Federal Election 2004
THE SENATE
| Seats won | Ongoing Senators (expiring 30/6/2008) | ||||||||||||||
| LIB | NAT | FF | GRN | ALP | LIB | NAT | FF | ON | IND | DEM | GRN | ALP | |||
| NEW SOUTH WALES | 2 | 1 | - | - | 3 | 2 | 1 | - | - | - | - | 1 | 2 | ||
| VICTORIA | 2 | 1 | 1 | - | 2 | 3 | - | - | - | - | 1 | - | 2 | ||
| QUEENSLAND | 3 | 1 | - | - | 2 | 2 | 1 | - | - | - | 1 | - | 2 | ||
| WESTERN AUSTRALIA | 3 | - | - | 1 | 2 | 3 | - | - | - | - | 1 | - | 2 | ||
| SOUTH AUSTRALIA | 3 | - | - | - | 3 | 3 | - | - | - | - | 1 | - | 2 | ||
| TASMANIA | 3 | - | - | 1 | 2 | 3 | - | - | - | - | - | 1 | 2 | ||
| Term expiry tied to House | Australian Capital Territory | 1 | - | - | - | 1 | Senate numbers until 30/6/05 | ||||||||
| Northern Territory | 1 | - | - | - | 1 | 32 | 3 | - | 1 | 1 | 8* | 2 | 29 † | ||
| Total seats won at election | Senate numbers from 1/7/05 | ||||||||||||||
| Total | 18 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 16 | 34 | 5 | 1 | - | - | 4 | 4 | 28 | ||
| "Senate numbers until 30/6/05" denotes party representation of members at the time of their election. Two Senators elected on 3 October 1998 later resigned from their parties, and both failed to win re-election on 9 October 2004: * South Australian Senator Meg Lees, elected as a member of the Australian Democrats, is now the sole parliamentary member of the Australian Progressive Alliance. † Tasmanian Senator Shayne Murphy, elected as a member of the Australian Labor Party, is now an independent. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PRE-ELECTION OVERVIEW For a comprehensible explanation of the Senate election system (to the extent that that's possible) take your pick out of Palmer's Oz Politics and Australian Electoral Commission - I suggest the former. For our purposes it need only be noted that the election of six members per state at a normal half-Senate election involves a quota of 14.3 per cent of votes which successful candidates must achieve either directly or through preferences. This means the major parties win three seats if they receive 43 per cent of the vote, directly or otherwise, while minor parties or independents need to scrape together 14.3 per cent to win a seat. This has been the arithmetic at play in normal half-Senate elections held since the enlargement of the Senate in 1984, which have taken place in 1990, 1993, 1996, 1998 and 2001. Normally each state will return three members for one major party, two for the other and one minor party or independent candidate. The exceptions have been when the major parties have each won three seats (in New South Wales in 1993 and Victoria in 1993 and 1998) and on the one occasion when two seats went to minor parties, with One Nation and the Australian Democrats each returning members in Queensland in 1998. The Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory each have two Senators whose terms are linked to the House of Representatives, and not to the cycle of staggered six year terms served by state Senators. Therefore the candidates who won in 2001 will again face re-election. In 2001 each state returned three Coalition and two Labor members. If this is repeated the Coalition will hold exactly half the seats in the Senate, which would give it an effective blocking majority against any measures it opposed (including supply) and allow it to pass any measure with the support of one cross-bench member. The tables below identify only candidates who have a strong prospect of being elected. Since the election of the top two place-holders for the Labor and Coalition tickets is all but certain, these candidates are in bold. An asterisk indicates that the candidate is a sitting member. NEW SOUTH WALES
Coalition ticket: Bill Heffernan is a senior John Howard numbers man and emphatic social conservative best remembered by the public at large for his discredited claim under parliamentary privilege that Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court had been using his Commonwealth car to pick up male prostitutes. Connie Ferravanti-Wells is another member of the Right and her success in bumping Senator John Tierney into the unwinnable fourth position was a major defeat for the moderate faction he represents. In the current phase of the cycle the third place on the Coalition ticket is reserved for the Nationals; they get second place in the other part of the cycle (i.e. at the last election and the next one). Unless both the majors poll strongly at the minor parties' expense, their candidate Fiona Nash will be grappling with Labor's Michael Forshaw for one of the last two places. Labor ticket: There are many who find it remarkable that Hutchins should lead the ticket ahead of Faulkner, among them Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating. But as Alan Ramsay explains in the Sydney Morning Herald: "Factional realities insist the Left always get the No. 2 spot, the Right the first and third, irrespective of personalities ... It is enough to know Faulkner barely failed - 398 votes to 406. A total 105 of the Right's delegates defected to him for this one vote, a measure of his immense personal standing". Labor will need to improve substantially on its 2001 performance to get Michael Forshaw re-elected. Minor party contenders: University lecturer and Greens education spokesperson John Kaye would have to be a front-runner, but Aden Ridgeway has a better chance than some of his party colleagues. There is always the possibility that neither will win and that Labor