Australian Politics

Hello! Maybe this is the wrong place as I'm sure there are a lot of political aficionados here, but I did a little write-up on the little quirks, key seats, and unexpected results of Saturday's election. I've personally found it kinda annoying to trawl through ABC and Poll Pludger on a seat-by-seat basis, so I thought I'd give more of a state-focused overview on what's happened for those that haven't really looked into the finer details of the results yet.

NSW

• Labor retain all of (and grow their margins in) their marginal seats, and gain marginal seats of Banks, Bennelong, and Hughes (thanks to a big redistribution of the district area) from the Liberal party.
• Independent (and former Nationals member) Andrew Gee has gained Calare from his old party.
• Independent Nicolette Boele is likely to gain the seat of Bradfield from the Liberal party.
• Independent Dai Le retains her marginal seat of Fowler.

VIC

• Labor gains the marginal seats of Deakin and (probably) Menzies from the Liberal party. Labor also have a good chance of winning Melbourne back from The Greens, partially due to a redistribution of the district area.
• Labor risk losing their (formerly) safe seat of Bendigo to the Nationals.
• Another safe Labor seat, Calwell, is challenged by multiple independents (making the count difficult/slower), but Labor are likely to retain.
• Similarly, the Liberal seat of Monash has a close, complicated count, but is likely to remain unchanged.
• Goldstein remains a toss-up between incumbent independent Zoe Daniel and the Liberal party.
• Independent Monique Ryan is fairly likely to retain Kooyong.
• The marginal Liberal seat of Casey has bucked the trend and been retained, with a modest swing away from Labor.

QLD

• Labor has won marginal seats Bonner, Dickson, Leichhardt, Forde, and Petrie from the LNP. Longman may join this list, but still remains a coin toss.
• Labor has gained Brisbane and Griffith from The Greens. Ryan should be retained by The Greens. A lot of these big swings are shaped more so by the 2CP count rather than changes in The Green's primary vote.
• Flynn is the one marginal LNP seat that has bucked the trend, being retained with a strengthened LNP vote.

WA

• Labor has claimed the marginal seat of Moore from the Liberal party. Probably helped by ex-Liberal incumbent MP Ian Goodenough running as an independent against his old party.
• Labor have also held onto (and strengthened their result in) Tangney, a key marginal seat they swung in their favour in 2022.
• The new seat of Bullwinkel is likely to be claimed by Labor in a very close contest (currently only 85 votes difference, out of 89000 votes total!). This seat is perhaps one of the more curious ones in Australia atm, it looks like one of those American gerrymandered districts - the area is largely around the conservative Wheatbelt and Perth Hills region, but contains a thin sliver of Labor's stronghold suburbs to the far east of Perth.
• Forrest will likely be retained by the Liberal party, although independent Sue Chapman has given them a good challenge.
• Regional areas showed very strong swings towards the Liberal party, even in the semi-metropolitan area of Canning. The 'Keep The Sheep' campaign has been very vocal and this likely reflects their efforts (although this is only really relevant to Canning, the only seat possibly within Labor's reach this time).
• Fremantle (one of Labor's safest seats nationally!) looks like it could be lost to independent Kate Hulett. A super thin margin on this, so we'll need to wait and see. I think this would be the first example of a "teal independent" targeting a safe Labor seat - to my knowledge all others have targeted safe LNP seats. If Kate gets in, this could really shape the way people see this political movement going forwards.
• Kate Chaney has held on to retain Curtin as an independent, but only slightly improved her narrow 2022 margin. This seems to be the case with many returning teal independents - a strong Liberal performance in 2028 could see them as some of the first seats to fall.

SA

• Labor has gained the marginal seat of Sturt from the Liberal party, and strengthened their lead in all other seats.
• The Liberal party holds on to two seats; Barker and Grey (the latter in spite of a strong effort from independent Anita Kuss)

TAS

• Huge swings to the ALP has seen them secure the two Liberal-held seats of Bass and Braddon. Labor will also retain their safe seat of Franklin despite a decent challenge from independent Peter George.
• The only non-Labor-held seat is now Clark, held comfortably by independent Andrew Wilkie.

ACT

• Very likely no changes, with ALP retaining their three seats despite a bit of competition from independent Jessie Price in Bean.

NT

• Labor retain their two seats. There was a considerable swing against them in Solomon (Darwin/Palmerston), but a roughly equal swing towards them in Lingiari (the rest of the NT).

