Tomorrow’s Australian Capital Territory election looks likely to maintain the remarkable continuity in Australian electoral politics that began in 1998. Prior to Kevin Rudd’s win last November, Labor won 22 successive state and territory elections, starting with the election of Peter Beattie’s government in Queensland. Two elections and numerous opinion polls since have indicated that John Howard’s demise has broken the circuit, notwithstanding that Labor made it to 23 in a row when it scraped home in the Northern Territory on August 9. This was achieved in the face of an 8.8 per cent fall in the Labor primary vote and the near-defeat of a government that went into the election with 19 seats out of 25. Labor’s winning run finally came to an end a month later when Alan Carpenter’s Western Australian government was dumped from office after shedding 6.0 per cent on the primary vote.

The other story to emerge from the two elections was the strong performance by the Greens, who demonstrated an ominous capacity to siphon votes from ageing Labor governments. The Greens vote in Western Australia was up from 7.6 per cent in 2005 to 11.9 per cent, and its average vote in the six seats it contested in the Northern Territory was over 16 per cent. The one public opinion poll to emerge during the ACT campaign makes it very clear that both trends are going to be replicated tomorrow. The Patterson survey published in the Canberra Times a fortnight ago suggested that a 12 per cent drop in the Labor vote has been harvested almost entirely by the Greens.

In other jurisdictions, Labor could console itself with the thought that most of those votes would return to them as preferences – but the ACT’s Hare-Clark system of proportional representation means the shift in votes will translate into seats lost to the Greens. As Chief Minister Jon Stanhope freely admitted on Monday, Labor has no chance of repeating its feat in 2004 when it became the first government to win an outright majority since self-government began in 1989. The Greens stand to increase their representation from one seat to three or even four: one each in the five-member regions of Brindabella and Ginninderra, and possibly two in the seven-member region of Molonglo. Labor would thus be reduced from nine seats to six or seven out of 17, with the Liberals down from seven to six.

This makes life very interesting for the Greens’ senior candidate for Molonglo, Shane Rattenbury, who has been designated his party’s presumptive leader following the retirement of its sole sitting member, Deb Foskey. Rattenbury looks set to enter parliament not only as kingmaker between Stanhope and Liberal leader Zed Seselja, but also as a potential Deputy Chief Minister if he pushes his party’s claim with sufficient force. The money, smart or otherwise, suggests a Labor minority government is a lay-down misere: Centrebet is offering $1.19 on a Labor win against $4.35 for the Liberals.

However, one precedent exists in Australia for a Greens-backed Liberal minority government, albeit a rather unhappy one. This happened after the 1996 election in Tasmania, when Labor refused to take the reins due to ongoing bitterness over its experience of relying on the Greens (then led by Bob Brown) between 1989 and 1992. The Labor and Liberal parties then contrived to put an end to the situation by agreeing to reduce the size of the lower house from 35 seats to 25. The idea was that the Greens would be reduced from five seats (one in each of the five seven-member regions) to one or two if they were lucky, but their ongoing electoral strength in Tasmania has been such that it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

UPDATE: Ben Raue in comments disputes the assertion that Rattenbury is the “presumptive leader” of the Greens.

Labor has three members in Molonglo standing for re-election, all cabinet ministers. Deputy Chief Minister Katy Gallagher entered parliament at the 2001 election, at which her win was a crucial element in Labor’s victory. A member of the Left faction, she was promoted to cabinet in December 2002 as Education and Industrial Relations Minister, becoming Deputy Chief Minister when Ted Quinlan quit in January 2006 and trading education for health. Andrew Barr came to the parliament in March 2006 after replacing retiring former Treasurer Ted Quinlan, winning the seat on a countback after polling 3.8 per cent at the 2004 election. A former adviser to John Hargreaves and member of the Right, Barr was immediately promoted to fill Quinlan’s vacancy in cabinet, reportedly ruffling the feathers of the backbenchers who were overlooked. Despite taking on what might have proved to be the poisoned chalice of education (along with industrial relations), he continues to be spoken of as a future leader. Barr was given further responsibility for planning when the other Labor member for Molonglo, Simon Corbell of the Left faction, was stripped of the portfolio in April 2007. Corbell has been in parliament since 1997 and currently serves as Attorney-General and Police and Emergency Services Minister. He was relieved of the planning portfolio he had held throughout the life of the Stanhope government after breaking cabinet solidarity to publicly urge colleagues to speak out against the prospect of recycled sewage being used as drinking water. Labor’s other candidates are Mike Hettinger, a former US Air Force officer and scientist with the Department of Education, Science and Training who narrowly failed to win a fourth seat for Labor at the 2004 election; Eleanor Bates, 29-year-old breast cancer survivor; Louise Crossman, a CFMEU industrial officer; and David Mathews, manager of an IT services and consulting business.

