Another Liberal by-election test coming up

15 May 2023

The Liberal Party faces another test in one of its Federal seats. A by-election will soon take place in the seat of Fadden, in the south-east of Queensland, following news of former minister Stuart Robert resigning from Parliament. This follows the recent loss of one of its seats, Aston, in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne, in another by-election, which resulted from the resignation of former minister Alan Tudge. However, another by-election loss looks unlikely this time.

Fadden is currently a very safe Liberal seat. It’d take a massive swing for it to be lost.

For sure, by-elections sometimes result in massive swings, in one direction or another. And some by-elections have resulted in safe seats changing hands, despite appearing very safe at when first looked at. Mind you, some seats have changed hands at by-elections and then gone back to their previous party occupants – or at least like what they were before.

Indeed I recall a by-election in the State seat of Tamworth in New South Wales in late 2001, after Independent MP Tony Windsor switched to Federal politics. The seat fell to the Nationals in that by-election. But at the next general election, in 2003, another Independent won the seat.

Apart from this example, however, by-elections with seats changing hands have involved actual political parties. And sometimes Independents have won seats in by-elections, only to lose them at the next general election to follow.

Nonetheless, going back to Fadden, this seat has been in Liberal hands for most of its existence.
It emerged in an electoral redistribution taking place in Queensland ahead of a Federal election which came in 1977. The Labor Party has only won it once, when it picked up many seats across Australia under the leadership of Bob Hawke at an election in 1983. But it fell a year later.

David Beddall won it in that 1983 election. But when the next election came, in 1984, he moved to the seat of Rankin, in southern Brisbane. Interestingly, holding this seat now is Jim Chalmers, currently Treasurer in the Albanese Labor Government.

When Beddall left Fadden, the Liberals won it back with David Jull, who was a defeated Liberal MP from 1983. Jull held his seat for more than two decades before he retired, and it was Robert who succeeded him there.

Now Robert’s resignation means that some voters will head back to the polls for a by-election.
As mentioned, Fadden represents another Liberal by-election test, coming less than two months after the Liberals lost Aston, admittedly a seat more marginal than Fadden. Although the Aston by-election loss was the first time in a century that the Government of the day had defeated the Opposition of the day in a by-election, there is probably little chance of a repeat in Fadden.

Apart from being a very safe seat, Fadden is in a State where the Liberals, and indeed their leader Peter Dutton, are more popular. Dutton’s unpopularity in Melbourne, if not Victoria as a whole, was a factor in the Aston loss. Dutton himself is a Queenslander, and his State is also something of a weak spot for Labor. Despite taking power at last year’s Federal election, Labor had a great deal of trouble in Queensland, where it took no Liberal-held seats, and it also lost one of its own seats, Griffith, to the Greens, in a surprise result.

With the above facts in mind, the Liberals shouldn’t have too much difficulty in holding Fadden in the by-election coming up. Of course, a swing against the Liberals is likely, but not big enough for them to lose – though such a result would be catastrophic, especially for Dutton.

Beyond Fadden, a by-election might also be coming up in the seat of Cook, in southern Sydney, in the event that Scott Morrison resigns from Parliament. Morrison was Prime Minister for four years, until losing the Federal election last year. He became immensely unpopular during those years in power, and few would be disappointed to see him go. If a by-election happens in Cook, the Liberals should hold the seat, as they held it easily at the last election and have held it since 1975. Of course, it depends on whether or not Morrison decides to call it quits.

For the time being, the Liberals await the Fadden by-election with some anxiety perhaps.

Labor left short by several hundred votes

13 May 2023

Close election results inevitably bring up thoughts of “if only” and “what if”. This is most likely to happen when seats are won or lost by a relative handful of votes. But it also occurs when overall election outcomes are close, especially if minority governments emerge, with nobody winning enough seats to obtain a majority.

And a State election in New South Wales two months ago produced such a result. The Labor Party ended up taking power, for the first time in over a decade, but not in its own right, with crossbench support enabling it to obtain power. On election night, it was thought more likely to win than the Coalition, but many people initially thought that it could win a majority, and ultimately this wasn’t the case. It fell two seats short of a majority in the end.

Because of the closeness of the election, many people would’ve looked closely at those seats that were narrowly won or lost. Perhaps agonisingly, Labor lost a couple of seats by margins of several hundred votes, but the narrowest loss was by less than a hundred votes.

If only a relative handful of people had chosen to vote differently, Labor would be governing in its own right.

The closest result was in Ryde, in Sydney’s north, which the Coalition retained by just over 50 votes. The next result, in terms of closeness, was in Holsworthy, in Sydney’s south-west, which the Coalition retained by about 330 votes. These were the Coalition’s narrowest wins, so Labor arguably fell short of a majority by only about 400 votes.

It could be argued that fewer than 200 voters stood between Labor and a majority in NSW.

But why would I refer to a number of votes and then half as many voters? It’s because these elections work that way.

To understand how a change of vote equals a change of margin by two votes, I refer to when Labor under Bob Carr increased its majority at a by-election after taking power many years ago. Carr led Labor to power in NSW by one seat in 1995, winning fifty seats, with its rivals winning forty-nine seats overall. One year later, though, Labor gained a Coalition-held seat at a by-election, taking its tally to fifty-one seats, while the combined total of its rivals went down to forty-eight. Therefore, the tally before the by-election had been fifty to forty-nine, meaning a difference of one, but then it became fifty-one to forty-eight, meaning a difference of three. I note that after this by-election, Labor went on to increase its majority at the next election, and held power until a big election loss in 2011.

The above example shows how changing a vote means changing a margin by twice as much.

Therefore, going back to the State election in NSW earlier this year, Labor was, agonisingly, left short of a majority by several hundred votes.

However, perhaps the most awkward result in NSW, at least for both Labor and the Coalition, was in Kiama. This was where former minister Gareth Ward was running as an Independent, with criminal charges hanging over him. He won the seat for the Coalition in 2011 and held it at more elections, before being exiled to the crossbench because of the charges.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that MPs facing criminal charges might well call time on their political careers. But it doesn’t always pan out that way. As such, Ward chose to run again for Kiama as an Independent, despite the charges that he faced.

In the end, he retained Kiama by about 700 votes, over Labor. Clearly, enough Kiama voters felt able to let him keep representing them. Of course, now he awaits his day in court, which will ultimately determine whether he remains in Parliament or not. But for now, Labor’s not particularly keen to engage with him to any degree. Time will tell whether that’s reasonable.

Notwithstanding the outcome of that time in court, whenever that happens, it’s hard to avoid knowing that this kind of ostracism, if I could put it like that, might’ve been avoided if fewer than 350 Kiama voters chose to put Labor ahead of Ward on their ballot papers.

Mind you, with NSW elections there’s also the factor of exhausted votes. People don’t need to direct preferences to every Lower House candidate when they vote, if they don’t feel like doing so. They can just vote “1” if they wish. It just means that if their preferred candidate drops out of the contest during the counting of votes, their votes no longer count.

Several thousand votes were exhausted in many seats in the last NSW election, and in those seats that Labor narrowly lost, this was no exception. However, I ignore the exhausted votes in this context, because often elections across Australia, including Federal ones, people must allocate preferences to every candidate, or their votes are invalid. Margins of small handfuls of votes are common in most elections, whether people can exhaust their votes or not.

Labor would probably still be relieved to be governing in NSW, with or without crossbench support. But its MPs must be annoyed at falling about 400 votes short of a majority.