and the Coalition will get three each. Fred Nile was usually good for about 3 per cent of the vote at New South Wales Legislative Council elections, good enough to get him elected under the absurdly low quota for that chamber but not for the Senate. Since the Coalition is likely to be his only potential source of preferences, Nile would presumably be hoping to win a seat at their expense. Campaign update: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 Firstly, some political observations regarding the parties' preference tickets, a condensed version of which can be read by following the above link. The Australian Democrats seem to have had a death-bed religious conversion, with Family First and Fred Nile favoured ahead of all comers. This is frankly a rather sad sign of the weak position the party finds itself in, and the party can only hope that its liberal support base fails to notice that their votes are almost certain to be passed on in full to strict social conservatives who stand a real chance of getting elected. Fred Nile also seems to have cut an interesting deal with Labor where Nile gets a third of Labor preferences ahead of the Greens and only two-thirds of Nile's preferences go to the Coalition ahead of Labor. Labor and the Coalition will as always have no trouble scoring two quotas on the primary vote. That established, the count will move to the other end of the ledger where the dozens of under-performers will be eliminated and their preferences distributed. Antony Green, whose efforts in examining these entrails put the Poll Bludger's to shame, notes that those who will be first to go will mostly send their preferences to Glenn Druery of Liberals for Forests, who has emerged as a "huge dark horse". Druery has form as an unapologetic but unsuccessful player in the game of preference-harvesting that has blighted elections for the New South Wales Legislative Council, where parties with names like "Wilderness Party" and "Gay and Lesbian Party" have appeared on ballot papers and funneled preferences to entrepreneurial candidates with miniscule public support (more on that from Scott Bennett and Gerard Newman at the Australian Parliamentary Library). Reader John Humphreys has passed on a list of 14 minor players who are giving Druery their preferences, mostly single-issue parties with catchy grievance-based names like "No GST" and "Australians Against Further Immigration". Also on the list is the Fishing Party, with whom Druery ran as a candidate at last year's state election - they have evidently parted on amicable terms. The Poll Bludger would love to know how Druery ended up with the Liberals for Forests handle, as this is the name of a group of Perth "doctors' wives" plus male fellow-travellers that won a seat in the 2001 Western Australian state election at the expense of a senior Liberal minister. Taking the combined micro-party vote from 2001 and factoring in a bonus for his politically effective new brand name, Druery could well gather as much as 5 per cent of the vote. That should bring him through to the final few rounds along with the third place-holders on the Coalition and Labor tickets, plus those heading the Greens, Fred Nile, Family First, Democrats and One Nation tickets. On present indications the latter two will not last long beyond that, and their preferences should ensure that Family First candidate Joan Woods finishes clear of Nile and Druery (Antony Green puts it mildly when he says preference harvesting is "much more difficult with the 14.3% Senate quota", which compares with 4.5 per cent for the NSW Legislative Council). Woods will then be in contention for one of the two final positions along with the Labor Senator Michael Forshaw, the Greens' John Kaye and the National Party's Fiona Nash. No permutation of the four is technically impossible, but the most realistic scenarios involve a left-right cleavage with the Greens against Labor for one position and the Coalition against Family First/Fred Nile for the other. Many observers of this contest will be assuming a normal outcome in which only one seat will be won by a minor party, but there are good reasons to think otherwise. The non-major party vote in New South Wales was 25 per cent in 2001, which could well have been enough to have deprived the Coalition as well as Labor of a third quota given the right circumstances. Instead the Coalition's only natural predator on the right, One Nation, was ruled out of contention as no significant party would touch them when it came to preferences. The contrast with the Family First/Fred Nile bloc, which is ahead of the Coalition on every conservative voting ticket plus that of the Democrats, is quite stark. Unless the Coalition can maintain its primary vote at or near the 41.6 per cent it recorded in 2001, Fiona Nash will struggle. By the same token, Labor will need to improve substantially on its 33.4 per cent from 2001 to take the seat now certain to be lost by Democrats Senator Aden Ridgway. Assessment: Coalition 3, Labor 2, Greens 1. Antony Green notes that the crucial factor in the Greens' failure to win the final seat over Labor was Democrats preferences - although they favoured the Greens over Labor, the Greens never received them as Fred Nile had been favoured over them both, and he eventually overtook the Greens to make it to the final round. On the primary vote, the Coalition scored 3.08 quotas, Labor 2.54 and the Greens 0.51. In past elections the Greens could have felt reasonably confident