Swinging By

The Heffron by-election came and went yesterday with a predictable Labor win.

I've written about the circumstances that lead up to the by-election here.

Suffice to say that, as expected, I didn't hear anyone complain about Keneally leaving early, which just goes to prove that a promise to stay and serve your local electorate no matter the state-wide result is a promise that no one is ever going to hold you to.

In the end, as discussed the post where I reviewed the candidate list, only 4 candidates nominated: Labor, Christian Democrats, Greens and Australian Democrats. In the 2011 election, there were an additional 2 (insignificant) independants as well as the Liberal candidate. In 2012, we were short those three but added an Australian Democrats candidate.

Given the likelihood of an easy Labor victory, the interesting part was going to be where the Liberal voters allocated their vote. All the state-wide polls since the election are very similar to the election result, so it is fair to assume that those that voted ALP or Green last time would vote the same way.

The only exception would be strictly progressive voters who voted Green or Labor last time and may now find a more comfortable fit with the Democrats.

It's unclear exactly how many voters there are who want to vote progressive but dislike the ALP (perhaps because they are a major party, or because of the union ties) but also don't want to vote Green (perhaps being put off by the focus on environmental issues).

This is the (an am sure growing) group that the Democrats would be perfect for - but whether the Democrats can ever rebuild and capture that group remains to be seen.

In any event, this was the result (not including postals, naturally):

Table from the ABC

38% of the voters would have had to vote differently to how they voted in 2011, and every candidate benefitted.

The first remarkable thing is the size of the vote for the Democrats. If the Democrats website is to be believed, in 2011 they ran in only 1 lower house seat, where they garnered just 1.4% of the primary vote. In the upper house, they didn't even manage 1%, which is less than the No Parking Meters Party.

So, where did that 10% come from? I'd say people like this:

It appears that this guy probably voted Green (however begrudgingly) but I suspect a large portion of that 10% were Liberal voters who could not contenance voting Green or Labor. That doesn't really make sense if you've read the Democrats platform, but there you go.

I also wonder how much of it was what I like to think of as the Liberal Democrats effect.

The Liberal Democrats are a party that drew 1.8% of the Senate vote. This is despite them being a fairly anonymous party with a platform that is libertarian and small-government. What I wonder is how many people, put off by the major, better known parties, liked the sound of a name that really told them nothing about the policies, but sounds like something they might like (progressive voters like the word Democrat, conservative voters are comforted by the word Liberal).

In other words, they may have scooped up voters who didn't like the sound of the other parties by having a name they liked.

That could be completely wrong, and we'll never really know what goes on in the mind of the "makes up his mind in the voting booth" voter. But it bears thought.

Other than the Democrats, the biggest rise was reserved for the Labor party.

Why? This tweet from Green upper house member John Kaye caught my eye last night:

He's right. Except when bickering over a few particularly divisive issues, there is hardly a vast chasm between the Liberals and Labor.

Most Liberal voters, when given the choice between Labor (in theory a centre-left party, although views differ) and the Greens (left - or loony left, if you prefer) will choose Labor.

There's no mystery about that. What remains to be seen is whether the Greens can start to capture a greater portion of the vote.

Many feel that Labor (both Federal and State) have drifted further and further to the right - becoming a centrist party. The Greens are not going to win Labor voters by outflanking them on the right - the only way they can take voters off Labor are going to be by winning the voters who are frustrated by Labor's apparent renunciation of left-values.

There's far more to say about that. Suffice to say, it's a pretty fair explanation of why the Greens didn't benefit more from the Liberals not running.

The next by-election with probably be Sydney if Clover Moore (as expected) is re-elected mayor and is forced to resign her state seat. With a prominent local member stepping aside it will be fascinating to see where her votes flow.

Stay tuned.

By the By

The by-election in Heffron is going to be held on 25 August.

I've already written about why the by-election is happening and what it all means here, so I won't repeat myself.

Suffice to say that, as expected, the Coalition has recognized that running a candidate is a no-win option, and are taking a pass.

Anthony Green has, as usual, put together an outstanding page on the by-election, which is thoroughly worth reading.

I just wanted to add a few thoughts.

First of all, the candidates: (summaries from Anthony Green's page)

First of all, as a Public Defender, Hoenig immediately earns some respect (from me, at least). PD's are barristers who work for Legal Aid full-time (as opposed to most barristers who are briefed by solicitors and may or may not do some legal aid work).

PD's work defending people who are often seen as being the lowest of the low, and their work is usaully pretty thankless. They do that for, in the vast majority of cases, far less money than they could earn in private practice.

