A candidates forum will be held at 6pm tonight at the Killara High School, hosted by the school and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition.

Friday, November 13

The ballot paper draw has been conducted, and the full list of 22 candidates can be viewed here. Expect a high informal vote thanks to the Christian Democratic Party, which has been unable to make quite as much of a joke of this very serious process as they had hoped to: only nine candidates are being fielded, rather than the promised 11. Were I a Bradfield voter, I’d send these idiots a signal by placing them from 14 to 22.

Monday, November 9

News Limited reports that Zoo Weekly has approached “chk chk boom girl” Clare Werbeloff to promote its wares by having her run as a candidate. A similar enterprise proposed for the March state election in Queensland, at which former AFL player Warwick Capper was to join Pauline Hanson in running for Beaudesert, was thwarted when the great man and his policy brains trust, Mark Jackson, neglected to submit the nomination in time.

Friday, November 6

LATE: Antony Green has updated his by-election with candidate details, which lists two who had escaped my attention: medical practitioner Simon McCaffrey of the Democratic Labor Party, and fitter and turner Victor Waterson of One Nation.

EARLY: Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports the Christian Democratic Party’s 11 candidates will run “an emotive anti-Muslim, anti-carbon trading campaign”:

The party’s propaganda for the December 5 by-election, which has been provided in advance to The Australian, declares “Enough!” and urges Australians to “Stand your ground in defence of Christian values”. It uses a selection of alternating slogans, including, “Ten-year moratorium on Muslim immigration”, “No nukes for Iran – we must defend Israel” and “No carbon tax – stop the ETS”.

Tuesday, November 3

The North Shore Times relates the aforementioned Simon Kelly is an “anti-safe seat campaigner”, and that the Liberal Democratic Party will also field a candidate.

Monday, November 2

Seven candidates are listed on Wikipedia: the aforementioned Paul Fletcher, Susie Gemmell, Marianna Leishman and Brian Buckley; another independent, “local IT businessman” Simon Kelly; and two Christian Democratic Party candidates, Leighton Thew and Heath Wilson.

Thursday, October 29

The Australian Sex Party has announced its candidate will be one Zahra Stardust, who is apparently no relation to Ziggy – her birth certificate reportedly records her as Marianna Leishman. Stardust-Leishman is billed as “a feminist writer and law graduate who also works as a trapeze artist, burlesque performer, showgirl, fire twirler and pole dance instructor”. Nominations close November 12, with the ballot draw to follow the next day.

Tuesday, October 27

Enjoy Paul Fletcher’s by-election website.

UPDATE: And, in the interests of balance, Greens candidate Susie Gemmell’s. Thanks to Spanners and Marg for their awareness-raising efforts in comments.

Monday, October 26

Speaker Harry Jenkins has confirmed that the Higgins and Bradfield by-elections will be held on December 5.

Monday, October 19

Brendan Nelson formally tendered his resignation today to Speaker Harry Jenkins, who is expected to announce an election date of November 28 or December 5 in the coming days. Antony Green has weighed in on local reports that the Christian Democratic Party might field as many as 11 candidates: one for each disciple other than Judas, which is presumably how Fred Nile and campaign manager Michael Darby view estranged party MLC Gordon Moyes. Already pencilled in are Leighton Thew and Heath Wilson. Antony says the plan would amount to the CDP “abusing its privileges as a registered party”, which allow it to nominate candidates without obtaining the signatures of 50 voters as independent candidates are required to to. He suggests reforming the law to require nominating signatures if a party wishes to field multiple candidates.

Saturday, October 10

With the by-election process still not officially under way, Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald discusses the question of timing:

Governments set byelection dates and, on average, have opted in recent years for polls 52 days after resignations were tendered. That would push Bradfield and Higgins back to Saturday, December 5. They could be a week earlier on November 28. Either way, the polls would follow the final two-week parliamentary sitting in which the Coalition – if it doesn’t filibuster – will have to vote on Labor’s emissions trading scheme.

Saturday, October 3

The North Shore Times reports potential independent candidates include Ku-ring-gai mayor Elaine Malicki and “Australian nationalist” Brian Buckley (hat tip to Nick C in comments).

Tuesday, September 29

An exquisitely detailed report on the preselection by Imre Salusinszky of The Australian details the ballot thus:

Courtesy of the special rule, the first ballot took care of everyone apart from Fletcher (28 votes), Switzer (15), Coleman (14), Leeser (11) and, surprisingly, Burton (12) and Alexander (7). A second ballot redistributed the vote as follows: Fletcher (40), Switzer (23), Leeser (19), Coleman (14), Burton (11), Alexander (7). The tennis champ was retired, hurt. Burton and Coleman were eliminated in the third and fourth ballots. As Coleman fell, the Left moved strategically against Switzer. Leeser leapfrogged him, picking up 13 of Coleman’s 17 supporters. The fifth vote came out: Fletcher (47), Leeser (38), Switzer (26). Leeser’s supporters began to speculate on how soon Turnbull would be elevating their man to the shadow ministry: with Switzer eliminated, they assumed the Right would lock in behind Leeser. They were wrong. Switzer’s vote split straight down the middle. Neeham walked briskly down the stairs of the RSL, to a room next to a billiard parlour, where the candidates were holed up. He told them Fletcher had beaten Leeser by 60 votes to 51, and took them through the successive balloting.

Sunday, September 27

Paul Fletcher won last night’s Liberal preselection over Julian Leeser by a margin of 60 to 51 in the final round, according to VexNews. Tom Switzer and David Coleman reportedly made it through to the third round, the also-rans presumably having been knocked out in the first and second. Stephanie Peatling of the Sydney Morning Herald reports the preselection proceedings were delayed by a bomb scare. Fletcher holds dual British citizenship which he says he will relinquish on Monday, the High Court having established in 1999 that this constitutes “allegiance to a foreign power” when it overturned Queensland One Nation candidate Heather Hill’s election to the Senate.

Other candidate that I’m aware of: Susie Gemmell of the Greens.

