Morrison the smaller pox

29 June 2019

 

The Federal election has come and gone, with a surprising result.  Hardly anyone predicted the Liberal-National Coalition, led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, winning a third term in office, especially after leadership problems in the past year or so.  But voters seemed to ignore those problems, while the Labor Party, led by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, ended up turning voters off with planned tax changes and a perceived indifference to costs of environmental issues.

Indeed before the election, there was talk of both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader being less than popular among voters.  I believed that this represented a pox on both houses, and that the election winner would probably be the one whom voters saw as the lesser of two evils – or the smaller pox.

One opinion poll after another showed that voters didn’t like Shorten, whose unpopularity was arguably keeping the Coalition competitive.  The Coalition seemed to be tearing itself apart over leadership, especially because Malcolm Turnbull, who’d led the Coalition to a narrow election win in 2016, was widely distrusted within Coalition ranks.  Voters had long known the views of Turnbull on various issues, including climate change, but they saw him as fake, because his critics, both inside and outside Parliament, were preventing him from doing what he believed in.  Eventually, many of Turnbull’s own MPs revolted, ending his leadership and putting Morrison in the top job.  Voters didn’t like watching this stuff, and it was thought likely to turn voters off, despite spurning Shorten.

The Australian economy has been in fair shape over recent years, but problems have loomed in various ways.  However, the election showed that voters, despite being disillusioned with the Coalition, couldn’t bring themselves to trust Labor, and the Coalition ended up narrowly winning.

The major parties went into the election with 72 seats each, out of 151 available, and I’d tipped Labor to end up on 76 seats – which would’ve meant a majority.

My tips were for Labor to win Gilmore, Robertson, Dickson, and Hasluck from the Coalition.  Labor had also gained another two Coalition seats, Corangamite and Dunkley, before the election, as a result of several electoral redistributions around the country, and I was tipping Labor to keep them.

Electoral redistributions often happen because of population change, and they are necessary to have an equal number of voters per seat, or as near as possible, in any given state.  These can make seats notionally stronger or more marginal for the parties holding them, and can even make them notionally change hands.

I also tipped Labor to win Chisholm, being vacated by Coalition MP Julia Banks, who defected to the crossbench after Turnbull’s downfall and opted to contest another seat.  I was, however, tipping Labor to lose Herbert to the Coalition.

In terms of other seats, I tipped the Coalition to lose Cowper to an Independent, gain Indi with the retirement of another Independent, and fail to defeat Kerryn Phelps, who’d won Wentworth from the Coalition in a by-election.

But my predictions, at least in terms of seats changing hands, were quite off.

I got right the Labor wins in Corangamite and Dunkley and Gilmore, plus the Coalition win in Herbert.

However, I got plenty of other seats wrong.  The Coalition held Robertson and Dickson and Hasluck, as well as Cowper, and it won Chisholm and Wentworth back.  But it failed to regain Indi, which went to another Independent.

Apart from Herbert, I didn’t tip any other Labor seats to be lost to the Coalition, but four fell – Bass, Braddon, Lindsay, and Longman.

I also didn’t tip the Coalition to lose Warringah, held by former PM Tony Abbott, to an Independent.  But Abbott was absolutely thumped.

The Coalition ended up with 77 seats and Labor ended up with 68, while various crossbenchers took the remaining septet of seats.  Morrison, winning the election as arguably the smaller pox, now has a slightly bigger majority than Turnbull ended up with in 2016.

As for the Senate, the Coalition ended up increasing its numbers with various seats gained.  But it still needs Senate crossbenchers to pass laws, albeit fewer than it needed before.

The result might’ve been close for the Coalition.  But Morrison sees it as a great win against the odds.  His behaviour will show whether he sees it that way.

 

Tables turn on Leyonhjelm

15 June 2019

 

The recent State election in New South Wales has seemingly ended an unlikely political career.  I say “seemingly” because I’ve seen too many politicians make comebacks when their careers looked over.  Nonetheless, I refer to an unlikely career, started without question by luck.

