Federal Election 2004
NEW SOUTH WALES
| CLICK ON ELECTORATE NAME BELOW FOR FULL PROFILE | |||
| Region | Non-Labor electorates | Labor electorates | Region |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central Coast | (0.4) DOBELL | ||
| Western Sydney | (1.2) PARRAMATTA | ||
| Hunter Region | (1.5) PATERSON | ||
| Central West | (1.7) CALARE | ||
| South-East Regional | (1.7) EDEN-MONARO | ||
| North Coast | (1.7) RICHMOND | ||
| North Coast | (2.8) PAGE | BANKS (2.9) | South-West Sydney |
| North Coast | (4.8) COWPER | GREENWAY (3.2) | Western Sydney |
| Outer Sydney | (5.5) LINDSAY | LOWE (3.9) | Inner Sydney |
| Outer Sydney | (7.0) MACARTHUR | BARTON (6.1) | Southern Sydney |
| Central Coast | (7.0) ROBERTSON | CHARLTON (6.7) | Hunter Region |
| Sydney North Shore | (7.8) BENNELONG | NEWCASTLE (7.0) | Hunter Region |
| Eastern Sydney | (7.9) WENTWORTH | WERRIWA (8.5) | Outer Sydney |
| Blue Mountains | (8.7) MACQUARIE | ||
| Far West | (8.8) PARKES | SHORTLAND (8.8) | Hunter Region |
| Southern Regional | (9.8) HUME | KINGSFORD SMITH (9.0) | Eastern Sydney |
| Southern Sydney | (10.5) HUGHES | CUNNINGHAM (10.7) † | Illawarra |
| North Coast | (11.3) LYNE | HUNTER (10.9) | Hunter Region |
| Sydney North Shore | (12.7) WARRINGAH | PROSPECT (12.9) | Outer Sydney |
| Sydney North Shore | (13.3) NORTH SYDNEY | ||
| Northern Regional | (13.9) NEW ENGLAND | ||
| Southern Sydney | (14.1) COOK | SYDNEY (15.1) | Inner Sydney |
| South Coast | (14.7) GILMORE | THROSBY (15.2) | Illawarra |
| North-West Regional | (14.9) GWYDIR | BLAXLAND (15.3) | South-West Sydney |
| Sydney North Shore | (15.7) BEROWRA | ||
| Southern Border | (16.4) FARRER | CHIFLEY (15.3) | Outer Sydney |
| Sydney North Shore | (16.9) MACKELLAR | REID (16.9) | Western Sydney |
| Southern Regional | (19.9) RIVERINA | WATSON (17.4) | Southern Sydney |
| Sydney North Shore | (21.2) BRADFIELD | GRAYNDLER (21.3) | Inner Sydney |
| North-West Sydney | (21.4) MITCHELL | FOWLER (21.5) | South-West Sydney |
Key - Australian Labor Party Liberal Party National Party Independent * Region classifications are based on those used by Antony Green in his election summaries at ABC Elections. † By-election held 19 October 2002 won by Greens candidate Michael Organ (2.2% vs ALP) | |||
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BANKS (Labor 2.9%)
THE CANDIDATES: Daryl Melham was elected in 1990 and made the shadow ministry immediately after Labor's annihilation at the 1996 election. He took on the Aboriginal Affairs portfolio until he memorably quit the front bench in protest over Labor's decision to support Queensland Government native title laws in the Senate. He returned with the Customs portfolio under the Simon Crean leadership following the 2001 election and remained loyal to him and then to Latham during the 2003 leadership contests. He was promoted to Housing, Urban Development and Local Government after Latham's win. The Liberal candidate is Roger Gray, a former lieutenant-colonel in the Australian Army who served in the peace-keeping force deployed to Cambodia in 1992-93. INTELLIGENCE: Louise Dodson of the Sydney Morning Herald reports that Banks "has been put on a list of Liberal key marginal seats, enabling candidate Roger Gray to win extra resources and help from Howard. Even though it is being pursued, Liberal insiders now say Banks is unlikely to switch". ASSESSMENT: Labor retain The same symptoms that cost Labor the seat of Greenway resulted in Daryl Melham losing another 1.8 per cent on two-party preferred. A boilover looked possible early in the evening but Melham held on in a seat that can now be definitively regarded as marginal. OUTCOME: Labor retain (1.1%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum BARTON (Labor 6.1%)
THE CANDIDATES: As the son of former Senator Doug McClelland, Robert McClelland joins Kim Beazley, Simon Crean and others at the butt of regular Coalition jibes about dynastic succession in the ALP (although Alexander Downer and Larry Anthony tend not to join in the fun). McClelland replaced the retiring former minister Gary Punch as member for Barton in 1996 and had been a solid performer for Labor as Shadow Attorney-General, but he paid the price for being among the one-too-few caucus members who shifted their votes to Kim Beazley in the second leadership vote with a move to the Homeland Security portfolio. Other Labor MPs in south-east Sydney had supported Beazley in his challenge against Crean in June and it was widely believed that this inspired Crean's decision to withdraw support for the Badgery's Creek airport proposal, thereby putting further pressure on nearby Kingsford Smith airport. Liberal candidate Bruce Morrow had a go at the similarly unwinnable seat of Sydney in 1998. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain Robert McClelland defied local trends to pick up 1.5 per cent on two-party preferred and about the same on the primary vote. OUTCOME: Labor retain (7.5%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum BENNELONG (Liberal 7.8%)
THE CANDIDATES: Sydney solicitor John Howard entered parliament at the 1974 double dissolution election at the age of 34. By the end of 1977 Howard was Treasurer in the Fraser Government and despite presiding over one of Australia's less illustrious periods economically he had established himself as an intellectual leader of the party's free-market lobby by the time of the Fraser Government's defeat in 1983. At that time Howard was passed over as leader in favour the better-looking Andrew Peacock, who relinquished the position to him by mistake not long after his better-than-expected performance at the December 1984 election. Undermined by the Peacock camp throughout his first period as leader, Howard came remarkably close to winning the July 1987 election despite campaign gaffes and the Joh-for-PM catastrophe. Political errors during 1989 sent his approval rating southwards and the Peacock camp made its move in time to muff the 1990 election. Howard observed the Hewson and Downer disasters from a senior position on the front bench and emerged as last man standing in 1995. Learning from past mistakes, Howard played his hand to perfection over the following year and annihilated the Keating Government at the March 1996 election. Since then his Government has combined social conservatism with prudent economic management, provoking unrelenting outrage from the electorally impotent inner-city left on the one hand, and fat wallets and soaring property values for inhabitants of the suburbs and regions on the other. Tarnishing his record has been the extreme narrowness of his 1998 victory, achieved in spite of an aggregate and two-party preferred Coalition vote inferior to Labor's, and the cold-blooded cynicism and perverse good fortune that underwrote his win in 2001. His current term has been distinguished by the nailing of his Government's colours to the mast of a contentious American military adventure. Prompted by the latter controversy, Howard has attracted a field of opponents including Troy Rollo, a "normal Liberal voter" who "can't vote Labor or Greens or now for John Howard", and more significantly, former Office of National Assessments analyst and "whistle-blower" Andrew Wilkie standing for the Greens. Labor's candidate is 29-year-old Nicole Campbell, who has worked as an environmental scientist for the Environment Protection Agency and the Olympic Coordination Authority. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: The contest for this seat has garnered more interest than it normally would due to the efforts of various "small-l" liberals aggrieved by the Howard Government's eight years of accumulated political incorrectness. Chief among these has been John Valder, the former Liberal Party president who branded Howard a "war criminal" over Australia's involvement in Iraq. To this end Valder has forged an alliance with left-wing journalist Margo Kingston that has co-opted the name of Kingston's best-selling tome of anti-Howard ramblings, Not Happy John. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain John Howard had enough to be pleased about on election night that he could overlook the fact that the "doctors' wives" effect had bitten deep in his own electorate, forcing him to preferences (just) and making his seat technically marginal. Andrew Wilkie boosted the Greens vote from 4.0 to 16.3 per cent, lifting a few points from each of Labor, Liberal and the Democrats, but came nowhere near overhauling Labor's 28.4 per cent, as he would have needed to do to have had even a theoretical chance of winning the seat. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (4.3%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum BEROWRA (Liberal 15.7%)
THE CANDIDATES: Philip Ruddock moved here after representing the city electorates of Parramatta (from 1973 to 1977) and Dundas (from 1977 to its abolition in 1993), having been mainstay of the party's moderate "wet" faction throughout that period. After several years of solid, workmanlike service in the Immigration portfolio, he metamorphosed into a populist right-wing attack dog upon the arrival of the MV Tampa off Christmas Island. For his efforts he was rewarded with grateful adulation by his party and a promotion to Attorney-General. The ALP website informs us that Labor candidate Michael Colnan took up a career as a school teacher after retiring from a 35-year career with the New South Wales Police "which included several years in counter-terrorist and crime intelligence". ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain The "doctors' wives" delivered a harmless 3.4 per cent swing to Labor and shaved an inconsequential 2.2 per cent from Philip Ruddock's primary vote. The Fred Nile candidate (3.1 per cent) got the better of Family First (1.1 per cent) in this notedly religious part of Sydney. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (12.3%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum BLAXLAND (Labor 15.3%)
THE CANDIDATES: Michael Hatton's career so far has fallen well short of that of his predecessor, and he suffered something of a low point in June 2003 when he featured prominently in a two-day attack by the Daily Telegraph on what it deemed to be underperforming Labor members in western Sydney seats. His angry response questioning the Telegraph's motives provoked the headline, "Conspiracy? We just think you're useless". Useless or not, his re-election is a foregone conclusion. Liberal candidate Mark Majewski is a former director of the Polish Club and a company director in the "automotive aftermarket" caper. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain Voters continue their gradual drift away from Labor in their western Sydney heartland, the Liberals picking up a 2.3 per cent swing. This was achieved despite a basically stable primary vote for Labor's Michael Hatton, a collective decline in the Greens/Democrats vote producing less Labor-friendly preference flows. Labor would also be smarting from the 10.7 per cent informal vote, for which they can partly blame confusion stemming from optional preferential voting at state elections. OUTCOME: Labor retain (12.9%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum BRADFIELD (Liberal 21.2%)
THE CANDIDATES: Former Australian Medical Association president Brendan Nelson assumed the seat in 1996 after ousting David Connolly, member from 1974, in a preselection vote that had more than a little in common with the recent battle for Wentworth. He has since removed the ear-ring and climbed the pole as high as the Education portfolio after the November 2001 election. He is unlikely to be too concerned about Labor's Neil Neelam, a 20-year-old computer science student at the University of Sydney. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain A slightly unusual outcome for the election in that the Greens vote rose (4.8 per cent) more than the Democrats vote fell (4.2 per cent). Greens preferences thus accounted for most of the 2.5 per cent swing to Labor, with only a minor shift in Labor's favour on the primary vote. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (18.7%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum CALARE (Nationals 1.7%)*