that preferences would close their small deficit over Labor's surplus, but such were the preference tickets that their vote remained stuck as the cast of micro and minor parties was progressively eliminated. Most remarkable was the success of Glenn Druery of Liberals for Forests in building upon a primary vote base of a mere 0.04 quotas to overtake One Nation (0.13 quotas) and the Democrats (0.15 quotas), devouring the preferences of each in turn and making it through to the final rounds along with Labor, the Greens and Fred Nile (0.18 quotas on the primary vote, compared with a mere 0.04 for Family First). The distribution of the various votes that Druery had absorbed by this point pushed Fred Nile ahead of both Labor and the Greens; since the Greens had fallen further behind Labor by this point, this meant the distribution of their preferences decided the final place in Labor's favour. Note the Poll Bludger's cautious pre-election talk of whether the Coalition can "maintain its primary vote at or near the 41.5 per cent it recorded in 2001" - they in fact increased it to 43.9 per cent. Outcome: Coalition 3, Labor 3. VICTORIA
Coalition ticket: In Victoria the Nationals get the sure-thing second position at alternating elections and the no-chance fourth position in between, although some Liberals think this too generous and Julian McGauran had to work vigorously against those agitating for a separate Liberal ticket. Gerard McManus of the Melbourne Herald Sun reported that his success was "in part because he has almost single-handedly won vital Democratic Labor Party preferences", the McGauran family having "helped fund the DLP's long-running legal fight for its right to exist". However he still had to fight off three challengers at a preselection vote held on July 9 including Scott Mitchell, a former Young Nationals president who pursued his challenge at the cost of his job as staffer for Trade Minister Mark Vaile. McGauran won on the first round with 34 out of 67 votes ahead of Darren Chester of regional business lobby group Champions of the Bush with 21, with Mitchell not in the hunt. As for the Liberals, Senator Tsebin Tchen has been bumped into unwinnable fourth as part of the ongoing war between the Kennett and Costello-Kroger factions in the Victorian Liberal Party. Tchen gained his position in 1998 by knocking Costello ally Senator Karen Synon out of third place on the ticket with Kennett's backing; six years later Costello has had his revenge by putting Michael Ronaldson (member for the House of Representatives seat of Ballarat until he retired due to ill health in 2001) at the top of the ticket, at the expense of both Troeth (who will probably be in dire need of those DLP preferences of McGauran's) and Tchen. Labor ticket: The same ticket as 1998 with Kim Carr and Steven Conroy swapping places, which neatly reflects the outcome of recent upheavals in the Victorian ALP. Conroy's roots are in the right-wing Transport Workers Union, a key player in the Labor Unity faction which was dudded when Greg Sword's National Union of Workers defected to forge a new alliance with Kim Carr's Socialist Left. Jacinta Collins is associated with the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association, another right-wing Labor Unity union on the wrong end of the realignment in 2002. Minor party contenders: The Greens have never won a Senate seat in Victoria and if the Democrats are again ahead of the Greens on both major parties' preferences, the Greens will need to outpoll them strongly to ensure those preferences don't end up making the difference. David Risstrom is a Melbourne City Councillor and accordingly has a very high profile, not that personalities matter too much in Senate elections. The Age describes Healy as "a one-legged, bisexual, vegetarian who has met the Pope". She is 19 years old. Campaign update: Wednesday, September 29, 2004 After Labor and the Coalition win their inevitable two seats, there will most likely be a tight contest between Liberal, Labor and Greens candidates for the final two positions along with either Family First or the Democrats. In the contest between the latter two, the group tickets suggest Family First will finish ahead and then absorb Democrats preferences and not the other way round. Beyond that, the deck is stacked in favour of Labor and Family First and against the Liberals and the Greens. If either of the latter two are to win one of the last two seats up for grabs, they will have to do so with something very close to a full quota on the primary vote - 43 per cent for a third Liberal seat, or 14.3 per cent for the Greens' David Risstrom. The usual successful scenario for the Greens involves their candidate overtaking the Democrats and then absorbing their preferences, allowing them to defeat the third place-holder on Labor's ticket. But this time the Democrats are preferencing Family First, as are both the major parties. If Risstrom needs preferences to achieve a quota he can only get them from Labor and the Democrats, and then only if Family First are eliminated before him. The Coalition was able to win in 2001 with a modest 39.5 per cent of the primary vote with the help of preferences from One Nation (who polled 2.4 per cent) and the DLP (2.2 per cent). Since neither can be relied upon this time, they will struggle to retain the third seat. Family First's challenge is to finish on top of the minor party pile, and then overtake either major party and absorb their surplus over the