I’m planning at some stage in the reasonably near future to write a longish post about Anna Bligh’s prospects (and I wouldn’t comment on Mike Rann’s, not being a resident of South Australia, and thus I don’t think able to assess them with any authority). But there’s a bit of an indicator of the trend from Newspoll which finds a dead heat in South Australia (50-50 down from 54-46 in the last quarterly poll) and only a slight advantage to Labor in Queensland (51-49 down from 55-45).
However, I don’t buy the whole “balancing state and federal governments” argument. States have political cycles of their own which are substantially independent of federal swings of the pendulum. In Queensland, changes of government are very rare, with only six since 1915. That might give you some idea of why Peter Beattie hung on in 2006 when by rights (and he knew it) he should have lost. And the LNP is still looking quite messy. Aside from the internal shenanigans associated with the Nats takeover, Lawrence Springborg has made a couple of big mistakes by not following up on his teaser campaign with any substantial policy in areas such as infrastructure, health and education and by going relatively silent since his great conservative union was kinda consummated. The Borg is now back in a no policy, carping oppo leader zone – with internal rumblings. So I think 2009 in Queensland is still Labor’s to lose.
Incidentally, contra The Australian, I don’t think Kevin Rudd should be shaking in his boots at Labor’s state polling in Queensland. The ALP won a majority of federal seats under Bob Hawke in the state while Joh Bjelke-Petersen was Premier in both 1983 and 1987.
Elsewhere: Possum crunches the numbers:
Beware people, or rather Queensland Nats, saying that The Merger is responsible for this changing of political fortune – as you can clearly see from the timeline, Bligh becoming Premier is what seems to be driving most of this, with Labor falling sharply and the Conservative party vote increasing substantially before the merger occurred. Springborg’s Better Premier rating is in the bin, again, as it probably always will be – the bloke is a liability in metro seats.
Particularly in urban and suburban south-east Queensland, and especially metro Brisbane, voters have a distinct habit of distinguishing between the issues, parties and personalities in Federal, State and local elections held at around the same time, and voting accordingly. Further, this doesn’t simply entail “ticket-splitting” between Federal and State parliaments. For example, in the period 1995-97, Queensland (and especially Brisbane) voters clobbered Labor in both the State and Federal elections, whilst giving Jim Soorley’s Brisbane City Council administration a massive majority. There were quite specific factors, in terms of issues and personalities, which explained the variation.
I plead guilty to inadvertantly impersonating the Prime Minister in the previous comment.
Each state has its own peculiarities; I don’t think the voters of WA tossed out Carpenter because they wanted to balance their political chakras, they were just sick of the ALP. Similarly in Queensland, if Springborg wins the next election it won’t be out of any desire to see a diverse range of views expressed at COAG meetings, it’ll be because voters are still sick of Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh’s incompetent governments.
I’ll miss Rod Welford, though. He was generally a pretty good Minister in his portfolios.
What Sam said about Rod Welford.
Yeh, I was kinda hoping that when South Brisbane becomes the New Bennelong, and Queensland gets its first green member, on liberal preferences, that Welford would get to sit in The Big Chair.
Elsewhere: Possum crunches the numbers:
Stuart Copeland anoounced today he will not contest the next Queensland election.
The people are angry. Labor is paying for the broken election promises. Particularly the pathology revealed during the NSW electricity brawl and “No Choices”recycling, indicating their incredibly anal adherence to neoliberalism, whatever the dog outcomes for the public or political impact on themselves.
Gosh for a minute there I thought the BrisbaneTimes headline Greens flex electoral muscles meant the Geeens were finally getting it: they are not going to get anywhere just being nice, they have to show they can be tough and pragmatic. (Not that I’m suggesting they should mutate into Terry McKenroth or Russ Hinze types, Bob Brown and Christine Milne are plenty tough minded enough.)
But no. The reporter sees the point for leverage
, but how do the Greens themselves bring pressure to bear?
as if it’s a given they will preference labor.
