Further afield:

• Courtesy of comprehensive coverage at Andrew Landeryou’s VexNews we learn the Liberal preselection vote to succeed David Hawker in Wannon has been won by Daniel Tehan, deputy director of the Victorian Liberal Party and son of the late Kennett government minister Marie Tehan. The other candidate who made it through to the final round was Stephen Mitchell, founder of natural gas explorer Molopo Australia. David Clark, Elizabeth Matuschka, Hugh Koch and Katrina Rainsford were eliminated after the first round, followed by Simon Price and Rod Nockles, then Louise Staley, then Matt Makin.

• Labor veteran Duncan Kerr has announced he will not contest his Hobart seat of Denison at the next federal election. Misha Schubert of The Age reports this has come as a surprise, such that “when news broke yesterday, there was no obvious successor staking a public claim”. It is widely noted that Kerr leaves his seat with a margin of 15.6 per cent after gaining it from the Liberals in 1987, though it probably wouldn’t do to put this entirely down to candidate factors. Early preselection contenders identified by Michael Stedman of The Mercury are George Williams, constitutional lawyer and “Kerr associate”, Jonathan Jackson, son of former state attorney-general Judy Jackson, and Rebecca White, staffer to Kerr and a state candidate for Lyons. However, state secretary John Dowling sounds confident none of the 27 state election candidates will be contesting preselection.

• With Peter Dutton confirming his intention to jump ship from notionally Labor Dickson in northern Brisbane to safe Liberal McPherson on the Gold Coast, Labor’s narrowly unsuccessful candidate for Dickson in 2007, Fiona McNamara, has signalled her intention to again seek preselection.

• Paige Taylor of The Australian reports former WA Premier Alan Carpenter is “preparing to leave parliament”, and “could quit his seat of Willagee before the next state election, due in 2012”. Although a neighbour of the seat of Fremantle which gave the Greens their breakthrough lower house win in May, Willagee is genuinely unloseable for Labor. The front-runner to succeed Carpenter would appear to be Dave Kelly, state secretary of the Left faction Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union, who wisely held back when Fremantle became available.

• The bill for a referendum to amend South Australia’s Constitution discussed in the previous post passed the House of Assembly on the second try, after embarrassing failure on the first. However, Attorney-General Michael Atkinson openly admits he does not expect it to be passed in the upper house. The Liberals have spoken in favour of four-year Council terms and a double dissolution mechanism, but against cutting Council numbers, giving the Council President a deliberative vote, and in particular the plan to combine the measures into a single referendum question. The Legislative Council is also debating the Electoral (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill, which proposes to ban registered political parties using the name of “a prominent public body” (plainly aimed at the Save the Royal Adelaide Hospital Group), increase fines for electoral offences by as much as 400 per cent, require that redistributions commence 24 months after an election as opposed to the current three, increase the number of members required of a registered political party from 150 to 500 (in line with most other states), introduce compulsory enrolment (surprised they didn’t have this already) and ban third parties from producing how-to-vote cards.

• Former NSW Rural Fire Services chief Phil Koperberg, who replaced Bob Debus as Labor member for Blue Mountains at the 2007 state election, is making noises which are generally being interpreted as meaning he will quit politics, either at or before the next election. According to the ABC, Koperberg says he is “not cut out for the nature of partisan or party politics and I find myself doing and saying things I would rather not do, which my conscience would have me to otherwise”, and that he is considering his future in the “medium to long-term”. Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald reports Koperberg “has told journalists, colleagues and even Coalition MPs several times in the past two years that he was thinking of quitting before the next election”.

• Via Democratic Audit, the House Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee is conducting an inquiry into the effectiveness of the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984.

UPDATE: The weekly Essential Research has Labor down a little after last week’s spike, from 61-39 to 59-41. Not sure why, but the usual suite of further questions is not included this time.

• Speculation continues to mount that former WA Health Minister and Attorney-General Jim McGinty (left) will shortly be calling it a day, initiating a by-election in Fremantle to coincide with the state’s May 16 daylight saving referendum. On ABC television news, Peter Kennedy reported that rumoured preselection contender Peter Tagliaferri (right) met with McGinty and ALP state secretary Simon Mead to “discuss the possible vacancy”. However, Alan Carpenter is offering point-blank denials to speculation he might also vacate his seat of Willagee, which puts the prospect of a dangerous preselection stoush between Tagliaferri and LHMWU state secretary Dave Kelly back on the agenda. Steve Grant of the Fremantle Herald reports:

Alan Carpenter says he will remain in state parliament till the next election. He ruled out the possibility of a by-election for his safe Labor seat of Willagee … He shrugged off speculation that he and Fremantle MP Jim McGinty were contemplating mid-term retirement to make way for new Labor blood, “you might not believe me, but often I’m the last person to hear about these things”. It seems Jandakot Liberal MP Joe Francis could be more tuned in to Labor machinations than the former premier, becoming the third person to tell the Herald that LHMWU secretary Dave Kelly was being groomed to take over a Labor seat.