Calare takes in an area west of Sydney including Lithgow, Bathurst, Orange and Cowra and was held by the Liberals or the National/Country Party from 1946 to 1983. Labor's David Simmons was member throughout the period of the Hawke/Keating Government, and it fell to independent Peter Andren rather than the Nationals when Simmons retired in 1996. Andren was easily re-elected at the next two elections, with a primary vote majority in 2001. The seat was last contested by the Liberals in 1998, when they very nearly equalled the National Party vote. THE CANDIDATES: Prior to his entry into parliament Peter Andren built his local profile over a three decade career in the local media, first in radio and then as newsreader on Prime Television. Andren has managed to get away with liberal views on various issues (asylum seekers, stem cell research, Iraq) by balancing them with popular crusading over politicians' pay and entitlements, backed by an unusual willingness to put his money where his mouth is. The Nationals have endorsed Bathurst minister Robert Griffith, who is one of four New South Wales National Party MPs endorsed by Fred Nile's Christian Democratic Party "in the absence of a CDP candidate in that division". Liberal candidate Paul Blanch is a sheep farmer who owns a property at Georges Plains near Bathurst. Labor's Robyn Adams is a physiotherapist who sits on the executive of the Health Services Union, and is also from Bathurst. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Robert Griffith appeared to ruffle a few feathers in the second week of the campaign when he said Peter Andren's electoral success was due to "ignorance with respect to the voters". He apparently meant that the voters were ignorant of what to his mind are Andren's pro-Labor sympathies, saying locals "vote for a local guy that they like but still want the Government returned". ASSESSMENT: Independent retain On the whole this was a good election for the Nationals, but they may find it sobering that it was the Liberal rather than Nationals candidate who made it to the final round against the inevitably triumphant Peter Andren, who again scored over 50 per cent of the primary vote. The Liberals did not contest in 2001, while the Nationals polled higher than them in 1998 and 1996. OUTCOME: Independent retain (21.2% vs LIB) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum CHARLTON (Labor 6.7%)
THE CANDIDATES: Centre Left faction member Kelly Hoare assumed the seat upon the retirement of her father, Bob Brown (the other one), who was member from the seat's creation in 1984 until 1998. Hoare's main qualification for the job was that she had worked as an electorate officer for the old man. Former Labor MP Gary Johns wrote in the Adelaide Review that a 20 per cent affirmative action weighting saw her win the preselection ballot by "1.2 votes". In September 2000 she saw off a preselection challenge from Chris Foteff of the Left. Hoare was one of the late deciders who swung to Latham in the post-Crean leadership vote. Liberal candidate Kurt Darcey could do with a shave. A Google search turns up the following wealth of information. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain Quiet Labor member Kelly Hoare did well to hold level on the primary vote and pick up 1.3 per cent on two-party preferred. Another seat where the Greens really did pick up the disappearing Democrats vote, and more besides, improving the flow of preferences to Labor. OUTCOME: Labor retain (8.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum CHIFLEY (Labor 15.3%)
THE CANDIDATES: The peak of Roger Price's trajectory in his 20 years in this seat was a parliamentary secretary position he held for about 18 months in the early 1990s. Nevertheless he played a significant role in the Kim Beazley challenges in 2003, being denounced by Labor colleague Warren Snowdon as one of a "self-interested and long-in-the-tooth cabal" promoting Beazley's ambitions, along with Steve Hutchins, Con Sciacca and Leo McLeay. Liberal candidate Costa Asarloglou is a 26-year-old small business proprietor. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain With the Save the ADI Site Party, the Australian Democrats and Australians Against Further Immigration not taking the field on this occasion, about 7 per cent of the vote was up for grabs. One Nation's vote fell 4 per cent as well. Despite all this Labor still went backwards, the spoils being shared by the Liberals and the Greens. The 10.1 per cent informal vote would have been damaging for Labor. OUTCOME: Labor retain (13.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum COOK (Liberal 14.1%)
THE CANDIDATES: Bruce Baird was a senior minister in the Greiner-Fahey New South Wales Government from its election in 1988 until his retirement in 1995. His portfolios included Transport and Tourism, while his effort as Minister for Sydney's Olympics Bid can only be considered a success. He returned to politics in 1998 after unseating his predecessor, Stephen Mutch, in a preselection coup. This took place against the wishes of the Prime Minister who was reportedly concerned by Baird's connections with Peter Costello, which remain strong. Labor candidate Mark Buttigieg is presumably the person responsible for this ABC forum posting critical of the preselection of Sharon Bird, his counterpart in the seat of Cunningham. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Greens (3.4 per cent), Liberal (1.8 per cent) and Labor (1.2 per cent) up, One Nation (3.8 per cent) and Democrats (2.9 per cent) down, two-party preferred about the same. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (13.8%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum COWPER (Nationals 4.8%)
THE CANDIDATES: Luke Hartsuyker brought a business background in real estate and tourism to parliament in 2001 and has kept his nose clean since. Labor candidate Allan Williams is a Coffs Harbour employment services worker. INTELLIGENCE: Peter Brent at Mumble nominates Cowper as "the surprise Ohmygod! seat for Labor if they win the election" since it "exemplifies the sort of seat Latham has a best chance of winning: outside the capital cities, low income, and it swung to Labor a little in 2001 while the state went the other way. Also, there're hippies, ferals and a growing number of ex-Sydneyites in them there hills". ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain Surprise Ohmygod! wins for Labor proved thin on the ground at this election, and in this seat the Coalition (with only the Nationals in the field this time) vote was up 4.3 per cent on primary and 1.7 per cent on two-party preferred. OUTCOME: Nationals retain (6.4%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum CUNNINGHAM (Labor 10.7%)*
The Labor bastion of Wollongong has been the focal point of Cunningham since its creation in 1949, now sitting at the southern end of an electorate that extends north along the coast as far as Helensburgh. Antony Green says it is "traditionally a working class electorate dominated by coal mining and the steel industry, the northern end of the electorate has changed in recent years, increasingly filled with more affluent residents who commute to Sydney for work but enjoy spending their home time closer to nature in the northern Illawarra". In October 2002 it become the first House of Representatives seat ever to fall to the Greens when a by-election was brought on by the resignation of Labor front-bencher Stephen Martin, the only electoral test Simon Crean ever faced as Labor leader and the party's first ever defeat here. Successful Greens candidate Michael Organ scored 23 per cent of the vote in a field of 13 that did not include a Liberal, with the various minor candidates feeding him enough preferences to turn a 15.1 deficit against Labor's Sharon Bird on the primary vote into a 2.2 per cent win on two-candidate preferred. A foretaste of this outcome came in 1990 when the Australian Democrats (who performed notably poorly at the by-election, scoring 2.2 per cent compared with 7.1 at the November 2001 election) came within 2.4 per cent of winning the seat. One factor on that occasion was preferences from Rex (Reg) Connor Jr, son of the legendary Whitlam Government Minerals and Energy Minister and loans affair protagonist who held the seat from 1963 until his death in 1977. Whatever history may record on the matter of Connor's role in the downfall of the Whitlam Government, it was a measure of the enduring regard in which he was held in Wollongong that his son was able to score 12.8 per cent as candidate for the rather pathetically named "Rex Connor Senior Labor Party". THE CANDIDATES: Michael Organ was a little-known figure before his win in the October 2002 by-election, and quite frankly he still is. His website speaks of a background as a local historian and archivist at the University of Wollongong, but despite his success in polling 15 per cent in a Wollongong lord mayoralty by-election in September 2002, there is a strong element of right-place right-time about his entry into parliament and he has been unable to make an impact as the Greens' only member of the House of Representatives. Labor are again running with their unsuccessful candidate at the by-election, Sharon Bird. A former Wollongong Councillor, Bird's earlier preselection caused a storm in local party branches as it was imposed by the state executive for affirmative action purposes under the party's controversial N40 rule. This same rule had thwarted Bird's bid for preselection for the neighbouring seat of Throsby at the 2001 election, the beneficiary being ACTU president Jennie George. Bird had earlier won the Left's endorsement for Throsby at the 1998 election over incumbent Colin Hollis, but this led to a near-split within the faction that allowed Hollis to hold on. In early 2002 she jumped factions to the Right, leaving her well placed to take over in Cunningham from Stephen Martin, her new-found factional colleague. Liberal candidate John Larter is a 31-year-old Thirroul ambulance officer who works for St George Hospital. ASSESSMENT: Labor notional retain Defeated Greens member Michael Organ can at least console himself with the knowledge that his 20.1 per cent share of the vote was 13.5 per cent higher than the Greens managed at the 2001 election and only slightly down on the 23 per cent that won him the 2002 by-election. But he finished far behind the Liberals (who did not contest the by-election) who polled 28.8 per cent, and his preferences thus delivered an easy win to Sharon Bird (39.6 per cent). OUTCOME: Labor notional retain (11.5%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum DOBELL (Liberal 0.4%)
THE CANDIDATES: Ken Ticehurst worked his way from apprentice fitter at 16 to managing director of what he described in his maiden speeech as "an Australian operation of a British multinational company" at the age of 37. He then started his own business in the unusual line of work of lightning tracking for insurance agents and rural fire brigades. David Humphries of the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Ticehurst "fought the campaign basically by staying out of the way". Labor's candidate is David Mehan, secretary of the Central Coast Trades and Labor Council, who has been working hard and early on building media visibility. INTELLIGENCE: The Sun-Herald has commissioned Taverner to conduct qualitative research in Dobell focusing on a sample of around 100 local voters. Voting intention fluctuated early in the campaign, with the Liberals favoured by 51-49 at the end of the second week, but after the parties' campaign launches there was a telling shift to Labor who recorded a 54-46 lead in the final weekend of the campaign. However, Dennis Shanahan of The Australian reported on September 17 that the seat was "thought to be safer than it was before the campaign". ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain A very good result for Ken Ticehurst who finds himself secure in another formerly dicey seat that now has a solid Liberal margin. The 5.8 per cent increase in his primary vote was achieved largely at the expense of Labor, who were down 6.1 per cent, and his two-party swing was 5.5 per cent. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (5.9%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum EDEN-MONARO (Liberal 1.7%)