Saturday, September 26

Today’s the big day for the Liberal preselection. Writing in The Australian, Peter van Onselen describes the procedure thus:

If you are reading this on Saturday, take a moment to feel for the 117Liberal Party members locked away from the outside world at the Hornsby RSL. There won’t even be a television in the background broadcasting the AFL grand final. If they’re lucky, theyll get a few newspapers to share around. The process will continue through the day as the 17 candidates formally work their way around small groups of preselectors in round table format to answer questions and make short pitches. By 7pm the voting process starts as each of the candidates gets eliminated. It is entirely possible we won’t know the result until the early hours of Sunday morning. If you are reading this article on Sunday, in all likelihood the result will be available on The Australian’s website, even if it wasn’t known in time to make it into the Sunday papers. The talk will quickly move from the process of the preselection to the choice of the candidate selected.

These are the 17 starters in vague order of likelihood of victory, as best as I can ascertain it.

Paul Fletcher. Former Optus executive, described by Imre Salusinszky as “a communications consultant and former staffer with former federal communications minister Richard Alston”. Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports “number crunchers” give Fletcher slight favouritism ahead of David Coleman. This is partly because he has strong support from the Left, which accounts for 35 votes, while Right (30 votes) support is scattered among Julian Leeser, Tom Switzer, Sophie York, Simon Berger and “dark horse” John Hart. Fletcher is also rated the favourite by Peter van Onselen, who nonetheless observes he “has the twin negatives of being close to the left-wing clique The Group and not living in the area”.

David Coleman. An executive with the Packer family’s Publishing and Broadcasting Limited who is associated with the Left faction and the other side of town, having run for the federal Cook preselection and been mentioned in connection with the state seat of Cronulla. Described as a “centrist” by Peter van Onselen, who rates him one of four front-runners but warns he “doesn’t live in the area and the risk for him is not having enough support early in the count to last long enough to pick up expected preferences”.

Simon Berger. Openly gay staffer for Nelson. Not Friends with Miranda Devine, who says he squibbed the emissions trading system issue while in Nelson’s employ. Andrew Landeryou at VexNews reports he “enjoys the doctor’s strong endorsement”, and is “loosely associated with the Alex Hawke part of the Liberal Right, but the associations with most of these candidates and the dominant factions are very loose”. Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald observes that Berger’s branch will be transferred to North Sydney under the current redistribution proposal. Peter van Onselen says both Berger and Leeser “should get strong local support but the difficulty for each of them is winning enough factional support to secure a majority if they make it to the final two”.

Julian Leeser. Menzies Research Centre executive director. According to Andrew Landeryou at VexNews, he would enjoy support from within the Alex Hawke sub-faction of the Right, but “also worked for factionally Left Phil Ruddock so he maintains good relations across the usually warring NSW Liberal tribes”. Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald says Leeser is a member of a Berowra branch that will be transferred into the electorate under the current redistribution proposal. Peter van Onselen reports both Leeser and Tom Switzer have been playing up the idea that a local resident is necessary to forestall a challenge by an independent running on development controversies, but says Leeser’s challenge is “winning enough factional support to secure a majority” if he makes the final two.

Tom Switzer. Former opinion page editor of The Australian, adviser to Brendan Nelson and waiter for Studs Afloat in a strictly “pants on” capacity. Said by Andrew Landeryou of VexNews to be backed by the David Clarke faction of the Right. Friends with Miranda Devine. Peter van Onselen reports Switzer has been playing up the idea that a local resident is necessary to forestall a challenge by an independent running on development controversies.

Sophie York. Like Tom Switzer, Friends with Miranda Devine, and evidently very good friends at that: she lists York’s qualifications as “barrister, author, lieutenant-commander in the navy reserves, mother of four sons”, being “part of a new breed of conservative feminists, generous and warm but with courage and a steely intellect”, and sharing Switzer’s qualities of being “successful, normal and fun, with a fine mind, good judgment, loving family and clear moral compass”.

Paul Blanch. Candidate for Calare at the 2004 federal election, at which time he was a spruiked as a sheep farmer who owned a property near Bathurst, he is now described by Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald as a “local lawyer and businessman”.

John Alexander. Former Davis Cup champion (loosely defined), “voice of tennis” and referee on Gladiators. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Alexander only recently joined the Liberal Party and attended his first branch meeting last week. A day before the preselection. Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reported Alexander had “unleashed a late offensive, telephoning about half of the 120 preselectors”.

John Hart. Chief executive of Restaurant and Catering Australia, rated a “dark horse” by Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Paul Ritchie. Public affairs manager for the NSW Business Chamber.

Namoi Dougall. A solicitor who once sat with Malcolm Turnbull on the Republic Advisory Committee.

Greg Burton. Another solicitor, Burton contested preselection for the state seat of Davidson in 2002.

Maureen Shelley. Former Ku-ring-gai councillor who challenged Bronwyn Bishop for preselection in Mackellar ahead of the 2007 election, losing by 90 votes to 17.

Philip Senior. A late entrant described by Peter van Onselen as an “author and business analyst”.

Richard Bell. Another late entrant, described by Andrew Priestley of the North Shore Times as a “barrister and community radio presenter”.

Robin Fitzsimons. Still another late entrant, described by Andrew Priestley of the North Shore Times as a “Sydney University senate fellow and neurologist”.

Mark Majewski. One more late entrant, described by Andrew Priestley of the North Shore Times as a “small business owner”. Majewski was the Liberal candidate for Blaxland at the 2007 federal election.

Non-starters:

Arthur Sinodinos. Considered the front-runner if he chose to run but has declined to do so, pleading the demands of politics on family life. Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald quotes a “senior source” saying that if Sinodinos had run, “there would have been potential to embarrass him over his relationship with the disgraced Treasury official Godwin Grech”. Peter van Onselen of The Australian has been promoting the idea that Sinodinos might want to enter state politics instead, perhaps replacing the outgoing Peter Debnam in Vaucluse.

Nick Campbell. State party president, said by Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald to have put his hand up on news of Arthur Sinodinos’s no-show, but ultimately didn’t follow through.

Adrienne Ryan. Former Ku-ring-gai mayor and ex-wife of former police commissioner Peter Ryan, mentioned in relation to every NSW Liberal preselection since time immemorial, but not ultimately a contestant in this one.

Nick Farr-Jones. Former Wallabies rugby union star mentioned early in the hunt, but evidently thought better of the idea.

