Other news:

• Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports Julia Gillard is “working behind the scenes” to save the career of Laurie Ferguson, a fellow member of the “soft Left” faction who backed the Rudd/Gillard coup against Kim Beazley in December 2006. Ferguson has been left high-and-dry by the effective abolition of his western Sydney seat of Reid, the redrawn seat of that name being the effective successor to its abolished neighbour Lowe. However, Ferguson’s efforts to find a new home are being resisted by the “hard Left” faction of Anthony Albanese. Coorey reports Ferguson believes he has the numbers to win a local preselection vote in Fowler, to be vacated with the retirement of Julia Irwin, but it seems at least as likely that this and other contentious seats will be filled by the decree of Kevin Rudd and the panel of factional leaders which was empowered to make final determinations through a recent change to the party constitution. VexNews intimates that if denied, Ferguson might look at “obtaining support for a potentially expensive and spectacular legal challenge”.

• Paul Sheehan of the Sydney Morning Herald had an interesting piece last week on the Liberal preselection for Cook ahead of the last federal election, which saw the dumping of the initially victorious Michael Towke and his eventual substitution with Scott Morrison. Towke’s Right faction lost the PR battle at the time (as my own electorate profile attests), but as Sheehan tells it, talk that Towke had fudged his CV had little or no foundation in fact. Rather, he was a victim of “a view among some senior Liberals” – evidently including John Howard – that “a Lebanese Australian could not win Cook in a tight election”. It will be recalled that the expanse of southern Sydney covered by the electorate includes Cronulla. Sheehan also relates that the Daily Telegraph’s reporting of Towke’s preselection led to a defamation action which was settled out-of-court with a payment of $50,000.

• Peter Caton of the Tweed Daily News reports the Nationals are struggling to find candidates to run against Labor incumbents Justine Elliot, in the one-time party stronghold of Richmond, and Janelle Saffin, in its marginal neighbour Page. The only known candidate for the latter is Kevin Hogan, who according to The Northern Star “runs his own finance business from his Clunes cattle farm”.

• Pat Farmer, the Liberal member for Macarthur, has as expected been soundly defeated for preselection by Russell Matheson, a police sergeant and former mayor of Campbelltown. The margin was 22 votes to nine.

• Rick Wallace of The Australian reports the Victorian ALP will follow the footsteps of the NSW Nationals by choosing a state election candidate through a US-style primary. Whereas the Nationals are still to decide which seat in which to conduct their experiment, Labor has earmarked the Liberal-held marginal of Kilsyth. The decision stems from a cross-factional committee report which also recommends reinvigorating the party organisation by slashing membership fees.

• VexNews reports that Louise Staley, who has previously sought federal preselection for Wannon and Menzies, is now hoping for a state berth in the country seat of Ripon, which Labor’s Joe Helper holds on a margin of 4.4 per cent. Staley is a former state party vice-president and Institute of Public Affairs agriculture policy expert. Also said to have nominated are “John van Beveren, a local winery owner and education professor and Vic Dunn, the local inspector at Maryborough”.

• The Australian Review of Public Affairs has published my review article on Australia: The State of Democracy, written by Marian Sawer, Norman Abjorensen and Phil Larkin through the auspices of the Democratic Audit of Australia and published by The Federation Press.

Plenty happening in Tasmania:

• Labor’s troubled first-term member for Bass, Jodie Campbell, has confirmed she will not contest the next election. Geoff Lyons, a staffer to Senator Helen Polley, has been mentioned as a possible successor, which would see the seat’s factional alignment transfer from Left to Right. The Liberals have preselected Steve Titmus, a former television news reader and PR consultant for Gunns Ltd. The winner will be the seat’s sixth member in less than two decades. UPDATE: The Launceston Examiner reports that the new candidate is likely to be determined by prime ministerial fiat “after the dust settles”, and that there is a second potential candidate in Winnaleah District High School principal Brian Wightman, who is currently pencilled in as one of six candidates for the Bass state election ticket.

• Terry Martin, independent member for the northern Hobart upper house division of Elwick, faces criminal charges which regardless of their merits are politically lethal by nature. Martin was elected as a Labor member in 2004, but was expelled by the party in March 2007 after crossing the floor to vote against the government’s fast-tracking of the proposed Tamar Valley pulp mill. He is due to face re-election at the next round of periodical elections in May; a by-election need not be held if the seat is vacated after January 1.