SENATE

• The senate takes longer to count, so this is more of a preliminary analysis. Long story short, nothing too drastic has changed. ALP is likely to gain at least 3 senators; LNP has likely lost 5 senators. One Nation may gain up to 2 of these senator positions lost by the LNP, but Labor are probably front-runners for these spots. The best case scenario for Labor would be that they only have to rely on the Greens (and not other crossbenchers) for a majority.
• In each of the 5 big states, the LNP appear very likely to lose one senator. These spots are likely to be gained by ALP senators, but One Nation could potentially compete for this spot in both WA and SA.
• ACT and NT unsurprisingly remain unchanged. The Liberal party has plummeted to 15-20% of the primary vote in ACT - maybe threatening to sack a large portion of the population of the territory wasn't a great idea.
• Other parties are probably unaffected in the senate (QLD looks like they're going to re-elect Malcolm Roberts for One Nation :/). There's an outside chance that Jacqui Lambie loses her spot to Labor in Tasmania, but it's too early to say.

Summary

• Labor gained a lot of seats from the Liberal party, strengthening their position in the House Of Representatives. The Nationals seemed largely immune to this swing.
• Independents also did fairly well in this election, with incumbents retaining and newcomers gaining several seats, continuing the huge rise of independents we saw in 2022.
• The Greens would be concerned that their primary vote has stagnated following a decent rise in 2022. Their big loss of seats was mostly out of their control (due to changes in 2CP counts, plus the redistribution of Melbourne), although there was still a considerable swing against Bandt.
• One Nation are still a fair ways off having much power, but their primary vote grew in every state, about 1-3% of the total vote. Considering they only have ~6% of the national primary, this is a fairly decent increase for them.
• Australia continues to ignore Clive Palmer. God bless this country.

Let me know your thoughts/insights! I'd love to hear any personal experience/vibes from seats you know about.

The exact record will depend on the final results, but it seems likely that this election result will produce more seats than the 90 seats won by Tony Abbott in 2013. There’s a chance Labor could surpass John Howard’s result in 1996, although I don’t think they’ll quite get there. As for Labor results, this is their best result in seat terms since 1943, and I don’t think any other result before that was any better.

For the Coalition, this looks like the worst result for any major party since 1943, even producing a lower seat proportion than Whitlam’s Labor in 1975. Of course the ballooning size of the crossbench means the defeat of the Coalition is a bit more impressive than Labor’s victory – an exaggerated version of the mismatch we saw in 2022.

For this whole campaign we have been looking at the declining major party votes, and what is amazing is that Labor has achieved this enormous victory while barely raising their primary vote.

...

The final point I want to touch on is the Greens’ performance. At the moment it looks like they will scrape by in Melbourne and potentially win other seats like Wills and Ryan. Their result wasn’t particularly impressive, but I want to emphasise how much they are victims of the electoral system. Nationally the Greens vote is steady, just over 12%, and part of the story is that the Greens suffered primary vote swings in many of their best seats while gaining votes elsewhere. The map at the end of this post makes this very clear in cities like Melbourne and Brisbane, although you don’t see it in the same way in Sydney.

But in a number of their seats, their defeat did not primarily come due to a dropping primary vote, but a rearrangement of their opponents. In Brisbane and Griffith, the rising Labor vote pushed the LNP into third, and thus LNP preferences will elect Labor.

It’s a perverse part of our system that the most conservative voters decide who wins in some of the most progressive seats. Elizabeth Watson-Brown likely will survive while Max Chandler-Mather will be defeated because she represents a more conservative seat where the LNP is the main opponent.

And this is a challenge for the Greens because so many of their best seats are now Labor vs Greens contests where Labor will easily win the 2CP on Liberal preferences.

https://files.catbox.moe/7vh90g.mp4

A few days ago, we saw Canada's Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre lose an election and his own seat. Can we make that twice in a week?

Current numbers (6.1% counted) have a 5.1% swing to the ALP, resulting in a 6.8% lead for Labor's Ali France over Liberal leader Peter Dutton.

Haven't seen another post for election updates yet, so creating this. Share your bets on how many times Anthony Green is going to have a screen malfunction.

That's

• 2 positive cards from the Greens, plus 2 positive pamphlets
• 1 letter from the Greens, masquerading as a letter from a local concerned citizen with a mix of positive and negative
• 2 positive cards from the LNP
• 4 negative cards from the LNP, 3 targeting Labor, 1 targeting Labor and the Greens, plus 1 negative pamphlet targeting the Greens
• 1 positive card from Labor, plus 1 positive pamphlet
• 2 identical negative cards from LNP-aligned campaign group Advance Australia, targeting the Greens

In short:

The Coalition will not pursue its stated plan to "restore … common sense" to the curriculum.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton previously claimed students were "indoctrinated" by educators.