THE CANDIDATES: Gary Nairn's pre-parliamentary background was in the Northern Territory where he was president of the Country Liberal Party from 1990 to 1994. Interestingly he also spent those years on the "management committee of the National Party". The latter point did not stop former state National Party MP Peter Cochran contesting his seat as an independent in 2001, recording 8.2 per cent of the vote. Labor's candidate is Kel Watt, a former media adviser to ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope and federal MP Stephen Martin. Watt has been campaigning furiously since his preselection in December 2003 and has already built up a considerable local media profile. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: The Government's announcement that it would build the Defence Department's $300 million joint operations headquarters near Bungendore, which did not appear to have anything to recommend it apart from its location in this crucial marginal electorate, was widely reckoned to be one of the more irresponsible displays of pork-barreling of the 2001 election campaign. And as the latest edition of BRW reports, "it was no coincidence that late in August the Government announced it was down to the selection of the final three tenderers". As the campaign progressed the Eden woodchip mill become a bargaining chip in preference negotations between Labor and the Greens, who are keeping their options open on preference recommendations in 26 marginal seats pending the full release of environmental policies. Labor will need to factor in a possible lengthening of the odds against them in Eden-Monaro in weighing up the merits of such a deal. The Coalition was at first seen to have put its pro-logging vote in jeopardy when it proposed to phase out old-growth logging in Tasmania. However the release of Labor's sweeping policy in the last week of the campaign suggested this had been a successful tactical manoeuvre designed to wedge Labor to the left, after which the Coalition released a logger-friendly policy that will make things difficult for Labor in Eden-Monaro. INTELLIGENCE: Labor had a 52-48 lead in a Sun Herald/Taverner poll taken on the Wednesday and Thursday of the second last week of the campaign, but the sample was only 200. This was about the same as for a Patterson Market Research Poll conducted for the Canberra Times a day earlier, which had the Liberals leading 54-48. A few weeks before the campaign, the Daily Telegraph conducted an unusual exercise in which Galaxy Research/OmniTalk phone polled 400 voters while Telegraph journalists Josh Massound and David Penberthy conducted a road-trip around the electorate to gauge the thoughts of 600 others. The results, published on August 11, had Nairn leading Watt by 46 to 40 per cent, with the Greens on 8 per cent, which would presumably give Nairn a slight edge on two-party preferred. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Yet another election in which Eden-Monaro's record as a bellwether suffered no harm at all, the Liberal Party's share of the two-party preferred vote roughly equal to the overall national results. Gary Nairn was able to harvest an extra 7.4 per cent of the primary vote, presumably from the 8.2 per cent who voted for conservative independent Peter Cochran in 2001. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (2.2%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results RELATED POSTS: A Galaxy Far, Far Away (11/8/04); Bellwether Report (10/8/04). Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum FARRER (Liberal 16.4%)*
Farrer covers a vast length of the northern bank of the Murray, accounting for about 80 per cent of the border with Victoria. Since its creation in 1949 it has always included Albury, and currently covers Deniliquin, Jerilderie and Balranald. The seat was held by the Liberals from its creation until 1984, and while that year's redistribution substantially changed its character by depriving it of Wagga Wagga (leading Liberal incumbent Wally Fife to contest Hume), Tim Fischer's success in winning it for the National Party can be put down to his 13 years as member for the local state seat of Sturt. When Fischer retired in 2001 Liberal candidate Sussan Ley defeated Bill Bott of the National Party by 206 votes, after leading 37.7 to 23.4 per cent on the primary vote. THE CANDIDATES: Prior to her triumph in 2001 Sussan Ley played an enormously popular role in her area as director of the Albury branch of Australian Taxation Office. She lists her previous vocations as air traffic controller, commercial pilot, shearers' cook and wool and beef farmer. Labor had nominated Geoff Pritchard but the 69-year-old former Mayor of Tumut decided the role wasn't worth his effort and accepted a senior position with the Southern Area Health Service. Their candidate is now 30-year-old Nico Mathews, who was elected to Albury City Council in March 2004. INTELLIGENCE: The Border Mail carried pointless but well-meaning poll of 600 voters on October 5 that showed Sussan Ley with predictably little to worry about, her primary support at 56 per cent. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain An essentially status quo result, except that the Liberals had the Coalition vote to themselves this time. The improved Liberal share of the two-party preferred vote was helped by the Greens' static performance despite sharp falls in support for One Nation and the Democrats. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (19.9%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum FOWLER (Labor 21.5%)
THE CANDIDATES: Julia Irwin had been a staffer for various Labor MPs over the decades and came to parliament in 1998 with the support of the old guard of the New South Wales Right, including Laurie Brereton and Leo McLeay. The seat had been conceded by the Left in a deal made to avert a brawl over the Illawarra seat of Throsby. Irwin remains a player in Right factional games and reportedly had a hand in the marginalisation of McLeay, although she needed state executive intervention to secure preselection for the 2001 election after a branch stacking campaign against her. The highest profile moments of her current term came when she caused her leader Simon Crean embarrassment with a parliamentary motion critical of Israel in November 2002, and when Crean intervened to prevent her speaking on the matter in a debate the following August. Liberal candidate Philip Powrie is 28 and "employed with a Wetherill Park building supplies firm". ASSESSMENT: Labor retain With five candidates on the ballot paper this time compared with 10 last time, Labor, Liberal and the Greens were all able to improve their primary vote. The lion's share went to the Liberals, who were up 7.9 per cent, although this only delivered them a fractional improvement on two-party preferred. OUTCOME: Labor retain (21.4%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum GILMORE (Liberal 14.7%)
THE CANDIDATES: Joanna Gash was born in the Netherlands in 1944, just two months before the bloody failure of Operation Market Garden. Her electoral record speaks for itself but she has risen no higher than the position of Government Whip, the Government perhaps content for her to tend to her potentially fragile electorate. Her Labor opponent is Wollongong legal aid solicitor and republic fan Megan Pikett. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Gilmore went against the grain in swinging 4.6 per cent to Labor, no doubt a measure of the Peter Knott effect from 2001. The vote freed up by the Democrats' failure to contest appeared to split evenly between Labor and the Greens. The important thing is that the huge swing from 2001 has mostly stuck, confirming its status as a safe Liberal seat despite having been held by Labor as recently as 1996. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (10.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum GRAYNDLER (Labor 21.3%)
THE CANDIDATES: Anthony Albanese will be known to many as the only principal who had the sense to refuse to be filmed in Bob Connolly's unforgettable documentary on shenanigans at Leichhardt Council, The Rats in the Ranks. Albanese arrived in parliament just in time for the march through the wilderness in 1996, having previously worked as policy adviser to recently-elected New South Wales Premier Bob Carr and in various party positions before that. He entered the shadow ministry after just one term and currently holds the Employment Services and Training portfolio. Albanese and several other Labor MPs representing south-eastern Sydney supported Kim Beazley in the June 2003 leadership challenge and Simon Crean rewarded them by announcing without consultation that the party was withdrawing its support for the Badgerys Creek airport proposal, thus countenancing more traffic at nearby Kingsford Smith. Albanese backed Beazley again in December, Mark Latham having said of him in 1998 that "if anyone can find a positive speech or idea that Albanese has ever put forward in public life I'll buy them a lottery ticket". They had also clashed a few weeks before the vote when Latham in his role as Shadow Treasurer appalled the Left with talk of top bracket income tax relief. Liberal candidate Stephanie Kokkolis is a 31-year-old partner in an optometry business. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain Among many disappointments for the Greens was their failure in their strongest seats to relegate Liberal candidates to third place, one of these being Grayndler. As impressive as the 8.0 per cent increase in their vote was (mostly garnered from the vanishing Democrats), it left them trailing the Liberals 24.4 to 21.0 per cent on the primary vote with Democrats and Socialist Alliance preferences almost but not quite making up the difference. Even if they had made it, it would not have availed them - Antony Albanese increased his vote by 2.1 per cent to score an outright majority of the primary vote. OUTCOME: Labor retain (22.6%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum GREENWAY (Labor 3.2%)
THE CANDIDATES: Frank Mossfield has always been quiet and is now also retiring. His replacement is Ed Husic, who will look naggingly familiar to many as the public face of Integral Energy. Paul Sheehan of the Sydney Morning Herald reports that his factional base is in the Communications Electrial and Plumbing Union and its dominant Right faction. The Liberals have high hopes for their candidate Louise Markus, a community worker for the Hillsong church. Hillsong's congregation of 17,000 is the largest in Australia and its political significance has been indicated by the heavily publicised visits it has received from John Howard and Peter Costello. For his part Husic is a non-practising Muslim whose parents are from the former Yugoslavia. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: An article by Paul Sheehan in the Sydney Morning Herald on September 27 took Labor candidate Ed Husic to task for his near-total media silence, specifically his persistent refusal to speak to either Sheehan or to The Bulletin for an article it ran on Greenway earlier in the campaign. Sheehan contrasts this with the highly fancied Liberal candidate, Louise Markus, who promptly agreed to an hour-long interview as would be expected of a candidate who was taking her campaign seriously. Husic's reticence is unusual given his background as PR flack for state-owned Integral Energy. INTELLIGENCE: A retiring incumbent, proximity to the increasingly Liberal seats of Macquarie and Lindsay and the local appeal of the Liberal candidate have attracted considerable attention to this contest. The Sun-Herald commissioned Taverner to conduct qualitative research in Greenway focusing on a sample of around 100 local voters. Results from the first half of the campaign found the group increasingly inclining towards the Liberals, who led 54-46 at the end of week two, but it tellingly snapped back to 51-49 in Labor's favour after the parties' campaign launches. A report quoting Labor internal polling on ABC Radio's AM program on September 17 suggested they were in trouble, while former Liberal MP Michael Baume said on Sky News' Election 2004 program he would be "very surprised" if voters didn't deliver the seat to the Liberals out of gratitude for the area's low unemployment rate. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain The Poll Bludger's calculation was that after a 6.4 per cent swing to the Liberals in 2001, another 3.2 per cent would be too much to ask. Here's his excuse for getting this wrong - Louise Markus won with the help of the highest informal vote in the land, a remarkable 11.8 per cent. Those of us sufficiently long-in-the-tooth to recall Bob Hawke's disappointing performance at the 1984 election will know that a high informal vote is bad news for Labor. This aspect of the result can be put down to the huge number of candidates, although Mike Steketee in The Australian also cites the high immigrant population in western Sydney and confusion resulting from the operation of optional preferential voting at state level. Even so, it's a significant result for the Liberals and one that has a lot to do with current talk of "McMansions" and the suburban religious vote. Louise Markus bagged an extra 7 per cent for the Liberals, perhaps accounting for the 4.1 per cent One Nation vote that went missing but also drawing 2.6 per cent for Labor. The two-party swing of 3.7 per cent proved just barely enough. OUTCOME: LIBERAL GAIN (0.6%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results RELATED POSTS: Clash of Civilisations (13/8/04). Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum GWYDIR (Nationals 14.9%)
THE CANDIDATES: John Anderson was born in Sydney but is of squattocrat lineage, so the National Party it was. Anderson did actually get his fingernails dirty on the family farm over a period of several years before he entered parliament in 1989 when Ralph Hunt, deputy National Party leader at the time of the Joh-for-PM turmoil in 1987, chucked it in. He made the front bench by 1992 and the deputy party leadership after the 1993 election, picking up the Primary Industries portfolio on the election of the Howard Government. Anderson was elevated to Transport after 1998 and then into the National Party leadership and deputy prime ministership following Tim Fischer's retirement in 1999. Despite his professional bearing and twinkle-eyed dishiness, the voters deprived the National Party of three seats when given their first chance to pass judgement on his leadership in the November 2001 election. Anderson is one of four New South Wales National Party MPs endorsed by Fred Nile's Christian Democratic Party "in the absence of a CDP candidate in that division". Labor's candidate is Mudgee grazier and business owner Glenn Sims. ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain Having taken a bit of a buffeting from One Nation at the last two elections, John Anderson's 9.4 per cent boost to his primary vote marks a return to business as usual. His two-party preferred swing was a more humble 3.6 per cent, suggesting an overwhelming majority of those One Nation votes from elections past were returning to him as preferences. OUTCOME: Nationals retain (18.5%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum HUGHES (Liberal 10.5%)