The senior Liberal candidate is Zed Seselja, who rose to the party leadership at 30 years of age last December. His elevation came shortly after long-standing leadership aspirant and erstwhile Seselja ally Richard Mulcahy was expelled from the parliamentary party (see below). The party collectively chose to clear the air by giving Seselja a clear run at the leadership, with Mulcahy’s rival Brendan Smyth agreeing to settle for deputy. Seselja came to parliament at the 2004 election, emerging as the second strongest performing Liberal candidate on his debut with 6.1 per cent of the vote, but he was only the third Liberal elected after being overtaken by Jacqui Burke on preferences. Jacqui Burke entered parliament in January 2001 after filling the vacancy created by former Chief Minister Kate Carnell’s departure, but failed to retain her seat at the election the following October. She returned after another countback, this time caused by Gary Humphries’ move to the Senate in 2002. A self-described “little-l Liberal”, Burke was on Brendan Smyth’s side of the party room stand-off against the Richard Mulcahy faction in the period when Bill Stefaniak was compromise leader. In November 2006 she replaced Richard Mulcahy as deputy leader, and was reported as having aspirations to go one better during the party turmoil of December 2007. She stood down as deputy together with leader Bill Stefaniak in December 2007, making way for the new leadership team of Seselja and Smyth.

The departure of Mulcahy means that unlike Labor, the newcomer Liberal candidates are of more than academic interest. According to Markus Mannheim of the Canberra Times, Gary Kent and Belinda Barnier both outpolled Jacqui Burke in the party’s April preselection vote, respectively scoring 24 and 11 votes to Burke’s seven. Kent was an all too active player in last year’s party ructions as ACT branch president, notably when a leaked email emerged in May in which he accused Brindabella MLA Steve Pratt of trying to destroy the career of his ally Richard Mulcahy. Kent opted not to reconstest the presidency the following August shortly after four MLAs defied his order that they not attend functions of the Canberra Business Club, with which he had been at loggerheads. Belinda Barnier works for the Red Cross, and has twice run for the federal seat of Canberra. A third newcomer, Guilia Jones, equalled Burke’s seven preselection votes, despite her apparently low profile. Also on the Liberal ticket are Clinton White, media adviser to former leader Bill Stefaniak, and Jeremy Hanson, a lieutenant-colonel in the army who was recently awarded the Chief of Joint Operations Gold Commendation for service in Iraq.

The recent surge in support for the Greens means the party seems certain to win one seat and could even win two if we are to believe the Patterson/Canberra Times poll, which had the party’s vote up from 11.5 per cent at the 2004 election to 23 per cent. For the second successive election the party has an open ticket of newcomers, with sitting member Deb Foskey announcing she would not seek a second term in May. Greenpeace International business director Shane Rattenbury is acknowledged as the party’s senior figure: he has been the focus of its advertising campaign, and could potentially emerge as Deputy Chief Minister if the party presses its case with sufficient force in post-election horse-trading. Rattenbury narrowly failed to win election in Ginninderra in 1998 and 2001, falling short on the latter occasion by 48 votes. The other Greens candidates are circus organiser and performer Elena Kirschbaum and ethical investment manager Caroline Le Couteur.