It's also worth noting that he has apparently been Mayor of Botany Bay for over 30 years, which must be some kind of record.

A pretty impressive sheet.

A serial candidate - not that that is likely to affect her vote. I suspect that CDP voters are, typically, voting more for the party than the candidate anyway.

Unlike the CDP candidate, Faruqi is not only a local, but ran for the Greens in this seat in 2011. But for the fact that Hoenig has an equally impressive "pedigree", one would expect that to give her a big advantage in a by-election, given the usual collection of opportunists that tend to nominate.

She is apparently well-known locally, and has quite the profile in the party.

I don't really have anything to add, other than that is a heck of a CV he's got there.

According to Anthony Green, the Greens need a swing of 16.2%. It's difficult to see where they could possibly find that, given the local pedigree that Hoenig has.

That's all assuming that Anthony Green's analysis of the preference flow is right. He has (quite reasonably) based it on the preference flow in Marrickville in 2011, which is a seat where the 2PP was LABvGRN. That's sensible, and all he really can do - but it is flawed because the further west you go in Heffron the "Greener" you get. The flow in the Southern and Eastern parts will not flow the same way.

Having said that, the other two candidates will not really figure, except for the Coalition voters who go with the CDP candidate rather than do the unthinkable and given Labor or the Greens a "1".

The fact that Labor have drawn the top spot will only further guarantee what should be an easy victory.

What will be more interesting will be the reaction to Kristina Keneally's husband Ben Keneally succeeding Hoenig as Botany Bay Mayor, and whether he starts positioning himself for a tilt at a seat in 2015.

Fly, Fly Away

Labor have been going on about promises a LOT recently.

 

 

 

And so they should. O'Farrell has done a lot of stuff he didn't say he would, and a lot of things he hinted or outright promised he wouldn't.

Luckily for Labor, it is a little hard to break promises when you're not in government. Most promises made during an election are made on a "When I'm Premier" basis.

The only promise I remember either side making on a "If we lose" basis was in relation to members staying on after the election.

The Coalition hammered Labor over whether Keneally and particularly Eric Roozendaal would stay on after the election. During the debate, Keneally committed that they both would:

Full story from the SMH

Late last night it was revealed that her promise would be broken.

Unfortunately for the Coalition, I don't think there is any hay that they can make out of this. Come next election, almost no one will remember or even care what someone who was premier four years before did.

With the promises and guarantees O'Farrell has broken to date, "broken promises" is probably a discussion he would rather avoid anyway.

What will be worth watching will be what happens in the by-election for the seat. Keneally is leaving the Lower House next week, so things will move swiftly.

After the Clarence by-election last year I took a close look and concluded that it gave every side something they could use, and really didn't prove much at all.

Heffron is in a very different situation.These were the numbers after last year's election:

From this helpful ABC website

The website reporting on the 2007 election still exists - it's not as pretty but the numbers are all there. Bear in mind that in 2007 Keneally hadn't yet become Premier, and had just finished her first term as MLA for Heffron.

There was a big swing against Keneally in 2011 - but the swing was almost identical to the swing for the state as a whole.

Will the Coalition be able to engineer another 7% before the by-election? It is difficult to imagine how.

The polling numbers are still very similar to the election result. True it is that the recognition of a local member who was also the Premier may have artificially inflated Keneally's vote - but that works both ways when you have a massively unpopular government being given the boot.

Given what has happened in the last few months (not least of all the changes to WorkCover), I'm expecting at least a small move back to Labor in the next NewsPoll.

To me, the seat doesn't look winnable for the Coalition. So this comment from the excellent @PrestonTowers seems pretty spot on:

Unlike in Clarence, it is difficult to see the Coalition winning the seat, and short of that it is difficult to imagine how they could spin the result a being a "win". Keneally may have broken her promise to stay, but how much are the Heffron residents going to punish the Labor candidate for that?

Not a lot, I'd suggest.

A Win for Everyone

Is it possible for everyone to be a winner? In a by-election, yes.

I've written previously about the way that even if the Nationals won the Clarence by-election (as they inevitably would) Labor would be claiming the result as a win, and living off it for some time.  There was never any doubt that there would be a swing back to Labor, given that the National's member had resigned in disgrace just 6 months after an election.

Disgraced National Steve Cansdell.

Electorates always take out their anger at returning to the polls so soon after an election, no matter what the reason. The circumstances of Cansdell's departure meant that their anger would be heightened, and the size of the swing increased.

The equation was further muddied by the absence of a high-profile independent. While this may affect primary votes, the NAT/ALP 2PP should in theory be unaffected - but of course these things are not always as simple or straight forward as that.

