Today’s Sun Herald brings us a poll of 500 respondents in Ryde, one of four New South Wales state seats which face a by-election next Saturday. It points to a 24 per cent two-party swing against Labor and an easy win for Liberal candidate Victor Dominello – a barely believable result in normal circumstances, but one that sounds entirely plausible in the current environment. The other Labor-held seats which go to the polls are Lakemba (margin 34.0 per cent, being vacated by Morris Iemma) and Cabramatta (29.2 per cent, vacated by Reba Meagher). The fourth seat is Port Macquarie, which is vacant as a result of independent Rob Oakeshott’s move to federal politics at last month’s Lyne by-election. This looms as a contest between Nationals candidate Leslie Williams and independent Peter Besseling. More on all this at some point in the next few days.
UPDATE: Crazy large overview of the Ryde by-election from Antony Green at ABC Elections.
80 Comments
24%… that’s incredible
I know their hated but 24 seems like an extraordinary amount to me. If it did eventuate, would that be some kind of record?
I would love to see a national poll result now too. I suspect that with Rudd and Swan remaining calm and Turnbull sounding a bit too shrill, there may eb a slight swing to Labor nationally, even though NSW Labor is suffering badly. Good for the voters I say; the two are chalk and cheese.
A terrible result. It’s too bad the system only allows a real choice between 2 equally repellant parties in NSW.
Eer, heard of Greens, independents?
I said ‘real choice’. The Greens and independents are not real choices.
The system allows you and anyone else to run as an independent or create your own party. Quit whining.
Whichever party wins it’ll be from the left – we are all socialists now.
Only a 24% swing?
Oz, the system allows it. The political reality is that there are only 2 parties to choose from. Not a mind blowing concept.
I’m shocked, utterly shocked. This result simply doesn’t make sense.
24% of people in Ryde STILL support Labor?
Labor’s 2007 vote in Ryde was artifically high so a dramatic correction is likely. I suspect that NESB voters might be underrepresented in the sample however. But overall Labor is headed for a severe defeat as in 1988, remember the 18 & 15% swings in the 1986 by-elections, today with voters more volatile by-election disasters get worse. A bad result in Ryde would suggest problems in Oatley & Strathfield at the election.
And so Geoff Robinson starts the expectation game – our vote last time was high, we expect a large swing, by-elections swing more now than they used to… blah, blah, blah
So when the actual result is less than a 24% swing I suppose we will hear about how it was a better result than expected, Nathan Rees reduced what would have been a wipeout under Iemma… blah, blah, blah.
I suspect Labor in Ryde will get exactly what they deserve.
Why was Labor’s vote in 2007 in Ryde artificially high? Watkins’s pimary vote fell 9% and his 2PV fell 5%.
But will the people in Ryde get what they deserve? It’s a sick joke surely that the Liberal party and its fellow travellers successfully demonised public infrastructure borrowing/ spending over the last generation and now stand to benefit electorally from its rundown and the mismanagement of ‘partnerships’ with the glorious private sector. Still, it’ll be fun watching the Alastairs and Marigolds forced to come to the party in pink.
Mogfreatures – I assume you are joking. You are blaming a party that has not been in government for over 13 years for the current problems. So I suppose I can blame Paul Keating for the current stock market meltdown?
Actually steve you can thank keating for the reforms he introduced that have allowed our economy to weather the asian meltdown and now the WEC
As for howard the % spend on the states went from close to 49% of Gov revenue to less than 41%
You do the math steve and you’ll see howard was woeful in regards to state funding
Hope this helps
It’s the dominant neo-con paradigm over the last generation which has been responsible for both. But hey, we’re all over that now, so the forthcoming electoral results can in no way be represented as a new found love afffair with traditional Liberal Party ideology.
Gusface, I do thank Keating. He was the best Labor Treasurer we have ever had. Not that that would be hard.
Howard was many things but he was not “woeful”. Woefull PMs do not last for 11 years. In relation to state funding, I never understand the whining about federal grants. State governments of their own volition abolished state income taxes and death duties .. to their own peril.