It’s a bit strange, and inconsistent, because on the greens site, the same spokesperson is down as saying
That’s more like it. What Dr Connors should have done, instead of losing focus, was ratchet up the pressure saying
danny, don’t forget that the Queensland Greens were formed by unnatural processes from the greenhouse gases inflating Drew Hutton’s stupendous ego, and are in no way related to the party of Bob Brown & co. Hutton was personally responsible for the Borbidge government, whose sole contribution to the environment was to use the front page of the Courier-Mail to sack the Environment Dept’s Frog Conservation Officer on the grounds that frogs aren’t worth conserving. Onya, Drew!
“Hutton was personally responsible for the Borbidge government”
The Goss government fell after the ALP lost its majority following the Mundingburra Special Election and the independent MP for Gladstone supported the Coalition, which after all had won 53.3% of the 2pp. So if anyone outside the ALP was ‘personally responsible’, it’s Liz Cunningham.
You’ve obviously forgotten just how hard the Goss governement worked to destroy the popular support it enjoyed in post-Joh Qld. The Greens polled a whopping 2.9% state-wide and directed preferences against Labor in 5(?) out of 89 seats. The ALP suffered a primary vote swing of -5.8% leaving them with 42.9% and a 2pp of 46.7% (-7.8%).
It’s kind of amazing that you think the Greens were able to produce a swing of almost 8%, but weren’t even able to reach 3% themselves.
d
“The Greens were able to produce a swing of almost 8%” …. my point, ‘zactly.
But first things first: Hal, I wasn’t here then, but I’ve read that the koala factor, and Mr Hutton’s management(?) of it, was responsible for 3 seats going tory-wards, more than enough it turned out.
Anyway, Mr Hutton will surely have had enough by now, after his recent unsuccessful run for the greenest ward in the Brisbane City Council elections, the type of inner city demographic which has got Lindsay Tanner in Melbourne, and probably a whole bunch of Sussex Street ‘droids, cacking themselves.
Mr. Hutton, and his baggage, is very well known here, and it was never going to work. Neither was their excellent mayoral candidate going to knock off Campbell Newmann. (It turned out to be a landslide rejection of the ALP, huge, remember). It might have been a different story if they’d swapped and made Mr. Hutton go for the mayoral ermine, and let the other local candidate have a crack at the local ward.
Mr Hutton can at last give up on his Quixotic hustings adventure, warmed by the thought that he got the greens their best result ( if you don’t count Borbidge) with over 25% of the primary.
The encumbent labor candidate got in BTW with just 35.79% cf the Libs 37.15%, indeed Greens preferences were the regal tender. If the state and federal candidates for this latte belt seat were anyone other than the Premier and Prime Minister, the ALP would be a tad nervous.
Which brings me to the swings required for a turnaroundabout.
If the seat gave Anna Bligh that sort of report card, she’d still get up, cos, let’s face it, greens voters could not re-arrange their neural pathways enough to preference a lib, it’d be Dr. Strangelove self-strangling en masse at the polling stations.
OK, the original LNP webpage mentioned ‘working for a greener qld’, but how long did that last, who’s gonna believe it? Malcolm is gonna convince folks that he’s gonna reshape the party in his image as a smart green liberal? With people like Santo Santoro still pulling strings, doing deals? I don’t think so.
No, the tories have to accept the greens did them a favour once with Borbidge, and have been Like Lady Macbeth ever since, it’s not gonna happen again, at least not until they show good faith and return the favour.
Scrutineering, I saw that it’s not in all lib voters DNA to not preference green. In my booth more than 50% did, it’s what I was keeping an weather eye out for. Could a green, not a lib, be the beneficiary of the preference flow in the state election?
The Sth Brisbane 2006 polling booth primary split was 24.92% Libs, 22.22% Greens. So yeh, I say enough Libs could be made to see the light, enough to change who was in on the preference count tango on the night, it’s the greens receiving for a change, not giving as usual, the favours.
