The Canberra Times has published a poll of voting intention for the October 18 Australian Capital Territory election, covering 400 respondents in each of the three multi-member regions. The poll appears to confirm what might have been ascertained from anecdotal evidence and recent elections elsewhere: that Labor’s primary vote is down by as much as 10 per cent since the last election; that it has no chance of retaining its majority; and that the dividend from its decline is set to be reaped by the Greens, who have a quota in their own right in each electorate and are looking good for a second seat in the seven-seat Molonglo region. The table below shows results from both the poll and the 2004 election, with the number of quotas indicated in brackets.
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Patterson
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2004 Election
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| ALP | LIB | GRN | OTH | ALP | LIB | GRN | OTH | |||
| Molonglo (7) | 33% (2.6) | 29% (2.3) | 23% (1.8) | 16% (1.3) | 45.3% (3.6) | 32.6% (2.6) | 11.5% (0.9) | 10.6% (0.9) | ||
| Brindabella (5) | 38% (2.3) | 37% (2.2) | 18% (1.1) | 7% (0.4) | 45.7% (2.7) | 40.0% (2.4) | 7.3% (0.4) | 6.6% (0.4) | ||
| Ginninderra (5) | 34% (2.0) | 34% (2.0) | 16% (1.0) | 16% (1.0) | 50.1% (3.4) | 32.4% (2.2) | 8.2% (0.6) | 7.6% (0.6) | ||
Labor and Liberal seem assured of two seats in Molonglo and the Greens of one, but the remaining two are hard to pick. With seven seats on offer, the electorate has proved attractive to independent candidates including Liberal-turned-independents Richard Mulcahy (an incumbent) and Helen Cross (defeated in 2004), along with high-profile Queanbeyan mayor Frank Pangallo. The poll respectively has them on 2 per cent, 2.5 per cent and 3 per cent, meaning there would need to be tight mutual preference flows if any of them are to be in the hunt (for what it’s worth, Pangallo has been approached by Labor in the past to run in Eden-Monaro). If the figures are accurate, the most likely result would be that the minor candidates’ preferences would spray around enough to deliver one of the final seats to Labor and another to the Greens. The figures from the five-member electorates point to straightforward results of two Labor, two Liberal and one Greens. That means the most likely outcome of the election is that Labor will survive as a minority government with Greens support (assuming a coalition of some description isn’t on the cards). The current numbers are Labor nine, Liberal seven and Greens one.
Further discussion at The-RiotACT.
UPDATE: Remiss of me not to have noticed the accompanying Canberra Times article which reports: “The Greens have made no secret that they would consider forming a coalition with either side of the political equation”. Hat tip to Oz in comments.
UPDATE 2 (5/10/08): The Sunday edition of the Canberra Times provides further figures on leadership perceptions, finding Jon Stanhope is preferred as leader by 41.6 per cent against 40.0 per cent for Zed Seselja. This compares with Stanhope’s 63 per cent to 19 per cent lead over then-Liberal leader Brendan Smyth shortly before the 2004 election. “Just over half” reckon Stanhope suffers from the foible du jour, arrogance.
UPDATE 3 (6/10/08): Adam Carr has some lovely maps at his Psephos website with colour-coded booth results for Labor, Liberal and the Greens.
175 Comments
This confirms the trend we are seeing all over the country. As it sinks in that Rudd meant what he said, that he is an economic conservative, and that the ALP under Rudd is a party of the centre and not of the left, a slab of Labor voters have defected to the left, ie to the Greens. In a PR system like the ACT, that will lead to minority ALP government dependent on the Greens. Elsewhere it will mean ALP governments re-elected by Green preferences. The next Tasmanian election will be very interesting, since Labor insists it will not do a deal with the Greens again. But the Libs are not profiting because Rudd’s monopoly of the centre leaves them bottled up on the right.
Wowee! First post on pollbludger – even if it is for the little old ACT election…Enough celebrating, to business:
While on the one hand celebrating the early appearance of a poll with a decent sample size in the ACT, I’m pretty lairy about relying on it. The main problem is that there aint a pollster alive that can accurately predict the way preferences flow in Hare Clark. There’s no above the line voting, so the pollster who did this poll lost a lot of cred with me when he said “unless all the independents band together in preference swaps, it is unlikely that there would be an independent member holding the balance of power”. There’s no way they can band together as it’s not possible to do preference swaps in the ACT!
The pollster also uses a unique method of distributing the undecided vote which at 9% is not insignificant.
While I’ll concede that it is eminently possible for the Greens to win a seat in Ginninderra now that the Captain Underpants effect has worn off for Chief Minister Jon Stanhope (who hoovered up all left leaning votes in 2004), and theoretically possible to win one in Brindabella (although they’re a hard-bitten lot down there, I fancy it’s more likely that a third Liberal would win the fifth seat), I draw the line at two Greens in Molonglo.
To win two seats they’d need to double their vote from 2004 (admittedly the poll gives them this) to around 22,000 first preference votes – given that they got around 24,000 FP votes for the Senate for the whole ACT in 2007, I’d say it’s unlikely. Even if they get a great big swag of votes, the problem they have is that they don’t have preferences coming from anywhere. Greens preferences go all over the place, but who preferences the Greens? This is particularly critical in Molonglo where the erstwhile leader of the Liberals, Zed Seselja, was only elected in 2004 due to a lucky split of votes between two Labor candidates. By rights in 2004 Labor should have had four members elected in Molonglo (they got 3.62 quotas on first prefs, the Libs 2.7 – both ended up with 3 members elected). Had the vote between Mr Barr and Mr Hettinger split 60/40 instead of 50/50 one of them would’ve got elected. Instead, Hettinger stalled in about the 15th count, Barr’s pref’s exhauseted and Seselja, by dint of about 200 votes, stayed ahead long enough to be elected on Hettinger’s preferences. Not sure what Democracy@work would say about that, but there you go.
Even though I appear to have the floor, I’ll stop there – nonetheless if the Greens do win two seats in Molonlgo, I’ll eat my hat.
My call for the election – 8 Libs (3 in Brindabella and Molonglo and 2 in Ginninderra), 7 Labour (2 in Brindabella, 3 in Molonglo and 2 in Ginninderra) and two Greens (Molonglo and Ginninderra) which equals a Labor minority government. Outside chance is independent Mark Parton rides his luck in Ginninderra and gets up ahead of the Green – in this scenario I’d back a Liberal minority government (but it’s a long shot)
Bugger! Beaten by Adam (not really) In Canberra and moderation!.I was really first!
Well by definition being an “economic conservative” puts Rudd and Labor on the right, where they’ve been for a while. The only way you can call them “centrist” is if you shift the scale across.
Weird thing about The Greens is that whilst most Green voters would be what you would call typical lefties and more recently those lefties who’ve defected from Labor, but there’s also a decent proportion who might not agree with their economic policies but want to erode some of their middle/upper-class guilt.