THE CANDIDATES: Prime Minister John Howard named Danna Vale as one of three Liberal "heroes" whose strong personal performances at the 1998 election helped the Government maintain a slender majority. Only since her elevation to the Veterans Affairs ministry after another excellent result in 2001 has Vale been exposed as a complete dill. In February 2004 Michael Harvey of the Melbourne Herald Sun catalogued the incidents that had made her known as the "minister for tantrums"; "refusing to talk to TPI (totally and permanently incapacitated) groups", shouting at RAAF personnel who had served in Vietnam that they would "never get a medal while I am minister", and being overheard saying "let's get out of here" at a state RSL meeting shortly before her insultingly early departure and not long after her insultingly late arrival. Then in May, Vale felt that Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones, then at the centre of a firestorm over John Laws' claims he had boasted of bullying the Prime Minister into keeping the contentious Professor David Flint as head of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, deserved a fax message encouraging him to "stay brave and true". The fax was mistakenly sent to Laws' station of 2UE and not to Jones at 2GB, and Vale became a national laughing stock. Labor candidate Greg Holland is a one-time staffer to Hawke Government minister Susan Ryan. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Danna Vale's forgiving constituents awarded her an extra 1.7 per cent of the primary vote and 0.6 per cent on two-party preferred. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (11.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum HUME (Liberal 9.8%)
THE CANDIDATES: Alby Schultz's parliamentary biography lists his occupation from the age of 14 to 47 as "meat processing industry worker". He then moved into the slaughterhouse of New South Wales politics when he picked up the state seat of Burrinjuck for the Liberals at the 1988 election that brought Nick Greiner to power. After surviving the state Liberal Government's defeat in 1995 he took the opportunity of National Party MP John Sharp's unplanned early departure from politics to run in his seat as the Liberal candidate at the 1998 federal election. In a stunning turnaround from the previous three-cornered contest in 1993, Schultz thrashed his National Party opponent and evidently emerged with a strong sense of entitlement to the seat and a conviction he had been given a mandate to act independently. When the subsequent redistribution cost Finance Minister and former NSW Premier John Fahey his margin in the neighbouring seat of Macarthur, Schultz bluntly refused to stand aside for his former state party leader. Michelle Grattan reported in the Sydney Morning Herald that the Prime Minister was reluctant to throw his weight behind Fahey in the dispute because "little would be gained by him further aggravating the volatile Schultz", and "some Liberal strategists believe he would have a chance of defeating Fahey" if he carried out his threat of running as an independent. The preselection showdown was averted when Fahey quit politics after losing a lung to cancer, but the depth of Liberal concern over the prospect of an independent Alby Schultz was indicated when he escaped punishment for abstaining on the vote for Telstra sale legislation in August 2003. This produced tensions between the Coalition partners, as the Nationals were putting a lot on the line by falling in behind the legislation. These were sorely exacerbated when Schultz criticised the National Party's support for the policy in the following terms: "I abhor what the National Party stands for because it compromises itself at every opportunity". Michelle Grattan again: "The Nationals generally see Schultz as something of a misogynist as far as National Party women are concerned - a female National Party candidate beat his wife for a NSW seat". Labor's candidate is Graeme Shannon, a former school teacher who works for the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. Independent Arthur Schofield is a former Liberal upset over the free trade agreement and the United States in general. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain A superb result for Alby Schultz, who added 4.6 per cent to his primary vote and 4.3 per cent to his two-party margin. A correspondingly poor effort by Labor, who dropped 1.3 per cent of the primary vote despite 8.3 per cent being up for grabs due to a no-show from One Nation. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (14.1%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum HUNTER (Labor 10.9%)
THE CANDIDATES: Joel Fitzgibbon has inevitably suffered Liberal Party jibes over his succession to his father's electorate, but he is reckoned to have performed well since entering the shadow ministry after the 1998 election, successively holding the Small Business, Resources and Tourism portfolios. In August 2003 he overcame a CFMEU-organised preselection challenge Lloyd Hill, reportedly winning almost 80 per cent of the votes. His National Party opponent is Westbrook grazier Beth Black. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain Lest the Nationals get too cocky, there is a lot of evidence at ground level to suggest their long-term decline has not been arrested. In Hunter the One Nation vote was down 7.2 per cent from the 10.3 per cent they recorded in 2001, but none of that went to the Nationals whose vote fell 0.7 per cent, the rest scattering among various minors and independents. Joel Fitzgibbon was up 1.3 per cent on primary and 2.9 per cent on two-party preferred. OUTCOME: Labor retain (13.8%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum KINGSFORD SMITH (Labor 9.0%)
THE CANDIDATES: Labor candidate Peter Garrett completed a law degree at Canberra University in 1976, but rather than pursue that line of work he wound up fronting dynamic Sydney rock band Midnight Oil, who by 1983 were selling albums to their home market on a scale that would make any contemporary act weep. Somewhere between albums one and four the band had evolved partly into an outlet for Garrett's social conscience and in 1984 he ran as New South Wales Senate candidate for the short-lived Nuclear Disarmament Party. Garrett narrowly missed the seventh and final place up for grabs in that year's unique Senate election to a Democrats candidate whom he had led on the primary vote by 9.6 to 7.2 per cent, as both major parties had the Democrats ahead of him on preferences. The party imploded not long after but the Oils powered on, scoring an international hit single and album in 1987. Even then Garrett was showing a happy knack for discovering a headline-grabbing political cause just as new Oils product arrived, the release of the Diesel and Dust LP coinciding with his major role in the campaign against the Australia Card that suddenly sprang to life after the 1987 double dissolution election for which it had been the trigger. As the band's success faded in the 1990s Garrett became more prominent in the environment movement, serving as president of the Australian Conservation Foundation from 1989 to 1993 and again from 1998. His decision to pull the plug on the band in December 2002 was universally interpreted as a prelude to an entry into politics, and after he turned down the opportunity to head the Greens Senate ticket it emerged that senior Labor figures including Simon Crean and Mark Latham had been ardently pursuing him. Lured with talk of fast-tracking to the front-bench Garrett accepted an offer to be parachuted into a safe Labor seat following Laurie Brereton's unheralded decision to retire in June 2004, setting the seal on another daring experiment in Labor head-hunting that will hopefully turn out better than the last. Garrett's Liberal opponent is Nick Prassas, a lawyer of Greek extraction. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain A strong debut entry for the tall bald gentleman, who added 1.9 per cent to the Labor primary vote (cf. Cheryl Kernot in Dickson in 1998). This presumably explains the static showing for the Greens who took 0.1 per cent of the 4.2 per cent freed up by the decline of the Democrats. OUTCOME: Labor retain (8.9%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum LINDSAY (Liberal 5.5%)
Recommended reading: The 'Western Sydney factor' by David Burchell at Australian Policy Online. THE CANDIDATES: A former RAAF lawyer and Australian rowing representative, Jackie Kelly's high-spiritidness has been an undeniable electoral asset since her surprise win in 1996, despite a feeling she had been promoted beyond her competence when she was given the junior Tourism and Sport ministry. When Ansett collapsed months before the 2001 election she unwisely described the event as "just a little blip" for the tourism industry, and was discreetly shifted to the ill-defined position of parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister after the election. One of her roles in this job has been what Kerry-Anne Walsh of the Sydney Morning Herald describes as "the government-appointed nurse and counsellor to the survivors, family and friends of the Bali victims". Labor have again preselected David Bradbury, Penrith Mayor and solicitor for Blake Dawson Waldron, who has set to work pillorying Kelly for informing Aban Contractor of the Sydney Morning Herald that lack of funding for the University of Western Sydney was no big deal since "no one in my electorate goes to uni", nor aspires to. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Election watchers have taken their eye off this once crucial seat, but Jackie Kelly did not definitively shake off the shackles of marginality at this election unlike many of her nearby colleagues. Both major parties increased on the primary vote, but Labor more so (2.5 per cent compared with 1.1 per cent), resulting in a minor two-party preferred swing in their favour. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (5.3%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum LOWE (Labor 3.9%)
THE CANDIDATES: Although hardly a household name, John Murphy has done quite well to reach parliamentary secretary level in his second term, first to the Shadow Health Minister and then the Opposition Leader. His factional base is in the New South Wales Right and he backed his colleague Mark Latham in the December 2003 leadership vote, and also Simon Crean in the June leadership challenge. The Liberal candidate is Five Dock businessman John Sidoti. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain A genuinely good performance by the Greens aside (up from 4.2 to 9.2 per cent) this was largely a status quo result, with a 0.5 per cent swing to the Liberals and both major parties within 2 per cent of their primary vote from 2001. OUTCOME: Labor retain (3.3%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum LYNE (Nationals 11.3%)
THE CANDIDATES: Opportunity knocked for former stock, station and real estate agent Mark Vaile four years into his parliamentary career, when the heads of National Party ministers John Sharp and Peter McGauran rolled over the 1997 travel rorts affair. The National Party vacancies resulted in Vaile going straight from the back bench to Cabinet, assuming first the Transport Minister position vacated by Sharp, then on to Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and now Trade. When questions were being asked about John Anderson's future in politics in 2003, Vaile was spoken of as his likely successor. Vaile is one of four New South Wales National Party MPs endorsed by Fred Nile's Christian Democratic Party "in the absence of a CDP candidate in that division". Labor candidate Greg Watters is a prominent urologist and author of the very helpful "Your Penis - A User's Guide". CAMPAIGN UPDATE: The electorate's main source of potential interest disappeared on day three of the campaign when Rob Oakeshott, independent member for the state seat of Port Macquarie, announced that he would not be going through with his threat to run against Mark Vaile as an independent. Oakeshott was elected for the National Party at the 1999 state election but quit mid-term and was resoundingly re-elected in 2003 with over 70 per cent of the primary vote. The Nationals candidate he thrashed was linked closely to Vaile, the two appearing together in a local press advertisement that painted Oakeshott as a fan of open-the-floodgates drug law reform. Oakeshott evidently emerged from his win thinking he had it over Vaile, but as running would require him to resign from his seat in state parliament it would have been a very bold move. ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain Even with 7.7 per cent of the vote up for grabs from the decline of One Nation and the Democrats, Labor still managed to go backwards, shedding 2.4 per cent. Mark Vaile lifted 3 per cent on the primary vote and 1.8 per cent on two-party preferred. OUTCOME: Nationals retain (13.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum MACARTHUR (Liberal 7.0%)