In the event, the results look like this (thanks to Antony Green, whose analysis has been brilliant, as always):

From here

A few salient points.

First of all, the vast majority of Richie Williamson's votes (the majority of the OTH row) flowed across to the ALP. That was to be expected.

But the 2PP for the National's was well down, although in fairness it was more or less what had been predicted.

What really interested me tonight was both sides trying to count the result as a win.

For the Nationals it was easy, given that they had actually won. Andrew Stoner had this to say:

He followed that up with an interesting response to a comment from ABC reporter Mark Tobin:

His point is a fair one, and it picks up quite neatly on just one of the reasons that the swings that we will no doubt be hearing about for some time are essentially meaningless.

Another point he might have made was that there was clearly a large "anyone but Labor" vote in March.  Some of that bitterness would be expected to have evaporated by now.

Funnily enough, the swing was what John Robertson chose to focus on:

Whilst the numbers he has quoted are more or less correct, he is perhaps misusing them slightly to fit the narrative I predicted Labor would try to run. His spin of the reason for the swing is little more than wishful thinking, in my view.

Nonetheless, the ALP will be hoping that this will continue the growing disquiet about the O'Farrell government.  Nothing reinforces an uneasiness felt by a swinging voter than the impression that lots of other people feel the same way.

As journos start (inevitably) picking up on that narrative, Robertson will have at his disposal a powerful tool to starting chipping away that those awful polling numbers that were released earlier this week.

As for the Greens, however, they've really had very little to say.  I'm not aware of any Greens MLC or MLA who has made any comment on twitter (or elsewhere) at this stage regarding the result.

The Greens have been campaigning hard on the Coal Seam Gas issue, and may have been expecting a bump from farmers concerned about the effect on their land and particularly their water supply.  Especially given the lack of a high-profile IND candidate, a swing of 0.3% is really a loss of the Greens,

John Kaye tweeted this photo earlier today, so clearly he is involved, but hasn't been heard from since:

In any event, the Greens' numbers will really only interest Greens members and wonks like myself.  The interesting part will be following the media over the next few days as the Nationals try to talk about how they won and as Labor tell anyone who can hold a pen about the massive swings they achieved.

It's going to be a fascinating week.

By the by

Some things mean so little and yet so much at the same time.

The Nationals will win the by election in Clarence, and they will do so at a canter.  Anthony Green, Australia's greatest election savant has declared it to be so, calling the seat a "Certain National Party retain".

Not that he needed to be a savant to make that call - the Nationals dominated this seat in March. Steve Cansdell's TPP vote v Labor of 81.8% made was the 5th highest in the state, trailing only Davidson, Ku-Ring Gai (both lodged deep in Sydney's North Shore), Pittwater (Sydney's Northern Beaches) and Hawkesbury (a seat the Libs have held since 1950).

In fact, the ALP didn't even manage to grab 2nd place.  An Independent by the name of Richie Williamson nabbed second spot with 17% of the first preference votes.

Table from NSW Electoral Commission

From Anthony Green's blog

In this article on SMH, Williamson indicated that was willing to discuss running for preselection as the Nationals candidate. I've done some searching and I've been unable to ascertain if Williamson was at any time a Nationals member  In any case, this Northern Star article explained that Williamson ran for preselection for the Nationals this October as a part of a crowded field, as is common when a by-election is contested.

The first candidate discussed in that article was business owner Stuart George.

From Anthony Green's blog

In the event, pre-selection was won by Chris Gulaptis.

From Anthony Green's blog

Whilst a number of stories suggested that Williamson was planning on running as an independent, he is not listed on the NSW Electoral Commission's site:

The absence of Williamson is not the only difference.  Labor also have a new candidate by the name of Peter Ellem. He is a newspaper editor and advisor to a federal member Janelle Saffin.

So - Labor is not going to win the seat, but will there be a swing to Labor? And, if so, how much?

It's important first to consider just how different by-elections are to general elections. Sometimes, as in this case, the sitting member has been forced to resign in disgrace.  In others, the member has received a better (usually Canberra based) offer. Obviously that can create more than a little resentment from the electors.

Further, in a by-election the opportunity to "send the government a message" is often difficult to resist. The by elections between the 2007 and 2011 general elections are good examples - the voters vented their bile towards the Labor party, with catastrophic results for that government.

Finally, by-elections tend to bring out a larger than usual number of unelectable independents, which often muddy the water.

The biggest problem for the Nationals, however, will ironically enough be the simply massive margin Cansdell won with earlier this year.

