A more lucid analysis will have to wait for tomorrow. For the moment I can only offer some swing breakdowns: 5.6 per cent in Sydney, 5.5 per cent in the rest of New South Wales; 5.4 per cent in Melbourne, 4.7 per cent in the rest of Victoria; 7.8 per cent in Brisbane, 8.5 per cent in the rest of Queensland; 1.4 per cent in Perth, 4.1 per cent in the rest of WA; 5.8 per cent in Adelaide, 9.2 per cent in the rest of SA (Mayo, Barker and Grey); 2.5 per cent in Tasmania; 1.7 per cent in ACT; 2.8 per cent in NT.
I think I can also manage an overview for the Senate, which has produced a surprisingly strong result for the Coalition and a number of disappointments for the Greens. Kerry Nettle is gone in NSW, with three seats each for Labor and the Coalition. It’s looking like the same result in Victoria, although Greens candidate Richard di Natale might yet take the final seat from the third Liberal candidate Scott Ryan. The Greens also seem to be falling short in Queensland, their candidate 2.4 per cent behind Labor’s third for the final seat. Better news for the Greens from Western Australia, which turned in its expected result of three Liberal, two Labor, one Greens, and South Australia, where their candidate looks likely to just keep ahead of Labor at the second last exclusion and win the final seat on their preferences. Tasmania is a clear three for Labor, two for Coalition and one for Greens, and Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory split one Labor and one (Country) Liberal as normal.
Assuming the Greens don’t get up in Victoria, and unless my late night/early morning arithmetic leads me astray, that points to 18 seats out of 40 for both Labor and the Coalition, three for the Greens and one for Nick Xenophon. Combined with ongoing Senators, that means 37 for the Coalition (one short of a blocking majority) and 32 for Labor, with the balance consisting of five for the Greens, one Family First and one Nick Xenophon. The Greens will thus not hold the balance of power in their own right, with the Coalition being able to stitch together a blocking majority with Fielding or Xenophon or an absolute majority with them both. Interesting times ahead.
1,248 Comments
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In case anyone else wants to say something stupid, here’s a hint: Glen’s response at 976 is entirely appropriate. You can always cut and paste instead of saying something offensive.
wpc: “It isn’t that conservatives are uncomfortable talking to the left about these things. It is just that they know there is no point.”
Then don’t make blanket statements about us not understanding or accepting the Howard Legacy. If you want to sprout rubbish about your hero then you have to accept that people like me will reject it as strongly as possible.
Jason @ 991 – it is a great Australian tradition to turn up at the polling place, tell them who you are, and get the ballot papers. It’s the origin of the old traditional Carringbush saying – ‘vote early and vote often’ … I actually quite like it. It smacks of arcane egalitarianism.
Very sorry about Matt Price, over so quickly
Haha. When was this?
1003 CL
can you get caught though?
I never said you said that, K Jin. I said Steven Kaye said that. Other than that, your point is too stupid to merit a response.
I’m pitching a new ABC doco: “The Costello Hours”
Re Kerry O – that’s funny. I also thought Tony Jones was hilarious last night – seemed to be off the leash and just savaging everyone.
#980 –
“Oh well Steven Kaye. Howard’s time is up. He’s gone. Dumped from government in a huge swing and rejected by his own constituents.”
After having completely transformed Australia over the last 11 years. For the better, of course. And after having ensured that all successful political leaders in this country have to copy him.
And you realise, don’t you, that this election result was simple about Workchoices? The most foolish thing the ALP can do is believe that the electorate has embraced it and Krudd, because it hasn’t. Labor’s low primary vote is evidence of that. Voters have simply installed Labor to dump Workchoices (and even then they’ll still end up retaining huge chunks of it).
I imagine that among the staff for whom Hockey is concerned would be Barbara Bennett?
985 paul k. That may be true, I suppose it depends on what you define as socialism. The dependence on government to fix everything is getting worse, and we have more and more regulations on our private lives. It is an offence to: kill canetoads without freezing them, leave your car unlocked, cut a tree down without red tape, etc.
K Jin
“as Tony Abbott would say…”
says it all really.
Ashley it was during the coverage i pre-recorded the ABC’s coverage and Kerry said at some point late in the evening, that there’s been ‘a significant swing to the ABC’ it was hilarious lol!