second quota. If they succeed, they are most likely to do so at the expense of the Coalition leaving Labor and the Greens competing for the other seat. If they fall short, a full complement of preferences from the "Christian coalition" will then flow on to Jacinta Collins and deliver her a third Labor seat, with the other place going to either Liberal or the Greens. The Poll Bludger made a special effort to think this through by himself without drawing upon the efforts of other commentators. With that effort out of the way, he now calls your attention to what others think. Malcolm Mackerras: "In Victoria, my assessment is that the 1998 result will be repeated exactly. In 1998, each of the Labor and Coalition tickets secured three places". Charles Richardson at Crikey: a number of scenarios are "possible", "but they point to the most probably winners being 2 Labor, 1 Liberal, 1 National Party, 1 Green and 1 Family First". A more equivocal assessment is offered by Antony Green. Assessment: Coalition 3, Labor 2, Greens 1. Many who had been relaxed about the democratic shortcomings of above-the-line voting after Pauline Hanson failed to win a Queensland seat in 2001 with 10.0 per cent of the vote became suddenly very alarmed when the Greens missed out here with 8.7 per cent. Admittedly, on this occasion there was the further aggravation that Family First succeeded from a mere 1.8 per cent, which compared unfavourably with the party's performances in South Australia (3.9 per cent), Queensland (3.3 per cent) and Tasmania (2.3 per cent). Key to the result was the preference deals Labor and Democrats struck with Family First in the expectation that they would be the ultimate beneficiaries, which failed to transpire due to their own dismal performances. Boosted by preferences from various micro-parties, Family First overtook the Democrats to become the beneficiaries of their mutual preference deal, which was enough to put their candidate ahead of Labor's Jacinta Collins due to their feeble 37.8 per cent primary vote. All of which disproved the Poll Bludger's assertion that a potential Family First seat would most likely come at the expense of the Coalition, who in fact polled a resounding 45.8 per cent to score an easy three quotas on the primary vote. Outcome: Coalition 3, Labor 2, Family First 1. QUEENSLAND
Liberal ticket: The question of running a joint ticket is a perennial matter of dispute within and between the Coalition parties in Queensland. Usually relations are too poor for agreement to be reached and so it appears at the moment. If a joint ticket were to be agreed to the Nationals would have third place, and since the state generally votes conservative this would usually (though not always) win them a spot. In 2001 however the contest for that third conservative seat was between the Nationals' Ron Boswell and Pauline Hansond place, and since the state generally votes conservative this would usually (though not always) win them a spot. In 2001 however the contest for that third conservative seat was between the Nationals' Ron Boswell and Pauline Hanson (she had won the House of Representatives seat of Oxley in 1996 and then stood unsuccessfully for Blair in 1998), but the overall strength of the Coalition vote was enough to put it beyond Hanson's reach. Nationals ticket: St George chartered accountant Barnaby Joyce won top place on the National Party ticket at a preselection vote held on May 29. Pam Stallman, who unsuccessfully challenged Ron Boswell's preselection heading into the 2001 election, had earlier been spoken of as a front-runner, and the Courier Mail reported accusations that state party president Terry Bolger postponed the preselection in late March to give Stallman more time to gather support. It appears she dropped out altogether, as the ticket is rounded out by James Baker and Dr James Gillies. Labor ticket: McLucas and Ludwig may not be in that order, but in any case they along with Mason and Brandis are guaranteed re-election. McLucas is of the Left while Ludwig is the son of legendary Queensland AWU power-broker Bill Ludwig. Both entered the Senate in mid-1999, Ludwig assuming the factionally reserved position formerly held by Mal Colston. Labor would need a dramatic improvement on 2001 to win a third seat. Minor party/independent contenders: The Greens have never won a seat in Queensland at either state or federal level. This time though they would be very optimistic about absorbing enough of the Democrats vote to unseat John Cherry. Drew Hutton has held a leading position in the Queensland Greens for almost a decade and strengthened his profile as candidate for the Brisbane Lord Mayoralty in March. A possible wild card is independent Hetty Johnston, the child abuse advocate who brought down the Governor-General. Johnston won $10,000 and valuable publicity as the Queensland winner of the Seven Sunrise "Vote for Me" contest (as discussed in this posting), which the organisers appear to have quickly backed away from. Len Harris has looked at all times like an accident of history and if Pauline Hanson couldn't win in 2001, there's no way he can in 2004. Campaign update: Monday, October 4, 2004 As always, Labor and Liberal are each assured of two places. The third place-holders on the Liberal and Nationals tickets, Russell Trood and Barnaby Joyce, face their own battle to be the Coalition's third contender. In 2001, 2.9 per cent of the vote separated the Nationals' Ron Boswell from the Liberal candidate (Russell Trood