Put simply, that kind of margin is out of the question in this by-election, given the massive anti-Labor vote in March that will have dissipated somewhat.  The Labor vote will be further assisted by the absence of a Williamson, who may well have been a convenient home for Labor voters who couldn't in good conscience vote for Labor again, but could not bring themselves to mark the Nationals box with a "1".

It is also worth noting that Cansdell's TPP margin in 2007 was a far more modest 26%.

Taken from Anthony Green's blog

The Labor vote will increase.  Whilst the Nationals will most likely also benefit from Williamson's absence, the margin will cut - possibly dramatically.

Which brings me back to how I kicked off this posting.  The Nationals will, as I have said, win at a canter.   There is absolutely no "story" in the result.

That said, there is no doubt that "Big swing against Coalition" is a tempting story, especially when run in the context of the number of groups that O'Farrell has been pissing off since he got into office.

The real problem for O'Farrell will not so much be the result but the possibility that another piece of bad news could start to build a narrative of NSW being very unhappy with the new Coalition government. It doesn't matter right now, but we have seen federally just how quickly a pattern where a government are seen as undesirable can become gospel truth, almost before anyone notices.

Neither O'Farrell nor the Nationals candidate for Clarence will be able to stop the stories about the reduced margin being written.  But O'Farrell will need to start looking for ways to change the story, or else he could find himself in charge of a government that has lost the trust of the electorate.  And that trust is not won back easily.

The by-election will mean nothing, but it has the real potential to mean a lot. Should be interesting viewing.

Stupid is as Stupid does

If these are the people running the state, then I fear for our future. I really do.

Steve Cansdell is many things, and no doubt we are going to see an entertaining range of adjectives used in the days to come.

For me, all I can think is that he is a stupid, stupid man.

Image from abc.net.au

As a solicitor, I know that I have to value my practicing certificate.  I know that a charge of perjury (for example) can have consequences far beyond the serious criminal consequences.

People often lose their practicing certificate and are not allowed to practice again after proof of dishonesty.  Every time someone suggests that I might perhaps do something unethical, I point to my certificate on the wall and tell them that there is no way that I would risk it.

In my profession honesty is important, and dishonest acts are punished swiftly and severely.  And rightly so.

One of the few professions where this burden should weigh even more heavily is politics.  This is not only because a conviction for dishonesty would automatically leads to your expulsion from parliament as per s13A of the NSW Constitution

Even dishonesty that doesn't qualify as perjury can lead to serious consequences. Carl Scully was shown to have mislead parliament over the Cronulla riots and was forced to step down.

It was inevitable that Cansdell would be asked to stand down from parliament, and that's exactly what happened.

This threat should be especially heightened as a pollie when you consider the number of people who would RELISH the opportunity to bring you down.

Between journalists looking for a story, opposition members looking to damage your party, factional opponents looking for an advantage, not to mention all the people you have to piss off to get a seat, politicians probably have as many enemies as any other profession.

If there is a hint that you are vulnerable, people are going to seek that out.

None of the reports I've read today explain why all this has happened today, but it seems likely that someone has been looking around.  For whatever reason, Cansdell has seen the writing on the wall and jumped before the inevitable.

The fact that all the media outlets appear to have been caught by surprise suggests to me that it may not have been the media that was on the scent.  If it had been the Labor party, you can assume that they would have been better prepared to take advantage of the situation, and would have positioned him accordingly.

We may never know the full story, and it may be that someone with an interest in minimising damage to the government found out, and convinced him to leave now before someone else found out.

The dumbest thing of all is that this has all happened over what is a (comparatively) minor matter - the loss of a drivers licence.

Cansdell apparently asked another person to sign a false statutory declaration so that they could take some demerit points that should have been allocated to him.

This may well be fairly common practice in the community, but that doesn't change a thing - it is illegal and is punishable by imprisonment.  Moreover, it is potentially easy to prove, and it involves other people - essentially, too many people are going to know about this for it to stay secret forever.

The consequence of Cansdell leaving parliament is of course a by-election.  This is often a disaster for a sitting government, but should be a comparatively minor event.

Anthony Green as written an excellent blog post on this issue.

In short, the seat is held with a margin of 31.4% over Labor and 23.3% over Williamson, an independant.  Cansdell polled 62.8% on first preferences.

Taken from Green's outstanding Election Analysis

Labor are still on the nose - there will be some hangover from the Carr/Iemma/Rees/Keanelly government when we return to the polls in 2015, let alone only 6 months after O'Farrell's coronation.