Monday, September 14

Ben Raue at The Tally Room reports the Greens have preselected Susie Gemmell, their candidate from the 2007 election and for the corresponding state seat of Ku-ring-gai in 2003 and 2007. Gemmell works as an adviser to state upper house MP and Senate candidate Lee Rhiannon.

Friday, September 11

Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports a “draft timetable” circulating the Liberal Party has the preselection scheduled for September 26. According to Salusinszky, Fletcher is “narrowly favoured … at this stage”.

Tuesday, September 1

Malcolm Mackerras in Crikey tips a Liberal-Greens two-party margin of 59-41. He also provides an interesting rebuttal of the conventional wisdom that by-elections are bad for governments: true of the days when most resulted from the deaths of sitting members, he says, but trumped by the desire of voters to react against a “greed-driven resignation of the sitting member” by voting against their party. Without question there’s a lot of meat on these bones, but it doesn’t explain last year’s solid swing to the Nationals in Gippsland.

There may be an interesting new addition to the Liberal preselection race if an item in yesterday’s Crikey Tips and Rumours section is to be believed:

The contest for preselection in Bradfield is about to get a little more interesting with international lawyer Jason Yat-sen Li to declare his candidacy. Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has been working very hard to convince Yat-sen Li to run. Turnbull and Yat-sen Li have been very close ever since they first met at the Constitutional Convention in 1998. Other front-runners for Bradfield, including Julian Leeser and Tom Switzer, fear that Yat-sen Li might just have what it takes to win the preselection, especially if he has Turnbull’s backing.

Li was the lead New South Wales Senate candidate in 1998 of the Unity Party, formed to send a multicultural message against Hansonism. He left the party shortly after, accusing it of negotiating preference deals with unsavoury right-wing micro-parties. I will hold off including him in my Liberal preselection form guide, which I will move up to the top of this post each time I add a new update:

Monday, August 31

It is expected that the by-election will be held in November: around the time, notes Dennis Shanahan of The Australian, that the Rudd government will reintroduce its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation, daring the opposition to provide it with a double dissolution trigger. Helpful Liberal sources inform Glenn Milne that Malcolm Turnbull is “finished” if he can’t add 2 per cent to the Liberal primary vote. This is revealed in an interesting article for News Limited’s Sunday tabloids which doesn’t seem to be online:

The battle for Bradfield will be an internal Liberal party referendum on Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership. No more, no less. And for anyone who thinks that a cruel and unusual benchmark for a leader scraping the bottom of poll figures no politician would wish upon another, hark back a moment, if you will, to May, 2008. That was the time of the Gippsland by-election. A happier time for Brendan Nelson, whose decision to quit politics early has turned the contest for Bradfield into a make-or-break moment for Malcolm Turnbull.

Nelson was leader of the Liberal Party and Turnbull his putative challenger. Turnbull and his supporters told anyone who would listen that Gippsland was Nelson’s last stand. If Gippsland went, held by the Nationals for more than 20 years, so too would Nelson’s leadership. Gippsland happened in the full sunlamp glow of Kevin Rudd’s honeymoon. Back then, no one had heard of the global financial crisis. Nelson didn’t have an issue to fly with. But in tough-minded fashion, he grafted some. He opposed the Government’s alco-pops tax as an attack on the “ute-man” demographic in Gippsland, and he flayed Rudd over his broken election promises to bring down grocery and petrol prices. Critically, he used his Budget in Reply speech to propose a five-cents-a-litre-cut in fuel tax.

It flew. Behind the scenes, Turnbull described it as “populist crap”. But after Nelson announced – the first time around – he’d be retiring at the next election, Kevin Rudd had him around for a private cup of tea. Rudd declared Nelson’s speech on the Budget one of his finest moments as Liberal Leader. Unlike Turnbull, Rudd knew a good political manoeuvre when he saw one. The National Party went on to retain Gippsland with an 8.4 per cent swing against Labor.

Critically, the emphatic victory came off the preferences of the 20.4 per cent of the vote won by the Liberal candidate, Rohan Fitzgerald. And you know what that victory bought Brendan Nelson? Three weeks of clear air. That’s all. Three weeks before Turnbull and his supporters again began white-anting him before finally bringing him down five months later. So don’t let anyone tell you that posing the Bradfield by-election as a test for Malcolm Turnbull is a maliciously minded set-up. It is simply a matter of applying Malcolm’s own standards to himself.

The Liberal preselection will be decided at the end of September by 72 local branch delegates and 48 from the state council and state executive. There is talk of as many 20 candidates taking the field. Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports talk in Liberal circles that some might be running to serve notice to the members for neighbouring Berowra and Mackellar, Philip Ruddock and Bronwyn Bishop, that it won’t do for them to squeeze out another term while the surplus of Bradfield preselection talent goes begging.

Elsewhere, AAP reports the Greens will preselect a candidate on September 14. There’s a crazy large guide to the electorate on Ben Raue’s The Tally Room. The similarly thorough Antony Green offers some late news on the 1952 by-election for the seat.

Tuesday, August 25

Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports Brendan Nelson “will not stay until the next election” and will “make an announcement in the next 24 hours”, suggesting a by-election is imminent in his north Sydney seat of Bradfield. The electorate runs from Chatswood north through Killara, Turramurra and St Ives to Wahroonga and has been very safe for the Liberals since its creation in 1949, the inaugural member being a venerable Billy Hughes. Brendan Nelson came to the seat in 1996 after a preselection coup against David Connolly, member from 1974.

Nelson announced he would not contest the next election in February, leading to considerable jockeying ahead of a preselection that was delayed pending the announcement of new electoral boundaries. To head off branch stacking, the party’s state executive promptly ruled that any new members in the electorate would not be eligible to vote in the preselection ballot due nine months’ hence, whereas the rule normally requires only six months of membership. By all accounts the two front-runners will be Arthur Sinodinos, legendary former chief-of-staff to John Howard, and Tom Switzer, former opinion page editor for The Australian. However, other names were recently put forward by Phillip Coorey: Menzies Research Centre executive director Julian Leeser; Paul Fletcher, director of corporate and regulatory affairs at Optus; and David Coleman, an executive with the Packer family’s Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (last I heard) who is associated with the Left faction and the other side of the town, having run for the federal Cook preselection and been mentioned in connection with the state seat of Cronulla.