Oz, you can debate the semantics, but the political consequence is the same. Labor leaks votes to the Greens, but doesn’t leak to the Libs = Labor stays in office, but increasingly dependent on Green votes either directly or indirectly.
And the circle of life* continues…
*Read as “ridiculous FPP system”.
Interesting that the Canberra Times are using WA company Patterson Research to do their polling. Keith Patterson must have some good connections.
no-one in Australia has a FPP (if you first past the post) system.
*IRV.
FPP doesn’t even make sense in that context, my bad.
what’s IRV?
IRV stands for ‘instant run-off voting’. It’s common US terminology for what Australians call ‘preferential voting’. (Common UK terminology is ‘AV’ for ‘alternative vote’.)
william
thanx for the link to the riotact-great site eh what! I love their newbie to seasoned rioter poster ranking BTW
as an ex forrest primary (I used to play on capital hill-now the site of the new parl house) kid i have a deep fondness for toytown
that said this election will see the greens increase their footprint in the political scene at the expense of the libs.A lot of my public circus mates have expressed an almost evangelical belief in the greens-pure as the driven snow and all that.I expect some solid gains from this demographic
the rot stops here, as the electorate federally probably has bigger issues like the WEC to worry about.
I see. Well since we’re in Australia, let’s stick to Australian usage, shall we?
So why does Oz consider preferential voting to be “ridiculous”?
Well you gave a good example. Labor can be leaking votes to The Greens all over the place be in WA, NSW, federally or where-ever else but they’re unlikely to actually get representation.
Multi-member proportionality is far more democratic and representative as it doesn’t simply sideline the first preference votes of, in most electorates, the majority of voters.
That’s got nothing to do with preferential voting. That’s to do with single-member constituencies. You can have preferential or non-preferential single-member constituency voting, or you can have preferential or non-preferential PR.
I was under the impression that IRV/preferential voting were only applicable in single-member electorates.
When talking about multi-member constiuencies it’s called a single transferable vote.
But this is all academic and some what pointless? It’s pretty clear what I was talking, the current electoral system for the lower house in Australia and its states.
Dear Jimbo Cool and others,
I just checked, and the Greens vote for the whole of the ACT at the 2007 Federal election was not “around 24,000″, but 48,384 (going off the ABC Senate figures, rather than the AEC figures). This amounts to just under 22% of the ACT wide vote.
Jimbo asks (rhetorically) “who preferences the Greens?” Generally they do very well (better than any other party) on second preference votes – although most of the time that’s cold comfort. Most Labor and Liberal voters, after preferencing their own party, put the Greens ahead of their traditional political foes.
There are many vagaries in an election campaign, and 2 weeks is a very long time in politics, but these figures from the Canberra Times suggest that it will be an interesting night on 18th October.
Cheers.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/poll-results-no-comfort-to-labor-or-liberals/1325259.aspx
“The Greens have made no secret that they would consider forming a coalition with either side of the political equation.
However, Mr Rattenbury says he is ”willing to work with a party that shared [Greens'] values and visions and is willing to work with us on our program as well as theirs,” but he will not make a decision on whom to support as chief minister before the election.”
I’m becoming a little tried with Greens complaining about single member TPP voting, it has worked for years and just because some countries do things differently does not mean we need to follow, what next since America has elected an Idiot twice should we!
This is looking a close result, I’m curious to know if the management of the Bushfires a few years ago are still an issue or has the community moverd onto other matters.
Indeed, just because we’ve done something for years does not mean we should continue in that same fashion forever. The global trend is towards proportionality, I see it only as a matter of time before there’s enough momentum for it here.
But does it produce better Government
“Better” is subjective. It produces more representative government, which I thought was the point of “democracy”.
It won’t be long before the ALP is delivering seats – via ITS preferences – to the Greens seats in parliaments across Oz.
It’s not so much “green” issues driving the Greens forward; it’s the fact that both parties couldn’t give a toss about Joe Average and his community. They’ve completely lost the plot.
Gillard’s fine impersonation of Margaret Thatcher hasn’t help matters for the ALP. Smash them teacher unions, sister. Iron Julie seems to be just as keen as Howard was in forking out buckets of public shekels to the Exclusive Brethren sect.
The ALP is on the same slow boat to nowhere as the Libnats.
Oz, if you avoided using other people’s political vocabularies in a discussion of Australian politics, you would be less confused. In Australia we use *preferential voting* for both single-member constituencies (eg the House of Reps) and in multi-member constituencies (eg the Senate and the ACT Assembly). It works perfectly well for both. At the federal level and in NSW, Vic, SA and WA, we have single-member constituencies for the lower house and PR for the upper house. In Tas we have it the other way round. In Qld and NT we have single-member constituencies for the lower house and no upper house. In the ACT we have PR for the lower house and no upper house.
My preference is for what we have at the federal level: single-member constituencies for the lower house and PR for the upper house, both elected preferentially. This usually gives us stable governments with majority support in the lower house, and an opportunity for minor parties to gain representation in the upper house. This avoids the excesses of PR as seen in places like Belgium and Israel, and the unrepresentative parliament and one-party monopoly produced by non-preferential single-member constituency elections in the UK. The only changes I would make would be:
* fixed four year terms for all lower houses
* fixed eight-year terms for all upper houses, with half elected every four years
* an upper house for Qld
* swapping the electoral system for Tas’s two houses so they are the same as the other states
* an Australian head of state
Our system gives minor parties opportunities proportionate to their strength. The DLP, the Democrats and the Greens have all in their time held the balance of power in the Senate, and in some of the state upper houses. It is much harder for minor parties (except the Nats) to win lower house seats, but that is appropriate because the main function of lower houses is to provide stable majority government.
Oh, I would also abolish the territories. The NT should chose between statehood and annexation by Qld or WA. The ACT should be re-incorporated into NSW. The original rationale for the ACT was to prevent the national capital being under the control of parochial NSW politicians, on the model of DC in the US. That made some sense, though not much. But self-government has now placed the national capital under the control of parochial ACT politicians, which makes no sense at all. Why does Canberra merit self-government when Newcastle does not?
What tosh. The major parties totally obsessed with “Joe Average and his community”. That’s why they’ve relentlessly moved to the centre, which is where Joe Average and his community actually live. This fantasy that the community is really wildly left-wing but that major-party politicians are “out of touch” is absurd. In fact they are far too “in touch” most of the time – driven by polls and focus groups, terrified of alienating Joe Average and the marginal seats where he lives. All the ALP has done is followed the voters to the centre. That’s how Whitlam, Hawke and Rudd won their elections. If Fagin would rather stay in opposition for ever, he’s welcome to it.
I believe Adelaide is closer to Darwin than Brisbane or Perth.
Fine, they can join SA then. Actually I think everything north of the Tropic of Capricorn should become a new state called North Australia.