THE CANDIDATES: Having recently completed a 15,000 kilometre lap of Australia for charity following the death of his young wife from heart failure, ultra-marathon runner Pat Farmer was a star Liberal candidate for this newly notional Labor seat. Although ridiculed during the campaign for his reliance on minders, he picked up a huge swing and enjoyed an easy victory. Farmer seems to have been pretty quiet since, although Emma Macdonald of the Canberra Times reports that he "has rather unkindly been dubbed by Labor as the Forrest Gump of the Liberal Party". Despite her less than sensational performance in 2001, Labor have again preselected Meg Oates, whose 17 years on Campbelltown City Council have included several as Mayor. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain An excellent result for the Liberals, who not only held on to all of their huge swing from 2001, but piled on another 2.5 per cent besides. Pat Farmer was up 3.7 per cent on the primary vote while Meg Oates was down 2.8 per cent. Another former Labor seat that they will now have to wait a generation to recover. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (9.5%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum MACKELLAR (Liberal 16.9%)
THE CANDIDATES: Former solicitor and company director Bronwyn Bishop was elected to the Senate in 1987 and rose to fame by roasting tax department officials at committee hearings, repeatedly accusing one of having boasted of a "war on taxpayers" well after it had been established that he had in fact said "tax cheats". Seasoned observers thought her an idiot, but her aggressive dealing with a public servant played well on the nightly current affairs programs and convinced Bishop and others that she could make it all the way to the top by substituting toughness for substance. Bishop had no party room support but hoped to sweep to the leadership on a wave of enthusiasm from the grass-roots of the party. Her bubble burst on 26 March 1994 when, as a necessary prerequisite for her future ambitions, she moved into the lower house at a by-election brought on when the talented Jim Carlton retired after one disappointment too many. Labor did not field a candidate, but maverick pro-Labor writer Bob Ellis ran as an independent and polled 23.1 per cent, sapping 4.4 per cent of the Liberal vote in circumstances where Bishop had little excuse for failing to improve on the party's 1993 performance. Not long after Labor and Coalition members could be heard openly joking with each other in parliament at Bishop's expense. When the Howard Government was elected two years later she was given the mildly insulting junior portfolio of Defence Industry, Science and Personnel but earned a promotion to Aged Care after the 1998 election. This portfolio had been the undoing of Judi Moylan and so it proved again with Bishop when revelations emerged of a Melbourne nursing home administering kerosene baths to treat residents for scabies. In truth this was an indictment on society rather than on Bishop, but the former found it convenient to blame the latter and the Government suffered political damage resisting calls for her resignation. In his usual fashion the Prime Minister dispatched her discreetly at a later date, following the 2001 election. Bishop, whose hobbies include calling points of order, is showing no willingness to retire and is apparently sustained by her aspirations to the Speaker's position when Neil Andrew retires at the coming election. Her Labor opponent, Chris Sharpe, ran for the corresponding state seat of Wakehurst at the 2003 election, causing few problems for senior Liberal front-bencher Brad Hazzard. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain With the Democrats down from 8.5 to 1.4 per cent there were plenty of spare votes up for grabs, most of which went to an independent candidate by the name of Robert Thomas Dunn. Other than that, Labor's vote went up a little while the Liberals were down a little, which was mildly unusual. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (15.9%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum MACQUARIE (Liberal 8.7%)
THE CANDIDATES: Despite his strong electoral performance Kerry Bartlett took a long time to win a promotion, receiving the chief government whip position at the July 2004 reshuffle. Labor candidate Mark Ptolemy writes letters to the Green Left Weekly decrying the Government's lack of commitment to reconciliation (among many other fine achievements, no doubt). In August 2004 he broke ranks with his party to declare he would not support the United States Free Trade Agreement if elected. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Pretty much a re-run of 2001, the 4.2 per cent drop in the Democrats vote scattering pretty thinly among the other eight candidates. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (8.9%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum MITCHELL (Liberal 21.4%)
THE CANDIDATES: Alan Cadman has a limited list of achievements to show for his 30 years in Parliament, and many within the Liberal Party have been quietly exasperated by his firm hold on his blue-ribbon seat. In March 2004 Glenn Milne reported in The Australian that former federal director Andrew Robb's ambitions for the seat were thwarted when he was informed that while there was a feeling in the local branch that Cadman's time was up, only a local candidate would be an acceptable replacement (Robb has since been preselected for the Victorian seat of Goldstein). When local opposition eventually coalesced around former Nick Greiner staffer and AGL executive Ian Woodward, Cadman experienced a sudden burst of energy, failing to impress Peter Costello with a column in The Australian calling for a higher tax-free threshold for families. Costello may have had Cadman in mind when he lamented that there were not two seats available for both Peter King and Malcolm Turnbull, saying "I don't think we're so overflowing with talent that we don't have opportunities elsewhere". However Cadman was obviously doing something right at the local level (and perhaps also reaping the benefits of years of loyalty to Howard), defying gravity and reason to win a narrow 58-55 victory that will certainly see the 66 year old warming a seat on the back bench for three more years. Labor candidate Harmohan (Harry) Singh Walia is prominent member of the Sydney Sikh community who arrived in Australia from India 14 years ago. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Interesting - Liberal up and Labor down on the primary vote, but a swing to Labor on two-party preferred. Since all of these shifts were very small, the doubling of the Greens vote to 6.2 per cent is enough to account for it. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (20.6%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results RELATED POSTS: Dead Wood and Bad Blood (13/3/04). Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum NEW ENGLAND (Nationals 13.9%)*
Rural New South Wales seat inland from the northern coastal strip, including Tamworth, Tenterfield, Glen Innes and Armidale. The 2001 election saw the National/Country Party lose New England for the first time since the party was founded in 1922. Tony Windsor, who had been the state independent member for Tamworth since 1991, easily defeated one-term National member Stuart St Clair with 45 per cent of the primary vote. St Clair assumed the seat in 1998 upon the retirement of one-time party leader Ian Sinclair, member since 1963. That election produced a complicated contest in which St Clair polled 31.1 per cent, a Liberal candidate 16.4 per cent and One Nation 13.6 per cent, with Labor failing to crack double figures. THE CANDIDATES: Tony Windsor won the state seat of Tamworth as an independent at the 1991 election after failing to win National Party preselection, an all-too-common scenario for the Nats. That election saw an unexpected backlash against the Greiner Government that left it relying on Windsor's support to remain in power. Windsor was re-elected in 1995 and 1999, respectively scoring 82.2 per cent (with no contest from the Coalition) and 69.4 per cent. Then, buoyed by Pauline Hanson's demonstration of National Party vulnerability, he toyed with the idea of taking on John Anderson in Gwydir before taking the safer bet of New England, which includes Tamworth. Since entering Federal Parliament he has relentlessly hammered his opposition to the sale of Telstra, and established further product differentiation from the Coalition by opposing the war in Iraq. The Nationals have been running hard after Windsor for some time and appeared to score hits over his parliamentary non-attendance during the New South Wales state election, which he spent campaigning on behalf of unsuccessful independent candidates. He may also have scored an own goal when he gate-crashed a Richard Alston press conference to beat the drum on Telstra privatisation, reportedly telling Alston's chief-of-staff to "go and get f---ed" after he pointed out he had no right to be there. The Liberal Party is taken with the idea that with the loosening of the Nationals' grip it is they who cam win it back again, and their candidate Scot McDonald, operator of a Guyra Landmark agency, has been generating an enormous amount of publicity in the local media and is as worth keeping an eye on as Nationals candidate Trevor Khan, partner in a local law firm. Labor's candidate is academic Greg Smith. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Tony Windsor told a Tamworth radio station on September 20 that he had been offered a diplomatic post as an inducement to abandon his seat. Windsor would not say who the offer came from, but his departure could only conceivably benefit the National Party who would most likely recover the seat if Windsor were to stand aside. The Prime Minister responded saying Windsor was making "a generalised smear clearly suggesting it's our side of politics". Windsor has since spoken with the Australian Federal Police and has said he would name those responsible if made to do so at an inquiry. The situation is reminiscent of the events that led to the downfall of NSW Premier Nick Greiner in 1992, after he was found to have offered a lucrative public service position to a Liberal-turned-indepedent MP with a view to recovering his seat at the ensuring by-election. ASSESSMENT: Independent retain Country independents usually do well at their second election, and so it has proved with Tony Windsor who piled on an extra 12.2 per cent, mostly at the expense of the Coalition. Both Coalition parties took the field on this occasion and it was an uninspiring result for the Liberals, who trailed their partners 18.7 to 10.0 per cent on the primary vote. OUTCOME: Independent retain (21.2% vs NAT) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum NEWCASTLE (Labor 7.0%)
THE CANDIDATES: Sharon Grierson is a Left faction member and former Newcastle school principal. Grierson has been strident in her criticisms of the war and the Bush Administration, and the Green Left Weekly reported she told a Newcastle rally for asylum seekers in 2002 that "the Australian people were to blame for Howard's re-election". Liberal candidate Josephine Barfield is apparently an electorate officer (for whom is not known) and has run what might be politely described as a low-key campaign. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain The voters of Newcastle appeared to give Sharon Grierson a thumbs-down of sorts with the big swing against her in 2001, but the 5 per cent boost to her primary vote on this occasion suggests she has won them over. That said, the Liberals (up 5.2 per cent) and the Greens (up 4.4 per cent) also made hay from the absence of One Nation and the Christian Democratic Party and the decline of the Democrats. OUTCOME: Labor retain (10.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum NORTH SYDNEY (Liberal 13.3%)
