The verdict from the McEwen recount is in: Labor candidate Rob Mitchell’s six vote win has been overturned, and Liberal member Fran Bailey declared re-elected by just 12 votes. This gives the result level pegging with the Liberals’ 1974 win in Stirling as the closest federal electorate result of modern times. Labor is still considering a legal challenge, but it’s an open question as to whether a re-match would really be in their interests. It seems very likely that we can now settle on a final result of 83 seats for Labor and 65 for the Coalition plus two independents. Two other recount demands await adjudication:
• The Greens will reportedy call for a recount for the Victorian Senate, a contentious move given that nearly 3.3 million ballots would need to be rechecked. Antony Green’s projection shows both the Coalition and Labor winning third seats upon the exclusion of eighth placed Family First, the Liberals doing so with a surplus of 21709 votes (0.68 per cent) and Labor with 6088 (0.19 per cent). At this point Greens candidate Richard di Natale is left stranded on 13.4 per cent, 0.9 per cent or 27804 votes short of a quota. This of course assumes that all votes are cast above the line, when there are in fact 65101 (2.05 per cent) below-the-line votes for which we presently have only first preference results. These are unlikely to make much difference, as most are votes for parties whose preference tickets favoured the Greens ahead of Labor. Much of the leakage would come from Liberals going below the line to ensure the Greens did not get their vote. Against this can be weighed Labor voters who gave their first preference to a Labor candidate before switching to the Greens, but past experience suggests this is unlikely to account for more than 10 per cent out of 14123. If the assumption of all votes behaving as ticket votes were to hold, the Greens would need for Labor to finish around 2000 votes below the quota after Family First’s exclusion, which is roughly 8000 less than they presently appear to have. The distribution of the Liberal surplus would then be enough to give di Natale the narrowest of victories. In support of their recount appeal, Greens spokesman Jim Buckell provided The Age with an interesting list of claimed irregularities: “309 Greens Senate votes from one booth were not recorded at all; in Isaacs 150 votes were missed; in Dunkley 173 Greens votes were recorded as 17; and in Gellibrand, some Greens votes were attributed to another minor party”. However, it seems most unlikely that the required average of around 215 votes per electorate would be found to have wrongly favoured Labor over the Greens.
• Labor candidate Jason Young’s request for a recount in Bowman following his 64-vote defeat has been knocked back by the divisional returning officer. Young is continuing to pursue his recount request further up the Australian Electoral Commission hierarchy, but one suspects he is unlikely to find any joy.
On a completely unrelated note, here is a chart I knocked together showing each state’s deviation from the national Labor two-party preferred vote going back to 1949.
The first thing to note is the hyperactivity of Tasmania, which can in large part be put down to its small population of five seats. Nonetheless, the results tell a story of a natural Labor state which turned around temporarily following the Whitlam government’s tariff cuts and Labor’s opposition to the Franklin dam at the 1983 election. The largest state by contrast has stayed within a narrow 5 per cent band on the Labor side of the ledger, dipping below the line only in 1987 and 1998. Victoria’s long-lost standing as the jewel in the Liberal crown looks very much like a symptom of the 1954 Labor split and the party’s subsequent paralysis at state level, and its Labor vote has only once fallen below the national result since 1980. The exception was the 1990 election which also proved aberrant for reliably conservative Queensland, state government factors providing the explanation in each case. It can also be seen that the Coalition’s relative strength in Western Australia at the 2007 election was matched only by 1961, there is nothing new about its conservative leaning.
On another completely unrelated note, I have just had to pay a fee to renew the pollbludger.com domain. This wasn’t hugely expensive ($50 to be precise), but it nonetheless offers a good excuse to pass the hat around among those of you who enjoy giving me money.
489 Comments
Pages: « 1 … 3 4 [5] 6 7 … 10 » Show All
#194 “Never mind that they’re out of office everywhere in Australia except Brisbane City Council.”
Hey, hang on there Bushfire Bill. You forgot about Karlene Maywald, the Nat minister in the ALP govt of SA!
(Hmmm… do the Nats count as a Coalition party in SA? – I don’t think the croweaters have a Coalition agreement.)
Enjoyed this comment muchly: “These wankers need to snap out of the delusion that they are the government in exile; that Labor is just keeping the seat warm until the rightful rulers of Australia get their act together and go through the formalities of winning the few votes needed to return to power.” Indeed.