Adam if ACT is put into NSW then Melbourne should become the Capital City again.
People like Keating can bleat about moving the capital around but the people and infrastructure are way too entrenched to move it all simply on hubris.
No Glen I like APH where it is. Where would it fit in Melbourne?
Point is Melbourne was the Capital and would have been had those stupid Sydney people not got the picture that Melbourne was and still is the main hub of Australia but especially so back in those days and so we had to have Canberra!!
I dislike Canberra!
31 Where would it fit in Melbourne?
Perhaps they could construct the new APH on the site of the MCG then it would certainly become a place of interest to all Australians.
Strictly speaking Melbourne was never the capital of Australia anyway. S125 says “Parliament shall sit at Melbourne until it meet at the Seat of Government.” So from 1901 to 1913 there was no Seat of Government, just an interim site where Parliament sat. From 1913 to 1928 there was officially a Seat of Government at Canberra, but Parliament didn’t meet there because nothing was built.
If the ACT Legislative Assembly was expanded to 21 seats (3×7) would the resulting shrink in Molonglo be likely to make it more Green by losing less green areas?
That would depend on how the boundaries are drawn. Does anyone have a map of the ACT showing the strength of the Green vote by polling place?
So the Greens are a) almost certain to hold the balance of power (given that the Liberals need an impossible swing for a majority), and b) are open to forming a coalition.
So we could see the first Green cabinet minister in Australia by the end of October. That would be, I think, the first time a nationwide third party (that is, not Labor or Coalition) has ever held a ministry in any government. Neato.
And, of course, the Canberra Times article says that the Greens COULD get as many as five or six seats, although that’s unlikely. But that the possibility exists at all is exciting…it’s psephologically possible that the Greens could become the second-largest party in the Assembly. Descending into wishful thinking, given that the Greens draw their votes disproportionately from Labor, any increase in Greens representation would take seats away from Labor to a greater extent…so, while it’s very unlikely, it’s not outside the bounds of possibility, as mapped out by that esteemed journal, the Canberra Times, that we could have six Greens, six Liberals and five Labor, the results of which should be obvious.
Of course, as I said: very unlikely.
Adam @ 25,
& Glen @ 29,
I couldn’t get rid of my NSW rego on my car fast enough when we moved into the ACT in January this year. If I were a long term Canberra resident and this ever happened, I would be spitting bricks. Cheers, Glen, something we can agree upon
…….
Adam @ 28,
You are in fine form this morning
…. something gotten under your skin today? 
The Sunday edition of the Canberra Times provides further figures on leadership perceptions, finding Jon Stanhope is preferred as leader by 41.6 per cent against 40.0 per cent for Zed Seselja. This compares with Stanhope’s 63 per cent to 19 per cent lead over then-Liberal leader Brendan Smyth shortly before the 2004 election. “Just over half” reckon Stanhope suffers from the foible du jour, arrogance.
Steve @ 33,
The MCG is already hallowed ground and considered a holy shrine by some of us
….. add the capital into the mix in Melbourne and yes, there would be truely no reason at all to bother with anything north of Albury 
Adam @ 36,
Maybe Anthony has this? Just guessing, that seems like the sort of thing that the ABC would have in their files …..
Julie I don’t know if you were in Australia when self-government was introduced in the ACT. Canberra people hated it, since they knew it was just a ploy by the federal government to end their privileged status as wards of the Commonwealth and make them pay for their own services. My question stands: what’s so special about Canberra that it deserves self-government, when other regional centres are ruled from the state capitals? The only thing special about Canberra is that the federal parliament sits there. But there’s no logical connection between that and giving Canberrans their own toy parliament, with its own layer of redundant administration. Ottawa, Wellington and Pretoria get by fine just being ordinary cities, so would Canberra.
But there is no logical reason for having Canberra as the Capital city!
Look at Europe did any of those countries make small and obscure cities their capitals?
NO!
London
Berlin
Rome
Paris
Now the fact is Melbourne would have been had those fools in Sydney have known their place, Melbourne is the culture capital of Australia and the sports capital and it was the seat of Parliament for decades and the prime city of Australia well into the 60/70s! Its only Tourism that has made Sydney popular but Melbourne was and is a hub and it should be the Capital.
Anyway if Melbourne couldnt have been to please the Sydney siders they should have picked Albury instead of Canberra because then they wouldnt have had to waste money on a whole new city.
That’s because those countries grew up organically over the centuries and coalesced around their royal capitals. Australia, like the US, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand and South Africa, is a country of fairly recent white settlement. All have either built new capitals (Washington, Canberra, Brasilia) and used smaller cities (Ottawa, Wellington, Pretoria). They didn’t want their largest city to be their new capital, because (a) they couldn’t build new national government edifices in the middle of existing cities (b) they didn’t want their capitals to be sites of mob violence, like Paris and (c) they didn’t want to cause intercity rivalries by choosing an existing city (like New York or Philadelphia) as their capital. India and Pakistan built new capitals at New Delhi and Islamabad for the same reasons, and now Nigeria has done the same at Abuja, and Malaysia is moving most of its capital city functions out to Putrajaya for the same reasons.
Adam @ 43, No, I wasn’t in Australia when self government was introduced. As for Pretoria et. al., the problem in this instance is that Canberrans and other ACT residents would have to bloody put up with a NSW postcode if that bridge were crossed. [ Can you tell I am a VIC at heart?
]
Such cruel oppression…
Adam@24 & 26
It’s in fact the combination of flawed ideologies and a poll driven mentality, that puts the major parties out of touch with the electorate. It is the blind faith in free-market forces, coupled with token populist policies designed to appease sections of the electorate, which usually results in a distorted policy platform riddled with inconsistency and deprived of any vision. Both the major parties are guilty of this.
As regards, the SM electorate system in the Australian lower house and most states, the system does not work as fine as you make out. The dichotomy between safe and marginal seats, disenfranchises sizeable potions of the electorate, and leads to re-enforce and promote cynical vote-buying policies. Take for example, the dismal public transport system in the North-West area of Sydney. Were the areas of Castle Hill and Baulkham Hills marginal seats, half-decent public transport would have arrived years ago. PR would deliver a certain equality, that Single Member electorates cannot.
