I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of the Nationals, and I thought I would play through some scenarios regarding their future.
When considering the losses of seats through redistribution and election losses in New South Wales, and the creation of the LNP in Queensland, it seems quite plausible that the party could fall below a threshold where it loses relevance to the federal Coalition within the next decade.
The Nationals today hold nine seats in the House of Representatives. In addition they have four Senators: two each from New South Wales and Queensland. Regarding the Senate, it appears that the Nationals will continue indefinitely to maintain two seats in New South Wales, while the last I heard the plan in Queensland was for Barnaby Joyce to take Ron Boswell’s seat when he loses his campaign for re-election in 2010 in the fourth position on the ticket. In Victoria, the Nationals will be #2 on the Coalition ticket. Roughly, this means the Nationals will continue to hold 3-5 seats in the Senate (1-2 in NSW, 1 in Victoria, 1-2 in Queensland) for the foreseeable future.
The House of Representatives is much more interesting. Let’s first of all look at the overall number of Nationals in the House, state by state. There are no serious prospects for the Nationals to win seats in Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia. While they had previously threatened Wilson Tuckey in O’Connor, the WA redistribution has ended this possibility.
In Victoria, the Nationals hold two seats. Mallee is one of the safest seats in the country, and last year’s by-election showed that the Nationals’ hold on Gippsland is firm. Yet the Victorian Nationals have no prospects of gaining seats.
Things get interesting in Queensland and New South Wales. In Queensland, the Nationals hold three seats: Hinkler, Maranoa and Wide Bay. The party lost two seats to the ALP in 2007: Dawson and the new seat of Flynn. Both of these seats are now held on margins of about 2%. While it is possible that the Queensland seat count could climb as high as five, it’s more likely in the current climate that this number could fall to two, with Hinkler less than 2% away from being won by the ALP. Wide Bay is also vulnerable in the medium term.
New South Wales is the most dismal case for the Nationals. A decade ago, at the 1998 election, the party won Page, Richmond, Cowper, Lyne, New England, Gwydir, Parkes, Riverina and Farrer, for a total of nine seats. Since that time the party has lost six of these seats and gained Calare: losing two to independents, two to the ALP, one to the Liberals and one to a redistribution.
The NSW Nationals now hold four federal seats. They have almost been pushed out of the north-east of the state, losing three of their four coastal seats as well as New England. On top of that, the redistribution has now put two of those four seats within reach of the ALP, with both Cowper and Calare sitting on a 1.2% margin.
If the ALP managed a uniform swing of 1.5% at the next federal election, it will knock off Nationals in Cowper, Calare and Hinkler, reducing the Nationals to six seats in the House of Representatives. This is less than a third of the nineteen seats the party won in 1996.
Of course, some of these seats could be recovered, particularly those in Queensland. I tend to think the Nationals will find it much harder to recover the seats on the NSW north coast. Yet the ALP isn’t their only threat, the Liberals are also on the hunt.
It’s fascinating to read the Liberal Party’s submission to the NSW redistribution. They explicitly called for the merger of National-held Riverina with Liberal-held Hume. Such a merger would have forced the sitting members into a contest, one in which you would have to tip the chances of the Liberal, Alby Schulz, who has had previous success wresting seats off Nationals. Like with the neighbouring seat of Farrer, the Liberals are poised to seize Riverina upon the retirement of the sitting MP, or through the effects of redistributions, which will continue to drag the seat closer to south-east NSW, whose rural seats are contested by Liberals, not Nationals.
This suggests that, without too much imagination, you can see the Nationals being reduced to only holding Parkes in NSW. This would leave the Queensland party as the dominant force in the party. NSW has been dominant in recent decades. Every Nationals leader since the retirement of (Victorian) John McEwen in 1971 was from NSW, up until Queenslander Warren Truss took over following the 2007 election.
As an aside, it’s interesting to note that the seats of the last six Nationals leaders have been lost to the party (being Richmond, New England, Gwydir, Lyne and Farrer). In contrast, the only seat in the Australian parliament to have been occupied by an ALP leader, and not held by the ALP today, is Wide Bay (held by Andrew Fisher), although two other early seats have long since been abolished. The Liberal Party no longer holds the seats of Billy Sneddon (Bruce), Billy McMahon (Lowe) and, of course, John Howard (Bennelong).