Antony Green has quickly whipped up a post on the matter, noting as a certain fact that Labor won’t run and that “the real contest in Bradfield is likely to be in Liberal pre-slection, not the subsequent by-election”.

UPDATE: According to Christian Kerr of The Australian, an “influential local Liberal” says: “If Arthur wants the seat, he’s got it. If he doesn’t run, then it’s an open race.”

UPDATE 2: The psephoblogosphere doesn’t stuff around: posts up already from Possum and Ben Raue.

UPDATE 3: Andrew Landeryou at VexNews says his sources believe Sinodinos is “not interested in running and has told people so as late as today”. He also names as another contender “master campaign tactician Simon Berger, an openly gay staffer for Nelson who enjoys the doctor’s strong endorsement”. Berger is “loosely associated with the Alex Hawke part of the Liberal Right, but the associations with most of these candidates and the dominant factions are very loose”. Leeser “would enjoy support from within the Hawke group. Interestingly, he once also worked for factionally Left Phil Ruddock so he maintains good relations across the usually warring NSW Liberal tribes”. Tom Switzer has support from the “Taliban Right” associated with local operative Noel McCoy and hard Right warlord David Clarke, “although they don’t really claim him as a member as such”. Apparently still in the mix is barrister Mark Speakman, recently discussed as a possible successor to Peter Debnam in Vaucluse and a challenger to federal incumbent Stephen Mutch in Cook way back in 1998, which led to the installation of Bruce Baird as a compromise candidate. Landeryou reckons David Coleman’s “decision to drag the party off to court over a previous preselection (for Cook before the last federal election) made him as popular as a bikini model in a Kabul coffee house”.

Lyne covers a 100 kilometre stretch of coastline up to 400 kilometres north of Sydney, the main population centres being Port Macquarie (home to 33 per cent of the electorate’s population) and Taree (14 per cent). Smaller centres include Old Bar, Lake Cathie and Harrington on the coast, and Wauchope and Wingham further inland. The National/Country Party has held the seat since its creation in 1949. The electorate covers the entirety of Oakeshott’s state seat of Port Macquarie, which provides Lyne with 55 per cent of its voters. Oakeshott won Port Macquarie as the Nationals candidate at a 1996 by-election ahead of independent John Barrett, who had come within 233 votes of defeating Mark Vaile as Liberal candidate for Lyne in 1993. He was promoted to the front bench after the 1999 election, taking the sport and recreation, fisheries and ports portfolios. In March 2002 he quit the party, claiming its local branches were controlled by property developers and questioning whether the party was still relevant to an electorate transformed by tourism and demographic change. The Nationals campaigned aggressively against him during the 2003 campaign, in particular over his support for drug law reform, but he was overwhelmingly re-elected with 69.7 per cent of the primary vote. This fell slightly to 67.1 per cent at the March 2007 election, his two-candidate preferred margin down from 32.8 per cent to a still formidable 28.2 per cent.

The Nationals candidate is Rob Drew, who was mayor of Port Macquarie until the council was sacked by the state government in February. The Macleay Argus reports he won a preselection vote ahead of Taree solicitor Quentin Schneider by 48 votes to 15. State party leader Andrew Stoner was reportedly urged by “senior colleagues” to throw his hat into the ring, but perhaps sensibly decided to stay put. The prospect of an Oakeshott candidacy was a cloud on the horizon from the time of Vaile’s departure, with Oakeshott earlier threatening to run against Vaile at the 2004 election. There has also been intermittent speculation over the years that he might be enlisted by the Liberals, although this might never have been more than wishful thinking by the party. Most recently, powerbrokers including Senator Bill Heffernan approached him to contest the by-election as the Liberal candidate, hoping that his success might push the Coalition further along the road to a merger. The party has instead opted to sit out the contest, aware that its presence would only increase the already high likelihood of an Oakeshott victory.

The other thing to be noted is that win, lose or draw, Oakeshott’s candidacy will initiate a state by-election for Port Macquarie – though that is a subject for another post. While it would be open to Oakeshott to re-contest Port Macquarie, owing to what Imre Salusinszky calls “a quirk in NSW electoral law”, Oakeshott has declared that such a move would be “unfair to the community”.

Episode one: Perspective. Labor has suffered a sobering 9.3 per cent slump on the primary vote and a two-party swing comparable to that of the September 1973 Parramatta by-election, which rebuffed the Whitlam government and brought Philip Ruddock to parliament. What’s more, Antony Green notes that Labor entered that campaign burdened by the Whitlam government’s proposed second airport at Galston. The Hawke government faced six by-elections in its truncated first term, picking up a 0.5 per cent swing in Richmond and suffering swings ranging from 1.2 per cent to 5.0 per cent in the other five. There are also state precedents such as Labor’s wins in Burwood and Benalla in the wake of the Kennett government’s defeat which suggest governments should be able to convert honeymoon opinion poll leads into votes at by-elections. As the above table demonstrates, most of the damage to Labor was done in the Latrobe Valley – hypotheses to follow shortly.

Episode two: Nationals versus Liberal. The by-election was the first time the Liberals contested the seat since 1987, so yardsticks for the Coalition parties’ relative performance are hard to come by. The best one available is the state upper house election in 2006, the only recent race involving the three parties competing separately without significant sitting member factors in play. In the equivalent booths, the Nationals and Liberals were evenly matched, with 25.4 per cent and 25.3 per cent respectively. The by-election by contrast has seen the Nationals almost double the Liberal vote, 40.4 per cent to 20.7 per cent. The combined Coalition vote is up a remarkable 12.2 per cent, giving merger opponents in the Victorian Nationals still more to work with. Labor scored 33.7 per cent for the 2006 state upper house, against 27.0 per cent at the by-election.

Episode three: West versus east. The corollary of Labor doing especially badly in the western part of the electorate is that they did less badly in the east, outside of localised outbreaks at Lakes Entrance (Chester’s home town) and Maffra. This is easy to explain: East Gippsland has a high concentration of older voters (21.0 per cent over 65 compared with a national 13.3 per cent), a sure predictor of low electoral volatility. By contrast, Latrobe’s age profile is almost perfectly consistent with the national average. It might nonetheless have been expected that discontent over the failure of the budget to increase the base level of the pension would have generated a backlash here, which may indeed have occurred to some degree.

