Time for a new thread. For the want of anything better to hang it off, I hereby reprint my piece in Crikey last week on prospects for the Senate. This does not mean discussion on this thread need be relevant to this topic.
Like so much else this year, speculation about the Senate election has been guided by “the narrowing”: that mystical force that would drive swinging voters to the Coalition once the campaign focused minds on economic management. It’s now clear to all but a dwindling band of die-hards that this hasn’t happened and isn’t about to.
It is thus necessary to revise the view that the Coalition will be strong enough in the Senate to make life difficult for an incoming Rudd Government. The Liberals and Nationals instead find themselves in danger of losing a swag of seats, which opens up a dizzying range of possibilities for the Greens.
A case in point is Kerry Nettle’s bid for re-election in New South Wales. Earlier in the year it seemed safe to assume there would be a traditional three-all split between left and right, with Nettle fighting a probably losing battle with Labor’s number three, Senator Ursula Stephens. In that context, any improvement in the Labor vote would have been damaging for Nettle. Now it seems Labor might be strong enough to win Stephens a seat without excluding Nettle, perhaps even bequeathing her a measurable surplus as preferences. That would boost Nettle’s chances of overtaking and defeating the Coalition’s third candidate, Senator Marise Payne.
The story is similar in Victoria, given that Labor and the Democrats have thought better of repeating their 2004 preference exchanges with Family First (who nonetheless have a vague chance if they can match their vote at the state election).
There has been a further stroke of good fortune for the Greens with the entry of independent Nick Xenophon in South Australia. Such is Xenophon’s popularity that he looks likely not only to win a quota in his own right, but also to deliver the Greens a substantial surplus. This could help their candidate Sarah Hanson-Young overcome the third Labor candidate, Cathy Perry.
Bob Brown should have no trouble winning a seat in Tasmania, the question being how the remaining five seats will divide between Labor and Liberal. There is familiar talk that Brown might do well enough to also carry running mate Andrew Wilkie over the line, but this at least seems a little too optimistic.
The two states where Labor’s strength does not help the Greens are Western Australia and Queensland. Western Australia does not look likely to produce the huge swing required to cost the Liberals a third seat, so a strong hike in the Labor vote has the potential to squeeze out the Greens. Nonetheless, their candidate Scott Ludlam remains the firm favourite.
Labor is also becoming hopeful of winning a third seat in Queensland, which it has never done before at a six-seat half-Senate election. On the other side of the ledger, there is a chance that the Coalition will lose the seat of Nationals Senator Ron Boswell to Family First, who will harness the entire right-of-centre vote if they get ahead of Pauline Hanson. It’s hard to see how Hanson herself could put a quota together, despite all that has been written about her minor successes in preference negotiations.
The remaining wild card is the Australian Capital Territory, where Greens candidate Kerrie Tucker threatens an historic win at the expense of Liberal incumbent Gary Humphries. This would be especially significant because territory Senators’ terms are tied to the House of Representatives, so that an end to the Coalition’s absolute majority would take effect immediately.
While it is likely that not all of these potential Greens wins will come off, they will probably have around five Senators joining the two continuing from the 2004 election, to be joined on the cross benches by Nick Xenophon and continuing Family First Senator Steve Fielding. The Coalition will be reduced from its current majority of 39 seats out of 76 to around 35, while Labor should increase its current 28 seats by four.
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Election 2007 Play List (In no particular order)
Express yourself, Eric B and Rakim
Another one bites the dust, Queen
The final countdown, Europe
Wont get fooled again, The Who
Blue sky mine, Midnight Oil
Should I stay or should I go, The Clash
Changes, David Bowie
Gone daddy gone, Violent Femes
One angry dwarf and 200 solemn faces, Ben Folds Five
Power in a union, Billy Bragg
Killing in the name, Rage Against the Machine
Bottom Line, Big Audio Dynamite
From little things big things grow, Paul Kelly
Beautiful day, U2
Am I ever gonna see your face again, The Angels (including the extra lyrics)
And finally….
Non, je ne regrette rien, The immortal Edith Piaf
For all the Greens talk about how big and bad Labor is, could the irony be that Labor ends up delivering the Greens a meaningful parliamentary presence?
cityblue it works both ways
Costello made an announcement today saying that Labor’s policy costing would not be available until at least Friday if at all – due to Kevin Rudd being a sneak.