As regards electoral reform, why would you want to see upper house politicians in the whole country elected to 8 year terms (as in NSW and SA)? Why should anyone be elected for a tenure of 8 years? The upper houses don’t needs any special consideration – 4 year terms are quite sufficient, and the public should equally have the right to toss out upper house MP’s if they’re not performing within a reasonable timeframe. Further to this, the Senate is not proportionally representative, but usually only semi-proportional in its representation. Fixed 4 year terms for both houses would reduce the 14.3% Senate quota to 7.7%, and therefore allow for more proportional outcomes. A PR system should deliver proportionally representative outcomes.
mrodowicz
Para 1: So when you say politicians are “out of touch”, you really mean they are out of touch with you and people who think like you, and with the policies you think they ought to be following, rather than out of touch with the majority of voters, who are ignorant yokels easily fooled by token populist gestures. Well that may be so, but I think the elites can generally look after themselves – it’s the yokels who need the things that government can do. Politicians who want to hold their seats and stay on the government benches have a professional and personal interest in being “in touch” with what voters want, and my observation (from up fairly close) is that most of them are unhealthily preoccupied with what the voters are thinking on any given day. That’s one of the arguments for 4-year terms. We might get at least 2 years in which governments are not driven by polls and the media cycle.
Para 2: Yes, that is a weakness of single-member systems. I’m not altogether opposed to the German / NZ mixed-member system, where you have some SM members and some PR members in the same house, provided there are more of the former than the latter and the threshhold is set fairly high – at say 5%. It’s a matter of trading representation against stability.
Para 3: I think there are merits in having an upper house with longer and overlapping mandates compared to the lower house. They have more independence and function better as a house of review. I don’t see any sign that voters in NSW and SA resent their Leg Councils having 8-year terms. I doubt many people know or care much about their upper houses.
SNIP: Off-topic comment deleted. See Article 1 in Comment Moderation Guidelines – The Management.
When assessing the ACT election you need to take into consideration that the ACT uses a last bundle counting system which is not fully proportional. It was`designed to facilitate a manual counting process. The system used seriously distorts the proportionality of the vote Added to the distortion of the last bundle process is the method and formula used to calculate the Surplus transfer value. For Every vote that exhausts in a surplus transfer increases disproportionaly the value of votes that express a continuing preference. As a result the system does not reflect the voters intentions. The last bundle system gives undue weight to party tickets at the expense of minor ticket votes.
Review of the Queensland Senate vote has revealed that the Greens were denied representation as a result of the system used. The extent of distortion represents over 50,000 votes added. The ACT system has its own level of distortion
It’s true territorians hated self government, but that is (as Adam notes) because they had previously been subsidised by the rest of the country, and self-government was part of a package where that was lost. They would have hated it even more if they had lost the subsidy and had no opportunity to have a say in what was done with the reduced pie.
Having the capital in Canberra has been expensive, but its about to come into its own. Sydney is getting close to the capacity it can hold without major loss of amenity. Melbourne has further to go, but will still inevitably feel the strain. In a world where population continues to grow Australia can’t expect to hold its population stable, so to avoid turning Melbourne and Sydney into unnavigable nightmares it needs to create more cities of medium size. Canberra’s good in that way, and it will likely grow faster than the national average (as I suspect will Newcastle and various others).
Of course the Capital could be part of NSW, but why should it? It’s healthy to run a few experiments. Many people have pushed the idea of abolishing states and giving some of their powers to regional councils. ACT self government has given us a chance to see whether it works and should be adopted more widely.
SNIP: Off-topic comment deleted. See Article 1 in Comment Moderation Guidelines – The Management.
Feral, fair points. What a pity short-sighted conservatives sabotaged Whitlam’s plan to develop Albury-Wodonga (”Whitlamabad”), and Don Dunstan’s plan to develop Monarto. No to mention Whitlam’s proposed airport at Galston, which would have been a godsend to Sydney by now.
(”Short-sighted conservatives” is of course a tautology.)
Can somebody explain why the Liberal primary is down. It just seems odd that with such a big swing appearing against Labor that the Liberals have not only not picked up any but also lost some.
Doesn’t the National Capital Authority effectively run the area around the Parliamentary Triangle independently of the ACT Government anyway? You should just reduce the ACT to the area of the parliamentary triangle and abolish self-government (since very few people would reside in the area). Canberra would have a sizeable influence on the NSW government, being bigger than any other regional centre, and you could institute a Canberra City Council elected along similar lines to the current LA.
Because they’re hopeless? (Just a guess.)
…because the idea would go down like a ton of bricks?
The ACT is culturally a million miles away from country NSW, which is why we have a parliament that’s so very different to our neighbours to the east. It’d make the outcry against self-government back in the 80s look like nothing at all. Alas, I’m not surprised in the least that Adam wants to abolish the one jurisdiction in the country that reliably votes actual left.
also, pokelyle@36: This wouldn’t be the first time we’d had minor party ministers in the ACT. There were Residents Rally (think a local 80s version of the Democrats and Greens) and No Self-Government Party ministers in the Liberal government 1989-91, and we also had an independent as Heath Minister in the late 90s.
Rebecca, if you want to pay more taxes so a bunch of jumped-up shire councillors can get driven round in big white cars and play at being cabinet ministers, that’s fine by me.
Great news for the Greens from Queensland! If only a few more of the Labor MPs had balls or whatever! Sorry Dr Adam to spoil your Sunday night! I am celebrating!
Pfft
I give this Patterson poll the same amount of credence as the one they produced (under the Westpoll name) a similar time before the WA election. “Westpoll: 54-46 to Labor”.
Patterson tend to get things spectacularly wrong.
Adam 61, probably never “69″! So MANY are so AMUSED at your CONSERVATISM! Free yourself from your “educational” experiences! YOU might liberate yourself FINALLY!
‘Great news for the Greens’… ‘First Green Cabinet Minister’… yeah, it’s easy sniping from the grassy knoll, but being part of the government will probably be a little more challenging – even if the hard decisions confronting the ACT are not quite those Joschka Fischer had to grapple with.
There is a chance that there could possibly be a number of Green cabinet ministers in the next few years. The ACT soon, Tasmania 2010 and Victoria 2010.
Of course none of these are anywhere definite because the Greens may not (or in the case of Victoria probably not) get the balance of power or there might be a grand coalition between Labor and Liberal or in the case of Victoria the National might do a deal with Labor to keep the Greens out.
I suggest that we have a special thread to discuss Adam’s “conversion”. Such a discussion has no place here.
#55: considering the Liberal leader seems reasonably popular, the Libs are unlikely to go backwards. However I don’t see them going forwards, either, as it looks too difficult to win a third seat in Brindabella or Ginninderra (they won’t win 4 in Molonglo, surely).
Any ideas why ‘Zed’ has such a (relatively) good approval rating?
MDMConnell: Seselja’s actually run a surprisingly good campaign. His TV ads are on the mark, he comes across as likeable and fresh, and a lot of the areas he does well are in stark contrast to the increasingly perceived as arrogant Stanhope. He’ll never win because his party’s a basketcase and his current caucus is too right-wing for the left-leaning territory, but to the extent anyone could actually pull off the David Cameron/John Key “nice conservative” sort of thing here, he’s doing it.
Adam: Honestly, I’d love to see one of the major parties here try proposing that. It’d be great political theatre, and the other party would be in majority government before you could say “oops”. Canberra has a very distinct identity; people who actually live here would no sooner be governed from Sydney than Melburnians would. Why do you think Stanhope’s parochial “defender of the territory” antics go down so well?
