The results of Saturday’s quintet of federal byelections have made three things known: there will be no federal election before the end of the year, Bill Shorten’s leadership is in no immediate danger, and the government’s standing in Queensland is weaker than it realised.
The active ingredient in all this is the one aspect of the results that failed to play to anyone’s script, namely the near double-digit drop in the LNP primary vote in Longman.
Elsewhere, Braddon was as close as anticipated, with Labor set to hold the same slender margin it won by in 2016; Rebekha Sharkie trounced Georgina Downer in Mayo, a result signaled well in advance by those otherwise unreliable seat polls; and Perth and Fremantle looked the way byelections always look when one major party forfeits and no strong independent emerges.
However, all that was overshadowed by the kicking administered to the government right where it hurt most: in a seat located on the metropolitan fringes, where elections are usually won and lost, and in the state of Queensland, home to the country’s richest crop of marginal seats.
Some haemorrhaging of support to a resurgent One Nation was to be anticipated, but few would have expected LNP candidate Trevor Ruthenberg to have emerged from Saturday night with a two in front of his primary vote in a seat where the Coalition’s previous worst result was 39%.
This rendered redundant the flow of One Nation preferences, which most had assumed would be the byelection’s decisive factor.
Preferences were indeed more favourable to the LNP than they had been in 2016, thanks as much to defectors from the party juicing the One Nation vote from 9.5% to 16% as to the effects of the One Nation how-to-vote card, which have traditionally been fairly modest.
The share of the aggregate vote that came to Labor as preferences from One Nation was around 5%, just as it had been in 2016, but the equivalent figure for the LNP shot from barely more than 4% to over 10%.
That left Labor needing to win the hard way, through an increase in their primary vote — which they duly managed to do by around 4%.
Their success in doing so has clearly spooked the Liberals, many of whom have concluded that company tax cuts are doing for Malcolm Turnbull what WorkChoices did for John Howard.
Among those who had been counting on a better show was Peter Dutton, who sits on a post-redistribution margin of 2.0% in the neighbouring seat of Dickson.
In his excessive zeal to crank up the pressure on Bill Shorten, Dutton could be heard last week proclaiming an LNP win in Longman to be something approaching a fait accompli.
Had expectations been calibrated more accurately, — whether by Dutton and his ilk, a press gallery over-invested in a Labor leadership showdown, or seat polls that tended to exaggerate how much Labor trouble was in — the results could have provided grist for narratives rather less flattering for Labor to take hold.
The Longman result potentially invites parallels with the Aston byelection in July 2001, at which a similarly sized two-party swing to Labor was seen to signal a recovery by the Howard government, which culminated in a come-from-behind re-election with an increased majority later in the year.
And once Labor are done celebrating in Braddon, they might care to dwell on how unusual it is for an opposition at a byelection to pick up a seat with no swing to speak of — and how this has happened in the thirteenth poorest electorate in the country, where a campaign based on penalty rates, company tax and deteriorating services should have found a particularly receptive audience.
Why were the results in Braddon so close….well you answered this one yourself in your last article “The last time a federal opposition had to defend a seat as dicey as Braddon or Longman was in November 1983, when a Liberal Party under the leadership of Andrew Peacock defied Bob Hawke’s stratospheric popularity to retain the Brisbane seat of Moreton with a slight positive swing.”
Braddon was dicey when you wrote the above and it still is.
“The Longman result potentially invites parallels with the Aston byelection in July 2001, at which a similarly sized two-party swing to Labor was seen to signal a recovery by the Howard government, which culminated in a come-from-behind re-election with an increased majority later in the year.”
If you’re going to try and pick out political parallels, may I suggest one that wasn’t completely upended by the most infamous terrorist attack of all time, a call to war AND the Tampa and Children Overboard incidents?
“a press gallery over-invested in a Labor leadership showdown”
Well done William for being the first person in the media to actually acknowledge this. Could you show it to Guy and Bernard?
“And once Labor are done celebrating in Braddon, they might care to dwell on how unusual it is for an opposition at a byelection to pick up a seat with no swing to speak of — and how this has happened in the thirteenth poorest electorate in the country, where a campaign based on penalty rates, company tax and deteriorating services should have found a particularly receptive audience.”