But this was overshadowed by the “ineligable 13″ story revealed by Robb at the same press conference.
Are the Libs really trying to win this election at all?
Please, no more “yay me first” type comments.
NB…
I rather like Alan Parsons..
eye in the sky
turn of a friendly card
Or if you like an excuse to annoy the neighbors..
Frida – theres something going on. (on repeat)
Hey William. just some friendly advice from someone who runs a number of bandwidth-hungry servers in both Oz and the US
I don’t know how much control you have over the way your blog works, but I think it would be a good idea to remove the “Show All” link you have in each thread as it mean a ridiculous amount of traffic every time some moron refreshes the page (if they are in that view).
For example, your Galaxy: 52-48 in “marginals” thread, expanded to show all 10 pages, is a whopping 600K+ in size – imagine that page being refreshed several times, by several people, over and over…
Just a thought….
You shameless cheat NB! Repeating your previous post – tisk tisk.
cityblue what if green prefs get labor over the line in bennelong, nth sydney, and wentworth? will you be chuffed or what?
cityblue: ALP winning many lower house seats will be largely assisted by the greens.
Its a win win for both.
Not sure I know how to do that George, but I’ll look into it. Would anyone know how to tinker with my paged comments plugin so it doesn’t take you back to page one when you submit a comment?
You’ll notice William that I wasn’t expecting to be first – I was just wondering what it would be like.
Ineligibility debacle leading on 5pm ABC news
Kevin Rudd brands Peter Costello a ‘right wing radical’ (news radio). Um.. so er.. whats new?
I doubt they expect the ALP to pick up second ACt senate spot. It looks like they just did a google search and listed anyone who’s name hadn’t been take off governmental websites, pretty weak.
Jude,
I’m egotistical to think that it’s actually a nice theme, although others are free to disagree. So I repeated it because I didn’t want it to get lost at the end of the last thread. Again, sorry William I know we’re eating your bandwidth.
The only reason the Libs pulled this stunt was to get Downer and the AWB affair off the front bench.
Dirty dirty politics.
what about cricket?, should customise a cricket ball with bushy eyebrows.
front bench = front page
The problem for the Libs is that most people have no idea how our electoral system works. So saying a candidate is ineligible will mean jack squat to these people. Too technical and as boring as all get out. You might as well rabbit on about party factions for all the good it does.
ABC radio BrisVegas.
All ALP candidates have resigned positions and they are all proper.
21 – That will make Robb look a goose.
More unsolicited advice from Alexander. I suppose in his next life he could write a book of etiquette:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22790661-12377,00.html
William I was wondering that myself – going back to page 1 gives me the shits but i thought it was me and my slow machine
I think a bit of silliness and light heartedness is a good thing on a blog like this.
Gary @20
People are so p#issed off with elections that the prospect of a by-election, no matter how fanciful, could make them vote for candidte who will stay his/her term.
21 hope that is correct. If so, I’m upping my prediction to 90, and pleading with Gillard to say, “Right enough of playing nice f***knuckes, lets spell out some ome truths…
Has anyone done the latest GG/Online Opinion poll? Someone in there must have a sense of humour, one of the questions asks you to describe what kind of dog both Howard and Rudd would be if they were dogs, and why….
25 Mad Cow I think thats what makes this site work – I dont comment much though – I like to watch
ruawake, got a link?
Like many Libs, he actually doesn’t require any external assistance for that.
#21
When is this going to hit the front pages of news ltd? Rudd needs to get all over this NOW (any ALP staffers reading please get the campaign team onto it).
cb, it wouldn’t surprise me if William is a bit short on sleep at this moment. Makes me nervous to comment on the blog itself (duck).
I think the worst case for the Libs with this stunt is that it becomes their Ralph Willis moment.
Sorry I will be off-topic but everytime a post is placed on this blog it gets 100 responses within a minute. So I’ll try to be one of the first.
Let’s first introduce myself. I migrated from Italy, joined the Australian Labor Party in 1982 and did not renew my membership in 2005. This was a combination of my anger that Labor did not counteract Howard on the Tampa in 2001, my disinchantment with Australia generally after the above mentioned Tampa, 9/11 etc and the associated islamophobia etc. and the fact that I had a young family and I did not have the time to devote to political activities.