For God’s sake, K Jin, most viewers of Insiders would have been fans of Matt Price and wondering how he was. Barry was just letting everyone know of Matt’s insight into the campaign, which most people watching would have appreciated. How you can turn that into Barry Cassidy somehow ‘using’ Matt Price is beyond me!!
Sorry, Steven Kaye, have you had a look at the scoreboard?
No more responses to K Jin please.
Looks like the Conservatives are going to be in Opposition for another 20 or 30 years.
R.I.P Matt Price
1003-Whats to stop you going to every booth in your electorate and voting as yourself. Obviously they will find out later but you could say it must have been someone else and you only voted once. Perhaps they have closed circuit monitoring?
1010 Steven Kaye
I agree with you in a large part- the election was a refferendum on workchoices in a large part. People do chose leaders though and it was clear that Howard as a leader was not going to listen to the people about workchoices.
But Steven won’t be the Liberal Leader Paul k so maybe it will be 10 or less?
Very sad news about Price, he was a good ‘un. Condolences to his family and colleagues.
scaper
Thu 27 Sep 07 (02:42pm) Hey Matt, a tough bunch here lately. As I have a vision to reveal to the public soon I hope my skin is as thick as yours. They always shoot the messenger don’t they. Oh well, what I need to get across is important in my and other’ minds so I will need to handle the abuse. TONY.
Senator Kerry Nettle is a goner at least something good can come from this election
The Nationals only have 4 senators, so even if they broke the Coalition they wouldn’t be able to offer Labor control of the Senate. OTOH, Family First + the Nationals can match the Greens, and in many ways may be as close to “New” Labor as to the Liberals – see e.g. http://www.politicalcompass.org/aus2007
In contrast, I can’t see that the Greens will ever have any choice apart from allying with Labor. I fully expect the Liberals to put a bigger emphasis on environmental issues in future, but on both social (gay rights, censorship, drugs, etc.) and economic (public schools, etc.) the Greens and Liberals are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
wpc: “it depends on what you define as socialism…It is an offence to: kill canetoads without freezing them”.
That’s not what I’d be putting down in a test. Pretty creative though.
Kerry’s Fruedian slip was , I think, largely due to his ongoing irritation to the noise and hype coming from the comercial TV coverage. To paraphrase him, his comment was along the lines of “we are here to give serious political analysis and “they” are here for entertainment”.
I think the days of the National Tally room are numbered because of it.
CL- actually, ‘Vote early, vote often’ is – like so many other dinky-di things – American in origin.
K Jin, even though you haven’t technically broken any of my unwritten rules, I think it best if I ban you. I simply don’t think you’re capable of making a worthwhile contribution here.
Glen: forget the vote counts, the important thing is which television channel got the best ratings on the night!
If the next Liberal Leader is smart he’ll court the Greens to try to get them to split their preferences 50/50. That could make a big difference in a lot of the marginals in 2010/2011.
Steven Kaye do you really believe that? So if I went back through your posts I wouldn’t find any examples of you saying WorkChoices wasn’t an issue?
Sure, I think WC was a part of the ALP’s victory, but definately not all of it. Also remember the Liberal Party recorded their lowest ever 2PP in history (well on the current count in any case). This means that at this time the Liberal Party is the least preferred to be in Government than at any time in history.
I don’t think this election can be put down to the repudiation of Howard’s policies (unfortunately) since I doubt the majority of the population have a real understanding of what his policies were to begin with. This is almost as huge an election loss at the 1996 election was for the ALP.
How will history paint Howard? I don’t know… but it certainly won’t overlook his demise.
Jen @ 1006 – I think they do compare the electoral rolls because they have to see who failed to vote in order to fine them. Which they do, since I was fined once when the boat I was racing on got becalmed in the middle of the bay and we didn’t get in until 7:00 pm, having departed at 7:30 in heavy airs!
So if you vote more than once, or if someone passes themself off as another voter, they are likely to be detected. I’ve never heard of an election being aborted because the rate of double votes was too high (mostly, if this happened at all, it would be pretty inconsequential). But back in the bad old days it was said to have happened often, and also to involve checking death notices to assemble a list of the deceased who would be unlikely to have been taken off the roll. Much more do-able in the pre-computer age! I’m certainly not advocating it as a practice, however! Just a remnant of our more colourful past. In my opinion, paper based voting systems are much to be preferred to computer voting or hanging shads or whatever the hell they do in that bastion of non-democracy known as the USA. And I don’t really like the idea of people having to prove who they are in order to exercise the most basic of democratic rights.