once again) which was given another 1.1 per cent of padding when preferences from Call to Australia, who aren't running this time, went to Boswell. This time the Nationals will have to settle for the Fishing Party. Morgan's Senate poll had them on just 3 per cent, while a survey of 929 voters on the Gold Coast (once a strong area for the National Party) published by the Gold Coast Weekend Bulletin on September 25 had them on 5 per cent. While it is true that the Nationals traditionally do better than the polls suggest, the Liberals seem well in the hunt to displace them. Hetty Johnston, Family First and the sentimental favourite of every psephologist, Senator John Cherry of the Australian Democrats, have emerged as a mutually-preferencing voting bloc that will put whoever emerges first out of the three into serious contention. Johnston has a head start here because each of the other two has her ahead of the other, while the opposite is true of Family First. There's a good chance that whoever makes it through could edge the Coalition out of a third place and make it home on their surplus. Pauline Hanson's only chance of winning serious preferences is if she can outperform this three-party bloc, in which case she will pick up Hetty Johnston's vote. Hanson would also get preferences from the Non-Custodial Parents Party and also the Fishing Party if the Nationals were knocked out, but would need to at least match her 10 per cent vote from 2001 to stand much of a chance. The Greens should be able to knock Labor's third candidate out of contention, but since Labor's surplus to their second quota was just 3.2 per cent in 2001, it may not deliver them enough preferences to put them over the line. The combined vote for the Greens and their preference-feeders, Socialist Alliance and Help End Marijuana Prohibition, will need to be about 11 per cent. For what it's worth the aforementioned Morgan and Gold Coast polls had the Greens on 8.5 and 11 per cent respectively. Here's what others think. Malcolm Mackerras: "In Queensland, my belief is that the Democrats will retain their existing seat (John Cherry) while the Nationals will take the seat of the Hansonite, Len Harris. My predicted distribution for the Coalition is two Liberal and one National. But it is possible there could be three Liberals, with the National Party missing out. I hold out virtually no hope for the either of the famous Queensland female Senate candidates, Pauline Hanson (Group K) or Hetty Johnston (Group O). While each has her own box above the line, the lack of description for that box is a major disadvantage". Charles Richardson at Crikey thinks it "a real lottery. My best guess is 2 Liberal, 2 ALP, 1 National and 1 Green, but the Democrats and Hetty Johnston are both in with a chance, and a rough shot for the famous red-headed one". Antony Green declares it "very difficult to work out" but eventually agrees with Richardson. The Poll Bludger will go out on a limb and predict three Liberal, two Labor and one Greens. My basis for tipping a National Party failure is that the Boswell-versus-Hanson contest attracted a great deal of attention to the National Party and their popular incumbent in 2001, whereas the Nationals are fielding an unknown this time and Hanson is not being taken as seriously. Assessment: Liberal 3, Labor 2, Greens 1. Even more so than Victoria, Queensland provided the Senate election with its greatest astonishment, the Coalition winning four seats in one state for the first time since six-seat half-Senate elections became the norm in 1990. Antony Green calculates that if the Coalition had run a joint ticket, for which the National Party had been agitating, a fourth seat would not have been possible and either One Nation or the Greens would have been elected in their place. The issue was ultimately decided by the 1.3 per cent vote for the Fishing Party, whose preferences (when restricted to realistic contenders) had gone firstly to One Nation, then to the National Party, and then to Hanson. That meant the key factor in the count was Pauline Hanson's success in narrowly maintaining her lead over One Nation despite unfavourable preference tickets, which she owed to her strong performance on below-the-line preferences. Since One Nation were eliminated first, the Fishing Party vote then moved on to the Nationals which ensured they stayed ahead of Hanson. If Hanson had gone first, the Fishing Party votes would have remained with One Nation who might have got their nose in front of the Nationals on Hanson's preferences. One Nation would as ever have been starved for further preferences, allowing the Greens to win the seat with the preferences of either the Liberal and Nationals candidate, whichever of the two ended up being eliminated. Instead it was the elimination of Pauline Hanson that decided which of the finely poised Liberal, Nationals and Greens candidates won the final two places, the Greens predictably coming off the worst. One other surprise was that the Nationals ended up winning the fifth seat rather than sixth, overtaking the Liberals due to the considerable number of Pauline Hanson's below-the-line votes that went against the ticket by favouring the Nationals ahead of the Liberals. Outcome: Liberal 3, Labor 2, Nationals 1. WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Liberal ticket: Senator Susan Knowles is retiring. State Liberal Party president Kim Keogh did very poorly in the preselection vote to lose the winnable third spot to little-known