The NSW government had the greatest economic boom during the 90s and early 00s but somehow managed to waste money of wigwams for a goose’s bridle. Nathan Rees hardly inspires confidence with his $30million dollar V8 extravaganza.
steve your feint praise of keating does you no service.
As regards howard-you know im right ,just admit it and get on with healing the pain of losing the little man and his neo con agenda.
I sincerely hope that the liberal party does admit its past failures and grows up to become a viable mature and representative choice.
your denial of past wrongs and ill-judged policy does not bode well for short term reform
(if of course your views are representative of mainstream libs)
Er no they did not. Only the Federal Govt. can levy income tax. The States thought they may be able to levy excises, but the High Court found this to be unconstitutional.
When Joh abolished death duties all the other states had not choice but to follow.
You can blame whatever you want. Mogfeatures is not “blaming” the Liberal party for the woes of the State, he’s saying that there are certain things that voters are unimpressed with and those are the reasons they are leaving Labor – inadequate public transport, failed PPP’s and pathetic public infrastructure.
But cutting spending, not investing in infrastructure and letting the magical private sector look after everything is core Liberal policy.
I’m seeing a Liberal-Labor merger not too far in the future…
The states voluntarily ceded their income tax powers to the Commonwealth in 1943. Fraser offered to give them back but the states said No Thanks.
“The Income Tax Assessment Act 1942 said that individuals had to pay Commonwealth tax prior to State taxes. In effect, the scheme meant either the states had to accept grants and stop taxing, or decline grants and try to collect tax at rates which were unsustainable.”
Hardly a voluntary action.
Thanks OZ – not everybody (and obviously most of those surveyed in Ryde) sees the irony.
Steve, I think you’ll find the Commonwealth has been the sole collector of income tax since 1942.
No 17
Do you even know what neo-con means mog-features? I’d guess most of the people who parrot the dumb label don’t.
Nevertheless, the NSW Labor Party deserves two decades of wilderness of their absolutely pathetic management of the state. I was campaigning in West Ryde yesterday and several people told Nicole Campbell and her sycophants, literally, to f**k off. And it appears that the ALP’s photoshoppers have been at work again: just like Belinda Neal’s amazingly youthful corflute photo, Nicole has been given a nip & tuck. LOL! Such appalling vanity!
‘I was campaigning in West Ryde yesterday and several people told Nicole Campbell and her sycophants, literally, to f**k off.’
you young fibs and your alcopops-best argument yet to raise the drinking age to 21
“Ominously for Labor, Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell outpolls Mr Rees 44 to 32 per cent on who would make the better premier, with 24 per cent undecided.”
Why is this ominous? I would suggest the 24% undecided is the relevent figure.
No 27
Fibs!? The ALP has has treated the people of NSW as idiots for 13 years! I’m surprised that you’d even come to their defence!
No 28
ruawake, Rees is no Anna Bligh.
#24 there was a premiers’ conference and all the premiers agreed to it.
Adam
How could they refuse?
That’s not the point. The point is that it was a voluntary ceding of power, so that state governments could get all the credit for spending money but none of the pain for levying the taxes to pay for the spending. The premiers liked it so much that when Fraser offered to give taxing powers back to the states they all said Noooooo thanks!
GP
not defending state labor as such,just that the young fib hoon element seems to begiven a free rein lately -my god man even I wouldnt have yelled F off at coconut.(the fact he probably wouldnt have heard me is irrelevant)
Have to agree with Adam.
No 34
Gusface, I don’t believe I said that Liberal campaigners yelled obscenities at the Labor candidate.
If you think I was implying that, then you’d be mistaken. I meant average people whose attention both parties were trying to attract.
Adam
The States then flirted with Section 90 of the Consitution for close on 50 years. They then came up with some doozies to balance the books – Neville Wran’s rounding down of TAB payouts was a classic.
What is left for the States to raise revenue without begging the Federal Govt. ?