Sorry if this has been covered already:
Journalist Matt Price dies
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/25/2100609.htm
“Matt Price, a popular and respected journalist with The Australian newspaper, has died in Perth aged 45.”
Devastating news, my deepest condolences to Matt’s wife and kids.
I certainly missed him, the campaign coverage had a huge hole without him.
# 913. Mixture of too bureaucratic and Churchy. I thought I was at church listening to the homily with the same measured flat tone…..zzzzz. It was all dry…. there were moments (like when he thanked the voters of Brisbane’s southside for their support) where the speech moved into a typical acceptance speech. But it was his big moment to launch himself onto the country as our new leader, to define his image as PM and to build a rapore and engage much as howard used to as ‘father of the nation’. Instead wel (at my house anyway) all started surfing the channels and getting another drink thinking here’s another polocy speech rather than an action speech.
# 914 …. safest place to be, I’ve often got views that can be quite contradictory. E,g. conservative economically but very liberal socially.
# 917 … agreed, appalling is a strong word maybe to much so, but it had me wondering all morning if the right choice had been made. Disappointing would convey the same feeling.
Farewell Matt, a decent person. Let’s all be civil to each other for the rest of the day in his memory, what do you say folks? I have lived for years waiting to see John Howard defeated but I could not help being impressed by the dignity of his concession speech; still more by Rudd’s opening his speech with thanking Howard for 30 years of public service. It reminded me of Clinton doing exactly the same for George H. Bush.
1032- If the next liberal leader is smart he will show Australia how the out of touch libs have turned a new leaf and will listen to the people to pass the new IR laws in the senate
I will miss Matt on Insiders far better than Lenore zzzzzzzzzz.
Your wrong LTEP. I believe Stephen Kaye said that Work Choices was a positive issue for Howard and would help him win a record 5th term.
What about the coverage on channel 7 — beattie, kennett, barnaby et al? That was hilarious. They spent their whole time bickering and talking over the top of each other. We couldn’t watch for more than a few minutes at a time. ABC chose their party political analysts a lot more cleverly (eg. Minchin). No one wants to sit and listen to squabbling.
Vale Matt Price thread here:
http://www.dockerland.com/cgi-bin/teemz/teemz.cgi?board=_master&action=opentopic&forum=Docker_Discussions&topic=18995
for those who interested in the others who muchly appreciated him.
1027 Pancho. I’d be extremely happy to be wrong. Do you have other info?
1002 George. Your blanket statements on the other hand, are perfectly acceptable, no? Howard is not my hero, he was a good leader. But of course, you will disagree, I was never going to convince you otherwise.
I worked giving out HTV cards at an election years ago and they caught a guy trying to vote multiple times for the ALP but I don’t remember how they spotted him. So they must have some way of catching them.
Dammit, the election is *over* and I’m still on pollbludger and not getting any work done!!
Gotta sign off for now folks. Thanks William for a great site. I’ll check back in now and then when I can’t resist the temptation.
wpc, you’re not going to make me agree with you, as you’ve stated. And you are in no mood to agree with me. So let’s leave it at that. But every time I hear someone say “Howard was a good leader/good for the country/good for my cholesterol level/
” then I will exercise my right and say “no he was not”. I can’t help it if I feel strongly enough to argue against your obvious myopic views of a terrible human being.
Hi all, been out all day celebrating!!!! YOU LITTLE BEAUTY!!!!!
Ashley @ 1045 – you’ve pricked my conscience! Exactly my difficulty …
Thanks again William
Whose it gonna be, half-Nelson or Moneybag-Turnbull for the tories?
I certainly expect the Liberals to start giving environmental issues more weight, though more because the broader electorate and their own supporters are increasingly demanding it (remember Liberals for Forests, Conservatives for Climate Change, etc.) than from a desire to court the Greens.
The Greens have and no doubt will split preferences in individual electorates, based on local issues, but given the gulf on social issues I can’t see them doing that generally. Maybe if the small-l liberals take the Liberal party back…
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