Despite unfolding against the backdrop of a global health and economic crisis, there is remarkably little expectation that tomorrow’s Eden-Monaro byelection will find voters behaving much differently from how they did in the immeasurably more settled circumstances of a year ago.
Famously marginal bellwether electorate that it is, this means all concerned are bracing for a result to rival outgoing Labor member Mike Kelly’s slender 1685-vote (0.8%) winning margin at the election.
Admittedly, such expectations are based largely on polling — the latest poll, conducted by uComms for the Australia Institute on Tuesday night, is typical in recording a Labor lead inside the margin of error at 52-48.
That the government appears to be competitive plainly reflects the positive response to its handling of coronavirus, as it is otherwise weighed down by just the kind of negatives that typically make governments quail from mid-term byelections.
The Liberal campaign has been blighted by fractious relations with its coalition partners, culminating in suggestions that John Barilaro, state Nationals leader and thwarted preselection aspirant, is actively seeking a Liberal defeat so he can take the seat himself at the next election.
However, most of the lead in the Liberal saddlebags relates to the summer bushfire crisis, which devastated large parts of the electorate.
It was for this reason that the Liberal hierarchy wished for the seat to be contested by state government minister Andrew Constance, who gained considerable public sympathy through his own experiences defending his threatened house from the fires.
However, Constance fell foul of fierce resistance from local Liberal branches, who remained loyal to the narrowly unsuccessful candidate from the election, Fiona Kotvojs.
Such sentiment was difficult to ignore given lingering bitterness over Warren Mundine’s conspicuously unsuccessful candidacy in the neighbouring seat of Gilmore, which had been imposed on the local party against its wishes.
But while Kotjovs is a proven campaigner with an established profile from council politics, Liberal hopes of neutralising the bushfires issue have been complicated by her record of skeptical noises about climate change and opposition to “green tape” restraining development in bushfire-prone areas.
The latest flare-up around ABC funding, which Labor promised on Wednesday to boost by $83.7 million, has also been unhelpful to Kotvojs’ campaign, and has further exacerbated tensions with the Nationals.
Labor candidate Kristy McBain has stayed out of trouble, but the Liberals have made mileage from the fact that she was preselected by the fiat of the party’s national executive, as compared with Kotvojs’ landslide win in a plebiscite of Liberal members.
It is also the case that Labor is losing the substantial personal vote of a member who was popular enough to have won the seat at losing elections in 2016 and 2019, something the seat had famously not done since 1969.
Overarching Labor’s challenge is the simple fact that the stakes are so much higher for Anthony Albanese than they are for Scott Morrison.
Whereas governments are expected to do poorly at byelections, oppositions are certainly not expected to lose seats at them — the last such occasion having been fully a century ago, as Albanese is constantly reminded.
A loss for Labor in Eden-Monaro is, frankly, a disaster for Australia, not just Labor and Albanese. For King Morrison the Almighty, he is fine if he loses – he can simply say that no government has won a by-election in 102 years, so no problem; he expected it (of course he will be stung by that repudiation), but he can shrug that off). If the LNP wins the seat, it will be King Morrison of Smirkdom who will think HE has won. The LNP candidate is not the sort of rabid ideologue that is needed in the parliament , but for Morrison it will be an affirmation of HIS policies and HIS faux-regal and Churchillian “I’m the great wartime leader” facade and that will inflate his pompous ego even further. It will be seen, by Morrison of Marketing, as evidence that Australia sees the LNP and its corrupt, incompetent, war-mongering and quasi-authoritarian policies as the way forward. Labor needs to win because it can then say that it IS a repudiation of the LNP’s flawed policies and utterly appalling governance for the last 8 years and a reminder of just how badly King Morrison the Messiah performed when he was genuinely under pressure during the bushfire crisis. He misread the mood of the electorate when he went to Hawaii. He then totally misread the mood of the electorate when he came back, believing that Australia had missed the comfort that only its self-deluded and self-appointed monarch could bring to “his subjects”. His floundering, petulant, abjectly stupid and puerile behaviours in a “one-after-the-other” sequence of desperation after his return showed just how truly self-centered and vacuous King Morrison of Spindom really is – Eden-Monaro has a duty to itself and to Australia to reject King Morrison and the last two weeks of grand sweeping policy announcements (that are all nonsensical – e.g., the huge defence spend mostly rehashes spending on projects already allocated in previous budgets, not new spending). But then, it is entirely possible to underestimate the power of collective stupidity and ignorance.
It gives me some fleeting comfort to read much of what I think and feel. Thank you. I think Kristy is a very brave and decent person. If she looses it is very likely for her own/family’s good. My trust in our political system is at rock bottom. For Australia’s sake I hope she wins.
