Antony Green's Election Blog

2017 Western Australian Election Website

I've just launched by website for the 2017 Western Australian Election.

It's still under construction. Only around a quarter of electorates have candidate profiles at this stage, and there is more to come on the Legislative Council.

A good starting point for the following the action with the writs issued today for polling day on 11 March.

Colin Barnett's Comment on Senate Vacancies

Saturday's West Australian reported a comment by WA Premier Colin Barnett on the candidates that parties nominate to fill Senate casual vacancies.

The comment is made in reference to who One Nation should nominate if Rod Culleton's Senate seat has to be filled by casual vacancy procedures under Section 15 of the Constitution. 

The quote from the West Australian is

Mr Barnett said political parties ordinarily filled casual vacancies by putting forward the next candidate on their senate tickets, which by convention was accepted by the joint sitting.

But he said “we are entering uncharted waters” because Senator Hanson had indicated she did not want to put forward the next person on the ticket, Mr Culleton’s brother-in-law Peter Georgiou, and had a new, secret, replacement in mind.

The comment is not shown as a quote from Mr Barnett, so it may not be a correct reporting of his views.

But what the West Australian has reported as ordinary practice is in fact not true. The exact opposite is the ordinary practice, as WA parties do not normally put forward the next candidate from the ticket to fill Senate vacancies.

Filling any Rod Culleton Senate Vacancy

If by one means or another Rod Culleton is no longer a Senator by the end of this month, his position in the Senate will have to be filled.

As Mr Culleton has been added to the register of bankrupts, he is no longer eligible to be a Senator, unless he has some legal avenue to overturn that listing. If he is no longer a Senator, his position will be filled as a casual vacancy. I will come to how that takes place in a few moments.

Also hanging over his head is a High Court ruling on whether he was eligible to be a candidate at the 2016 election. His eligibility is in question over having been under sentence for an offence that disqualified him. That conviction was later overturned, but on the date of nomination he was under sentence, and it is the date of nomination that is important. The High Court must release the judgment soon as it was heard before Chief Justice French who retires at the end of this month. The High Court treated the matter as urgent and should release the judgment soon. (Note: the above correction has been made as while Justice French sat on the directions hearing, he did not sit on the five justice panel hearing the case so the judgment is not required before his retirement.)

If the High Court disqualifies Mr Culleton, then his position does not qualify as a casual vacancy but will be filled by a re-count of the votes from 2016. That re-count would elect his brother-in-law Peter Georgiou who was second on the One Nation ticket.

If the High Court rules that Mr Culleton was qualified to be a candidate, then the bankruptcy becomes the issue, and if the bankruptcy stands the vacancy will be filled as a casual vacancy. The same applies if Mr Culleton is disqualified and Mr Georgiou subsequently resigns from the Senate, the seat would be filled as a casual vacancy.

2017 Western Australian Election - Electoral Pendulum

(UPDATE: My website for the 2017 Western Australian election has been published and can be found at this link.)

The 2017 Western Australian election will be held on 11 March 2017. It will be conducted on changed electoral boundaries from the 2013 election when the Barnett government was re-elected.

My ABC election guide for the election will not be available until the end of January, but below I have set out the electoral pendulum for the 2017 election based on transferring the 2013 election results to match the new boundaries.

The Impact of Federal Governments on State Election Results

Since the mid-1960s there has been a consistent trend for state election results to go against whichever side of politics holds Federal office.

I first published the graph below during the period of the Gillard government when the number of Labor held state lower house seats plumbed new lows.

The graph shows Labor seats in state and territory parliaments as a percentage of all seats. A graph of Coalition seats in the same period would be the graph's mirror image.

Shading in the graph indicates which party is in Federal office, blue for the Coalition, red for Labor. (Click graph for larger version.)

The graph is based on state election results and ignores by-elections and party defections.

The trend is clear. In the mid-1960s, the last years of the long period of post-war Coalition Federal government, Labor started to gain state seats as shown by the rising red line. The same trend shown by the rising red line is evident in the years of the Fraser (1975-1983) and Howard (1996-2007) Coalition governments, and has been repeated under Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull since 2013.

When Labor was in Federal office, Labor lost state seats, as shown by the downward sloping red line during the periods of the Whitlam (1972-75), Hawke/Keating (1983-1996) and Rudd/Gillard/Rudd (2007-2013) governments.

Some state election results have bucked the trend, the clearest example being the defeat of the Queensland National Party government in 1989 while Labor governed nationally.

Since the Coalition took office in 2013, Labor's seat numbers have been on the rise from the party's low point during the period of the Gillard government. Those lows were largely caused by Labor's massive state defeats in NSW in 2011 and Queensland in 2012.

Labor's revival in Queensland and NSW, plus a big victory in the Northern Territory, have put the proportion of state seats held by Labor back above 45%.