Pokies ?
Because that’s what average people do – swear at candidates. We all know the Young Liberals are the rational voices of reason in the Australian sphere of debate.
Ryde is truly a marginal seat on current boundaries prob more inclined towards liberal
than labor maybe by 5%.John Watkins had a personal vote of at least 7% which has now been lost to labor. If the opinion poll figures are correct then this will be like a British byelection when a party is unpopular even safe seats can be lost in the climate of the time then at the general election they vote on normal lines
There’s a full analysis of Ryde at http://www.abc.net.au/elections/nsw/2008/byelections/ryde.htm
No 38
Oz, please don’t be so patronising. No Liberal or Labor Candidate shouted obscenities. But the voters did and Labor bore the brunt of them. That is the honest truth.
But patronising is what I do best =/
Why does AG link to the Liberal Party’s website for the Liberal Candidate for Cabramatta.
Is this in some way related to the fact that she is an ABC employee?
I think we should be told.
I recommend an inquiry investigating pro-Liberal bias at the ABC.
Who knows how many fancy “chamber graphics” and “swing pendulums” have been doctored by Antony Green.
It’s an amusing idea: blast a few obscenities in the face of the ALP candidate then pop inside and vote Labor!
Spleen venting par excellence …
Adam is quite right WRT to states ceding tax powers. Thus students have the joys of learning about vertical fiscal imbalance. And yes, states can deleiver goods and services, but blame the Feds if it goes wrong (”they didn’t give us enough money”). but the end issue has already remained that governments at both levels have always tried to take maximum credit for minimum pay out – and local govt has seen this agenda pushed at them, with a raft of programs and decisions forcing them to look for increased revenue to fund decisions they didn’t make.
Perhaps the abolition of states might achieve this, or a complete re-negotiation of federal-state funding arrangements, but I can’t help feeling that short of only one level of government raising the funds, making the decisions and then implementing (ie have only one tier of govt) there will always be this argy-bargy. There is a case for states receiving a bigger slice of the federal pie, but then states also need to be delivering the services… The equalisation factor of the federal government is often forgotten when people don’t get what they want (thus WA always complaining about the eastern states taking all the money and giving nothing back, or rural WA (aka The Nationals) wanting money raised from regional WA returned to regional WA), but without it there would be severe dislocations between the resource rich and poor.
Back to Ryde – I’m not all surprised that people are heckling ALP candidates and workers. I’m sure Liberals received the same prior to the last federal election. But in a state (by)election I’ve found it more prevalent as the issues are so much closer to home. What I’m interested with this Taverner poll (and any others we might see twixt now and next Saturday) is where is the rest of the vote going? By my reckoning there’d be about 30% going to everybody else (or undecided?) – and if someone collected all that up, they’d pass the ALP and maybe even the Libs. Full figures would be interesting indeed.
Has anyone seen any polling for the other 3 by-elections? I’m interested in how Besseling is going as I’ve heard he is doing well publicly (and the Nats are worried he’ll take the seat).
SNIP. New item of coarse language case law: “f**k” is permissible in quotations, but it amounts to an evasion of my moderation filter when it’s your own work – The Management.
Judging from Victor’s site he is tie challenged.
That’ll learn me for trying to be funny!
It is sensible to have income tax (and many other taxes) on the largest scale possible so as to avoid tax evasion and races to the bottom.
Bring on a democratic world government with tax powers.
When the parties in NSW were 50:50, (after the 1995 election), the boundaries of Ryde indicated a 4% Liberal margin.
Poor candidate selection and the general political tide worked against them with swings of 10% in 1999 and then another 10% in 2003. There was a correction in 2007, but like all the Marginal seats in Sydney, the ALP held back the tide. But there was a 10% swing across Liberal held seats away from the government.
The nature of ALP key seats campaigns in 1999 and 2003 means that there are many over-inflated margins in the suburbs.
The recent ALP strategy in NSW to say, sure we may be bad, but look at them, didn’t work where people already had Liberal representatives. I think the rot has set in enough now for it not to work more generally.