Episode four: Climate change. In opposition, climate change worked for Labor as a symbol of Rudd’s modernity and Howard’s obsolescence. In government, it is becoming increasingly evident that Labor faces a stern political challenge in matching deeds to words against the backdrop of an eerily familiar oil shock. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Latrobe Valley, whose brown coal power stations provide Victoria with 85 per cent of its electricity. The 10 per cent swing here is a reminder that voters in low-income areas do not take kindly to bearing the sharp end of visionary government reform programs, as the Pauline Hanson phenomenon demonstrated last decade. Interestingly, the Liberals hit Labor hard on the issue in their television advertising, but the Nationals don’t seem to have mentioned it. It is likely the Liberals succeeded in driving Latrobe Valley voters away from Labor with this attack on Darren McCubbin, who had mused that local droughts might have been linked to coal-fired power, but that Darren Chester was as much the beneficiary as Rohan Fitzgerald.

Episode five: State factors. Talk of a sharp anti-Labor swing in the Latrobe Valley should sound a familiar note for election watchers. This is because the area proved the sting in the tail of Labor’s state election night triumph in November 2006, which was marred by the surprise loss of Morwell to the Nationals and Narracan (mostly in the neighbouring federal seat of McMillan, which significantly failed to swing at last November’s election) to the Liberals after respective swings of 7.0 per cent and 9.5 per cent. Local discontent over water issues was seen to be to blame: defeated Narracan MP Ian Maxfield complained that “the Liberal and National parties ran an incredibly effective scare campaign by claiming that we were sending sewage to Gippsland and taking fresh water into Melbourne”. Sure enough, the Liberals returned to the theme during the by-election campaign with television ads that prominently featured an image of John Brumby.

Episode six: Labor versus Labor. Another reason given for Labor’s poor state election performance in Morwell was dissent in the local party, leading many prominent members to quit in protest against an MP said by one to have surrounded himself with a “Left clique”. There was further talk of disunity ahead of the by-election, with 2007 Gippsland candidate Jane Rowe seen to have been elbowed aside in favour of Darren McCubbin. Given that neither appeared a match-winner in their own right, Labor would have done better to have stuck with Rowe who could at least have built upon her existing work in last year’s election campaign.

Episode seven: Night of the living Nationals. The big winners are unquestionably the state Nationals and especially their leader Peter Ryan, who holds the seat of Gippsland South and until recently employed Darren Chester as his chief-of-staff. So far on Ryan’s watch, the Nationals have held their own at the 2002 state election (while the Liberals lost 22 seats and 8.3 per cent of the primary vote), and defied predictions to retain party status in 2006 after winning two extra seats in the lower house (cancelling out losses caused by electoral reform in the upper house). Ryan was the only party leader at state or federal level who was anywhere to be seen in the parties’ television ads (UPDATE: Okay, not quite – there was one Kevin Rudd read-to-camera), where he presented a local face unencumbered by association with unpopular actions of current or recently deposed governments. The Liberals by contrast had Peter Costello campaigning in the electorate, which might not have been such a good idea.

Episode eight: Night of the dying Coalition merger. There was talk going into the by-election of the Nationals and Liberals running a joint candidate to push the Victorian parties down the same merger road being followed in Queensland. The result has surely vindicated the state party’s decision to follow its own course. There are now a number of reasons to suppose that what’s good for the Queensland goose might be less good for the Victorian gander. Firstly, the by-election result gives force to the idea that competing Nationals and Liberal candidates can maximise the total Coalition vote where there is compulsory preferential voting and thus little preference leakage – which is crucially the case at Victorian state level, but not in Queensland. Secondly, the near-parity of strength among the two Coalition parties in Queensland has rendered them unmarketable at state elections due to confusion as to who their candidate for premier is. As this doesn’t apply in Victoria, the Nationals can serve the broader Coalition cause by absorbing protest votes in rural and regional areas.

Episode nine: Local factors. Those of us watching at a safe distance were bemused by the focus on the parish pump issue of Traralgon’s post offices, but that town indeed swung savagely against Labor even by Latrobe Valley standards.

UPDATE: Reading back, I note that apart from one “oil shock” reference, I have spent little time here discussing the decisive issue of petrol prices – mostly because I can only offer statements of the obvious. It should also be noted that Peter McGauran might not have taken much of a personal vote into retirement, with complaints heard he was spending too much time in Melbourne. Meanwhile, Andrew Landeryou hears the Coalition ran an unsustainably expensive campaign, as suggested by the remarkable number of Nationals and Liberal television ads floating around.

8.38pm. Hooray! The AEC finally adds booth results.

8.14pm. The final booth has given the Nationals a big boost, pushing the swing to a headline-grabbing 7.25 per cent on the AEC figures. However, Antony Green’s booth-on-booth comparison (which I can’t do because the AEC doesn’t have booth-level figures on its website – the above is based on my earlier guess of how preferences would go) has it at 6.2 per cent.

7.49pm. All booths now in. My preference projection has the swing at 7.2 per cent, but the AEC notional count with three booths outstanding has it at 6.3 per cent.

7.35pm. Yet more good news for the Nationals with the addition of two Traralgon booths and Bairnsdale East – boosting the swing to 7.3 per cent on my figures. However, I’m still using my old preference guess, and these evidently flatter the Nationals a little. The ABC site, which is using the actual notional counts, has it at 6.6 per cent, although my figures are slightly more recent.

7.31pm. Bruthen and Glengarry added; the swing continues to bounce around in a narrow range around 6.5 per cent.

7.27pm. Devon North and Sale North added.

7.24pm. Six more booths added, including Lakes Entrance and Paynesville, adding a further 0.2 per cent to the swing.

7.17pm. Now 70 booths in and 45.7 per cent counted, 17 to come. The Nationals are obviously on the receiving end of a handsome swing, currently of 6.5 per cent.

7.11pm. Nine more booths, including Maffra and one each from Traralgon and Sale, have pushed the Nationals swing up to 6.8 per cent. 37.9 per cent counted.

7.05pm. Five more booths, including Traralgon East and Orbost, and the results are still better for the Nationals, with the swing sticking at 5.3 per cent. 24.5 per cent counted.