Tom: I’d be surprised if there was a Green cabinet minister in Tasmania anytime soon, as the two parties hate each others guts. I think they’re more likely to sit on the crossbenches and annoy a Labor government while supporting them on confidence and supply motions. Victoria’s a fair way off too – they’d actually have to get someone in government first.
However, the ACT’s a different story. The ACT Greens are pretty well organised (if strategically stupid at times), they have good support from normal Liberal voters, and I think they’ve got every chance of becoming the official opposition here in the long term if the Liberals can’t get their act together. The ACT Liberals have got to realise (as Kate Carnell did in the ’90s) that the sort of conservatism that plays well in Sydney or Melbourne goes down like a ton of bricks here, and that they’re going to doom themselves to irrelevancy if they keep appealing to such a small segment of the population.
SNIP: Off-topic comment deleted. See Article 1 in Comment Moderation Guidelines – The Management.
SNIP: Response to above comment deleted – The Management.
I would appreciate it if people stopped using this post as an open thread for whatever they feel like discussing. It’s acceptable to discuss Queensland politics on the Morgan thread, but not here.
Yeah my bad, I had about 6 Pollbludger tabs up and thought this was Morgan.
If you want something done, do it yourself.
I have made some ACT booth maps
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/states/act/actindex.shtml
It’s striking how evenly distributed the ALP vote is, a tribute to the ACT planning authorities who wanted to create a socially homogenous city. The ALP vote is strongest in Woden and Belconnen, weakest south of the lake and in parts of Tuggeranong. The Liberal vote is weakest in the centre and Woden, strongest in Gunghalin and Tuggeranong. The Green vote is strongest around ANU, and gets weaker the further out you go.
Nice map.
A couple of points for Adam in Canberra:
1) ACT MLAs do not get “get driven round in big white cars” – no Comcars in the ACT Legislative Assembly, they drive themselves (although they get privately plated cars as part of their salary package.)
2)Perhaps you could enlighten me as to which Australian town councils have responsibility for primary, secondary & tertiary education systems; primary, secondary and tertiary health systems;magistrates, supreme and appeals courts; criminal justice system; public transport system; disabilty and carers; public housing etc?
3) Are you aware that the “T” in ACT stands for “Territory”, hence the need for a Territory government with responsibility for State/Territory functions noted in point 2)?
4)Why does the NT get to have a Legislative Assembly (and a bunch of shire councils) without quibble from you when its population is barely two thirds of the ACT’s and the whole place is subsidised by the rest of the country?
Just curious
I was just saying that there is a chance of Green ministers.
There is a chance that the Libs could take 9 or 10 seats of Labor (55) and the Greens up to 3 seats which could leave the Greens with the Balance of power (unless Labor came to an agreement with the Nationals or Liberals) in which case the Greens could support a minority government or join with Labor in a coalition in which a would guess they could expect 1 minister in each house.
Plus, or course, a Territory needs a port. Lucky Canberra was located out of range of Naval guns.
And indeed the ACT got it’s port – see the Jervis Bay Territory Acceptance Act 1915…I came across this while working for a Community Legal Cenbtre on the NSW south coast a few years ago and acting for someone who had committed an offence inside the JBT…makes for the odd messy situation that lawyers love…see also the Aboriginal Land Grant (Jervis Bay Territory) Act 1986 – a ‘mirror’ of the NT’s Land Rights Act
And further to the NT reference by Jimbo Cool above – will TPB have a look at the upcoming NT Local Government elections? – I’ve done a short intro post on it over at The Northern Myth…
Jimbo, I stand corrected on Comcars. Your other points are completely circular. The ACT and the NT exist, therefore they need governments, therefore they have to run schools etc, therefore they need to exist. As I said earlier, I am in favour of abolishing both of them. The NT is sufficiently far from everywhere else to merit statehood, if it wants it and is willing to pay for it. The ACT should become part of NSW.
Ruawake, the ACT has a port, Jervis Bay. That’s why it’s part of the ACT.
That’s where we would have had a nuclear power station, had Gorton got his way!
Actually, Jervis Bay is Commonwealth Territory, not part of the ACT. While Jervis Bay is included in the ACT Federal electorate of Fraser, it is not administered by the Stanhope government. It is the same as Christmas Island being in the Federal electorate of Lingiari but not part of the Northern Territory.
The Commonwealth, in 1915, bought Jervis bay off of the NSW Govt. So Canberra would have a port. Since self Govt. in 1989 it has been the Plaything of the Minister for Territories
I assume that is Albanese?
Jervis Bay was part of the ACT until 1989, when it was separated and became a Commonwealth territory in its own right, presumably to stop pinko ACT politicians having jurisdiction over the naval facilities. It was acquired by the Commonwealth from NSW in 1915 so that the new national capital could have its own port. I presume there was going to be a Jervis Bay – Canberra railway (or maybe there is one? I don’t know). This sort of territorialist thinking is also the reason why the ACT includes all those nice mountains to the south, now the Namadji National Park – so that Canberra would control its own water supply, and malevolent NSW politicians couldn’t cut it off.
Adam @ 73,
According to your maps, Chisholm is 45 to 50% Liberal so almost even up. I will look at my polling location in Chisholm and see what we get when counting on Election night ….
Anyone else here working a polling booth? (for the Election side, not scrutineering side(s)) …..
Julie, since you live nearby, what is it about Fadden that makes it the best Liberal booth in the ACT?
Adam, Fadden has a sub division known in estate agent speak as “Fadden Hills” which was snapped up by those same real estate agents, and second hand car dealers etc such as make up the local membership of the Liberal Party. Despite the founding fathers and the former NCDC policy of a homogenous social make-up of the city, there are a few such enclaves of developer driven estates within suburbs that are marketed as being for a better than average class of person. Gleneagles estate within the decidedly blue collar suburb of Kambah is a good example (just don’t tell them that it is built on a rubbish dump!).
Common wisdom has it that the Green vote is driven by disillusioned lefties deserting the ALP in protest at the lack of lefty policies from those ALP governments. How does this explain the ACT situation where the ALP is undoubtedly the most left friendly govt in the nation?
That it also has the most left-friendly voters in the country? That said voters are not sympathetic to budgetary rationalisations for mass school closures?
No, ruawake, I’ve just checked the Administrative Arrangements order, and territories now come under the Attorney-General’s portfolio, so it’s Debus or McClelland, not Albanese.
Adam, I’ve lived here only since January this year so don’t know enough (voting wise) beyond my immediate area of Chisholm in Tuggeranong to be able to answer your question. Fortunately, #86 bailed me out
….. his answer sounds knowledgeable to me ….
