The Poll Bludger - Australian State and Federal Elections

DENISON
Region: Hobart

Denison essentially covers all of Hobart west of the Derwent River, plus some hinterland beyond. The redistribution has added an area around Neika south of Mount Wellington, adding 1800 new voters and cutting Labor's federal margin by 0.3 per cent. It is the strongest electorate in the state for the Greens, having elected Bob Brown at the 1986 election and returned the party's only member in 1998, when representation was first reduced from seven members per electorate to five. The electorate also produced Tasmania's only state Democrats MP when Norm Saunders (who later became a Senator) won a seat in 1980 and retained it in 1982. The former election was another unique feature of Denison's history, being a by-election held after the election of three Labor members from 1979 was ruled invalid due to breaches of a rule capping campaign expenditure at a mere $1500, which had hitherto been politely ignored. The occasion also saw a transition from alphabetical ordering of candidates on ballot papers (which Wayne Crawford of The Mercury recalled resulted in 15 of 35 members of the assembly having names starting with A, B or C in the late 1960s), which the government finally saw the attraction of after the Left succeeded in having a “how to vote” card adopted that had Deputy Premier Neil Batt reduced to fourth place – a card that would now have diminished value as it would not resemble the ballot paper.

As the chart to the left indicates, the emergence of the Greens initiated a period of electoral stability that ended with the Liberals' calamitous performance in 2002, when Bob Cheek became the first Tasmanian party leader since 1903 to lose his seat. Cheek's personal vote fell to 7.7 per cent from 12.9 per cent at the previous election – still the highest vote for a Liberal candidate, but preferences from Liberal supporters as well as opponents pushed veteran Michael Hodgman ahead of him. The 2006 election produced what appeared to be a straightforward exchange of votes from Labor (down 3.9 per cent to 46.9 per cent) to Liberal (up 3.6 per cent to 26.6 per cent), but not of sufficient force to endanger Labor's three seats. The intra-party contests were a very different matter. Jim Bacon overwhelmingly dominated Labor's share of the vote in 2002, polling 35.5 per cent out of the party's 50.8 per cent total. In his absence, David Bartlett – who had come to parliament after a recount on Jim Bacon's retirement in 2004 following his diagnosis with lung cancer that would soon take his life – was the standout performer with 13.0 per cent, while fellow sitting member Graeme Sturges performed only slightly better than successful newcomer Lisa Singh, 9.6 per cent to 9.4 per cent. Sturges struggled further on preferences, coming within 762 votes of being eliminated ahead of party colleague Louise Sullivan (who polled 6.6 per cent).

Greens leader Peg Putt polled the highest personal vote of the election with 18.1 per cent, with Cassy O'Connor the Greens' second best performing candidate on 3.9 per cent. O'Connor assumed Putt's seat on a recount when she retired in July 2008.

The Liberals go into the election with a blank slate due to the retirement of Australia's longest-serving political veteran, Michael Hodgman. Hodgman was first elected to the upper house seat of Huon in 1966, moving to federal politics as the member for Denison at the 1975 election. He was eventually unseated by Labor's Duncan Kerr in 1987, returning to state politics in Denison in 1992. Hodgman lost his seat at the 1998 election but recovered it on a recount in 2001 after the retirement of former Premier Ray Groom. He has been the only Liberal to win a seat in Denison since 2002. In his tell-all book published in 2005, Cheek described Hodgman as “the darling of the Sandy Bay blue rinse set” (with “more front than Dolly Parton”) and said he had “entered every leadership contest state or federal, without being asked ... and rarely got more than one vote”. One of Hodgman's legal clients, noted Melbourne poet Mark “Chopper” Read, forced a rhyme from his surname by rating him "a master of the legal twist/a shrewd and artful dodge-man”. His son Will entered parliament in 2002 and goes into the current election as Liberal leader.


	SCOTT BACON
	DAVID BARTLETT
	MADELEINE OGILVIE
	LISA SINGH
	GRAEME STURGES

Following the mid-term departure of Jim Bacon and the retirement at the election of Judy Jackson, Labor went into the 2006 election with only one member who had been elected in 2002: Graeme Sturges, who had polled 4.7 per cent out of Labor's total of 50.8 per cent. With an almost clean slate, the best performing Labor candidate was David Bartlett, who did his reputation as a rising star no harm at all by polling 13.0 per cent after two years in parliament. Bartlett was previously an IT worker for the state Treasury, who first ran in 2002 when he polled 4.2 per cent (perhaps impeded by flak he copped during the campaign after putting his computer skills to use by spamming local constituents). With the backing of the Right, Bartlett was appointed Education Minister after the 2006 election, and there was soon talk of him assuming the premiership from Paul Lennon be it through a managed transition or a leadership. When expectations he would be promoted to the economic development portfolio at a January 2008 reshuffle were not met, it was reported as a calculated move to put Bartlett in his place. He nonetheless became deputy leader when Steve Kons was obliged to stand aside the following April for misleading parliament, narrowly defeating since-departed Franklin MP Paula Wreidt in a party room vote, despite Lennon's preference for the latter. The convulsions that made Bartlett the third deputy leader since the election mortally wounded Lennon politically, and it was little over a month later that Lennon stood aside with Bartlett as his unchallenged successor.