Anna’s primary vote was down to 51.27%. How many of them are really getting a bit sick of being rusted on to the construction firm/developers brown paper bag party, feeling a lot betrayed, enough to send their primary elsewhere? Enough I reckon to force Ms Bligh to those preferences.
What happens then? Which way would liberal preferences go? Not Bligh-wards methinks, not if the Greens start talking turkey with Trinity lane. Again: Didn’t the Greens do the Tories a favour and get rid of Goss? It’s time for the favor to be returned. Removing Ms Bligh, without her ever actually having won the premiership, that’s gotta be an attractive proposition to them as a consolation prize if they don’t get government, terrfic morale building stuff.
Or it could be made real simple, cutthroat: the Libs face it, save their money, and not stand a candidate in Sth Brisbane, cos the green voters will never let ‘em in, and explain to the liberal constituency why, and what to do: vote Green to get rid of Anna Bligh, too easy. Gosh, what would happen? The closer you get to her office, the more the booths show the antipathy. How soy milk eco chino latte is this belt? This postcode has the highest rate of solar panel installation in the nation, that’s how.
There, that’s out of my system. Sorry. What’s wrong with those numbers? Tell me again why it can’t happen, that encumbent party leaders can’t get thrown out of their own seat? It’s bennelong time since the rock was rolled…
I wouldn’t be getting too excited about this poll at a time that various groups of public servants including electricity workers, ambulance workers etc. are in the middle of bunfights coming to new EB agreements.
A reading of Question Times in Hansard since the formation of the LNP shows no improvement in the Parliamentary performance of the Opposition since the merger.
The resignation of Stuart Copeland today makes it one step more difficult for the LNP to win the required twenty seats needed to form government.
I have noticed lately that a lot of Nationals look like being preselected in the South East corner where ex Liberals would be expected to be a wiser choice.
I also find it interesting that there is no accounting for support of Independent Conservatives in these polls which could also be lumped in as LNP at this stage.
You might have missed my point Danny – it ALP lost the 1995 election all by themselves. It didn’t have a lot to do with the Greens preferences. If you’re right about Green prefs sending 3 seats to the coalition (a claim I’ve never seen any evidence to support) then the counterfactual is that the ALP would have held a working majority with 46.7&% of the 2pp vote, which would have been an outrageous result. I think you have to go back to the Playford era in SA to see a government formed with such a low vote.
As for Drew, well I think he still has the highest every Green state result (Mt Cootha 1995) and the highest ever council result (Dutton Park 2008). He was the candidate for Lord Mayor at the 2004 election and got (from memory) 2% more than our excellent candidate Jo Bragg did this year. By the way, Drew doesn’t just ‘decide’ he’s going to be the candidate for a seat. He faces preselection like everyone else and it’s up to branch members to decide. As it happens the Dutton Park preselection was closely contested and Drew won narrowly. The losing candidate ended up running in Morningside and directed preference to the Liberals.
d
Darryl: It might not sound it, but I’m with you.
However, like i say, I wasn’t here for the koala election, what i seem to remember reading, (sorry, can’t back it up), is that the 3 seat greens effect was localised to the koala seats, so we’re not talking significant aggregate statewide 2pp votes %s. I may very well be wrong. Graham at ambit gambit is bound to know.
I guess if you can’t go along with the idea of the tories owing the greens for back then, you can’t go with it being time for them to pay up, by delivering Sth Brisbane.
I couldn’t agree more about Jo Bragg being an excellent candidate, and considering how big the swing it was that was on to Campbell Newmann, being within a cuppla % to drews previous effort means she did better than those raw figures indicate, to my thinking.
Trivial detail: this year it was Gabba ward, not Dutton Park, (redistribution?) drew stood for.
I didn’t mean to suggest I thought Drew “just decided”. What I said, just my reading, was “It might have been a different story if they’d swapped and made Mr. Hutton go for the mayoral ermine, and let the other local candidate have a crack at the local ward.” Of course Jo could have been expected to have some input, it’s a highly democratic party I believe.