THE CANDIDATES: As no doubt befits the member for an inner Sydney electorate, Joe Hockey is renowned as a moderate and a Costello supporter (mind you, Bennelong is an inner Sydney electorate as well). His slow climb up the ladder since being made Financial Services Minister in 1998 no doubt has something to do with this, although the portfolio did leave him exposed to the collapse of HIH. In any case the Finance portfolio was an obvious path to promotion when it was made available by John Fahey's retirement at the 2001 election, but it instead went to Howard ally Senator Nick Minchin. His own portfolio was abolished at that time and he did no more than hold his own in being reassigned as Small Business Minister. For the second election in a row Labor has nominated Fran Teirney, Lane Cove City Councillor and deputy president of the state branch of the Australian Services Union INTELLIGENCE: The Liberals have seen fit to reveal that their internal polling shows them losing enough votes to Labor and the Greens in the blue-ribbon Sydney seats, including this one, to put Joe Hockey at risk. The combined Labor and Greens vote is reportedly 52 per cent, 11.5 per cent higher than the Labor, Greens and Democrats vote from 2001. Despite Ted Mack's success here as an independent in 1990 and 1993, this seems a little hard to credit. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain It appears that the Liberal "polling" was slightly off. The combined Labor and Greens vote was in fact 39.6 per cent rather than 52 per cent, and the combined Labor-Greens-Democrats vote was basically stable, as was the Liberal vote. Still, Labor managed a 3.2 per cent swing, the kind of feat they were only able to manage in inner-city seats, of which the only electorally consequential examples were Adelaide and Brisbane. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (10.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum PAGE (Nationals 2.8%)
THE CANDIDATES: Ian Causley entered state parliament from a farming background in 1984, and served in the Greiner and Fahey governments in the National Party-friendly portfolios of Natural Resources, Water Resources, Agriculture and Fishing and Mines. After the Fahey Government's defeat in 1995 Causley jumped on the Howard bandwagon and rode into federal parliament by winning a seat held by Labor since 1990. He has not flown quite so high in his federal career, although he contested the party leadership after Tim Fischer's retirement in 1999 and reached the position of Deputy Speaker in 2002. Causley was evidently troubled by the threat of One Nation, as his railing against dairy deregulation and "economic rationalism" went far enough that some viewed him as on par with Bob Katter and De-Anne Kelly in the National Party dissident stakes. The Queensland and Western Australian state elections in early 2001 left him feverishly hoping for a One Nation preferences deal, but in the event it proved unnecessary. Labor candidate Kevin Bell is a former army officer and school teacher who ran for the safe National Party state seat of Lismore in 1999. ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain National Party partisans wishing to talk up their performance might like to point to Ian Causley's 6.6 per cent primary vote increase, although Liberals might care to wonder how they might have gone if the coalition agreement agreement allowed them to contest. In fact, pretty much everybody improved on the primary vote, thanks to a large vote for various independents in 2001 that found no outlet this time. The Greens' 3.6 per cent increase (to 10.8 per cent) accounted for all of the 2001 vote for the non-contesting Democrats (2.8 per cent) and more besides. Labor were up 4.1 per cent, but down 1.5 per cent on two-party preferred. OUTCOME: Nationals retain (4.2%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum PARKES (Nationals 8.7%)
THE CANDIDATES: John Cobb entered parliament in 2001 after 10 years with the NSW Farmers Association, three as president, defeating three other candidates for preselection including Cobar Mayor Peter Yench. In 2002 he pleaded guilty to workplace safety breaches relating to the death of a 17-year-old farmhand on his property. Labor's candidate is former president of the Dubbo Chamber of Commerce Joe Knagge, who also ran in 2001. ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain One Nation polled 10.4 per cent in 2001 and didn't contest this time, and it appears most of that went straight to John Cobb who lifted 9.4 per cent on the primary vote. Labor was down 1.9 per cent on primary and suffered a 5.6 per cent two-party swing. OUTCOME: Nationals retain (14.4%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum PARRAMATTA (Liberal 1.2%)
THE CANDIDATES: Prior to August 2004 Ross Cameron was enjoying a successful term, having been appointed parliamentary secretary first to Larry Anthony immediately after the election and then to Peter Costello in the October 2003 reshuffle. There had nevertheless been occasions in his career where colleagues may have had cause to doubt his political judgement. He raised eyebrows on the left by calling for the ABC to be scrapped on the grounds that public broadcasting is out of date, and on the right by conceding that some found mandatory detention "primitive and barbaric" and describing the Anzacs as a pack of whingeing bludgers (or something along those lines). He also told HQ magazine he regarded Mark Latham as "very intelligent, insightful and unorthodox", "a person of real intellect and political courage" and "a genuine leader figure". Here he has changed his tune somewhat, declaring in April 2004 that "Osama bin Laden is stroking his beard and celebrating the advent of Mark Latham". In August 2003 Cameron was involved in the cash-for-visas scandal, having lobbied extensively on behalf of Dante Tan, the Philippine fugitive businessman granted citizenship by the Immigration Department. It was established that Tan had donated $10,000 to Ruddock's 2001 election campaign and that his lawyer had made a $2000 campaign donation to Cameron. Tan was also present at a Sydney Harbour fund-raising cruise for Cameron organised by immigration fixer Karim Kisrwani, though all concerned swear that he neglected to cough up when the hat was passed around. That storm passed, but Cameron stunned his party in August 2004 when he confessed during an interview with the Fairfax Saturday papers' Good Weekend magazine that that he was conducting an affair with what the Daily Telegraph would later describe as a "vibrant, exotic party girl" while his wife was pregnant, and that this was but one of many infidelities. When Labor's Julie Owens won the Parramatta preselection ballot in November 2003 the position would have been regarded as no great prize, given the then-universal expectation that Labor faced disaster at the next election. This no doubt explains the party's failure to pull any unduly big names out of the hat, with the Left-aligned Owens defeating independent Desmond Netto by 166 votes to 32. Owens is the chief executive of the Association of Independent Record Labels, a worthy enough lobby group but one hardly likely to strike terror into the heart of the governing establishment. Her electoral apprenticeship was served with the thankless job of Labor candidate for North Sydney at the 1996 and 1998 federal elections, at which she predictably failed to cause Joe Hockey any trouble. INTELLIGENCE: The weekend before the election two polls were published, one from ACNielsen with an impressive sample of 1002 taken just before Labor's campaign launch, the other from Taverner with an unimpressive sample of 300 taken just after. The former poll bucked expectations somewhat by showing Ross Cameron with 49 per cent of the primary vote and a 53-47 lead on two-party preferred, while the latter had Labor with an unlikely 60-40 lead. Part of the reason Cameron was believed to be headed for oblivion was that Liberal internal polling (always a dubious source) reportedly had his support plunging 10 per cent after his public confession. But McNair Ingenuity Research polls conducted not long before and after (on June 11 from a sample of 200 and August 22 from a sample of 516) suggested otherwise, producing very similar results with Labor ahead 46 to 42 per cent in July and 47 to 43 per cent in August. Reports of internal polling during the campaign suggest Cameron is struggling, but not entirely out of contention. ASSESSMENT: LABOR GAIN The primary vote figures here were not hugely dissimilar from 2001 - Liberal down 1.8 per cent, Labor up 0.1 per cent, Greens up 2.2 per cent, Democrats down about the same, and so on. These figures were not out of the ordinary for inner-city seats at this election, although Parramatta doesn't quite fit that mould. Whatever the reason, these modest shifts translated into a modest swing of 1.9 per cent, just enough to tip Ross Cameron out. OUTCOME: LABOR GAIN (0.7%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum PATERSON (Liberal 1.5%)
THE CANDIDATES: The six pre-parliamentary gigs listed for Bob Baldwin in his parliamentary biography range from "company director" to "scuba diving instructor". As recounted above, he entered parliament in 1996, left it again in 1998 and was back in 2001. As the holder of a razor's edge marginal seat his efforts are devoted to local politicking of a type that does not make good copy. However his utterance to the party room in March 2003 that "I just want the party room and the Prime Minister to know I feel uncomfortable about the war in Iraq" was reckoned by the excitable Alan Ramsey of the Sydney Morning Herald to be the only words of internal dissent on the matter ever to reach the Prime Minister's ears. Labor's Giovanna Kozary is a Port Stephens councillor and former staffer for Bob Horne. INTELLIGENCE: A McNair Ingenuity Research poll with a small sample of about 200 was published on July 11, showing Bob Baldwin leading Giovanna Kozary 50 per cent to 40. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Despite its marginal status Labor never seemed too excited about Paterson, and their lack of confidence proved well founded. Of the 12.1 per cent increase in Bob Baldwin's primary vote, 7.2 per cent can be put down to the National Party's failure to field a candidate this time. The rest appeared to come directly at the expense of Labor, who were down 4.7 per cent. On the two-party measure there was a 5.6 per cent swing to the Liberals. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (7.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum PROSPECT (Labor 12.9%)
THE CANDIDATES: Chris Bowen faces an easy ride into parliament having served his apprenticeship as chief-of-staff to NSW Roads and Housing Minister Carl Scully. Liberal candidate Robert Jacobucci is 30 and works as an "estimator for Bunnings Hardware". ASSESSMENT: Labor retain Chris Bowen hit a bit of a speed bump at his debut election, shedding 5.3 per cent of the Labor vote while the Liberals were up no less than 10.5 per cent. Greens preferences must have flowed pretty heavily to Labor to restrict their two-party hit to 5.7 per cent. OUTCOME: Labor retain (7.1%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum REID (Labor 16.9%)
THE CANDIDATES: Until 1984 Laurie Ferguson, like brother Martin, worked for the Miscellaneous Workers Union. In that year Martin became the union's secretary and Laurie entered the New South Wales state parliament, where he served until 1990 when opportunity knocked with Tom Uren's retirement from this unloseable inner western Sydney seat. Despite serving in a range of low-level shadow ministry positions since 1996, then-backbencher Mark Latham felt moved to describe him in 2001 as "one of the great embarrassments. The only reason he is in parliament is his father had the numbers in Granville. The only reason he is on the front bench is his brother had the numbers on the Left ... it is an embarrassment to the labour movement to think of him as a future minister". This embarrassment to the labour movement then went on to hand Latham victory by supporting him in the December 2003 leadership vote, even as his brother supported Kim Beazley. This was seen to typify the lack of influence factional discipline exerted upon the vote. The Liberals' candidate is 22-year-old law student Sarah McMahon. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain Another poor result for Labor in a western Sydney stronghold - Laurie Ferguson down 5.7 per cent, Liberal up 8.3 per cent. The informal vote was a remarkable 11.7 per cent, and the 4.8 per cent vote for the top-of-the-ballot No GST party suggests the donkey vote was pretty high as well. If so, the 4.1 per cent two-party swing flatters Ferguson. OUTCOME: Labor retain (12.8%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum RICHMOND (Nationals 1.7%)