I think the drift of inner-urban elite voters from the ALP to the Greens is “vibe” driven, not personality or issue driven. (What’s the elite word for vibe? Zeitgeist? Weltanshauung?) Since Canberra’s elite is the elite of elites, it’s probably as much driven by the federal vibe as the local one.
Weltanschauung with ‘c’ please. But ‘Zeitgeist’ might fit better here…
Its interesting to note that this massive increase in the Green Vote is about a “Vibe’, not personality or issue driven. HaHaHa HA you are just fishing for a response but this is to much. Ha Ha Ha if you even think for one moment that the increase vote, across the whole country, at every level of government, including local, is about Vibe, well I hope that you have influence in the ALP as they are proving that they never got Climate Change, all the spin about the environment is meaningless. Here we are faced by a challenge greater than anything we have ever faced before, its about the way we think, the way we make decisions, and the way we argue. You can’t argue with the environment, you can’t try and spin the realities of the health of the planet. Inputs result in outputs and there is no other way of seeing it. But where are the ALP in this debate, running around making totally sycophantic comments about ‘our friends in congress’ and 700 billion packages. Should I go on.
How arrogant. People are flocking away from the major parties in droves as shown both by polling and recent election results right around the country, the major issues of the time are climate change and infrastructure (particular public transport), the main recipient by a large margin of the disillusioned voters is to a party with strong policies in both areas yet it’s not “issue” driven, it’s an “elitist vibe”.
Oh by the way should we have a thread on the Vic local election William, The Mayoralty in Melbourne could be quite interesting and will have meaning for the inner Melb seats at the next state and fed. Just a thought, There are more voters in these elections than the ACT?
That “vibe” is the shaking of the foundations of the LIB/LAB Club, by the very pissed of voters.
The Greens know how to rock and roll.
If I had gram of gold for ever time some one said “the Greens will never…”, or “the Greens are irrelavent…”, or the Greens have to get dirty like the big boys”, I’d be very rich.
Feel the vibe it’s comming to an election near you. hahaha.
FTP, where the ALP is in this debate is in government, driving Australia’s response to climate change, balancing powerful competing interests, trying to produce an outcome that deals with the issue responsibly without driving the country broke. It’s a very difficult challenge but I think Rudd and Wong are doing a very good job so far. I don’t think this is an issue which is driving people to the Greens.
Oz, people are not “flocking away from the major parties in droves.” In WA the three main parties got 79% of the vote between them, a drop of only 2%. In the NT the two main parties got 89.6%, actually an increase of 1.1%. The Greens are being used as a handy recepticle for a protest vote, just as the DLP and the Dems were before them, but it’s a drift rather than a stampede. And it is coming mostly from the inner city elite. Look at my ACT map and see where the Green vote is concentrated – most of it’s within a short bike ride of the ANU coffee shop. In the NSW local government elections, yes the Greens did well in various places across the state, but mainly in Marrickville and Leichhardt, the strongholds of the inner city cosmopolitan elite.
Adam says
“In the NSW local government elections, yes the Greens did well in various places across the state, but mainly in Marrickville and Leichhardt, the strongholds of the inner city cosmopolitan elite.”
If you have a look you will see the proportional increase in Green votes was higher in country areas.
Yes margaret an increase from 1% to 2% is a 100% increase. But hardly relevant.
That’s because they were starting from a very low base. Green stength is overwhelmingly clustered in the inner city areas.
Look, I’m not denying that the Greens did well. But as I said before, it was mostly a protest vote, in this case against the NSW Labor government, rather than a sudden conversion to Green policies.
Can’t be to irrelevant ruawake, you always make an effort to dismiss the massive Green vote!
Green are good for you, and everybody.
What [massive Green vote!] ? 7.79% last Nov? Get real.
Over 1 million Australians voted [1] The Greens last November.
That’s real and that’s massive.
As usual the Greens get their figures wrong. 967,789 is not over 1 million.
As usual the spinmistro caught out wrong.
The Greens 1,144,751 9.04% +1.37%
http://results.aec.gov.au/13745/Website/SenateStateFirstPrefsByGroup-13745-NAT.htm
Whichever figure you take, it’s just the standard protest vote. There have been bigger ones. The Dems got 12.6% in the Senate in 1990, and the DLP got 11% at the 1970 Senate election. The Greens get a respectable vote, and it is currently rising, but they always over-hype thekr prospects and then finish up being disappointed.
I tend to ignore the unrepresentative swill vote – the HoR is where govt is formed. Canberra is where it sits. Thats in the ACT (just to keep things on topic).
HoR eh? Somewhat neutralises Adam’s point and brings in the fact that the Dems never had a member in the Lower House whereas the Greens have.
“But that was an anomaly”
Oz
I was making my point, Adam was making his.
Just to get back on topic, if you look at my maps you can see very clearly who votes Green – inner city and university areas. Once you get out into the baby-belt suburbs the Green vote falls below 10% and even below 5%. And that’s in Canberra, which should be one of the Greener cities. The Greens have a big job to explain to working families that their anti-growth policies won’t harm their interests, or if they will, that it’s all for the greater good.
That’s the problem with the LAB/LIB Party ignore the facts,
living in a bygone era dreaning of clean coal and shuffel the deck chairs around a bit.
rauake, let your bosses know the voters have moved on, Adam has noted the shift.
Pinch some of the Greens ideas, they won’t mind. Better than eating your hat all the time.
So Margaret, how would YOU explain to working class families in outer suburbs that they will have to give up their cars, pay much more for their energy, and incur all the other costs that Green policies would impose on them?
Great map Adam,
The Green defiantly have an up hill battle explaining their excellent economic policies.
The constant wave of BS on the MSM and rubbish sprayed around by some, doesn’t help.
The Carbon based economy is unsustainable and the sooner our leaders realise this the better for the economy and jobs.
Your map shows hope for the future. I’m assuming young tertiary educated people have seen the light (as the young inner city kids have thoughtout aust.)
Eventually these young people will complete their education and move out and on to other places taking their Green voting elitismos with them.
Some might feel threatened by this phenomena but I don’t.
Remember No environment=No jobs
There’s quite a lot of issues with that. First of all, Labor’s policies are going to deliver a rise in energy prices. Secondly, in action on climate change is going to deliver a rise in the price of just about everything and more importantly, if allowed to go on unchecked there won’t be places to drive, there won’t be places to live.
Green policies regarding the environment and climate change are based on the same idea that’s been espoused by people like Nicholas Stern or more recently, Garnaut. That acting now is going to much cheaper both economically, socially and environmentally that playing short term, electoral cycle politics a la Labor and Liberal.
It’s delusional and inappropriate to hoodwink the voters into thinking that you can actually stave off climate change by refusing to factor in the environmental costs of the products they consume, like petrol and electricity.
Adam says
“So Margaret, how would YOU explain to working class families in outer suburbs that they will have to give up their cars”
If YOU think they should give up their cars YOU should explain.