The career is that of David Leyonhjelm, who was elected to the Senate in 2013, running for the Liberal Democrats in NSW.  His Senate term was due to expire this year, with a Federal election due then.  But he suddenly quit the Senate and decided to run for an Upper House seat in a State election taking place in NSW before the Federal election came.  Despite polling pretty well, he was beaten.

Looking at the start of his career, it was undoubtedly lucky.  Nobody knew who this person was until the immediate aftermath of a Federal election in 2013.

While most Australians remember that election as the one that saw the hugely unpopular Tony Abbott become Prime Minister, it also saw some unlikely people elected to the Senate – including a mix of minor parties with unfamiliar names, including the Liberal Democrats and the Palmer United Party and the Motoring Enthusiasts.  The mere mention of the Motoring Enthusiasts brings up memories of Ricky Muir, who freakishly won a Senate seat for them in Victoria, winning only a tiny percentage of the vote but getting everybody else’s preferences.

But the election of Leyonhjelm back then also caused a stir, because NSW voters were confused when they saw the Liberal Democrats that he ran for.

The country didn’t reminding of the fact that Abbott was the leader of the Liberal Party, and he was never popular.  Few would dispute that he became PM because the Labor Party, governing since late 2007, had torn itself apart over leadership fights between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.  While Rudd led Labor to triumph at an election in 2007 as was immensely popular as PM, Abbott ended up giving him a fright over some policies that Labor MPs dumped him in favour of Gillard just months before a due election in 2010.  Gillard narrowly held on in that 2010 election, and Abbott engaged in massive negativity and nastiness to try to force Gillard back to the polls.  In June 2013, with an election not far away, Labor MPs reluctantly dumped Gillard as PM and restored Rudd to the top job.  However, changing leaders didn’t prevent Abbott from leading the Liberals to victory.

However, there was an unlikely victor in NSW, with Leyonhjelm taking a Senate seat as a result of a lucky dip.

In NSW, the Liberal Democrats were lucky to be drawn first on the Senate ballot paper, so their name would’ve been the first that NSW voters saw on that paper.

At the previous election, in 2010, statistics show the Liberal Democrats winning about 2.3 per cent of the Senate vote in NSW, and their votes elsewhere similar or less.  But in 2013, while their votes seemed similar across the country, their vote surged to about 9.5 per cent of the vote in NSW.

Concurrently, the Liberals, in tandem with the Nationals, saw their NSW Senate vote drop.  It was about 39 per cent in 2010, and about 34 per cent in 2013.

Clearly, many NSW voters saw Leyonhjelm’s Liberal Democrats on their Senate ballot papers first and mistook them for Abbott’s Liberals.  Leyonhjelm always denied this, but it was beyond question.

Leyonhjelm managed to hold his seat at the next election, in 2016, but support for the Liberal Democrats fell to about 3.1 per cent in NSW.

This year, with a State election coming in NSW, Leyonhjelm opted to run there and leave the Senate.  Believing in giving governments less control over freedom to live your life as you wished, such as in relation to owning guns or using drugs or marrying a person with the same gender as yours, he thought that he could make a difference at State level, given that governments there had more control over some issues than at the Federal level.

Certainly I’d imagined that he’d get elected to the NSW Upper House, with only about 4-5 per cent of the vote across NSW required in order to win a seat there.

In the end, the Liberal Democrats got about 2-3 per cent of the vote in the Upper House, which was reasonable.  But in the end, after the counting of preferences, Leyonhjelm just felt short.

As such, the NSW election saw the tables of fortune turn on Leyonhjelm, though this was a close thing for sure.

The Liberal Democrats still hold State parliamentary seats in Western Australia and Victoria, but it remains to be seen whether Leyonhjelm’s absence has some effect on them.  In terms of what Leyonhjelm achieved during his parliamentary career, or what impact he had on policy, I can’t think of much.  This unexpected Senate winner will probably fade into history.