That campaign already found a receptive audience at the last election. Labor is defending a very strong high-water mark in Tasmania, all the more impressive for the fact that the Libs are not on the nose with Tasmanians at a state level, this is a specific endorsement of the federal ALP.
Re Arky’s comment (inserted because Replies are no longer attached to the original comment – another “improvement” on a system that was working well. For some reason people like to “improve” IT that works, and leave stand the IT that doesn’t.)
““a press gallery over-invested in a Labor leadership showdown”
Well done William for being the first person in the media to actually acknowledge this. Could you show it to Guy and Bernard?”
Arky – it could also be shown to Niki Savva, Malcolm Farr and Katharine Murphy on Insiders yesterday, when they declined to acknowledge the obvious point made by Barrie Cassidy. And all the newbie right wing warriors now scribbling for Fairfax, having been retrenched from the Murdocracy,.
My apologies – someone did something in response to the feedback and replies are again attached to original comments. Kudos to Crikey.
Well said, Arky…the usual suspects still can’t leave well alone!
They have to find some reason why Malcontent Talcum has some very big problems in the electorate…can’t have that poxy Labor Party winning the next Federal election, can we??!!
All good, but a couple of points:
The press gallery didn’t just smell blood in the water for a leadership spill, but overall has a slant to the Liberals and wanted to foment division. Too many live in a fantasy that an urbane and socially at-least-non-regressive Liberal PM can exist. There seems still hope that Turnbull might deliver – amazing!
The relatively strong showing in Braddon shows that people often vote against their interests – especially the lowly educated and lowly employed. This might sound snobby, but it is obvious. As WB says: how can such a poor electorate nearly vote for the reverse Robin Hood high income/big business tax cuts of Turnbull?? Because the bottom feeding electoral strategy (lies, scare campaigns, moral panics, economic distortions, pretence that they care eg about electricity costs etc) and the personal attacks on Shorten do register.
However, the kicking of the government where it hurts (delicious!) in outer urban, poor Longman signalled that Turnbull’s mimicry of Tony Abbott (shame there are no ‘African Gangs’ there!) and total sell out of what he knows eg climate change isn’t necessarily enough. Even the Kill Bill strategy wasn’t enough (what real leader needs that?). Thus we hang on by our fingertips only.
Given Turnbull’s sellouts, the horrible NBN, the nasty, creeping surveillance and opacity by the State, the rorting of ‘independent’ bodies, general incompetence across the board, the blowing out of debt etc etc it is amazing they are anywhere near a shot.
But then the moronocracy is still strong – facilitated by compulsory voting, but that is another topic…
Not enough credit is given to Erica Betz for helping Labor across the line in Braddon. Typically, Erica trolling through his dirt file came across trouble that Craig Garland got into 24 years ago, and so Erica, demonstrating what a good christian he is, had to hold a press conference to make sure that the dirt was spread around. Result; 11% voted for Graig. I wonder what the result would have been without Erica’s mealy mouthed smear campaign? Even a couple of percent loss of voters could have meant Malcolm’s ‘captains pick’ could have continued his charmed life at the trough.
Presumably people who voted Garland 1, Labor 2 would have just voted Labor 1 if Garland wasn’t there. Not sure how Garland either helped or hindered anyone.
As for Abetz’ intervention, didn’t Garland do just about as well as this at state election level? Feels like the end result of the mud slung at Garland is that it was ignored.
I feel sorry for our pro-Limited News Party advertorial Limited News’ Curry or Maul – for it “Longman” seems to have become personal.
Since 1993 I can’t recall it touting Labor in any election; except for 2007, when it couldn’t save Howard, so it “endorsed” Labor (at least until after the election, whereupon it resumed it’s “white-ant Labor” hostilities).
But that year, in the week before the election, it ran two seperate editorials, to the whole state, one urging voters to save Boswell (against a Green senate vote) and one to save Brough in Longman.
“Unfortunately”, “the Longman rubes” ignored their shilling and tossed Brough over the side.
Then there were those PR puff-pieces it did for Wyatt Roy during his tenure.
This campaign it dedicated so much PR to trying to persuade those same “rubes” of the folly in voting for Shorten/Labor (indulging/ignoring Hanson – who’d have known she’d been “missing” longer than Shorten, for a day, from it’s “reporting”).
To end up like this?