7.01pm. I’ve corrected an error that made the ALP primary vote swing come up as 0.0%. These primary booth swings, like the 2PP swing, are comparing like booths with like.

6.59pm. 50 booths now in, with two of the new ones from Morwell, bringing the swing back down a little.

6.55pm. Seven more booths in, all small rural ones, but they have boosted the Nationals swing still further.

6.50pm. 35 booths in, including Hazelwood North and Lakes Entrance East, adding up to 11.32 per cent counted, and the swing has increased further – now 5.7 per cent.

6.45pm. Antony Green has apparently called it for the Nationals.

6.44pm. By the way, the primary vote swing recorded above for the Nationals is really for the Coalition as a whole – i.e. I have added the Nationals and Liberal vote and compared it to the Nationals vote last time.

6.41pm. 23 booths now in, still a swing to the Nationals showing across the rural booths.

6.37pm. Fifteen booths now in in the above table, and the swing to the Nationals is still holding – though this is only 2.4 per cent of enrolled voters. All the booths are rural bar one – Morwell North. Love to give you a result there, but I don’t think the AEC is providing them.

6.30pm. The above table is based on the first eight booths; there are now 15 in. I usually have teething problems with my tables early on, so don’t quote me on the above quite yet.

6.21pm. Five small booths in. Do I have this right – the AEC isn’t going to let us see individual booth results, but just give a tick to indicate that the booth is in?

6.00pm. Polls close. I will be providing booth-adjusted results on a table soon to be added at the top of the post. I will be doing this manually and thus will not be quite as quick off the mark as those provided by Antony Green and the AEC. Antony will also be live blogging. You can also listen to two hours of live coverage at ABC Gippsland Radio.

June 24: John Black, former Labor senator and chief executive of Australian Development Strategies, sets out the case for his belief that Labor will win the by-election, contrary to the conventional wisdom that the Nationals will retain the seat. The future of Australia Post services in Traralgon continues to generate a surprising volume of column inches, with former Australian Railways Union official and current chamber of commerce president Harvey Pynt appearing in a television commercial to back Rohan Fitzgerald’s campaign on the issue.

June 16: A summary of events since I went quiet a few weeks ago:

• A surprisingly modest field of candidates has emerged. In ballot paper order, they are Malcolm McKelvie (Greens); Rohan Fitzgerald (Liberal); Ben Buckley (Liberty and Democracy Party); Darren McCubbin (Labor); Darren Chester (Nationals).

• Antony Green has published the definitive guide to next Saturday’s action.

• The Greens are refusing to direct preferences to Labor, candidate Malcolm McKelvie declaring there is “barely a skerrick of policy daylight between the Australian Labor Party and the Nationals” on “climate change and clean coal, forestry policy, genetically modified foods and social justice issues”.

• According to the Latrobe Valley Express, “concerns” that the two existing Australia Post operations in Traralgon will be rolled into one have “dominated the efforts” of the Nationals and Liberal candidates during the campaign.

• Peter Costello caused a stir last week when he hit the campaign trail in Gippsland, the Herald Sun talking of “fresh speculation of a political revival”.

• Independent Distillers of Australia, representing the makers of pre-mixed drinks, are running local television ads in a bid to turn the by-election into a referendum on the “alcopops” tax hike. Speaking on ABC Radio’s PM program, Brian Costar of Swinburne University said he “couldn’t think of a longer bow to draw to make an association between that ad and the outcome in the by-election”. I’m not so sure: if a flannel-shirted wood-chopping Bundy-and-cola pre-mix swiller isn’t the authentic voice of Gippsland, I’d like to know what is.

Here’s Labor’s ad:

The Nationals have adopted a more positive tone in their two YouTube ads, one of the meet-the-candidate variety and another conveying the endorsement of state Nationals leader Peter Ryan:

Liberal candidate Rohan Fitgerald’s ad focuses on climate change, though it’s not clear whether he’s for or against:

P.S.: Courtesy of Andrew Landeryou, another Nationals ad I missed. Landeryou notes it shows Darren Chester “doing what few candidates are willing to do normally, appear in their own attack ads”.

May 26: Glenn Milne (again) this morning launched a non-story about an “edgy” arts act which Labor candidate Darren McCubbin had OK’d in his capacity as a local festival director. Brendan Nelson joined in, but it then emerged the festival had received funding from the previous federal government. Andrew Landeryou offers a “script in development” based on the episode. Highlights:

Peter Ryan: “Hey young one, nice work leaking that review of the gay play put on at the arty farty festival run by that fairy McCubbin. Brilliant idea giving it to Milne too, he’s so needy these days with Cossie out of the picture.”

Later …

Ryan (incredulous): “You mean we gave these pervs money when we were in government? We gave taxpayer money to a sex show that was celebrating ‘c*ck-stroking’ and ‘neckophilia’ ?

Acting COS: “That’d be right. George Brandis was Arts Minister too. I think he got sucked in by all those arts wankers.”

Other news: Despite Labor’s prodigious efforts to dampen expectations, they are at least running television advertisements, which can be viewed on the ALP site. The negativity is notably directed entirely at the Nationals, rather than the Liberals. The Liberty and Democracy Party have announce a candidate, “well-known local councillor” Ben Buckley, who you can read about in comments.

May 12: Glenn Milne reports on the National Party’s by-election focus group research in The Australian:

Down in rural Victoria with an industrial back end that picks up the La Trobe Valley, the good burghers of Gippsland now apparently rank the cost of living as the No1 issue at the impending by-election, according to National Party research. Based on Utting’s work and the Nationals’ own focus groups the battle that is now looming in Gippsland is one about perception. Labor will seek to convince voters that inflation and the cost of living are things largely outside their influence, especially given the context of the US sub-prime mortgage meltdown. The Nationals for their part, will be seeking to drive home the message that the prices buck stops with Rudd. Expect to see ads that feature a laughing image of the Prime Minister with text along the lines of: “To get elected, Labor promised to ease the pressure on working families,” followed by a list of increased prices including petrol, milk, cheese, bread, poultry, fruit, vegetables along with rents, electricity and house prices. Increases in interest rates, and declining consumer and business confidence indices will rightly get a guernsey as well.