What's next?

Voters will head to the polls on Saturday, May 3.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has dropped his vow to change the national school curriculum, after comments earlier in the campaign that students should be able to think freely without being "indoctrinated" by educators.

Mr Dutton confirmed this morning "we don't have any proposals" to change the curriculum, despite saying in his budget reply address just a month ago that "a Dutton Coalition government will restore a curriculum that teaches the core fundamentals in our classrooms".

But his comments were contradicted by senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price just a few hours later, who asserted the Coalition would end "indoctrination" in schools.

The head of research at the fossil fuels campaign group Lock the Gate Alliance, Georgina Woods, said global heating caused by burning fossil fuels was “already affecting Australian businesses, community wellbeing, household bills and national security” and damaging “our extraordinary natural heritage”.

Gavan McFadzean, from the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the country’s thermal coal exports were an “appalling contribution” to the climate crisis and a “major handbrake” on global efforts to cut emissions. He said the major parties were running on a “unity ticket” of trying to get the Australian public thinking “there’s nothing to see here”.

As Thoreau pointed out long ago, what use a home with no livable planet. :(

Both major parties have argued that there remained a global market for fossil fuels and if Australia reduced its sales they would just be replaced by coal and gas from other countries in a way that would lead to no overall gain but would hurt parts of the local economy.

This is like arguing if we don't sell weapons to Russia, North Korea will and then being ok with that. I get it's the "drug dealer problem" but neither the LNP or the ALP would suggest dealers are ok ?

Vote Green

The AIP is one of several third-party groups running well-funded campaigns designed to oust Greens from their three inner-Brisbane electorates and against independent “teal” MPs in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

One of those groups, Australians for Prosperity, has also declared $725,000 from Coal Australia. Another, Advance Australia, has been actively involved in anti-renewables campaigns.

So much for needing to stop burning fossil fuels.

I see Graham Young mentioned, that shit balls web site online opinion is infested with nonsense

In short:

Nurses and midwives in the seat of Richmond are handing out flyers for the Greens while wearing their scrubs.

There have been allegations of bullying and harassment at pre-poll booths.

What's next?

Nurses warn the federal Labor party could see a voter backlash over state Labor decisions on nurses' pay and conditions.

In short:

The Coalition's budget bottom line would be $7.9 billion worse off than Labor's in the first two years of a Dutton government, and $21.8 billion better off in the following two years.

Most of the budget improvement comes from a $17.2 billion public service cut, and a $3.6 billion vaping tax, but migration cuts will cost the budget $4.2 billion and nuclear power will have an eventual $118 billion "off-budget" cost.

What's next?

The Coalition has not offered a timeline for a return to surplus, but Angus Taylor says it would be achieved "faster than Labor".

Peter Dutton is in a serious but stable condition after receiving a welcome to his front door earlier today.

Stopping home briefly while on the campaign trail, the Opposition Leader had a cardiac arrest after spotting a welcome doormat on his porch. After receiving CPR at the scene, Dutton recovered enough to make a statement, saying it was ridiculous that he was unable to get in the door without being subjected to a welcome to his own house.

“It’s getting out of hand. This is my home; I don’t need to be welcomed to it,” he said.

A Sky News viewer has left a giant hole in his computer screen because he doesn’t like being welcomed to his own computer.

59 year old Paul Smith, an Australian patriot, has today lost his cool and punched his screen while booting up the home computer and seeing the home screen say “welcome”.

“I bought this computer brand new from Harvey Norman in 2009, this is my computer and I don’t need someone welcoming me to it!” said a frustrated Paul.

Future Former-Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has responded to recent polls that show many see him as ‘untrustworthy’, by saying that he actually has plenty of ‘trusts’.

This comes as 4Corners revealed that Dutton didn’t disclose his stake in a family trust worth tens of millions of dollars while serving as a cabinet minister, in the sort of factual reporting that gets a news company dubbed ‘hate media’ by Dutton.

“People say trust is earned,” said Dutton, “and my family has earned a lot of money, so I’m clearly worthy of my trusts.”

Context: ABC News: Peter Dutton failed to disclose he was the beneficiary of a family trust, Four Corners reveals

Archive: https://archive.md/rMuVR

In this election, voters are more distrustful than ever of politicians, and the political heroes of 2022 have fallen from grace, swept from favour by independent players.

A Roy Morgan survey has found, for the first time, that Australians are driven more by who they distrust than who they trust.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is the most distrusted figure, outranking even US President Donald Trump. [!!!!!!!!!!!!] He’s three times more distrusted than Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.