THE CANDIDATES: Elected to the old family fiefdom on the second try in 1996, Larry Anthony made it to Community Services Minister three years later. His performance was not consideredly wildly impressive and he was moved to the lesser Children and Youth Affairs portfolio after the 2001 election, although this was partly due to the down-sizing of the National Party's ministerial representation in line with its loss of seats. Labor candidate Justine Elliot has been campaigning vigorously, at one point getting shirty with the local ABC for providing insufficient coverage for what the Byron Shire Echo describes as her "voluminous" press releases. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: For reasons best known to herself, Justine Elliot called on John Anderson and Larry Anthony to apologise after the National Party's Western Australian website was "infiltrated" with "explicit messages about children". Her attempt to get Queensland independent Senate candidate and anti-child abuse campaigner Hetty Johnston to back her up backfired when Johnston said she had "the utmost respect for Larry Anthony" and felt it was "really cruel and damaging to the cause of child protection to play such trivial games". INTELLIGENCE: With its confluence of low-income and older voters, Richmond has been a key demographic target of Labor's tax and health policies. Two polls published by the Gold Coast Bulletin have shed some light on the matter. One was published the day before the election, putting Larry Anthony on 42 per cent (again after distribution of the undecided), Justine Elliot on 36 per cent and the Greens on 15 per cent, which would give Labor a slight edge in a seat they desperately need to win. On September 11, Larry Anthony was trailing 48-52, his narrow primary vote lead of 41 to 38 per cent on the primary vote swamped by 15 per cent support for the Greens. Both polls came from samples of about 450. A McNair Ingenuity Research poll published on July 11 from a small sample of about 200 had Anthony leading 47 per cent to 37, with the Greens on 11. ASSESSMENT: LABOR GAIN As with Ross Cameron in Parramatta, Larry Antony was not engulfed in any electoral convulsion - his vote rose 1.0 per cent, not much lower than Labor's 1.6 per cent increase. The decisive factor was the solid flow of preferences that Anthony received from One Nation in 2001, when they polled 4.2 per cent. This time they didn't contest, the minor party vote being harvested by the Greens, Family First and Liberals for Forests. The result was a subtly greater flow of preferences to Labor, which just proved sufficient to get Justine Elliot over the line. OUTCOME: LABOR GAIN (0.2%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum RIVERINA (Nationals 19.9%)
THE CANDIDATES: Kay Hull's website describes her as a "successful business owner/operator since 1978". She entered parliament in 1998 after seven years on Wagga Wagga City Council, including three as Deputy Mayor. In 2003 she was one of many National Party MPs to agonise over the party's decision to fall in behind the Liberals on Telstra sale legislation, and eventually abstained from the vote and moved an amendment to have put the matter to a referendum. Hull had been copping heat over the issue from Liberal loose cannon Alby Schultz, member for the nearby electorate of Hume. A hip replacement operation in mid-2004 had many speculating that Hull might be about to retire, sending shudders through a National Party that expects to lose the seat to the Liberals the next time it is open for them to contest, but she promptly denied the reports. Hull is one of four New South Wales National Party MPs endorsed by Fred Nile's Christian Democratic Party "in the absence of a CDP candidate in that division". Labor candidate Victoria Brooks is a local journalist and music lecturer. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Kay Hull has twice caused the Coalition embarrassment during the campaign. On September 27 she was again at the centre of controversy over Telstra, saying she would cross the floor to vote down its sale if the numbers were such that her vote would prove decisive. A week earlier she suggested that those who could afford to do so should be made to pay fees to send their children to public schools. The campaign also made the headlines in the second weekend of the campaign when two home-made bombs, apparently made of firecrackers and petrol, exploded in the garage of Victoria Brooks' home in Wagga Wagga, destroying her car. ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain With fewer candidates in the field, Kay Hull harvested an extra 5.4 per cent while Labor and the Greens nudged up as well. The two-party swing was a barely noticeable 0.8 per cent. OUTCOME: Nationals retain (20.7%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum ROBERTSON (Liberal 7.0%)
THE CANDIDATES: Former service station proprietor Jim Lloyd reached the position of Government Whip after the 2001 election and despite a low national profile became Local Government Minister at the July 2004 pre-election reshuffle. For the second election running Labor's candidate is Trish Moran, who won the preselection for the 2001 election by two votes over Belinda Neal, former Senator and wife of New South Wales state minister and party power broker John Della Bosca. Neal claimed the vote had been rigged and appealed the outcome to the party's national executive, a body that included her husband, but was thwarted when then-leader Kim Beazley weighed in behind Moran, causing a damaging rift with the Della Bosca faction. This time around Moran secured preselection with a win over Gosford Councillor Daniel Cook. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Not much to see here, although the Greens' 8.0 per cent was double what they managed in 2001. The Democrats' failure to contest (they scored 3.6 per cent last time) would have helped here. Jim Lloyd was up 2.8 per cent, Labor up 0.7 per cent, slight swing (0.2 per cent) to Labor on two-party preferred. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (6.8%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum SHORTLAND (Labor 8.8%)
THE CANDIDATES: Left faction member Jill Hall served on Lake Macquarie City Council in the early 1990s and won the state seat of Swansea at the 1995 election, before jumping at the opportunity created by the retirement of long-serving federal MP Peter Morris at the 1998 election. Hall secured her preselection with the backing of two of the more colourful Left unions, the Maritime Union of Australia and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union. Liberal candidate Dell Tschanter is listed as a "self-employed conveyancer and hospitality and staff consultant". ASSESSMENT: Labor retain The Greens' increase from 4.1 to 7.9 per cent was pretty good, but apart from that Shortland offered little to delight the election watcher. OUTCOME: Labor retain (9.5%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum SYDNEY (Labor 15.1%)
THE CANDIDATES: Tanya Plibersek worked as an electorate officer to Senator George Campbell, one of the chief power brokers of the New South Wales Left along with Anthony Albanese, and assumed the seat of Sydney upon the retirement of another Left stalwart, Peter Baldwin. Secure in possibly the nation's trendiest electorate, the former UTS Students Association women's officer hasn't let her entry into parliament restrain her commie ratbag instincts, offering provocative commentary on the iniquities of the United States and Israel. Given that the only possible threat to her re-election comes from the Greens rather than Liberal, this no doubt represents a happy confluence of conviction and self-interest. Liberal candidate Michael Shevers is listed as an employment and recruitment consultant. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain By normal standards the 6.9 per cent increase in the Greens vote was a good result (largely at the expense of the Democrats, who were down from 10.9 to 2.1 per cent), but the party and its leader had been talking itself up rather more than that. Their 21.6 per cent share of the vote was well behind the Liberals' 28.5 per cent, which meant that Tanya Plibersek was in no danger of being tested on the Labor-versus-Greens measure. This was just as well given her failure to build appreciably on her 44.3 per cent vote from 2001. OUTCOME: Labor retain (16.4%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum THROSBY (Labor 15.2%)
THE CANDIDATES: Italian-born Jennie George was actually reasonably famous before she entered parliament, firstly as president of the New South Wales Teachers' Federation in the late 1980s, then as assistant secretary and later president of the ACTU. She is associated with the New South Wales Left faction dominated by Anthony Albanese and Senator George Campbell. George was preselected for Throsby through the party's contentious N40 rule whereby the state executive can take matters out of the hands of the local branches, thereby doing over Sharon Bird who would have had the numbers (Bird has since twice been preselected for the neighbouring seat of Cunningham, with the help of the N40 rule on this first of these occasions, dropping the seat to the Greens in a 2002 by-election). Despite her background George went straight to the back bench and has been little heard from since. There was talk in late 2003 that she would face a challenge to her preselection from local Labor identity Gino Mandarino, although his campaign collapsed when he publicly defended his political ally Neville Hilton after he was charged with child prostitution offences. Her Liberal opponent, unveiled well into the campaign, is "university student Linda Nelson of Figtree". The Illawarra Mercury reported that "three days after and despite a number of calls requesting an interview and some information on Ms Nelson, the Mercury is none the wiser about just who she is". ASSESSMENT: Labor retain A no-contest from One Nation meant votes galore for everyone except the Democrats (down 4.9 per cent) - 1.4 per cent for Labor, 5.8 per cent for Liberal, 5.6 per cent for the Greens who cracked double figures. The Liberals picked up a seismic 0.1 per cent two-party swing. OUTCOME: Labor retain (15.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum WARRINGAH (Liberal 12.7%)*
Affluent Sydney seat taking in Manly, this is a naturally Liberal area with a weakness for independents. At the state level the local seat of Manly has been held by independents since 1991, by former Deputy Mayor David Barr since 1999 and former Mayor Peter McDonald beforehand. McDonald stood here as a federal candidate in 2001 and polled an impressive 27.8 per cent, but for all that Tony Abbott's hold on the seat has never been in doubt and he has always won on the primary vote. Abbott assumed the seat in 1994 at a by-election brought on by the retirement of Michael Mackellar, member since 1969. THE CANDIDATES: Tony Abbott was active on the conservative side of politics in his days as big man on campus at Sydney University and he subsequently attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, where he was awarded a blue in boxing. Between then and his entry into parliament in 1994 Abbott established his conservative credentials as a journalist for The Bulletin, press secretary to John Hewson during his term as Opposition Leader and executive director of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy. Abbott assumed the seat of Warringah at a by-election in 1994 and was put through the usual hoops (backbencher until 1996, parliamentary secretary until 1998) on his way to the Employment Services ministry, which in turn led to the senior Cabinet posts of Workplace Relations in 2001 and Health in 2003. He has at all times been renowned for his social conservativism and staunch Catholicism, despite the uncomfortable fact that at the age of 19 he fathered a child out of wedlock who was put out for adoption. Although Abbott has consistently conceded Peter Costello's seniority, he remains his natural future rival for the party leadership. Labor's candidate is Linda Beattie, a drama teacher whose past acting career brought her a role on The Young Doctors and in road safety advertisements. Kate Lahey of The Manly Daily reports that independent candidate Neil Francey, running on an anti-war ticket, "is so confident of taking the seat" that "he has signed a four-year lease on an electorate office". Independent Di Underwood is a former Abbott office secretary who says she is disaffected with her former boss - it will be interesting to see her how-to-vote card. INTELLIGENCE: The Liberals have seen fit to reveal that their internal polling shows them losing enough votes to Labor and the Greens to put Abbott at risk. This seems a bit hard to credit, but reports on the ground suggest Abbott is campaigning vigorously enough that he at least appears to be taking the threat seriously. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain The freeing up of Peter McDonald's vote from 2001 allowed Labor to pile on 13.6 per cent, more than doubling their vote. The Greens also did well, up from 3.7 to 11.8 per cent, while Tony Abbott gained 3.1 per cent. The AEC doesn't record a swing since the two-candidate outcome from 2001 was between Abbott and McDonald, but going off the Parliamentary Library's figures there was a 2.1 per cent swing against Abbott on the two-party Liberal-versus-Labor measure. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (10.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum WATSON (Labor 17.4%)