May 6: The Nationals have filed a complaint with police after a photographer hired by Labor was caught taking pictures of Darren Chester from a parked car. Rick Wallace of The Australian reports the Nationals “believe the photographer was assigned in an attempt to catch out Mr Chester in an inadvertently unflattering pose – such as stumbling or scratching himself – with the images to be used to ridicule him in campaign ads or brochures” (in which case they would presumably have been in a position to file a complaint even if the photographer hadn’t been caught). Labor state secretary Stephen Newnham says the photographer was acting on his own initiative while in the area to take shots of Darren McCubbin, and that his actions were not condoned by the party. Peter Ryan is “expected to complain about the incident in state parliament this week”.

May 5: The Gippsland federal by-election has been officially set for June 28, the first of what is likely to be a series of unwelcome electoral tests for the opposition. This one follows the departure of the seat’s member since 1983, Howard government Science Minister and (later) Agriculture Minister Peter McGauran, who has quit to take a position as chief executive of Thoroughbred Breeders Australia. The by-election offers the exciting prospect of a three-way contest between the incumbent Nationals, Liberals who hope the seat might go the way of Farrer and Murray in shifting their way on the retirement of a long-serving Nationals member, and an ALP enjoying massive honeymoon leads in all published opinion polls.

The electorate of Gippsland has covered the far east of Victoria since federation, and has been in National/Country Party hands since the party was founded in 1922. Gippsland currently covers the Princes Highway towns of Morwell, Traralgon, Bairnsdale and Orbost, extending north to Maffra and Omeo. The Nationals’ hold appeared to be in serious jeopardy for the first time when the redistribution ahead of the 2004 election added Traralgon and strongly Labor-voting Morwell, a symptom of the region’s relative population decline. This cut the margin from 8.0 per cent to 2.6 per cent, but McGauran was returned in 2004 with a 5.1 per cent swing and suffered a correction of just 1.8 per cent last November.

McGauran’s retirement announcement gave impetus to scheming by Liberal operatives to impose a merger on reluctant state branches of both Coalition parties. This prompted NSW Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan to approach the state independent member for Gippsland East, Craig Ingram, to spur things along by running as a “joint Liberal-Nationals candidate”. It was concurrently suggested that a similar scheme might involve Rob Oakeshott, ex-Nationals independent member for Port Macquarie in the New South Wales parliament, if Mark Vaile called it a day in Lyne. Ingram admitted to being “interested” in Heffernan’s proposal, but the state Nationals argued Ingram had demonstrated his unsuitability by helping scuttle the Kennett government in 1999.

In any case, the Nationals were determined that the seat should go to Darren Chester (right), chief-of-staff to state party leader Peter Ryan, who was raised in Sale and lives in Lakes Entrance. Chester was opposed for preselection by 63-year-old former army officer Russell Smith, who reportedly had little support. The by-election marks Chester’s second run for parliament, his first being an unsuccessful run against Craig Ingram at the 2002 state election. He also contested Senate preselection against Peter McGauran’s brother Julian ahead of the 2004 election, but was defeated by 34 votes to 21. Senator McGauran went on to defect to the Liberal Party in January 2006.

Labor at first looked set to re-endorse their candidate from the 2007 election, East Gippsland councillor and two-time mayor Jane Rowe. However, shortly before the preselection was due to be decided by the party’s administrative committee (without reference to locals), Rowe stood aside in favour of Wellington Shire mayor Darren McCubbin (left), who had not previously been a party member. Rick Wallace of The Australian reported that some in the ALP had feared Rowe’s status as a single mother ”would prove a detriment in the deeply conservative Victorian electorate”, although Rowe insisted she had withdrawn so she could devote more time to her daughters. McCubbin’s caused friction with local branch members who backed alternative candidate David Wilson, deputy mayor of Latrobe City, with Duncan Hughes of the Financial Review writing of members being urged by dissidents not to contribute funds to the campaign. There had earlier been talk that Labor had been rebuffed in an approach to Christian Zahra, who held the neighbouring electorate of McMillan from 1998 until 2004 when he fell victim to an unfavourable redistribution and a statewide anti-Labor swing.

The Liberal candidate is 36-year-old Central Gippsland Health Service bureaucrat Rohan Fitzgerald (right), who appears to have been preselected without opposition. There were earlier suggestions that Julian McGauran might seek the nod, but few took them seriously. The Greens have nominated Yarragon doctor Malcolm McKelvie.

Further reading: Possum Comitatus at Crikey charts historical trends in Gippsland and other Coalition seats likely to face by-elections soon, concluding it to be Labor’s best shot out of the bunch (although a poor performance locally at the 2006 state election and a relatively weak swing at the federal election might suggest otherwise). Nick Economou of Monash University concurs the seat is winnable for Labor in an extensive overview of the contest on the 7.30 Report. Malcolm Mackerras argues otherwise, observing that there is no historical support for the notion that federal governments can expect favourable by-election swings during their honeymoon periods (no link located). Peter Brent weighed in at Mumble on April 27. Gerard McManus of the Herald Sun reports Labor internal polling has them on 36 per cent to the Nationals’ 32 per cent and the Liberals’ 19 per cent, which after preferences would mean a comfortable win for the Nationals.

At the close of the evening’s count Chris Hayes emerged with 55.3 per cent, 2.7 per cent more than Mark Latham managed (the "2.01%" swing recorded by the Australian Electoral Commission suggests pre-polls and absentee votes ran against Labor last time). The other 15 candidates all finished well short of 10 per cent, with unofficial Liberal candidate James Young leading the field on just 7.9 per cent. There were vaguely noteworthy performances from the Greens’ Ben Raue, up from 3.1 per cent to 5.7 per cent, and Janey Woodger of Australians Against Further Immigration, whose 4.8 per cent was assisted by the donkey vote but might also have been boosted by recent talk of importing workers to cover skills shortages.

The Christian parties scored an impressive 8.2 per cent between them, Family First outperforming Fred Nile’s Christian Democrats with 4.3 per cent of the vote. Despite the influence of the 2000-strong congregation of the Liverpool Christian Life Centre, the Family First vote comes as something of a surprise. Neither party contested Werriwa at the federal election, but as Bryan Palmer of Palmer’s Oz Politics notes, the "mainstream protestant" Christian Democratic Party performed far better in New South Wales than the "Pentecostal-aligned" Family First. In Werriwa, the Senate vote was 2.4 per cent for the CDP against a mere 0.6 per cent for Family First. The 5.2 per cent who came on board for the by-election would presumably have voted for a Liberal candidate had one been available.