In the end, as I say, the anti-labor swing was on, the point being to functionalise a dysfunctional council, just deliver it to the mayor, and drawing too much other inference would be dodgy.
And yes, like a beacon to the future, I did hear, from the labor gabba candidate, that she understood greens preferences could no longer be taken for granted, though she was a beneficiary of drew’s, it wasn’t so for the morningside candidate. Excellent.
What will Gary, if he’s going to give Sth Brisbane another go, do, I wonder.
I’m with Darryl. The ALP lost because of Wayne Goss. (And Kevin Rudd… oopsy…)
Who is?
And danny, Anna’s safe in South Brisbane. In the longer term, the Liberals are somewhat of a bigger threat in those inner city seats.
He wrote the score for Rumble Fish and played drums in Curved Air for a couple of years back in the 70s.
So a friend of Tom Waits? I’m sorry he’s not standing for parliament then. We need more Tom Waits fans in the State House.
I wrote an Honours dissertation on the 1995 Queensland State election and can confirm that none of the four seats along the route of the Koala Killing Korridor were lost by Labor on Greens preferences. In all cases the anti-Labor swing, driven by the local anti-tollway campaign, was so large as to render Green preferences irrelevant.
I don’t have my thesis to hand, but as I recall I calculated that the net effect of Green preferences in terms of seats was to:
* save Whitsunday for Labor (which was behind the Nationals on the primary vote); and
* knock off Labor’s Warren Pitt in Mulgrave.
Some critics of the Greens’ role in that election (Gary Maclennan, Jim Downey) argued that the Greens aided the Coalition in that election not so much by shifting preferences in swing seats but by making statements which made the Coalition look more environmentally friendly than they were, thereby inducing a shift in the primary vote from Labor to the Coalition. Needless to say, detecting and quantifying such an effect would be a very difficult and dubious task.
Good, that’s cleared up, it was a green issue, not the Greens Party, that delivered the KKK seats. Taa Paul.
I’m envious of you being able to leverage an election analysis into a thesis. Christine Jackman seem to have leveraged the last one into a career. Maybe that’s what the Greens in Qld need, a
pProfessional purveyer of puff pieces to the weekend glossies to take them on board as A Project. The real estate industry does after all categorise, for management purposes, the green demographic as “Alternate Rich”.As to Greens’ (validating) statements shifting primary votes from one of the majors to the other, and it being a difficult and dubious task to measure the effect, maybe it’s like aerial asbestos levels, there just is no known safe level. What you say is no doubt true, but BlindFreddyTM, voodoo psepholigist extraordinaire, will tell you the effect was/is/will be real.
So it should be “handle with exterme care”. One week the Greens saying they are “ready to give up on (labor) and start talking to the Coalition as Queensland’s alternative government”, and the next warning “the Labor Party not to leave it until a month before next year’s state election before talking to them about preferences” as if
just devalues Greens claims to be seriously engaged in the electoral process.
It works in reverse too. If you take away the effect of a noisy, tho ultimately unelectable candidate, the signal/picture can change radically. I’m talking Mayo where the Greens went excitingly close to knocking off a pretty damn safe Lib seat.
Hmm, best be careful lest this thread gets mistaken for Greens hustings. Sorry all.
Oh Dear, just when we were supposed to believe that the Liberal National Party were supposed to be on the verge of winning the next election we have this from Brough:
“Well, I’ve just had a gutful, quite frankly. I think this whole thing is a bit of a shambles,” he told 4BC radio.
“You try and do the right thing and, quite frankly, at this point it’s all over the shop and it’s no wonder voters get so disenchanted with the non-Labor side of politics.”
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/brough-quits-liberal-presidency/2008/09/25/1222217423498.html
Sorry I’m missing the point, what diference does it make if one wing or other of the Laberels win? They all believe in the same things .
Only the lies change.