The Poll Bludger - Australian State and Federal Elections

BASS
Region: Launceston/North-East

Launceston (Source: Combined Media)

Bass covers the eastern part of Tasmania's northern coast plus Flinders Island. Launceston provides it with about 70 per cent of its 70,000 enrolled voters; other centres include George Town, a Labor-voting coastal town at the mouth of the Tamar River, and the more conservative Scottsdale, a hub of surrounding timber and farming communities. The redistribution has effected minor adjustments south of Launceston, adding about 1600 new voters at Hadspen and Franklin Valley from its only neighbour, Lyons. Bass has been an arm wrestle between the major parties at both state and federal level since the 1970s, recording relatively mild shifts in the statewide realignments to the Liberals in the 1980s and to Labor over the past decade. Despite a substantial gap between the vote for the two parties, it was the only division where the Liberals won as many seats as Labor in 2002 and 2006. At federal level the seat has changed hands at five of the last six elections, the only interruption being with Labor's consecutive clean sweeps of Tasmania in 1998 and 2001.

Labor fell painfully short of winning third seats in both 2002 and 2006, respectively at the expense of the Liberals and the Greens. In 2002, then newcomer Peter Gutwein narrowly edged out Labor's Anita Smith late in the count to take a second seat for the Liberals, despite Labor's primary vote amounting to 2.95 quotas. This result was variously put down to Labor's decision to field six candidates (which can lead some voters to number the minimum required five boxes and leave a sixth party candidate hanging) and leakage of Labor preferences to Liberal member Sue Napier. Labor received no corresponding benefit from leaking Liberal votes because its highest profile candidates, Jim Cox and Kathryn Hay, had performed better than Napier and were thus elected early in the count.

Scottsdale (Source: The Dorset Drum)

Late counting in 2006 similarly delivered a surprise 138-vote win to Greens member Kim Booth at the expense of a third Labor candidate, Steve Reissig. The conventional election night wisdom that Reissig would win prevailed right up to the final day of the count, when Sue Neales of The Mercury wrote that Booth “appears to have failed to lock in enough votes”. However, Booth benefited from a high rate of exhausted Labor votes, and from Labor voters who crossed to the Greens ticket after casting personal votes for Michelle O'Byrne (Tasmanian psephologist Kevin Bonham noted that the rate of leakage from strongly performing Labor candidates in the electorate seems to be unusually high). That the Greens cannot take a seat in Bass for granted was earlier demonstrated in 1996, at which time elections were still for seven members, when they lost the seat they had held since 1989. They also emerged empty-handed in the first five-member election in 1998, and it required a strong performance to bring Booth to parliament in 2002.


	MICHELLE O'BYRNE
	MICHELLE CRIPPS
	SCOTT McLEAN
	BRANT WEBB
	BRIAN WIGHTMAN

Labor narrow failure to win a third seat last time means they will need to lose a full quota's worth of the vote to go backwards this time, which would have to be rated unlikely. One of the two incumbents, Jim Cox, is retiring at the election after a career going back to 1989. Cox remains noteworthy as the subject of a bribery attempt in 1989 by businessman Edmund Rouse, whose diverse interests included the chairmanship of the then-fledgling forestry company Gunns. Rouse hoped to entice Cox into defecting from Labor to prevent the party from forming a government in accord with the Greens. Cox took the matter to the police and agreed to take part in a 10-day sting operation that led to the imprisonment of both Rouse and fellow conspirator Tony Aloi. He lost his seat at the 1992 election that dumped Michael Field's troubled Labor government from office, but recovered it in 1996 and strongly consolidated his position at subsequent elections.