• Sue Neales of The Mercury reports the Liberals have finalised their state election ticket for Denison, adding “renewable energy lawyer Matthew Groom, businesswoman and former Miss Tasmania Sue Hickey, and high-profile school parents advocate and Glenorchy councillor Jenny Branch” to the already announced Michael Hodgman (the sole incumbent), Elise Archer and Matt Stevenson.

• Tasmanian government legislation for fixed terms has been referred to a committee, scuppering any chance of it being passed in the week remaining before a recess that will last until the election. Premier David Bartlett nonetheless swears that the election will be held on March 20, again locking the psephological community into the headache of simultaneous elections in South Australia and Tasmania.

Elsewhere on the site, note that it’s all happening on the Willagee by-election thread, while things are ticking over more slowly yet still surely on the Bradfield and Higgins threads. Observe also the New South Wales Newspoll post immediately below.

Legislative Council maps available for enjoyment courtesy of Adam Carr and Ben Raue. You can also access ABC Local Radio forums with the candidates for each of the three divisions from ABC Elections.

Tuesday, April 21

On Saturday week, one fifth of Tasmanian voters go to the polls – or at least, ought to go to the polls – to perform some reupholstering on the state’s 15-member Legislative Council. Members of said chamber are elected for six-year terms on a rotating basis, which sees either two or three of the single-member divisions face the voters each May. Of the 15 members, four are Labor and the remaining 11 are independent, including former Labor member Terry Martin. The Liberals have traditionally not fielded candidates, and were badly rebuffed when they did so in the early 2000s. This year is the turn of Derwent, held for Labor by Treasurer Michael Aird; Windermere, where independent Ivan Dean faces re-election; and Mersey, which is vacated by retiring independent Norma Jamieson. Further reading from Antony Green and Tasmanian Politics.

Windermere occupies interesting electoral real estate on the eastern bank of the Tamar River, from the mouth through Bell Bay of Gunns pulp mill fame on to the northern and eastern suburbs of Launceston. Ivan Dean, the member since 2003, has attracted a surprisingly large field of four challengers, who perhaps detected vulnerability when he failed to win re-election as Launceston mayor in 2007. Best known of these is Kathyrn Hay, a former Miss Australia who served a term in the lower house after being recruited by Labor. After surprisingly choosing to bow out in 2006, Hay is now running as an independent, and Peter Tucker of Tasmanian Politics reckons she “clearly has a chance”. Peter John Kaye is a former broadcaster and adviser to various federal ministers including Warwick Smith, and is presumably of Liberal sympathies. Ted Sands is a Launceston councillor who ran third in the mayoral election. Antony Green tells us he is “a former member of the Labor Party and nominated for Labor Party pre-selection in Bass ahead of the 2007 Federal election”. Also in the field is Greens candidate Peter Whish-Wilson, who not surprisingly is a “prominent anti-pulp mill campaigner”.

Mersey covers Devonport and its immediate surrounds. An open contest following the retirement of independent member Norma Jamieson, this has curiously failed to attract any more newcomers than Windermere. Lynn Laycock is well credentialled as mayor of Devonport, but she faces strong competition. Mike Gaffney is an interesting departure from the upper house norm. Since turning down an offer from David Bartlett of Labor preselection in Braddon, he has quit the party and decided to make his mark as an independent. However, Sue Neales of The Mercury reports he has “refused to rule out accepting a future ministerial position in a Labor government”, while Bartlett continues to describe him as a “good candidate”. How this will appear to voters who traditionally vote to defend the independence of the upper house remains to be seen. Carolynn Jamieson is the owner of local transport and metal fabrication businesses, a fluent Mandarin speaker and, significantly, the daughter of outgoing member Norma. A recent precedent for keeping it in the family was Tania Rattray-Wagner’s win in 2004 in Apsley, on the retirement of father Colin Rattray. Steve Martin is a Devonport restaurant owner and chairman of the Mersey Community Hospital group, who happily fesses up to work as “a part-time Electorate Officer for local Labor MPs”.

The great disappointment of this round of elections was former federal Labor MP Harry Quick’s abandonment of his plan to run against Treasurer Michael Aird in Derwent. The division extends from Hobart outskirts for about 100 kilometres through the Derwent Valley. Aird is opposed by independent Jenny Branch, a Glenorchy councillor and Liberal Party member said by Antony Green to be seeking preselection for Denison in 2010, and Susan Gunter for the Greens.

I am maintaining my yearly ritual of tallying independents’ voting in divisions, but as there have been only four this year there isn’t much to write home about. The table shows the proportion of divisions in which each member has voted with Labor. I have been dividing it into substantive and procedural votes since 2007. Note that Sue Smith has recently taken over the position of President from Don Wing, who had not recorded a vote since 2003.