No 50
Arrant nonsense. Our sovereignty should never be ceded to a capricious world entity.
As we are currently learning, our sovereignty is pretty fictional. If we are going to have a global market, and if we agree that markets need to be regulated, then it follows that we need a world regulatory body with coercive powers – which is a government.
It is striking that Labor’s 1999 Sydney gains have seen major increases in Labor’s vote whilst nearby Liberal electorates have not: Miranda vs. Cronulla, Ryde vs. Eastwood. Is this evidence of a personal vote? This is what I mean by an inflated vote. The point is that if Labor is clobbered by a 20% swing in Ryde this does not mean that its 2PP vote at the 2010 election will fall by a similar margin. Ryde is the worst possible seat for Labor to face a by-election, Lakemba is probably the best. But Labor will lose and lose badly in 2010
2011…
No 53
Wrong. Co-ordinated efforts can be achieved through multilateral negotiations, as is occurring now. There is no need to institute a global government. As Thomas O’Neill once said: “all politics is local” – I doubt a global government could ever understand the needs of local people and entities.
It wouldn’t need to. It would deal with global issues, while second, third and fourth-tier governments would deal with second, third and fourth-tier issues.
No 57
You can dress it up however you like, but I will never in a million years support a supraterritorial government.
I doubt it will be up to you.
Well, in defence of GP, the European parliament was a good idea until the voters temporarily got to say in non-binding referendum that they didn’t want it.
I would be worried as an Australian about that sort of arrangement. 21 million doesn’t get many votes or voices in 6 plus billion.
At least we can expect some sort of advantage of national leadership, and the inevitable competition between countries (like the competition for global capital currently happening).
Not everything will be in the control of the Australian government (nor was it ever) but there do under the current system still exist levers to encourage people to invest here etc.
Very good point. It is verging on the United States of Europe, which plainly is undesirable to average European people. Just look at the failure of the Lisbon Treaty.
I think I just heard at the end of the ABC news something like “ALP expected to lose Ryde by-election in biggest upset ever”
How can an expected result be an upset?
Well, it would be demoralising for the ALP if they did lose by such a sizeable margin.
presumably it means “upset” as in “an upsetting of the previous majority.”
Yeah it’s quite a swing, but he’s right, it’s not really an “upset” since everyone saw it coming from the second Watkin’s handed in his resignation.
The fact that you’re calling it an “upset” a week out from the election automatically disqualifies it from actually being an upset.
Yeah, the Libs haven’t had much to gloat about recently. Now their ideology is intellectually bankrupt on the world stage and the opportunism of their recent and current Federal leadership teams exposed as morally bankrupt, all they have to look forward to is to put themselves forward as potentially better local managers (and then only by default) of an even bigger public sector – welcome back to ‘Society’ brothers and sisters (by all acounts Maggie T’s not to know now anyway). So, for chrissake, let’em think it’s a massive rebuff/ upset, or whatever.
No 66
The Liberal ideology is not libertarian. After all, it was Peter Costello who introduced the prudential regulation that has proved to be visionary in its foresight.
If anybody cares …
… that is not correct …
… and that is not correct …
… and nor is that …
J-D
well done
I read somewhere that the original war cabinet decision was only temporary,but at wars end was lost in the swirl of new legislation and the subsequent 50’s case merely was a case of “sort it out among yourselves”.
Is this correct?
ta
Gusface
The wartime package of legislation included one part which said that taxpayers could not pay State income taxes until they had first paid their Commonwealth income taxes, but said that this was for the duration of the war only. This, along with the other parts of the legislation, was upheld as constitutional in the First Uniform Tax Case. Later, that part of the legislation was changed and the time limit was removed. In the Second Uniform Tax Case the majority of the High Court ruled that particular provision unconstitutional, departing to that extent from the earlier decision, but a different (but overlapping) majority continued to uphold the key provision making Commonwealth grants to the States conditional on the States not charging income taxes, so the overruling had no practical effect (the Chief Justice actually said: ‘I think that par. (a) of s. 221 (1) of the Income Tax and Social Services Contribution Assessment Act should be declared invalid. Whether such a declaration is of practical importance in relation to the system of uniform taxation is a matter about which I may be permitted to remain sceptical, but it is part of the relief for which the plaintiffs have asked.’).