• What’s more, Robert Taylor of The West Australian has mused on the possibility of star Gallop/Carpenter government minister Alannah MacTiernan moving to federal politics by taking on Don Randall in Canning, where redistribution has shaved the Liberal margin from 5.6 per cent to 4.3 per cent.

• Staying in WA, the Liberal Party is having an interesting time dealing with jockeying ahead of preselection for the safe southern suburbs seat of Tangney. Sitting member Dennis Jensen (left) lost the preselection vote ahead of the last election to Matt Brown, former chief-of-staff to Defence Minister Robert Hill, but the result was overturned by prime ministerial fiat. As Robert Taylor puts it, “this time there’s no John Howard and Dr Jensen looks decidedly shaky”. Against this backdrop, local Liberal branches have been inundated with membership applications from “Muslim men”, who are believed – certainly by the Brown camp – to be enthusiasts for the incumbent. A compromise reached at the state executive saw admission granted to half the applicants, who can apparently thank Julie Bishop for arguing that “many of her east coast colleagues with big Muslim populations in their electorates were nervous about the outcome”. Taylor says a Brown supporter told him “the new members were associated with ‘strident anti-Israel statements’ from the Australian National Imams Council”.

• With independent MP Rory McEwen to call it a day, the Liberals would be pencilling in his seat of Mount Gambier as a soft target at next year’s state election. However, the Border Watch reports Liberal candidate Steve Perryman, the mayor of Mount Gambier, might face an independent challenge from Don Pegler, the mayor of Grant District Council, who has perhaps been inspired by Geoff Brock’s boilover in Frome. Grant covers the electorate’s extensive rural areas outside of the City of Mount Gambier, although the latter accounts for three times as many voters.

• Andrew Landeryou at VexNews offers a colourful and detailed account of the gruelling Liberal preselection jockeying in Kooyong.

• Landeryou also notes conflicting reports on the prospect of a Right-backed preselection challenge by Noel McCoy against Phillip Ruddock in Berowra.

• Andrew Leigh and Mark McLeish have published a paper at Australian Policy Online which asks a most timely question: Are State Elections Affected by the National Economy? Using data from 191 state elections, they find a positive correlation between low unemployment and success for the incumbent, “with each additional percentage point of unemployment (or each percentage point increase over the cycle) reducing the incumbent’s re-election probability by 3-5 percentage points”. Furthermore, “what matters most is not the performance of the state economy relative to the national economy, but the state economy itself”. That being so, it seems voters “systematically commit attribution errors – giving state leaders too much blame when their economy is in recession, and too much credit when it is booming”.

• The Parliamentary Library has published a note on the redistribution of WA’s federal electorates.

• Brendan Nelson’s announcement he will vacate his blue-ribbon northern Sydney seat of Bradfield at the next election could initiate another of the classic preselection clashes for the NSW branch of the Liberal Party has become justly famous in recent years. Party sources quoted by Imre Salusinszky of The Australian say the preselection will be “the most open and hotly contested since Bronwyn Bishop succeeded Jim Carlton in the neighbouring seat of Mackellar in 1994”, with no clear front-runner and neither Right or Left controlling the seat. However, it is also “understood party bigwigs are intent on avoiding a repeat of the preselection debacle in 2007 in the southern Sydney seat of Cook”. Salusinszky’s report floated the possibility of his paper’s conservative pundit Janet Albrechtsen taking the field, but she promptly ruled herself out. Live possibilities apparently include another connection with The Australian in Tom Switzer, former opinion page editor and staffer to Nelson; Arthur Sinodinos, John Howard’s legendary chief-of-staff; Nick Farr-Jones, former rugby union international; Julian Leeser, executive director of the Menzies Research Centre; Geoff Selig, former state party president; Alister Henskens, barrister and local party office-holder; David Elliott, former Australian Hotels Association deputy chief executive; Paul Blanch, a sheep farmer who ran in Calare in 2004; and, as always, Adrienne Ryan, former Ku-ring-gail mayor and ex-wife of former police commissioner Peter Ryan. The Sydney Morning Herald reports we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for a result:

A state executive meeting tomorrow is likely to discuss the timetable for the preselection race but because of a redistribution of seats in NSW, the final ballot will not be held until the end of the year. Because of that, most Liberal insiders believe the final candidate has yet to emerge.

• The Electoral Commissioner’s federal electoral determination has been published, confirming redistributions will need to occur to remove a seat from New South Wales and add one to Queensland. There seems to be some confusion abroard as to whether this scotches any chance of an election this year. As Antony Green explains, it is indeed the case that Queensland cannot be deprived of the seat which it is constitutionally entitled to at the next election now that the determination has been made, and it is indeed true that a redistribution process takes the better part of a year. However, the Electoral Act lays out a set of procedures for “mini-redistributions” in these circumstances, in which the two most or least heavily enrolled adjoining electorates in the state are either divided into three or merged into two. This has never happened before, and there would be obvious political difficulties in justifying an election held under such slapdash arrangements if it could possibly be avoided.