farmer Judith Adams. Labor ticket: Peter Cook led the ticket in 1998 but has been dumped after losing support from his own Centre faction as punishment for backing Simon Crean and Mark Latham over Kim Beazley in the leadership votes. The faction transferred its support to Transport Workers Union organiser Glenn Sterle, who has taken over the Centre's pre-ordained spot at the top of the ticket. A plea by Mark Latham to the party's national executive to overrule the state branch fell on deaf ears. Minor party contenders: Time may be up for Brian Greig, the only openly gay member of federal parliament apart from Greens leader Bob Brown. Greig briefly held the Democrats leadership in the interregnum between Natasha Stott Despoja and Andrew Bartlett. The likelihood is that Western Australia will revert to its pre-1996 habit of returning Greens rather than Democrats Senators, making it second time lucky for Rachel Siewert, a well-known figure in WA as long-term head of the Conservation Council and Senate candidate in 2001. Campaign update: Monday, October 4, 2004 Peculiarities of the preference tickets include the Nationals favouring the Greens over the Democrats and Family First, and a complicated effort from the Christian Democrats that appears to betray embarrassment that half of their preferences will go to the Greens' Rachel Siewert ahead of Labor's Emi Barzotto. The Poll Bludger doesn't care to waste too much time on this one because he's very confident the result will be three Liberal, two Labor and one Greens. However, Charles Richardson thinks that "Democrats, One Nation and Family First, together with some preferences from micro-parties and surplus from a major party, might put together a quota between them", potentially electing either Family First or the Democrats. Assessment: Liberal 3, Labor 2, Greens 1. The only state the Poll Bludger called correctly. Most of the Greens' quota came from three sources - 0.56 quotas from the primary vote; the 0.28 surplus over the second quota from a poorly performing Labor; and the Democrats 0.14 quotas, which also went to the Greens ahead of the major parties. With 0.8 per cent of the vote, Family First were not in a position to benefit from the Democrats preference deal. An excellent result for the Liberals, who scored 49.1 per cent of the primary vote. Outcome: Liberal 3, Labor 2, Greens 1. SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Liberal ticket: All incumbents, including cabinet ministers Nick Minchin and Amanda Vanstone, were endorsed without incident. Minchin and Alan Ferguson are from the party's Right faction, which appears to have first and third place sewn up, while Vanstone is a leading moderate. Labor ticket: In mid-June Labor's sitting members Nick Bolkus and Geoff Buckland announced within two days of each other that they would not be seeking re-election. This came as a particular surprise in Bolkus's case since he had previously been stubbornly insisting on remaining, even though this would have contravened reasonable interpretations of the party's quota of 35 per cent of winnable seats for female candidates. Male candidates had been preselected in two of the three South Australian lower house seats which the party had a serious prospect of winning from the Liberals, and factional arrangements meant the sacrifice had to come from Bolkus of the Left rather than Buckland of the Right. Mark Latham had backed Bolkus in calling for the rules to be interpreted so that third place on the ticket was deemed "winnable" and hence good enough for a female candidate, but the matter had not been resolved when Buckland announced on June 15 that he would stand aside and his faction throw its support behind Annette Hurley, the former state deputy party leader who boldly abandoned her safe seat of Napier to unsuccessfully challenge a sitting Liberal minister at the 2002 state election. This solved Bolkus's affirmative action problem but the following day he too announced his retirement and marshalled his faction's support behind Anne McEwen, state secretary of the Australian Services Union. The effect of this was to freeze out a rival Left aspirant to the position, state Energy Minister Patrick Conlon, who reportedly reacted by quitting the faction. Rounding out the all-female winnable portion of Labor's ticket is Dana Wortley, state secretary of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance who lost the preselection vote for the lower house seat of Makin despite it having been reserved for her in a factional deal. Minor party contenders: After her loss of the Democrats leadership and the resulting Natasha Stott Despoja fiasco, Meg Lees quit the party to form her own Australian Progressive Alliance. The Democrats grew out of South Australia and their vote has always been higher here than in other states, running at 12.5 per cent in 2001 against a national average of 7.2. This is why the Greens have never won a Senate spot here, but with Meg Lees' candidacy serving to emphasise the Democrats' dissolute state, their candidate Brian Noone would have to be rated a serious chance to break the drought. That said, Noone failed to achieve the none-too-tall order of winning a seat in the South Australian Legislative Council as head of the party's ticket at the 2002 state election. Among those who did was Andrew Evans of the Family First Party, closely associated with the Assemblies of God church (whose followers include Australian Idol winner Guy Sebastian, as noted in this