“pay much more for their energy”
Solar power is free after set up, so energy bills will be reduced.
This discussion reminds me of what happened at the 1998 ACT election. The Opposition Labor Party adopted a policy that required cars to meet emissions and fuel efficiency guidelines to pass their rego test. If applied fully, it would have prevented every car over five years old being re-registered. Needless to say the Liberals lept all over a policy that would have forced people to buy new cars. Labor was thumped at the 1998 election, though the rego policy was only one of the reasons. But is a reminder that whatever the long term benefits of changing environmental rules, it is often the short term costs that scare the crap out of politicians.
Of course ANY useful response to climate change wil entail increased costs. It’s a question of degree.
* Interesting demographic notions, there Margaret. The working class will disappear as their suburbs are colonised by young inner city graduates. So who will do the actual, you know, WORK, in the future?
* It’s not my party which wants to shut down the carbon economy and make everyone use public transport, so I don’t have to explain it.
* It’s moonshine to say that solar energy can immediately replace the coal-based energy and industrial economy we have now. It would take 50 years, even if the technology existed, which right now it doesn’t. The only energy source which can replace coal within say 30 years is nuclear, but you’re opposed to that too.
On the subject of the giving up of cars, the solution is to improve public transport to a level where it is competitive with the car (easily achievable in urban areas) (see http://www.ptua.org.au/category/every-10-minutes/) and encourage and spend on cycling and walking then watch as people spend less on cars and the obesity problem reduces.
Adam, you realy should get up to date
Alternatives to coal do exist and the tecnoiedgy has been up and running for some time.
nuclear is to expensive, to late and to dangerous.
I thought you were well travelled and well read.
Why don’t you find out about the Greens ideas from them,
http://greens.org.au/about
don’t just make things up.
Australia can switch to solar and geothermal for most of its electricity within a much shorter time than 50 or even 30 years if enough resources are devoted to it. The main obstacle to this is government timidness and the private ownership of coal and natural gas power stations and the era of the dominance of timid small non-interventionist governments is ending with the current economic crisis needing big government intervention and even more so the worse in gets.
And this time responding to climate change and peak oil may provide a better (less deadly) area for big spending than the one that got us out of this kind of mess last time and hopefully sooner.
“trying to produce an outcome that deals with the issue responsibly without driving the country broke”. Like what? how are the ALP dealing with this issue at all. They are not, its just all spin. The thing that amazes me is that the political/business elite think that all the voters are completely stupid. They are not, if there is a graph of Green votes over the last 15 years, across all the differents tiers, it would look like the increasing CO2. Blah Blah Blah Adam.
Adam: Your green-bashing is tiresome. The Greens are recording strong swings in areas well outside of the inner-city areas you love to talk about; look at the massive swings to Labor in Alice Springs, of all places, in the NT election.
This nonsense about the green vote being all in the areas around ANU is nonsense as well. Of course it’s a good area for the Greens – but all of it (as well as the socially-conscious but otherwise Liberal voters in the wealthier suburbs south of the lake) are all entirely in Molonglo. It makes perfect sense that the swings in suburban Tuggeranong and Belconnen which see the Greens set to win their highest swag of seats in the ACT ever can be attributed to uni students in O’Connor and Braddon – or perhaps it does in cuckoo land.
Wow the Greens got 522 votes in Araluen at the NT election. Staggering
Or indeed swings in regional mining areas like Cessnock.
Adam’s points would make sense if applied a few years ago when the Green vote actually was restricted entirely to inner-city areas. He may not like to accept it, but that’s not really the case anymore.
Wow the swing to the Greens was +0.1% in Hunter at the last Federal election. Staggering. Better than the overall state result where there was a swing AGAINST the Greens.
Labor got 618.
Quite sure there was a swing of 0.7% towards The Greens at the last NSW state election,
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/nsw/2007/results/
Omg swing against Labor! They’re a spent political force! Silly, and factually incorrect point.
I suggest Oz conducts a plebiscite in Cessnock about shutting down the coal industry. Tar and feathers, anyone?
Conduct all the hypothetical plebiscites and elections you want, it’s the real ones that count.
ruawake clearly said FEDERAL election, Oz. The Green vote in NSW at the 2007 federal election dropped by 0.21%
Oh my bad, I got confused with “State result”.
Interesting that the counterargument to quite substantial and trending swings to The Greens right throughout the country is cherry picking particular results, that one could call outliers.
The NSW primary vote in Federal election may have dropped 0.21%, but it was 0.7% higher at the Federal election in the same, and I would say quite a bit higher at the more recent council elections. And we’re still only talking about NSW.
But I don’t quite understand how you could be arguing that votes for The Greens aren’t increasing in numbers? You can argue about why people are voting and whether it’s a “protest vote” or whatever, but it’s kind of silly to argue with the numbers and the trend.
Blargh, higher at the *State election.
That’s what happens when you get over-excited.
Of course I acknowledge the Green vote is rising. Look at my post #1 on this thread.
So back to the ACT election and the Patterson (Westpoll) figures. It may make the Greens all hairy chested thinking they may win 4 seats. But remember this is the polling mob who said Labor was ahead in WA : 54-46 , the same polling mob who last election said Gary Nairn would retain Eden-Monaro.
NOTE: The latter statement is false: see here – The Management.
Right, so there’s no point in picking the few examples bucking the trend, is there? Because I don’t think anyone is saying that The Green vote is rising EVERYWHERE. It doesn’t happen for any other party, so why would it happen for them? Pointless assertions.
Can anyone else be bothered to do polling in the ACT? Or is that the reason we have to deal with Patterson?
Patterson have a deal with The Canberra Times and The “West”. Maybe the contractual obligations of the others ties them to their newspapers.
Maybe Morgan ?
The real problem here is that we won’t get many more polls other than this one in the lead up to the election here. Its pretty hard to assess its accuracy in the absence of any trends…
Greens vote increased by 10%, Labor vote dropped by 10%.
2007 NSW State election
Go The Greens.
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/nsw/2007/results/
margaret
I get some very good drugs on prescription – what’s your excuse?
A mate of mine is a subbie at the Canberra Times and said they can’t afford to hire to many companies to do polling. I’d suggest (though he didn’t) that they chose Patterson cos they were cheap (not that i can confirm that).
I don’t think any of the major companies could be bothered in the ACT. It’s not really a massive talking point anywhere but here. And even here its not that big a deal.
Yeah, fair enough. Only a week and a half to go anyway.