• Could Western Australia’s May 16 daylight saving referendum be the catalyst for a super Saturday of state by-elections? It certainly seems war clouds are gathering over the electorates of the two most powerful figures in the defeated Carpenter government: Jim McGinty, the member for Fremantle, and Alan Carpenter himself, who holds the neighbouring seat of Willagee (surely I have not so pleased the Lord that He would grant me neighbouring same-day by-elections in my own backyard?). According to Jenny D’Anger of the Fremantle Herald:

In the face of persistent rumours that veteran state Labor MP Jim McGinty is about to trigger a by-election for Fremantle by announcing his retirement, the Greens have called a war cabinet to talk tactics and anoint a candidate. It is all but certain they will choose South Fremantle’s Adele Carles, who came within a whisker of taking the seat at last year’s state election … Ms Carles says if the powerbroker is considering calling it quits he should do it so the by-election can coincide with the daylight saving referendum in May, saving thousands of dollars … The tom-toms have been beating for weeks that Fremantle mayor Peter Tagliaferri was the shoe-in as Labor’s choice to replace Mr McGinty. But more recently a senior union figure has emerged as a front-runner, which a Labor insider says had Mr Tagliaferri threatening to run as an independent (Word around the campfire is that this refers to Dave Kelly, one of McGinty’s successors at the LHMWU – PB). The Herald’s Labor source said Alan Carpenter also had to be taken into account: If the former premier decides to quit politics the union figure may prefer Mr Carpenter’s safe Willagee seat, which is not threatened by the Greens. This would leave Fremantle open for Mr Tagliaferri. But both Mr McGinty and Mr Tagliaferri are denying a by-election is imminent. “It’s no more than rumour-mongering,” Mr McGinty barked down the phone, adding he stood by the Herald’s report last November that he had no plans to go early but was unlikely to run again in 2013.

• Killjoy Harry Quick has gone back on his threat to run against Treasurer Michael Aird as Greens candidate in the looming upper house election for Derwent. According to the ABC, Quick says “his family has played second fiddle to his political aspirations for too long”. An earlier report said he was “understood to be ready withdraw his nomination due to family pressure to stay true to the Labor Party”.

• Ray cites various elections over the past year-and-a-bit to observe that the advantages of incumbency are clearly not what they used to be. In particular, “a formerly inviolable rule of politics was that if opinion polls showed the country or State ‘heading in the right direction’ by more than 55%, re-election was a certainty”. The Howard government was nonetheless defeated with 58 per cent supporting such a proposition, and Alan Carpenter’s Labor joined the club with the figure on 54 per cent. Trumping the statistic in the latter case (and no doubt the former as well) was the belief of 53 per cent that it was “time to give someone else a go”.

• “As a rule, the higher the voter turnout, the better Labor does.” This time it was 82 per cent compared with 85 per cent in 2005. “Was the Labor vote lower because of the reduced turnout or was the loss of community support for Labor a driver of lower turnout? So far, no plausible explanation has been offered.”

• “Too many in the electorate thought that the surplus was just sitting around, unused”, when it was in fact being committed to capital works programs. Voters “readily formed the view that they, as individuals, had not benefitted from the boom and were resentful that the Government was not spending some of the surplus on them.”

• Colin Barnett “looked like he had made a personal sacrifice to resume the leadership and had been unfairly ambushed by the calling of the election”.

• “Dream team” candidates who were defeated in decisive seats such as Mount Lawley and Morley were placed in the wrong seats – though it’s unclear where they should have run instead. Bumping Bob Kucera aside in Mount Lawley is universally recognised as an error, though I do wonder what role the Royal Perth Hospital played in Labor’s loss of that particular seat.

• Ray faults The West Australian for “displaying a bias not seen since the Murdoch excesses of 1975”, which “spread to the rest of the media as though it was the norm”. On the former count, I wonder if Ray remembers the role Murdoch’s Adelaide News paper was said to have played in the defeat of Des Corcoran’s South Australian government in 1979, an election which had many parallels with this one.

• Ray rightly complains that Labor did not run an ad responding to the Liberal effort which gave viewers 30 seconds of silence to think of “three good things Alan Carpenter’s Labor has done in eight years of boom”, which would have written itself. The West Australian reported shortly after the election that such an ad had been considered but rejected on the grounds it would have seemed “reactive”.

• The Nationals “had a simple message, promoted it for 18 months and were allowed to get away with the fiscal irresponsibility of their promises and the illusion of their independence from the Liberal Party”. Blame lay with a “Perth-centric” Labor campaign, which was no doubt inspired by the new electoral landscape ushered in by one-vote one-value.