revealing article from the Sydney Morning Herald). There is no reason to think the party will not be able to repeat its state election vote of 4.1 per cent for the Senate. This might not be enough to elect lead candidate Andrea Mason, a former Australian netballer and Paradise Community Church member, but their preference distribution will be of considerable interest. Almost certainly they will go to the Liberals, as they did at the state election, in which case they could end up guaranteeing them a third seat. It has also been suggested that Meg Lees could do well to court their favour, as she has done with other such figures of the outer right as One Nation Senator Len Harris and Prime Minister John Howard. Campaign update: Tuesday, October 5, 2004 The Liberals scored an easy three quotas in 2001 and only if they lose a substantial proportion of the vote to Family First will they be in danger of failing to do so this time. Labor didn't come close and it will take a very fortuitous arrangement of preferences to put them in contention for a third seat. An interesting contest looms between Family First and the Democrats to see who picks up the preferences of the other, this being the strongest state for both parties. If it's the Democrats they will then need to overtake the Greens and make it home on their preferences. The Greens will get a boost in that they are very likely to do better than Labor's surplus over their second quota, in which case they will receive these preferences and then also those of the Democrats if they can outperform the Democrats/Family First. It's not altogether out of the question that Democrats or Family First can deprive the Liberals of a third quota while the Greens do the same for Labor, but a more likely result is three Liberal and two Labor. In this case the other place would go to either the Greens or the winner out of Family First and the Democrats - bearing in mind that the latter two would get an extra boost from the Liberals surplus to their third quota in this scenario. If Labor's vote can lift enough that they are still in the hunt at this point, they could hold a vague hope that Family First preferences might put them over the Greens. Pressed for a decision, the Poll Bludger's money is on the Democrats. Here's what others think. Malcolm Mackerras: "My prediction is that the Liberal Party will win three seats, Labor two and Family First one". Charles Richardson at Crikey says "ironically, the backlash against the Democrats from their preference deal with the fundamentalists (i.e. Family First) may be the very thing that drags down their vote and allows their preferences to put Family First within reach of a seat", and he countenances a range of possibilities including Family First winning a seat at the Liberals' expense, and even an unprecedented outcome where both the Democrats and the Greens win seats. But he ultimately favours a more "boring" outcome of three Liberal, two Labor and one Green. Antony Green alone considers Meg Lees worth a mention, but sees a contest of two halves in which the Liberals and Family First compete for a third seat, while on "the other side of the ledger" are Labor, Greens, Democats and also Family First if the Liberals win their third seat. He notes that "the lower the Labor vote, the more likely that Labor preferences will elect the Greens. The higher the Labor vote, the more likely the Democrats can stay ahead of the Greens". Assessment: Liberal 3, Labor 2, Democrats 1. The key to the outcome here was the preference deal between the Democrats and Family First, which allowed Family First to overtake the Greens with their preferences and then consolidate with the Liberals' considerable surplus over the third quota from their 47.1 per cent primary vote. That left the preferences the Greens needed locked up with Family First, who remained until the final count. At the point of their elimination the Democrats trailed Family First by 0.25 of a quota to 0.30 - had they finished ahead, preferences from Family First and then the Liberals would have delivered them the seat. Outcome: Liberal 3, Labor 3. TASMANIA
Liberal ticket: After a long period of electoral failure in Tasmania Senator Eric Abetz, the Right powerbroker who headed the Liberal ticket in 1998, faced a rebellion from party moderates that prompted Ellen Whinnett of the Hobart Mercury to report that he was "fighting for his political life" under a headline that read, "Abetz on the ropes". Yet Abetz narrowly survived, with the two incumbents remaining in the top two positions, and the touted moderate challengers are conspicuous by their absence from the business end of the ticket. Third place ended up going to Burnie businessman Stephen Parry, who Whinnett says is "considered conservative". Labor ticket: Of Labor's three winners from 1998 only Kerry O'Brien is again in contention, with Kay Denman retiring and Shayne Murphy having quit the Labor Party in October 2001 to sit as an independent. Murphy may not be contesting this election and will be wasting his time if he is. The first and third spots on the Labor ticket go to the Left, and the contest between O'Brien and state secretary David Price over who would get which produced a bitter split within the faction which is still being played out. The Right chose Helen Polley for the second spot, at least partly because they were obliged to pick a female candidate due to the affirmative action quota. Minor party contenders: Christine Milne was leader of the Greens