It was never the case at any time that the Commonwealth tried to pass a law forbidding the States from imposing income taxes (that would have been obviously unconstitutional). The States always had the constitutional power (and still do) to impose income taxes. The legislation and the court decisions always left it up to the political judgement of the States to decide whether or not to impose income taxes, but the political intention of the Commonwealth was to make it impossible for them to do so, and that’s how all the States always read the situation.
once again J-D well done.
Was also Mings influence,though not overt or “wrong’,a factor in the states accepting the decision,though an appeal to the privy council was mooted (I think) at the time.
Mogfeature
The Liberals ideology is intellectually bankrupt on the world stage?
What cause this global credit crunch is the US policy of forcing banks (ie Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae) to lend to borrower, who cannot repay the loan.
The goal is a social goal of everyone being equal and everyone in America to own a home. These loans are then packaged and sold to investors
This is a liberal/socialist ideology, rather than a free market ideology. Note: The Liberals in Australia is the right wing party
“What cause this global credit crunch is the US policy of forcing banks (ie Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae) to lend to borrower, who cannot repay the loan.”
Oh psht. What a shallow analysis. That could possibly explain a few banks in the US posting negative returns, it can’t explain the complete collapse of the financial system in most of the developed world.
In relation to the Port Macquarie by-election look for the Nationals Leslie Williams to recover the party’s brand in the midnorthcoast of NSW.
A Nationals victory in Port Macquarie will go a long way in repairing the damage of the loss of Lyne. The party will also remember though that when Tony Windsor switched from the state seat of Tamworth to Federal New England they won the Tamworth by-election only to lose the seat again at the 2003 NSW election. So if Leslie Williams wins Saturdays by-election they will have to work hard to ensure it remains a safe seat in the future.
Indeed, because a Leslie Williams win will be not so indicative of her own popularity or that of the Nationals brand but disaffection with the NSW government. Port Macquarie isn’t a rural die-hard conservative belt anymore.
Oz, the government also ask bank to give non-recourse loans (unlike Australia) ie if I cannot pay my mortgage, I give the property back to the bank and I have no liability
And then the property market drop 15%
From my understanding Ryde is very much a marginal seat!!
I have a rule of thump on voting patterns which is totally unbacked by any scienific evidence!
You have a group of voters I will say two! these two may not like the Government but in a normal election only one will change their vote.
Whilst in a landslide both will change, therefore when looking at a By-election result I always half the swing result so if the ALP do suffer a 24% swing which I think will be a record! then I would predict the ALP are looking at a 10%+ swing statewide.
One thing I have noticed is that Governments start off by winning a narrow election then at the following election score a large swing to them then at the following election there is a swing back towards the Opposition, normally in either very safe Government seats or opposition held seats
Then at the following the marginals swing knocking the Government out.
I think the real test for the ALP is what happens in Lakemba and Cabramatta, these two seats should not be lost after all Ryde stikes me as the sort of seat that the Liberals will need to win if they are too be in Government whilst the two soild ALP areas are close too if not the two safest ALP seats in the country.
If my memory serves me correctly the Nationals won the By-election for Tamworth when Tony Windsor moved to Canberra only to see an Independant win Tamworth at the following State Election.
While Port Maquarrie may be changing, I still think we should consider it National party heartland
Dovif!! The policy of encoraging home ownership is nowadays considered a by-partisen policy, yes I know the Republicans have had very slack regulation and while Howard saw himself as a Republican type his Government was left wing compared to the Bush administration.
J-D, thanks for correcting me and others about that matter. I have always been under the impression that the transfer was voluntary, but evidently I was mistaken.