“He then totally misread the mood of the electorate when he came back, believing that Australia had missed the comfort that only its self-deluded and self-appointed monarch could bring to “his subjects”. Cut Moses some slack – he probably had jet lag.
As so often through the decades, the ALP keeps wondering what it will ever take to break the Stockholm Syndrome love affair that the Australian electorate has with the Coalitio.
What do we expect. We’ve got the weakest labor and greens parties in decades. Expecting them to win with the same old policies is crazy. Where are the social housing, infrastructure, climate change and social equity policies? Will labor accept the Uluru statement? When will labor (or greens) finally start agitating for dental care for all as they have in Europe?
I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic or if you have not read The Australian Greens policy statements.
No I’m not being sarcastic. You made my point. In order to know what the greens stand for, I’m required to read their manifesto? Please. Back in the day there was no doubting what Bob Brown’s Greens stood for. The current docile greens barely held their ground at the last election despite an electorate hungry for change. They need to be far more noisy and pro-active if they want to make a difference.
The “Labor” party is no longer fit for purpose and AA will ride the corpse into the ground – see his vacuous plea for a bi-partisan energy policy with SmoKo.
The damage done to the Greens by the wannabe tory De Natale made him their Meg Lees/Cheryl Kernow.
He made them anathema to anyone seeking a real alternative – even without Brown Bob’s disastrous Freedom Ride into the DeepNorth.
Bref ‘s comment is really valid ,Labor and the Greens have to shift the public discourse toward the vital needs for the country. The Greens have looked completely distracted for years and Bill Shorten in the last campaign over simplified to the point where it was as if he was trying to gain the attention of kinda kids that needed a wee.
The big end of town…. he wasn’t game to explain the pressure of election sponsorship, the right wing media and deserved to lose.
Not being willing to talk about new jobs and strategies for work in the Adani area was just stupid. They could have allotted a significant sum in opposition with relevant local policy easily. ,industry hub, agricultural, infrastructure upgrade, etc.
So frightened of any point of difference, not prepared to detail in case it became a neocon attack highlight
They were simply corralled into distraction from neocon media, it isn’t good enough.
Is it even possible to win an election if you aren’t subservient to the neocon media machine, Labor seems to think not.
Australians have shown themselves to be a bunch of self-serving arseholes who don’t give a stuff for the public good and who see civilization and society through the narrow prism of their own self interest and commercial sport.
They vote for Morrison, because to vote for actual policies requires some intellectual preparation and understanding of the power structure under which they live. It’s much easier to vote for some idiot who as Paul Keating said can “throw the switch to vaudeville.”
Most people people vote on the basis of emotion and perception not common sense or the analysis of policy. That’s why they continue to vote for people who don’t care about their interests, but the interests of the rich like Gerry Harvey who got the GST on all internet transactions because it challenged his business model which that didn’t include the internet.
I will give you an example. An acquaintance of mine was in rabid opposition to homosexual marriage. His excuse was that it discriminated against those who don’t believe in it and who would be forced to marry same sex couples when they had religious opposition to such unions. I explained to him that such people were not forced to marry same sex couples, but he denied this was true. I asked him if he had read the legislation. He had not. But he still maintained that there wasn’t any protection for these people. I had read the legislation and knew this to be incorrect. I sent him a PDF of the legislation via email. I never heard another thing about it.
I was tempted to ask him whether he had read the legislation, but to what end. I thought no good flogging a dead horse. Of course what it was really all about was that he didn’t like homosexuals and he liked even less the idea that they should marry. He didn’t have the guts to say this, because there is no logical basis for his prejudice. He thus resorted to a story that that could salve his cognitive dissonance about the matter and through this the maintenance of his shaky moral righteousness. This is the sort of shit thinking is what we are up against. If he had said to me he doesn’t believe in homosexual marriage, because it doesn’t fit with his moral values I would have said he’s entitled to his views. But what he did was to concoct a lie about his motives and transfer his prejudice onto the priest who refuses to participate in homosexual marriages. A priest who in fact cannot be forced to.
In fact it doesn’t matter at all who you vote for. You can never vote FOR the communities self interest and as Chris Hedges has pointed out you can never vote against Goldman Sax or in Australia their Australian counterparts, to numerous to mention.
Oddly innumerate for an alleged psephologist – at the last election the 2PP difference was 1665 – not 1685.
Neither is within a bull’s roar of an 0.8% margin which would require an electorate in excess of 210,000 – in 2019 it was 106,505 (99,259 formal). The latest figure is 114,244.
As for “…substantial personal vote of a member who was popular enough to have won the seat at losing elections in 2016 and 2019.. – perhaps the 2013 loss didn’t fit the prepared parameter of this piece, especially given that he was beaten by a simulacrum of a homunculus like Peter Hendy.