Diogenes 181:
I think the paragraph:
In some circumstances there may be a genuine medical reason for a procedure to be performed. The guidelines stipulate the procedures where clinical indication would support surgery funded through the public health system.
Covers the ACHA requirements, as far as I know most of these operations have not been done in NSW public hospitals ( particularly the more under-resourced ones for some years). The thought of the public purse paying for a ritual circumcision sickens me. Why are the surgeons upset? Surely they have more than enough work treating patients with clinical indications for surgery.
People, please don’t tar me with the brushes applied to my fellow Westralians. I’m actually not sure what happened here, as virtually everyone I know (many of whom were lifelong and/or “natural” LP voters) have stated that they would preference Labor or the Greens over the LP.
My own grandfather (79 and a fan to this day of Robert Menzies) said that he was having serious trouble deciding whether to vote informal, as he didn’t want to vote for Labor but couldn’t stomach the thought of voting Liberal.
I just don’t know what went wrong…..
Mathew, A swing of 2+% is not necessarily a disaster although a net 1 seat was lost. I think Labor was coming from a very low base and only in this sense is there a feeling that more needs to be done
#194 Bushfire Bill I share the passion but after hearing Bishop (’hypnotoad’ remember long long ago on PB), I took a deep breath and thought – an independent inquiry – why not – with David Peetz heading it, and John Buchanan and other academics witchhunted by Howard demonstrating that any connection between job security and employment rates is very very tenuous indeed – what a good idea.
Here’s Brian Loughnane’s take on ‘why we wuz robbed’ — ‘I had nothing to do with it, it was all about timing, leadership and maybe just ever so slightly workchoices. But mostly it was about those union thugs opening their coffers for Labor’:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/19/2122852.htm
#206 apres and what’s more it is unfair for unions to politically campaign, only business is allowed to do so —
“He [Loughnane] says unions spent $30 million on their own campaign and this gave the Labor Party flexibility in deploying resources.
He says he feels this third force in the campaign is an unhealthy development…”
Got my question time tickets, folks.
Neophyte #207,
Can one post replies to the story at its original site? I’d love to tell Mr Loughane what I think of his logic.
Howard is already in hiding!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7149569.stm
202 midnothcoast: re Diogenes 181
“In some circumstances there may be a genuine medical reason for a procedure to be performed. The guidelines stipulate the procedures where clinical indication would support surgery funded through the public health system.”
.
FWIW, off-the-top of my head, I suspect this covers it well enough. That list looks reasonable to me. Just guessing, but its possible SA just wants to make it clear that purely cosmetic cases won’t be publicly funded in the future.
.
When is the AEC going to release the full distribution of preferences for the HoR seats?
Some of these were declared early last week. Surely it doesn’t take that long.
Fine and dandy. If the LNP “leadership” can’t face self-criticism and must look for scapegoats, they’re destined to be wandering in that wilderness for quite a while. And no one loves a hypocrite. “Third force”? That’s just sour grapes because big business wouldn’t come to the party to defend workchoices with anything like the commitment of the unions to attacking it. They’ve also whinged endlessly about Labor’s “scare campaign”. How would they characterise 90% of the Liberal advertising?
I wonder if they’ll show QT live next year. If so, I must free up that time.
#206
From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/19/2122852.htm
“He [Mr Loughnane] says WorkChoices united and activated the labour movement and the campaign against WorkChoices created anxiety in the electorate.
He says unions spent $30 million on their own campaign and this gave the Labor Party flexibility in deploying resources.
He says he feels this third force in the campaign is an unhealthy development and that the ACTU should have to set out how the money was spent.”
Oh COME ON!!! Are you kidding me!!?? How much money did the Howard Government spend to PROMOTE WorkChoices, in those cheesy infomercials? Unlike the govt, the ACTU spent its OWN money on advertising – it didn’t siphon taxpayers’ money to force WorkChoices down the collective throat of Australian voters.
Sheesh!! What a bunch of crybabies these Libs are. All’s fair in love and war and campaigning – except when you lose.
Ye gads… Talk of merging not just the Libs and Nats in Queensland, but Family First and One Nation too.
Wouldn’t that be a turn-up for the books.
RA, and this is supposed to make them electable???