I still remained an ALP voter. I guess my political beliefs would be closer to the Greens but I somewhat got a bit annoyed at they holier-than-thou attitude.
I will be voting ALP for the House of Representatives and Green for the Senate. Living in one of the safest Labor seats in the country (Batman) it doesn’t really matter.
However, I am not an Howard hater. I think that he really believes that his actions are the best for Australia. I believe that on that account he is genuine, and in a sense this is what it makes it so sad that when we were on a path of becoming a forward looking country, he dragged us back by limiting our horizons – and many Australians agreed with him.
I am also alarmed by the chortling and gloating that many contributors have done here over the past few months based on the polls.
I fear that if Howard wins on Saturday (which is still a possibility) many of you will be so shattered after believing so firmly for such a long time that Howard would be tossed out. I hope you can take it on the chin. It will be really disappointing but life goes on. There are things beside politics.
Australia has a fantastic environment. Just its skies are beautiful. Should the result not go our way. Just wake up on Sunday. Avoid all media (especially The Australian!) and look upwards and take a big breath.
It still nice living here.
26 Chris – I’m not convinced they would change their vote for that reason. I have no evidence one way or the other, but I’m not convinced of that argument.
William, have you considered setting up an IRC channel somewhere for election night so that the site doesn’t melt down?
35 But Robb obvoiusly thinks it’s worth a go.
very good idea Dave
ABC Radio PM show are leading with Workchoices Mark 2 cover up.
This made my heart sink a little…. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22791429-5013871,00.html
When the Greens hold the balance of power in the Senate and Labor’s getting frustrated that they can’t pass their “slightly-less-WorkChoices-ish” IR legislation, this statement is going to come back to haunt them. Especially seeing as the Greens are much less inclined to compromise than the Dems were over the GST for eg.
That Downer, what a d1ck
Looks like little Lexy may save the day after all.
“Mr Downer says he wants the 16 countries at the meeting, including China and India, to sign an agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“If we can get their agreement to energy intensity improvements, that is using energy more efficiently, if we can get their agreement to greater efforts in the area of reforestation, that would be a great achievement, that would be enormously important,” he said.
I can imagine him running back on his widdle fat legs saying ” You don’t have to vote us out , look look what we have, we’re green, we’re green, we believe, we believe.”
Its all the fault of the voters! heh
mc – I haven’t slept much this week and am a nervous wreck – god knows what William’s doing – I can’t even get a rational argument happening with myself – optimism level – ahhhhhh 60% – wringing hands
My campaign video playlist:
The sounds of silence (After John Howard)
The Party’s Over (The Party’s Over)
Forgotten Years (not, not… responsible)
Bright Side of Life (Dead Parrots Society)
For light relief and some serious satire: “Labor View from Broome’
37 Chris – desperation will do that to you. For this to work at all the allegation must be substantiated or you look tricky and this government doesn’t need another example of looking tricky.
Great question Dave, I have begun preliminary inquiries into doing just that. However, I am a complete babe in the woods when it comes to this kind of thing, so I would love to hear from anyone who has any expertise in this area. Email me at pollbludger – AT – bigpond – DOT – com.
Penny Wong demolished the Robb claim on 10 News. Robb looked flustered and uncertain – as though he was not really believing what he was saying.
I posted this on Possum Comitatus:
From the reporting, all that I can see is that the LNP has collected together a list of 13 candidates who were previously public servants. That’s all. They have taken George Newhouse’s situation and then said that “it might be possible” that the other candidates are in the same situation. The legal advice appears to pertain to the question of whether a by-election would have to be held if a candidate were found to have failed to resign in time. Well derrrr. We knew that a by-election was an inevitable result of such a finding.
See how slippery this is? No proof, just an assertion that they were public servants, therefore they may be in the same situation as the dill in Wentworth. They don’t actually have the proof at present that those 13 candidates have failed to resign. So the candidates are now being forced to come out and say they are okay, thereby distracting us from the IR referendum (oops sorry the election).
It may backfire on them actually – just heard the Victorian candidate on ABC 774 – great! 13 candidates, otherwise undistinguished, going on the media to confirm what great candidates they are!!
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