If the trend continues, it is bad news for the Barnett Liberal/National government in Western Australia, facing an election in March 2017, and good news for the Palaszczuk Labor government in Queensland, likely to go to the polls in 2017.

 

One Nation and the 2017 WA Election - Lessons from the Past

The success of One Nation at the 2016 Federal election, plus evidence in recent polls, suggests that the party could be a major player at next year's state elections in Western Australian and Queensland.

Both past results and polls show Queensland to be One Nation's strongest state. I'll deal with Queensland in a future post. In this post I'll look at the impact of One Nation in its second strongest state, Western Australia.

Western Australia goes to the polls on 11 March with the governing Liberal-National Barnett government trying to break the two term trend of recent WA governments.

Prior to 1959 the Labor Party in Western Australia had a long record of forming government, but the Liberal and National Parties have governed for 37 of the 57 years since. From the days of the Brand government in the 1960s, the Liberal and National Parties have been seen as the parties more in favour of developing the state's natural resources, while the Labor Party has struggled in a state with the nation's lowest proportion of unionised workers.

Two years ago with the economy booming, prospects for a change of government in March 2017 looked unlikely. Now the end of the mining construction boom has put the state's economy into decline, damaged the Barnett government's budget and more importantly damaged the government's reputation for economic management.

The 2017 election is looking closer than would have been predicted earlier this year, and now the wildcard of One Nation is again on the scene.

In 2001 the electoral success of One Nation played a part in the defeat of Richard Court's government and the election of Labor to office. Will One Nation play a similar role in 2017?

Polls have traditionally been poor at measuring One Nation support, and we have often seen late surges in support for the party as polling day approaches.

While we cannot predict the level of One Nation support next March, based on the party's electoral record we can predict where it will poll more strongly, where it might win seats, and how its preferences might be important.

As I will explain in this post, if One Nation repeats its past level of support, it will struggle to win lower house seats next March, but could win at least three Legislative Council seats.

Past elections have shown a consistent pattern of One Nation polling more strongly in regional Western Australia, but also polling well in outer southern and eastern parts of Perth.

One Nation has damaged the Liberal and National Parties in the past by taking first preference vote support which then dissipates as preferences to both sides of politics.

Let me go through the electoral record, starting with the recent revival in the party's fortunes.

Queensland Electoral Pendulum Based on Federal Preference Flows

In April 2016, the Palaszczuk Labor government amended an Opposition bill increasing the size of the Queensland Parliament to include a provision that abolished optional preferential voting (OPV). (You can read about the change in this post.)

What impact will this decision have on the 2017 Queensland election? In this post I take the first preference results in each electorate from the 2015 Queensland election and apply the minor party preference flows seen in Queensland at recent Federal elections.

The result of this analysis is that full preferential voting may not be as advantageous to Labor as has generally been assumed.

Coverage of Canterbury, Orange and Wollongong By-elections

From 6pm I'm doing live results coverage of the by-elections for the NSW state seats of Canterbury, Orange and Wollongong.

Follow these links for the Canterbury results, the Orange results and Wollongong results.

US Election - Close of Poll Times

The table below sets out the best estimate of when results by state will be available on Wednesday 9 November.

States crossing more than one time zone create complications on the release of results. Sometimes results are delayed until the second time zone reports. Others states release results as soon as part of the state closes, but the national television networks hold off calling a result until all polls in the state are closed.

So by time zone and current polling position, here are all the states.

What Happens if Bob Day is Disqualified as a Senate Candidate?

The tangled case of Senator (now ex-Senator) Bob Day becomes ever more complex for the Turnbull government.

The government intends to ask the Senate to refer his qualification as a Senator to the High Court to determine whether he has breached Section 44(v) of the Constitution; which states:

"Any person who ... Has any direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth otherwise than as a member and in common with the other members of an incorporated company consisting of more than twenty five person ... shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives."

This is relevant because Senator Day's office is in a building that he has an interest in, and the Commonwealth's contract for the office may therefore be a matter that is a pecuniary interest for Day.

Even though Senator Day has resigned, the question remains as to whether he was qualified to be elected on 2 July.

Why Are So Many Wrong Ballot Papers Issued at Australian Federal Elections?

At last July's Federal election, at least 150,000 Australians were given the wrong ballot paper for the House of Representatives election.

In the electorate of Herbert, won by Labor with a margin of just 37 votes, more than 450 extra Senate votes were recorded, a figure that can represent people given the wrong House ballot paper.

Compare these numbers to the fuss in Senate Estimates last week over the much smaller 18,000 names marked off the electoral roll more than once. Very few of these would have been multiple votes, most being due to clerical error.

Yet a much larger number of incorrectly issued ballot papers is passed over without comment when a solution to the problem is already in use at state elections.