14, from a panel consisting of 26 representatives of local branches and 17 of the state executive. Imre Salusinszky reported that Morrison owed his win to Right delegates from the executive who persuaded local branch delegates to fall behind him. Fletcher and Speakman withdrew at the last minute, while Morrow ran but failed to secure any votes.