Graeme Sturges was the secretary of the Left faction Communications Electrical Plumbing Union before entering parliament after the 2002 election. He was promoted to cabinet secretary in the April 2008 reshuffle that followed Steve Kons's departure as deputy premier, and was further elevated to the position of Instrastructure Minister when Paul Lennon stepped aside as Premier a month later. In April 2009 he acquired the newly created veterans affairs portfolio, the creation of which was ridiculed by the Liberals as a cosmetic attempt to build his profile in his electorate. He suffered a self-inflicted body blow the following September when he told a security guard at a parliamentary function: “Don't you know who I am? I'll have your f..king job.” He has also made headlines during the campaign after newcomer candidate Madeleine Ogilvie (see below) accused him of telling voters she was “not really Labor”, reportedly promting a sharp telephone call from Ogilvie. Sturges did not help matters when he explained he had “just been telling them to vote for a Labor bloke”, which was equally seen as directed at Lisa Singh. There have been suggestions during the campaign that Labor has been actively hoping he will lose his seat to Scott Bacon.

Lisa Singh entered parliament after the 2006 election, having previously been manager of Arts Tasmania, and performed impressively for a newcomer in polling 9.4 per cent. She raised her profile considerably the following August when she abstained from legislation giving approval to Gunns' Bell Bay pulp mill, complaining in parliament the company had sought to “bully” the government. She was nonetheless made parliamentary secretary in April 2008, and elevated to cabinet the following November as Corrections, Workplace Relations and Consumer Protection Minister following the resignation of upper house member Allison Ritchie. During the campaign she was overheard complaining of media reaction to the party's asbestos policy announcement: “This is a f**king good policy, why do they always have to f**king pick negatives”.

Labor's newcomer candidates are Scott Bacon, who is an economist, adviser to Energy and Resources Minister David Llewellyn and the son of former Premier Jim Bacon; and Madeleine Ogilvie, a barrister.


	ELISE ARCHER
	MATT STEVENSON
	MATTHEW GROOM
	JENNY BRANCH
	RICHARD LOWRIE

With the retirement of their sole sitting member, the Liberals go into the election with a clean slate. There was reportely concern in the party that they were having trouble securing sufficiently high-profile candidates: even before a new vacancy was created by Michael Hodgman's announcement he would retire due to ill health, Sue Neales of the Mercury reported in March 2009 that preselection plans had to be deferred while head-hunting continued. Only two candidates were selected at that time in addition to Hodgman: Elise Archer and Matt Stevenson. The ticket was eventually rounded out in October with the endorsement of Matthew Groom, Jenny Branch and Sue Hickey. Two complications emerged subsequently: Hodgman's retirement announcement, and the withdrawal of Hickey in December on the grounds she did not wish for her business to forego government contracts, as required of parliamentarians by an onerous provision in the state constitution. She was replaced on the Liberal ticket by Richard Lowrie, a manager with Hobart catamaran manufacturers Incat. No replacement was made for Hodgman, reducing the ticket from six candidates to five. Consistently unsuccessful throughout the process was Marti Zucco, Hobart alderman and twice-unsuccessful independent upper house candidate, whose consistently troubled relations with the party reached a head at the end of 2009, on which more below.

Elise Archer is a lawyer and Hobart alderman who also ran in 2006, polling 3.2 per cent. She attracted unwelcome attention late last year following what Matthew Denholm of The Australian called a “heated arm-waving confrontation” between Archer and the aforementioned Sue Hickey. Two witnesses pointed the finger of blame firmly at Archer: the director of the festival, the also-aforementioned Marti Zucco, who subsequently quit the Liberal Party over parliamentary leader Will Hodgman’s failure to act against Archer; and Hobart deputy mayor and Greens candidate Helen Burnet. The latter was allegedly told by Archer’s husband, former state party president Dale Archer, to “f**k off” when she intervened on Hickey's behalf. Hodgman ordered Archer to apologise to Hickey, which she did by email. At issue was Hickey's public comment that there were too many lawyers in parliament.

Matt Stevenson is 26 years old and the state president of the Young Liberals. He succeeded in lifting his profile by setting up a successful Facebook page inviting respondents to tell their stories of falling victim to street violence. Matthew Groom is the son of former Premier Ray Groom and a corporate lawyer with state-owned wind power company Roaring 40s. Jenny Branch is a Glenorchy councillor who performed strongly as an independent in the May 2009 upper house election for Michael Aird's seat of Derwent, polling 33.5 per cent in a Labor stronghold. Richard Lowrie is a former rugby player and manager with Incat whose father served for 18 years in the Legislative Council. He also ran in 2006, polling 3.6 per cent.


	CASSY O'CONNOR

Cassy O'Connor came to parliament in July 2008 on a countback following the retirement of Peg Putt, having comfortably been the second best performing Greens candidate at the 2006 election. She went into that election with a fairly high profile by virtue of the fact that she had until recently worked as an adviser to Labor's Duncan Kerr. This was seen to indicate that gap that has opened between the Labor Left and the party's pro-business, pro-forestry industry state hierarchy. O'Connor earlier made herself known as the public face of a campaign against a controversial housing and marina development at Ralphs Bay east of Hobart. The theoretical possibility of the Greens winning a second seat makes the remaining Greens candidates of more than the normal academic interest. The party is promoting as its second candidate Helen Burnet, the deputy mayor of Hobart. Also on the ticket are hospitality manager Penelope Ann, engineering supervisor Peter Cover and Housing Tasmania policy officer Kartika Franks.

Other candidates: Andrew Wilkie, the former Office of National Assessments analyst who quit over the Howard government's actions before the Iraq war, is running as an independent. Wilkie ran as a Greens candidate against John Howard in Bennelong in 2004 and as Bob Brown's Tasmanian Senate running mate in 2007.