There might ordinarily be a chance for an Independant to step in and sweep up some voters who are angry at having had to return to the polls so soon, but as Green notes on his blog, the seat is not far from Rob Oakeshott's seat of Lyne, and it is likely that the new National candidate will not be slow to remind the electorate.

Oakeshott's seat of Lyne

Cansdell's former seat of Clarence

So, a loss of the seat is unlikely.  What damage to the O'Farrell government?  Probably not a great deal - allegations of corruption and incompetence tend to have a cumulative and exponential effect, and Robertson's statement below is probably a bit over the top.

From SMH

The fact that the Stoner was able to announce that Cansdell was out of the parliament when the news broke meant that he could say the following:

Also from SMH

It is also interesting to note that Cansdell has already reported the matter to police, and expects to be prosecuted.  I think we can conclude from this that the person who has confronted him with the evidence has insisted he do this - otherwise surely he would have resigned to spend more time with the family (or used one of the other usual excuses).

I have no idea whether Cansdell should have been preselected in the first place.  Perhaps all this has come completely out of the blue, and Stoner truly had no reason to suspct that this kind of behaviour may have been on the cards.

But the real question I want answered is this - who pushed him?  Who had this knowledge, and insisted not only that he stand down, but also that he reveal the reason?  Who stands to gain the most from that?

Hopefully in the fullness of time we'll find out.

A Super Situation

The Daily Telegraph revealed on Wednesday that new Liberal MP for Rockdale John Flowers may have to resign.

The story (incorrectly) stated that Mr Flowers "was elected while receiving a disability pension, in breach of the constitution." In fact, the section 13B of the NSW Constitution Act reads as follows:

(1) A person:

(a) holding an office of profit under the Crown, or

(b) having a pension from the Crown during pleasure or for a term of years,

shall not, if he is elected as a Member of either House of Parliament, be capable of sitting and voting as a Member of the House to which he is elected, and his seat as a Member shall become vacant, after the expiration of the period commencing with his election and ending on the expiration of 7 sitting days of that House after notice of his holding that office or having that pension has been given to that House in accordance with its Standing Rules and Orders, unless that House has previously passed a resolution indicating that it is satisfied that that person has ceased to hold that office or, as the case may be, that the right of that person to that pension has ceased or is suspended while he is a Member of that House.

So, you can be elected if you are in receipt of a pension.  However, upon being elected, if you do not give notice to the house that you are no longer in receipt of the pension before 7 sitting days have passed, your seat becomes vacant.

John Flowers is not in trouble yet.  But he will be soon.

The difficulty is this: he can't do the obvious thing and just give up the pension.

Mr Flowers is in receipt of a disability pension that he gained "when he was a teacher in 1997".

I'm not quite clear on what the disability was, or how it is that the disability prevents him from teaching but does not prevent him acting as a Rockdale councillor and mayor, or for that matter campaigning and being elected as a member of the Lower House, but there may well be a reasonable explanation.

I'm no superannuation expert, but I think that the relevant part of the Superannuation Act 1916 is section 52E.  It seems to suggest (at subsection (4)(b)), that a person can have the pension awarded for life. Presumably, this is the situation John Flowers is in.

The relevant provision contained in that section regarding removal of the pension is under subsection (6) which indicates that, if the SAS Trustee Corporation is of the view that the person has ceased to be "physically or mentally incapable of performing the duties of any employment that… would be reasonable for the person to undertake," then the pension should cease.

What has apparently happened is that Flowers has sought permission from the State Superannuation Board to have his pension frozen.

Exactly what power they may have to do this is not something I know anything about, but I suppose they can do these things.

Now, the Government has an advice on this from Crown Solicitors, no doubt written by someone who knows far more about all this stuff than me.  

But, to me, surely the obvious solution is for Flowers to point out to the SAS Trustee Corporation that he is no longer "physically or mentally incapable of performing the duties of any employment that… would be reasonable for the person to undertake."

The difficulty may be that this may mean that he loses this pension for life - and it would seem that he is likely to struggle to hold this seat in 4 years, and would therefore be loathe to risk being left with no income 4 years from now.

The surprising thing is that, as Luke Foley put it, "It beggars belief the Liberal Party would not have known about Mr Flowers' circumstances." So why was nothing done about it until now?

Surely a plan would not have been too much to ask for?  The whole thing could have been hosed down by someone from the Coalition being able to say "It's OK!  We have it under control!"

Instead we have the Daily Telegraph running with the byline "The O'Farrell Government is hoping that a State Superannuation Board ruling next week will avoid a by-election just one month into its term," which is an entirely fair assessment.

This must have come up when he was vetted.  If this becomes a "thing" - the Coalition has no one to blame for it but themselves.