RA #216,
If you thought Labor’s factionalism was bad, try a look at a “united” Conservative Party with FF and ON included.
Not to mention the fact that including FF and ON will scare off a lot of their voters, particularly ON.
Given the leadership debacle of the QLD libs, any merger which produces an odd number of parliamentarians must make them more electable, surely?
Maybe that’s the thinking.
Or they are just realising that other states are upping the ante for the “least functional Liberal Party” and QLD is trying to preserve it’s position….
COAG health discussions underway: QLD’s Anna Bligh says “states wont walk away” from hospitals:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/19/2122462.htm
A couple of years ago, I went to a seminar on C’wlth/State relations in hospitals. One of the presenters showed newspaper clippings going back to the 1950s on proposals for CW takeovers. It gets trotted out for recycling every few years!
Sounds good politically doesn’t it? Twas clever enuff by Rudd to *threaten* taking them over by 2009, if the S/Ts dont pull their finger out!
As I think Julia G mentioned “Taking it to the people” by 2009, is actually somewhat different to taking over. Its a Constitutional thing, so CW takeover of hospitals would have to go to national referendum, and those of us who know our Oz history on referendums, know how well they usually turn out! LOL
.
Could always throw it in with another Republic referendum to save money, and watch them both fall to the No Vote.
.
Might actually watch for the full COAG Communique this time, the newspaper synopsis and media releases are usually too brief.
.
Be funny if they ended up with an even number then. I wish their merger plans well.
You’ve got to love the Nats! Let’s just gather together all the racists, religious nutjobs and wild-eyed-frothing-at-the-mouth bigots on the lunatic fringe of the existing lunatic fringe and hug them all to our collective conservative busom. That should make them much more appealing to your average Liberal voter.
After the recent Liberal “Tattslotto” Leadership Battle, merging with the Nats, FF and One Nation would be a calming and unifying sign of rationalism for the average Liberal voter.
FG @ 222 “Let’s just gather together all the racists, religious nutjobs and wild-eyed-frothing-at-the-mouth bigots on the lunatic fringe of the existing lunatic fringe and hug them all to our collective conservative busom. That should make them much more appealing to your average Liberal voter.”
.
Ahahaha… even Liberals need to maintain some standards! Labor at least kept the hippy-trippy tree-huggers separate to their own Party.
.
But tis democracy, the rabid right have just as much right to be representation as anybody else.
.
Or you could try the Italian system of factional proportional representation, which I understand is hilariously entertaining to outsiders. Several dozen Parties, none can form a government without forming coalitions with several others. Very reminiscent of the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, with the factinalism of the various forms of Judean Liberation Fronts.
.
#209 Mathew Cole – yes you can post comments and there are 9 there already.
GG: Which is why your average Qld Liberal voter has been voting Labor for the last few elections.
I did note that they neglected to mention Pauline’s UAP and the CEC in their collection of the sad, the mad and the bad. Surely a mere oversight.
And Alpal @ 187…the answer is indeed E.G. Whitlam (all rise and bow respectfully) – the only Australian PM to spend his boyhood years in Canberra.
After how many elections of voting Labor does your “average Liberal voter” become a rusted on Laborite?
As for the mooted new United Conservative Lunatic Fringe party – they could always pinch the name of the UK’s Monster Raving Loony Party. I don’t believe they’re using it any more and it fits so well.
On Melbourne results. Greens run second to ALP but if Senate vote in Melbourne had been replicated in HoR Greens elected easily. HoR ALP 49.5 Lib 23.5 Greens 22.8 Senate ALP 40.4 Lib 24.0 and Greens 28.7. About the reverse of the 55/45 split in HoR. Lindsay Tanner can thank a very large personal vote.
Everyone working hard on an acronym for the new United Conservatives?
Rain and midnothcoast- I actually agree with implementing the list of restricted procedures but I am in a minority amongst my colleagues. They argue that there is a Medicare item number for many of these procedures and they cannot be restricted because of this. Of course, we are never going to be able to operate on them because of more urgent cases so I think keeping them on the waiting list is just giving them false hope. Evidently, the decision is off with the lawyers now for a ruling.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,22764887-910,00.html
Conservative United! Though the NT branch may have a problem with the acronym.