THE CANDIDATES: With the loosening of the McLeay family grip, the Labor nomination went to Tony Burke, who entered the New South Wales Legislative Council after the 2003 state election and quickly established a reputation as one of the more alert members of that chamber. Liberal candidate Keith Topolski is a 20-year-old arts student at the University of Western Sydney. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain Perhaps Leo McLeay didn't offer much in the way of a personal vote, but in any case Tony Burke held up the Labor vote creditably enough (one could perhaps favourably compare his performance with Chris Bowen's in Prospect), nudging Labor fractionally upward on the primary vote. But the Liberals were up by more - 3.4 per cent - and picked up 2.2 per cent on two-party preferred. OUTCOME: Labor retain (15.1%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum WENTWORTH (Liberal 7.9%)
THE CANDIDATES: Rhodes scholar Malcolm Turnbull briefly took up journalism after completing his studies at Oxford, but then pursued a legal career that brought him to international prominence (in Britain and Australia at least) when he successfully defended former MI5 agent Peter Wright against the British Government over the publication of Spycatcher, Wright's much-discussed but little-read tell-all account of the mother country's intelligence services. Always ambitious, Turnbull then moved on to the real money in the corporate world, forming a merchant banking partnership with Nick Whitlam and later becoming co-chairman and partner at Goldman Sachs. His role in steering the Australian Republic Movement had a lot to do with public perceptions of the cause as a plaything of the rich elites, and the subsequent defeat of the 1999 referendum. In 2002 he came under the spotlight at the HIH Royal Commission, which probed his company's role in HIH's disastrous takeover of FAI Insurance and concluded his submission to be "not founded on facts". Nevertheless, it had been no secret that he had long fancied himself as a future prime minister and the following year he began putting his plan into effect, launching an aggressive preselection challenge against one-term incumbent Peter King which succeeded by 88 votes to 70, after much "recruitment" to the party from both sides. Peter King had reason to feel aggrieved about his defeat as he is not without qualifications of his own - Rhodes scholar, Oxford rugby blue, barrister, mayor of Woollahra City Council (on which council his wife Fiona Sinclair-King now sits), UNESCO World Heritage Committee president and lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve. King came to receive the Liberal nomination through similar methods to those of his successor, spearheading a productive local party membership drive that helped him put an enforced end to the two-term parliamentary career of Andrew Thomson. After his own preselection defeat he consistently refused to rule out standing as an independent, eventually announcing he would do so to a throng of media at Bondi Beach at the end of the campaign's first week. Labor's candidate is David Patch, who has done well out of his past as an old student politics rival of Turnbull's from their Sydney University days. In particular Patch was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald recalling an incident, documented in university newspapers at the time, when Turnbull lunged at Patch during a debate: "His left palm hit me in the upper chest. Before he could hit me with his raised right fist, I sprawled backwards". Turnbull's story was that "our interactions at university were not sufficiently exciting to remember". Patch would go on to win the race for student council president and has pursued a legal career in the real world. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Before Peter King announced he would run, Mark Latham denied knowledge that Labor figures were discussing his possible appointment as Speaker in the event that he won the seat (reserving the position for an independent being one of the first policies Labor released during the campaign). King did well to make a media event out of his big announcement at Bondi Beach on the first Friday of the campaign, and spent the rest of the day hosing down talk that his decision could make the seat for winnable for Labor. King immediately set about courting the Greens, knowing that their preferences would decide the outcome of the contest between himself and David Patch, who he will need to finish ahead of in order to ride over Malcolm Turnbull on preferences. Noting his newly discovered enthusiasm for the Tasmanian wilderness, one wag at a door-stop asked King exactly how many old growth forests there were in his electorate. It proved to no avail as the Greens announced their recommendation would run David Patch, Peter King, Malcolm Turnbull. King may have been confronting a contradiction with his efforts to stitch together a local coalition of pot-smoking tree-huggers and blue-rinse monarchist tories. Soon after King's announcement, reports emerged that some in the ALP (not including the candidate) were advocating that Labor "run dead" so that King could finish ahead of them and ride home on their preferences, but it appears the view has prevailed that they stand a reasonable chance of winning the seat themselves. INTELLIGENCE: The key to the battle for Wentworth is not who wins first place or even second, but third. Should Malcolm Turnbull crash so badly enough that he ends up with the bronze, his preferences will give Peter King the edge over David Patch. If David Patch loses enough votes to Peter King that it's him who comes third, his preferences will put King ahead of Turnbull. If Peter King takes third, the way his preferences divide will decide the issue between Turnbull and Patch. Justifying his decision to run, King said at one point that "the Labor Party knows it cannot win Wentworth and my independent polling shows it can't win Wentworth - it's simply scaremongering to suggest otherwise"; at another, he claimed Labor would win Wentworth if he didn't intervene and save it from them. In both cases King cited support from his own polling, commissioned from "a well-regarded pollster whom he would not reveal" and covering 350 voters. But all he would say of the results was that he had "56.5 per cent of the vote, with the ALP's David Patch behind him at 43.5 per cent", a two-candidate preferred outcome that could only have been based on the assumption that Turnbull would come third. King was not forthcoming with a primary vote breakdown suggesting this to be the case. The polls seem to suggest otherwise. On September 29 The Australian reported that "recent internal ALP polling" had Turnbull on 30 per cent, Patch on 27 per cent and King on 25 per cent. A week earlier, an ACNielsen poll produced results that were identical except that Turnbull was 4 per cent higher. The accompanying article noted that "after the distribution of preferences from Mr King and the Greens, the two-party preferred vote is 50-50", but this assumes Labor will finish ahead of King after the distribution of Greens preferences. The Greens are recommending preferences go to Labor ahead of King, and while it is axiomatic that preference recommendations have little effect on their supporters' choice out of Labor and the Coalition, they might be more open to influence on the question of who to favour out of Patch and King (King obviously thought so, given his efforts to secure a preference deal). This is despite the tactical lure of costing the Liberals a seat by helping King get home on Patch's preferences by finishing ahead of him, suggesting all concerned believe Patch to be a real chance. On this evidence, King's excuse for refusing to direct preferences to Turnbull over Patch on the grounds that Patch has no chance of winning looks very flimsy indeed, and could end up damaging him in the eyes of local conservative voters who may already have been alienated by his courting of the Greens. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain The Poll Bludger at least had this one right all along - a Malcolm Turnbull win, a swing to Labor and Peter King not in the hunt. The published polls flattered King, who managed only 18 per cent, well behind David Patch's 26.3 per cent. The night clearly belonged to Turnbull, who shed a mere 10.3 per cent of the Liberal vote from 2001 and suffered an unembarrassing 2.3 per cent two-party swing. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (5.6%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results RELATED POSTS: The Madness of King Peter (3/9/04); Dead Wood and Bad Blood (13/3/04). Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum WERRIWA (Labor 8.5%)
THE CANDIDATES: The son of working class parents from south-eastern Sydney, Mark Latham, 43, overcame humble origins and family hardships (including the death of his father at 18) to complete an honours degree in economics at Sydney University. He then worked as a research assistant to former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, winning an important admirer in the process. His next employer, then-NSW Opposition Leader Bob Carr, was less impressed, his refusal to back Latham for preselection to the state seat of Liverpool in 1989 prompting his resignation. In 1991 he began a four-year term as Mayor of Liverpool after winning the first ever popular election for the position, in which his role has come under withering scrutiny a decade after the event. David Humphries of the Sydney Morning Herald summaries his mayoralty thus: "Typically, he went at it like a bull at a gate, casting a four-year strategic plan which opened the council's former monopoly over services to outside competition. Council workers overwhelmingly carried a motion of no confidence in their mayor but Latham was unperturbed, even scathing. His $36 million capital works program addressed some of the service deficiencies he'd railed against in youth and left the council with an annual $4.6 million bill in recurrent costs. He would blame the council's later debt problems on its poor fiscal management following his departure after five years as mayor". He entered Federal Parliament in 1994 and assumed at first minor portfolio responsibilities after the defeat of the Keating Government in 1996, followed by promotion to Education in 1997. Following the 1998 election he made a tactically astute withdrawal to the back bench, and published his third little-read book on "social capital". Advancing his claims to leadership from the sidelines, he returned to the limelight as Assistant Shadow Treasurer when Simon Crean assumed the leadership following the 2001 election, remaining supportive of the floundering Crean while Kim Beazley laid the groundwork for an attempted comeback. The public at large became familiar with his much vaunted reputation for abrasive straight-talking shortly before the 2003 Iraq war, when he told Parliament that President Bush was "the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory". After Beazley's June 2003 leadership pitch he was rewarded for his loyalty with promotion to Shadow Treasurer at the expense of Bob McMullan. Despite a widespread perception that he was outclassed in the position by his opposite number, Peter Costello, Latham's loyalty to Crean paid dividends after his resignation with his narrow and unexpected 47-45 victory over Beazley in the caucus ballot. The Liberals' 25-year-old candidate Michael Medway drew attention to one of the dangers involved with the noble art of blogging when a News Limited reporter obtained an online journal he had kept while travelling through Europe, which exposed him as a childish moron. Making rather more of a splash is independent Sam Bargshoon, a former ALP member who was among those burned by the Carr Government's decision to close the Orange Grove shopping centre, a move seen to have benefited a rival centre owned by generous Labor patrons Westfield. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Sam Bargshoon's emergence saw the Orange Grove shopping centre controversy spill over into the federal arena, and specifically into the contest for Mark Latham's seat. Speaking with the protection of privilege at a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry in the third week of the campaign, Bargshoon claimed to have conducted a branch-stacking operation under Latham's direction a few weeks before he became party leader in December 2003. Latham promptly produced party records that appeared to discredit the claim, and Bargshoon was soon on the receiving end of a very unflattering article by David Penberthy of the Daily Telegraph. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain In the Green Valley booth the local hero picked up 6.3 per cent on primary and 6.1 per cent on two-party preferred, so all that homey campaign blather was good for something at least. That aside, Mark Latham picked up a disappointing dividend from his status as Labor leader, lifting 2.3 per cent on the primary vote compared with a 1.8 per cent increase for the Liberals. Sam Bargshoon did surprisingly well to poll 4.9 per cent, but his being at the top of the ballot paper may have had something to do with this. OUTCOME: Labor retain (9.3%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