Cox lost his place as Labor's strongest performing candidate in Bass at the 2006 election, following a remarkably strong debut by Michelle O'Byrne. O'Byrne had been the federal member for Bass from 1998 to 2004, and came to the state election 18 months after a defeat few blamed her for. She was promoted to Community Development Minister seven months after the election in the reshuffle that followed Bryan Green's resignation as Deputy Premier, and has retained the portfolio since. It initially appeared she would be joined on the ticket by Kathryn Hay, a former Miss Australia who became Tasmania's first Aboriginal MP when elected in 2002 at the age of 27, before surprisingly deciding not to contest the 2006 election. After winning a place at the July 2009 preselection, Hay announced her withdrawal four months later citing health problems, but noted in her media release she did not rule out standing again later. It was reported that Labor would ask initially unsuccessful preselection candidate Rob Soward to take Hay's place, but at present the party only has five confirmed candidates.

In Hay's absence, Labor's ticket is filled out with newcomers engaged in an even race for a second seat. By far the highest profile candidate is Beaconsfield mine disaster survivor Brant Webb, whose recruitment by Labor is symptomatic of an electoral system that rewards parties for fielding recognised candidates. Scott McLean is the forests forests division secretary of the CFMEU, reckoned by The Mercury to be a “star candidate” despite being “condemned by many diehard members of the Labor Party in 2004 when he backed Liberal Prime Minister John Howard over Labor’s then-federal opposition leader Mark Latham”. Michelle Cripps is a North Tasmanian Development consultant who ran in 2006, polling a respectable 2.1 per cent. Brian Wightman is a school principal based in Winnaleah; like Cripps, it has been said he might be a preselection prospect for federal Bass, to be vacated at the election by Jodie Campbell, if he does not win a state seat.


	PETER GUTWEIN
	MICHELLE McGINITY
	MICHAEL FERGUSON
	NICK PEDLEY

The contest for Bass received an unexpected shake-up on February 9 when former Liberal leader Sue Napier suddenly withdraw due to a recurrence of breast cancer, with which she was first diagnosed in 2008. That leaves as their only incumbent candidate Peter Gutwein, who was narrowly elected in 2002 at the expense of Liberal member David Fry. In his first term Gutwein went against party policy by calling for an end to old-growth logging, and was briefly dumped from the front bench after voting in favour of a Greens motion calling for a commission of inquiry into child sex abuse. The party felt compelled to reinstate him mainly because of difficulties in spreading the portfolio workload across seven parliamentary members, restoring him to education but not treasury. He gained police in December 2006, before recovering treasury when Will Hodgman relinquished it in August 2008.

The other high-profile Liberal candidate is Michael Ferguson, who defeated Michelle O'Byrne in federal Bass in 2004 before himself going down to defeat at the hands of Labor's Jodie Campbell in 2007. Ferguson came to politics with a reputation for social conservatism, having been director of the Tasmanian Family Institute and a vigorous opponent of the Tasmanian government's gay adoption laws. He had also worked as a staffer to Senator Guy Barnett, a key player in the state party's ascendant Right faction. He demonstrated his conservative credentials in federal parliament by accusing abortion advocates who opposed the death penalty of “breathtaking hypocrisy”, and moving restrictive amendments to legislation on stem cell research.

Following Napier's withdrawal, the party promptly endorsed Michelle McGinity, who has “worked in public relations in Canberra”. Their other listed candidate is Nick Pedley, a law student at the University of Tasmania. Pam Dakin has also been named as a confirmed starter, but is not listed as such on the Liberal Party website.


	KIM BOOTH

Kim Booth brought the Greens back to Bass after a term in the wilderness (so to speak) with an easy victory at the 2002 election, before surviving by the narrowest margins when the party's vote fell in 2006. Interestingly, Booth is a former owner and operator of a building and saw-milling company. Also on the ticket is Greens candidates include Jeremy Ball, an electorate officer to Booth and former actor who had roles in the television series Water Rats and a brief cameo in the Hollywood blockbuster The Matrix, who also ran in 2006 (and federally in 2004). The other candidates are Sally Day, Beverley Ernst and Peter Whish-Wilson.