With seven seats up for grabs, Molonglo is by far the most attractive of the three electorates for independent and minor party candidates, and has again attracted some significant entrants. The most notable is Richard Mulcahy, who was expelled from the parliamentary Liberal Party amid the turmoil that engulfed the party last December. The trouble began when then-leader Bill Stefaniak stood Mulcahy down from his portfolios pending a federal tribunal inquiry into past activities as executive director of the Australian Hotels Association (he was cleared of wrongdoing in February). Mulcahy reacted by claiming to know of unspecified allegations against Stefaniak and Brendan Smyth, intimating that it would be in their best interests if they joined him on the back bench. The ensuing explusion motion was passed unanimously by the party room, which then sought to clear the air by having Stefaniak stand aside for clean-skin Zed Seselja. He will now attempt to hold his seat under the banner of “Richard Mulcahy Canberra Party”. Two other independent candidates of interest: Frank Pangallo, the high-profile former mayor of Queanbeyan, and Helen Cross, who was elected as a Liberal at the 2001 election but was expelled the following year after a series of disagreements with her colleagues, most notably over her decision to support legislation to legalise abortion. The Patterson/Canberra Times poll had Pangallo on 3 per cent, Cross on 2.5 per cent and Mulcahy on 2 per cent.

At the 1995 election the bar for minor party candidates was raised with the abolition of the shambolic “modified d’Hondt” system of Territory-wide proportional representation. It was replaced with the present Tasmanian-style Hare-Clark system based on three multi-member regions, two of five members (Brindabella and Ginninderra) and one of seven (Molonglo). As in Tasmania, the “Robson” system of rotating ballot paper order means candidates are forced to compete against their party colleagues. The first such election produced a Liberal minority government of seven members, headed by Kate Carnell, which was sustained with the support of two independents. Carnell achieved a status quo result at the 1998 election, before resigning in 2000 to head off a no-confidence motion resulting from an unfavourable auditor’s report into the revamp of Bruce Stadium. Her successor Gary Humphries led the government to defeat in 2001, moving a year later to the Senate where he has remained ever since.

The change of government after the 2001 election followed Labor’s gain of two seats at the expense of Liberal-leaning independents, with the Liberals retaining their existing seven seats. Re-elected Greens member Kerrie Tucker had ruled out supporting the Liberals, meaning Labor’s eight seats were enough to ensure a comfortable hold on government without having to rely on the one Democrats member. New Chief Minister Jon Stanhope introduced four-year terms effective from the 2004 election (held one week after the October 9 federal election), at which Labor gained the one extra seat required for majority government at the expense of the collapsing Democrats. The vote for both major parties increased, Labor from 41.7 per cent to 46.8 per cent and Liberal from 31.6 per cent to 34.8 per cent, but the Liberals remained on seven seats with the Greens on one.

There are several reasons to think Labor will struggle to match that feat on October 18, most notably an electoral cycle that has lately shown its force in Northern Territory, Western Australia and various state Newspoll surveys. Stanhope’s government has accumulated a heavy burden of baggage in the last four years, the low-point coming with a horror 2006/07 budget that sought to balance the Territory’s tottering finances by closing 39 schools (nearly a quarter of the total). The ACT edition of the Daily Telegraph reacted by describing the Chief Minister as an “economic vandal” who headed a “disgraced government”, beneath the front-page headline: “STANHOPE-LESS”. A large part of Stanhope’s political strategy consisted of needling the Howard government over terrorism laws and civil unions for same-sex couples, which lost much of its utility after Kevin Rudd came to power.

However, Labor’s woes have been matched by an eerily familiar story of leadership disarray among the Liberals. There have been two leadership changes in the current term: from Brendan Smyth to Bill Stefaniak in May 2006, and from Stefaniak to the 31-year-old incumbent Zed Seselja in December 2007. Both Stefaniak and Seselja were compromise leaders of a kind, Stefaniak taking the reins because Smyth and rival Richard Mulcahy each mustered three party room votes out of seven. Stefaniak’s departure followed a dramatic week that began with Mulcahy being stood down from his portfolios pending a federal tribunal inquiry into his past activities as executive director of the Australian Hotels Association. Mulcahy did not take this lying down, claiming to know of unspecified allegations against Stefaniak and Smyth and calling on them to join him on the back bench. The party room reacted by unanimously voting to expel Mulcahy, who will run in Molonglo at the head of his own grouping. Shortly afterwards Stefaniak and his deputy Jacqui Burke announced they would clear the air by standing aside, and Seselja and Smyth were elected in their place without opposition.

Posts on each of three electorates will follow over the coming weeks. Antony Green offers plenty to keep you going on with in the interim.