in the Tasmanian state parliament from 1993 until 1998, when she and most of her party colleagues lost their seats because Labor and Liberal had cut a deal to shaft them by changing the electoral system. Milne is almost assured of victory following the retirement of Catholic conservative Labor renegade Brian Harradine, independent Senator for an epic 29 years and winner at six successive elections, a remarkable achievement that would not be possible in a larger state. The past record for Tasmania suggests the Democrats need not be taken seriously. Campaign update: Thursday, October 7, 2004 In 2001, Bob Brown got very near to a full quota with 13.8 per cent of the primary vote and minor party preferences did the rest. The Democrats and One Nation fell well short of both the Labor and Liberal surplus over the second quota, leaving the major parties competing for the final seat. The Liberals went into this contest with a slightly superior primary vote (38.8 per cent compared with 36.8 per cent for Labor) and were ahead of Labor on One Nation's ticket. But Labor would still have won, narrowly, if the Democrats had given them full preferences instead of splitting them between the two major parties. Interestingly, Tasmania is the only state where they are not doing so again this time, instead favouring Labor. The Greens should do at least as they did in 2001, leaving Labor, Liberal and another minor party candidate competing for sixth place, which will most likely be Family First. It is clear that Tasmania has been excepted from a number of mainland preference deals, as the Democrats have been frozen out by Family First as well as the CDP. The Democrats can retain a faint hope that the Greens might do well enough to deliver them their surplus, providing they stay in the hunt long enough to collect it. Shayne Murphy, who was elected as a Labor Senator in 1998 and made an indulgent decision to switch to the cross-benches, will need to outperform both the Democrats and the combined Family First-CDP vote, which doesn't seem likely. However, his preferences should ensure that the CDP ends up behind Family First, who will end up absorbing the votes of all three. Should that account for the Democrats, they will then get their preferences as well. If that puts them ahead of one of the remaining major party candidates, their preferences will put them ahead of the other and into the Senate. As for the major parties, the Liberals will need a much higher vote than they achieved in 2001 if they are to again win the last seat. On that occasion they ended up with the 3.3 per cent One Nation vote and half of the Democrats' 4.6 per cent - this time they will have to make do with the CDP. That's at least a 5 per cent handicap straight off the bat, so the recent controversies over forestry policy had better kick in hard if they're going to make it up. The Poll Bludger's tip: Liberal 2, Labor 2, Greens 1, Family First 1. Here's what the others think. Charles Richardson at Crikey notes that "what makes Tasmania difficult is that its voters do not necessarily follow the tickets. In every other state, well over 90% of voters vote 'above the line', so their preferences are distributed automatically. In Tasmania last time it was only 80%, and much less for the minor parties - for the Greens, an extraordinarily low 57%". Richardson says Shayne Murphy can win if he can poll "something over 3 per cent" and concludes that he will, if only because he has been "itching to say something controversial". Malcolm Mackerras doesn't seem interested in the idea of a second seat being won by a minor party or independent, saying the last seat is 60 per cent likely to go to Labor and 40 per cent to Liberal. Antony Green paints a similar picture and ultimately tips three seats for Labor, two for Liberal and one for the Greens. Assessment: Liberal 2, Labor 2, Greens 1, Family First 1. Only in Tasmania, where fewer candidates combined with habits formed at state elections produce a below-the-line voting rate of nearly 20 per cent, is there a serious likelihood that the final result will differ from what would have occurred had all votes been above-the-line. In this case Family First's Jacquie Petrusma would have won the final seat if it weren't for below-the-line voters favouring the Greens, who as usual had done very poorly on the preference tickets. Otherwise, the Greens' Christine Milne would have remarkably failed despite scoring a 0.93 quota on the primary vote, which had a typically optimistic Bob Brown claiming premature victory on election night. An apology is due to Labor-turned-independent Senator Shayne Murphy who did rather better than the Poll Bludger dismissively suggested, recording 2.2 per cent of the vote and making it to the final counts. Outcome: Liberal 3, Labor 2, Greens 1. Australian Capital Territory
Assessment: Labor 1, Liberal 1. In another example of the shortfall between expectation and reality for the Greens, their candidate Kerrie Tucker polled less than half of the vote for the Liberals' Gary Humphries who they needed to outperform in order to secure a historic victory. Humphries in fact did nearly as well as Labor's Kate Lundy, the primary vote scores being Labor 40.5 per cent, Liberal 37.5 per cent, Greens 16.2 per cent. Outcome: Labor 1, Liberal 1. Northern Territory
Assessment: Labor 1, Liberal 1. Country Liberal Party Senator Nigel Scullion scored 44.9 per cent of the vote with Labor's Trish Crossin on 40.7 per cent. Outcome: Labor 1, Liberal 1. |