What shade of Green are we talking about? The Ronan Lees or Ian Cohens, the Petra Kellys or Joschka Fischers? Everything from anti abortion to pro Afghanistan intervention eh? Just think what they’ll be like when they have to caucus.
mogfeatures, have a look here and all shall be revealed:-
http://act.greens.org.au/
Margaret, I don’t know what planet you’re living on, but on this one the results of the 2007 NSW state election were as follows:
Australian Democrats 21,099 00.5 (-00.4)
Australian Greens 352,805 09.0 (+00.7)
Australian Labor Party 1,535,872 39.0 (-03.7)
Christian Democrats 97,420 02.5 (+00.7)
Liberal Party 1,061,273 26.9 (+02.2)
National Party 396,023 10.1 (+00.4)
Others 471,497 12.0
Greens up 00.7%, Labor down 3.7%.
Thanks for clearing that up Adam
Should be
Greens up 8.5% on their vote in previous election
Labor down 9% on their vote in previos election
No Margaret, Adam is quite right. Swing is always expressed as a percentage point difference, not as a percentage. By your mathematics, interest rates fell 14.3% yesterday.
The reason why is simple. Say a two party contest, one party 45%, the other 55%. Say the next election was 50:50. The swing was 5 percentage points. If you used percentages rather than percentage points, the party whose vote rose would have received an 11.1% swing, but the swing against the other party would be 9.1%. The number of voters was the same in both cases, so the percentages are clearly misleading.
ruawake… I don’t remember any polls saying Nairn would retain Eden Monaro. I remember they said that it’d be about 54/46 or 52/48.
This from today’s Crikey email:
There was certainly no published poll showing the Liberals ahead in Eden-Monaro. However, from memory just before the election Howard geed up the troops by telling them their internal polling in the seat was, at the very least, encouraging.
I’ve now read the Ruawake comment LTEP is responding to: s/he is definitely mistaken about Patterson polling showing Nairn in front.
Hettinger should defect to the Greens.
Patterson polled Eden-Monaro twice, the first poll showed a Nairn win, the second showed the result within 2%.
The only result widely published was the aggregated result of the two polls.
NOTE: This statement is false: see here – The Management.
Please provide a link to support this assertion.
Or I’ll ban you.
“We also provided two iterations of voting intent for the Canberra Times in Eden- Monaro.”
http://www.marketresearch.com.au/aurora/assets/user_content/File/Federal%2007%20Assessment%20FINAL.pdf
heh!
From rua’s doc
“Our sampling was N=400 in each case.
This provides a sample error of +/- 4.9% at the 95% level of confidence, or about 2.1% at the 70% confidence level”
Who the hell uses a 70% confidence interval?
It’s like “yeah, sure – two out of three aint bad”.
OK its tedious but http://www.archive.org will confirm my assertion.
Ruawake, you have made the following assertions:
1. That Patterson conducted two polls.
2. That one of these polls showed a Nairn win.
3. That the other showed the result was within 2%.
4. That the only “widely published” poll aggregated these two results (which if true must have showed a narrower margin of 2%).
The first assertion, which is neither here nor there, is the only one supported by the link you have provided. The facts are as follows.
1. On October 15-16, Patterson conducted a poll of 400 voters in Eden-Monaro. This is the “first iteration” to which their report refers. Far from showing a Nairn win, it has Labor leading 56-44. This poll was published in the Canberra Times on October 27.
2. On November 16-17, a second poll of 411 voters was conducted which showed Labor leading 53-47. This poll, which was published in the Canberra Times on November 19, is the one detailed in the link you have provided.
I can only conclude that you are deliberately peddling untruths with the intention of damaging the company’s reputation, rather than admit you were wrong. This is an extremely serious matter, and you have been dealt with accordingly. If you can point to any actual evidence to refute what I have said here (as opposed to a meaningless link to archive.org), you can send it to me by email.
Gosh, if that’s an extremely serious matter, what is the impending collapse of the British banking system?
There’s another article on this here (Canberra Times). I guess Hettinger could do a Ronan Lee and jump over to the Greens… I doubt he’d do it now, seeing as the ballot papers have already been printed and there’s probably some regulation against it, but if he got elected (which may happen – he’s getting plenty of publicity
), and then went Green… well, that’d be interesting. Might be the second Greens member in Molonglo. (Third, even, in the case of a boilover – although if he’s making himself known as a green candidate, that’d squash the Green vote there, so I doubt it.)
Also – a nice round up of ACT goings-on at RiotACT, here. That’s quite a good website – I could see myself using it quite a bit if I ever moved to Canberra.
Yeah, I think that too about RiotACT.
Bird of Paradise, if you remember a few years back there was another case up in QLD where almost the exact same thing happened… a certain someone whose name doesn’t deserve to be mentioned on this hallowed website was kicked out of the Liberal Party for peddling views they didn’t agree with, created their own party and ran as a candidate but because the ballot papers had already been printed they were listed as a Liberal candidate.
Of course it would be quite a bit harder in the ACT with the party tickets and PR etc.
The Hettinger hoo haa is mostly a symptom that the ALP see most of their problem coming from the Green side rather than from the conservative side. He wants to have a bit of both ways.
Has anyone noticed anything the ACT Liberals are proposing which owes anything to traditional Liberal Party ideology? Or does it appear they’re just promising whatever it takes to have a turn at the wheel? In which case, given the predisposition of the ACT electorate to the left, the ascendancy of Rudd and Bolshie Turnbull, and the collapse of the glorious market, whither the Canberra Liberals? What do they stand for? Anyone care to enlighten us or speculate where individual Canberra Liberals are coming from or just where they might sit on the political spectrum? They can’t all be opportunists, surely.
Obviously in these circumstances they should run on a platform of outright Bolshevism.
I remember seeing some vague comments about wanting to return Canberra to it’s former ‘nature’ on some such thing, which was hinting at a more conservative, backwards looking territory. I think that could possibly be viewed as a traditional campaign point.
Oh… and there’s law and order of course.
170 – Perhaps then they might be willing to form a coalition with the medieval wing, sorry, branch, of the Greens.
mogfeatures: I’m not surprised in the least. ACT Liberal leaders who campaign on traditional Liberal Party ideology become long-forgotten opposition leaders. It goes down like an utter ton of bricks here.
Seselja is smart enough to realise that by staying the absolute hell away from anything that could be portrayed as seriously conservative, he won’t alienate a giant swathe of the population who are fed up with Stanhope and want somewhere else to go. History makes this bloody obvious – the only Liberal Chief Minister who ever won an election was Kate Carnell, who was popular, charismatic, and on the definite social liberal end of the Libs. Trevor Kaine and Gary Humphries were both more conservative, and both got their arses handed to them when they actually had to face an election.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/rivals-gang-up-on-greens-as-poll-push-boils-over/1331045.aspx
I thought it had been emphatically proven that negative attacks don’t actually work.
And ‘negative attacks’ haven’t been central to the demonising of Stanhope? (So much so that one of the minor, so-called ‘independent’ parties appears to be running almost solely on an anti Stanhope ticket, rather than anti Labor.)
Clearly they’ve been rife throughout this campaign, my point is that it’s unlikely to translate into any tangible positive electoral result.