Apparently Deborah Locke’s campaign attracted more attention outside the electorate than in, as she finished in ninth place with 3.2 per cent. The others who did better were independent Joe Bryant (3.9 per cent) and Charles Doggett of One Nation (3.5 per cent). The AEC guessed that James Young would finish in second place by partnering him with Hayes for the notional two-candidate preference count, and it is likely that they will be proved correct. The point is entirely academic because Hayes is credited with 70.0 per cent of the two-candidate vote and this is not likely to change much regardless of who gets the silver after preferences.

When Latham pulled the plug on January 18, two questions emerged – who would be the Labor candidate, and whether the Liberals would bother. Local lawyer and Campbelltown mayor Brenton Banfield was reckoned to be the best-credentialled Labor contender, and many were unimpressed by the manner in which he was bumped aside. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald on March 12, Alan Ramsey quoted (at length, naturally) from a detailed testimony by Banfield ally John Dowling that was mailed to branch members. Dowling complained that factional heavies assured Banfield he would not have to face a preselection vote, but withdrew their support when focus groups suggested he could fall victim to negative campaigning over his legal work for sex offenders. Banfield was persuaded to step aside and the nomination instead went to Australian Workers Union official Chris Hayes. Most saw this as a less-than-inspiring outcome.

In early February, newspaper reports quoted “Labor insiders” anticipating a 10 per cent swing to the Liberals, enough to deliver them the seat. This was obviously nonsense, as indicated by the Liberals’ ultimate failure to field a candidate. Laurie Oakes offers a far more plausible story in this week’s Bulletin:

Polling by the major parties after Latham quit showed quite clearly that the Liberals would be wasting their time if they entered the by-election contest. There was no resentment over Latham’s departure. Werriwa voters accepted that the former leader was entitled to pull out because of his health problems. In summary, the view was: ‘The poor bugger copped a walloping. His health suffered. He wants to spend time with his family. That’s fair enough’. And there was an added consideration: ‘Anyway, Howard’s got a big enough majority. He doesn’t need to win this one’.

With no threat from the Liberals, Labor’s remaining fear is of a repeat of the 1991 by-election in Wills or the 2002 by-election in Cunningham, respectively lost to independent Phil Cleary after the retirement of Bob Hawke and the Greens’ Michael Organ after the retirement of Steve Martin. Many in the party expressed concern that the unpopularity of the state government and the large field of 16 candidates might provoke unpredictable behaviour from voters. Significant local issues include the recent Macquarie Fields riots which took place in the electorate, and the Carr government’s hugely unpopular closure of the local Orange Grove shopping centre which benefited Labor patrons Westfield but left a number of locals without jobs.

One major difference with Cunningham is that this is not historically strong territory for the Greens, who have nominated 19-year-old Ben Raue. By general acclaim the candidate best placed to pull off an upset is Deborah Locke of the unregistered People Power party, a former fraud squad detective whose whistle-blowing was credited with bringing about the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption. Locke’s candidacy has generated valuable publicity including a Sunday Telegraph back cover and a 2GB interview. Stephen Mayne of Crikey reports that “the three independents who will be handing out HTVs across the electorate, former Labor branchstacker Sammy Bargshoon, Ned Mannoun and James Young, have all decided to give their preferences to Locke ahead of the other key contenders”, since they mutually agree she has the best chance of winning.

The best-known of the remaining candidates are Joe Bryant, a former Blacktown deputy mayor, and James Young, a Liberal Party member and former staffer to Jackie Kelly. Bryant took great pride in being described as a “Liberal trojan horse” by former Labor premier Barrie Unsworth when he ran for election two decades ago, and the Blacktown City Sun reported on March 8 that he “became a well-known local figure for his fight with the Commonwealth Bank”. Young is considered likely to absorb much of the homeless Liberal vote, and like Bryant he will deliver a solid flow of preferences to any non-Labor contender who emerges from the pack. Also worth noting is Sam Bargshoon, who turned against Labor after being burned by the Orange Grove closure and scored 4.9 per cent of the vote when he ran against Latham last year.

For all that, a Labor win would have to be considered the likely outcome. Writing in the Canberra Times on March 1, Malcolm Mackerras noted the following differences between the current circumstances and those of the Cunningham by-election:

First, the sudden and wholly unexpected nature of (Latham’s resignation) means there is not likely to be any high-profile independent candidate waiting in the wings. Here there is a major difference with Cunningham, where speculation that Labor MP Stephen Martin would resign was rife for six months before he actually did resign. Second, there are interesting sociological differences between Cunningham and Werriwa. These suggest that Cunningham is the sort of Labor seat where the Greens might fluke a one-off win. By contrast, Werriwa is not in that category of safe Labor seat … (the parliamentary library’s “relative socio-economic disadvantage” index) for Werriwa is 950 (in 17th place out of 150) compared with 1014 for Cunningham (at 104) … The third reason I expect Labor to win Werriwa lies in the difference of party leader. Simon Crean was leader at the time of Cunningham, Kim Beazley at the time of Werriwa.

These perceptions have been further strengthened by recent political developments. The rise in interest rates and the government’s decision to send more troops to Iraq, blamed for their recent slump in the opinion polls, have given traction to Labor’s appeal for voters to “send John Howard a message” by voting for Labor directly. Most persuasive of all to the Poll Bludger’s mind is the number-crunching done by Bryan Palmer at Oz Politics which suggests that historically speaking, Labor’s vote is likely to fall little if at all from the 52.6 per cent recorded by Mark Latham at the federal election. My own calculations suggest that Labor picks up roughly 20 per cent of the non-Labor vote as preferences at by-elections which are not contested by the Coalition, although this fell as low as 15.7 per cent at the Cunningham by-election. Even on the latter figure, Labor would need to fall to about 41 per cent if they were to lose the seat. This would entail the loss of 11 per cent from their primary vote at the October election, substantially greater than the 6.2 per cent decline that cost them Cunningham. Accordingly, it is the Poll Bludger’s considered judgement that Labor can rest easy.