Jude #231,
BUPA – The Business Unlimited Party of Australia.
or
HPA – The Hypocrites’ Party of Australia.
201 TW- You are right. There is no coalition agreement in SA.
Same in WA, which makes the 2009 WA State Election all that harder for the Libs to win
Whatever it is called, it would best resemble Annabel Crabbs famous pizza made by five year olds. Meat and cheese and olives and toothpaste and smarties.
#231
Mad Hatter’s Tea Party
How about pitching for the youth vote as ‘the OC’ (opposition conservatives)?
Maybe they should ask someone on their side whose view actually matters these days, like Campbell Newman.
Well, let me preprhase that – not “like” Campbell Newman, per se.
Just …..ask Campbell Newman. Himself.
Pretty limited range of alternatives.
If Rudd had won Government in 1996 with inflation & interest rates falling , then the hubris of Labor voters would be justified
The reality is rudd has won as inflation & interest rates are rising & before the US sub prime effect is in.
The SAME mortgage belt that voted Howard out can do do the same given only a 2% margin
It was the …….. worm!!!!
http://news.smh.com.au/libs-support-national-debates-commission/20071219-1i0p.html
And I thought organised crime was an issue!
42nd Parliament expires February 12, 2011.
The last day the next election can be held is April 16, 2011.
Rudd could potentially go without an election for 3.5 years. Although given his criticism of Howard for ‘delaying’ a few weeks, i doubt he would want to delay by nearly half a year. Wouldnt look good.
Next NSW state election is on 26 March, 2011 and i dooubt he would want to clash with Iemma’s demise. Barring an early DD, i predict a late 2010 election. (But comfortably before the VIC State election)
Labor claims Flynn
Central Queensland’s new seat of Flynn has been officially declared.
Labor’s Chris Trevor has made history becoming the first ever federal Member in the new seat.
FG-
just checked in ( I think I’m addicted- I said my farewells the other night but can’t stop myself), and just saw`#233.
Made my day!
Hiya Jen!
I’m glad the farewells weren’t final. Good to see you. And yes, 233 made me chuckle too!
Watched Loughnane’s whinging at the NPC on ABC. I hope the Libs continue in this vein till the next election, and the next one after that. It was never their fault. No mention of the Rodent except for one of Dear ex-Leader’s sycophants suggesting that Rudd give him a job. For heaven’s sakes!!!
BB, onyer mate! Long may the rage be maintained (and aimed at the Ruddster if he falls into the same ways…)
Holy God, fancy the defeat of De Anne Kelly and co finally forcing a Nat. seatwarmer of many years duration from the Mackay area to actually come out and say something publicly. On ya Ted!
Nice to see there is a tongue in that head.
Silence is golden but it doesn’t work too well for longterm survival in politics. Can we now expect Ted to take up a leadership position in the new conservative party or is that too much to ask from a longterm politician.
“Mr Loughnane warned televised political debates were in danger of becoming irrelevant as they descended towards entertainment rather than serious policy discussion.”
Serious policy discussion? Huh?
Ron – you’re internally inconsistent.
Inflation is rising, true.
Interest rates have already risen – there will probably be another one early next year, which people will still blame on Howard.
The Sub-Prime crisis will lead to LOWER rates in the long run.
So long as the US economy stops short of utter annhilation (very likely) then it shouldn’t be too bad a time to take control.
Not as good as 1996, but definitely good enough to work with. Rudd shouldn’t really worry. If things do fall apart they’ll fall apart so fast that it will be obviously not Rudd’s fault.
Re. inquiries looking like vindictiveness…
AWB? The prospect of prosecutions was welcomed by all and sundry on the Coalition side (when they could quietly tell the competent authorities to go slow and they had the immediate perpetrators among AWB execs by the short and curlies).
Super Hornets? $6 billion without any due diligence. It’s time for some of that on this purchase. $6 billion isn’t a carton of paper clips.
Ion Generator? Money paid on new projects during the caretaker period is prima facie illegitimate money. If the orangutans didn’t get their $500k for this reason, all the more reason to look into $12 million for snake oil science.
And while I’m at it…
A nice cosy inquiry into government advertising mightn’t go astray. among items to be investigated: who got the money, what rates did they charge, and who got jobs with them after the election?
Pages: « 1 … 3 4 [5] 6 7 … 10 » Show All