The possibility of Queensland dominating the federal Nationals brings us to the question of the Liberal National Party. It’s not quite clear how new LNP members of Parliament will fit in with the federal parties. While it’s safe to assume most, if not all, sitting Queensland MPs will keep their loyalty to their pre-existing party throughout their careers, you will soon see federal MPs elected without any allegiance to Liberal or National. Like the CLP in the Northern Territory, I am assuming they will get a choice. It seems reasonable to expect that those who would have previously filled Nationals seats are much more likely to choose to join the federal Liberals than the reverse. Being a member of the Liberal party room allows you a say in deciding a potential Prime Minister, and ultimately there is more potential for career advancement.
So after considering these possibilities, the question becomes: what happens to the Nationals? If their seat numbers in New South Wales remain low (say 2-3) and Queensland rural MPs gravtiate to the bigger conservative party, can the party survive? We’re talking about a scenario which could see the party falling to below five seats nationally within the next decade, as new Queensland MPs choose the Liberals and the population in western NSW falls, pulling Riverina and Calare into more urbanised areas and away from Nationals control. At what point do the federal Liberals decide it is no longer worth their while to tolerate the Nationals? Such a decision would see the Nationals no longer capable of electing Senators in New South Wales and Victoria, and rarely in a position to hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives. Can the party being deprived of power in such a way, or will we see the Queensland merger model extended across the country?
“I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of the Nationals”
Shame.
I like the fact that Nigel Scullion is deputy leader of The Nationals and he’s not even a member of the party.
So if you think about it, 3/5 Nationals in the Senate don’t belong to any organisation called “The Nationals.
I would tend to think they will end up merging federally, but the picture is complicated by the different situations at state level. The Victorian and WA Nationals, although now in Coalition with the Libs, enjoyed better electoral fortunes by fighting their last state elections as separate parties, and there’s of course the curious case of Karlene Maywald in SA.
In the short term I wouldn’t dismiss their chances of regaining some seats lost to Labor when the pendulum swings back, and seats lost to independents when they retire, it’s losing seats to the Libs that doesn’t seem to be able to be undone, and the Libs of course may snare some of those seats ahead of them.
Don’t forget to consider what’s happening at state level when considering the Nats prospects as well. Everyone writes off the Nats on the north coast whilst ignoring their performance at the state level. Page and Richmond are noteworthy as the only two seats held by Labor federally in areas where all the state seats are held by the Coalition anywhere in Australia (before the last federal election, Richmond held that title on its own for the 8 months after Labor lost Tweed at the state election). Comparing individual booth results from federal and state elections shows the full picture of some quite wide disparities in voting patterns between federal and state level.
Also noteworthy about the north coast is the relatively poor performance of the Libs last time they contested these seats (Richmond & Page 1996, Cowper 2001, Lyne 1993). Only in the case of Lyne did the Libs outpoll the Nats across a significant number of booths. It will be interesting if the Libs also field candidates in Richmond and Page next time to see how far they’ve improved. I’ll be surprised if they don’t at least contest Richmond, was surprised they didn’t last time.
Geoff Provest, the Nat who won Tweed at the 2007 state election, addressed the debate about whether the Nats or Libs should’ve contested the seat by describing himself in campaign material as the ‘National Liberal candidate for Tweed’.
Ben, I love your blog. And yeah, it’s because you’re the only person I know who would start a sentence with “I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of the Nationals.” In a sick kinda way I find it hilarious. Great post.
Ben, I’m not convinced that would be correct for NSW. In a election with a 2004 result I believe the Nationals would stand a good chance of getting ahead of the third Liberal candidate thanks to the preferences of the right-wing micro parties and since the Liberals would still preference the Nationals ahead of Labor and the Greens their votes would then elect the Nationals candidate.
GhostWhoVotes, the Liberals and Nationals run a joint ticket.
Oz, I was referring to the scenario in which the Liberals dissolve their coalition with the Nationals, forcing them to run their own Senate tickets.
I guess it is possible they could achieve that in a good year. But it is highly unlikely.
If the Libs ran a seperate Senate ticket to the Nats, I’m confident they would shut the Nats out. The Nats got 7.9% in the HoRs in NSW at the last Fed election, and I imagine that the number of conservatives who would vote Liberal but had to vote National is higher than vica versa. It would be close for the third conservative seat, but I would tip the Libs (though of course the Nats would be angry and organise preferences with Fred Nile types, which would increase the chance of a deranged-right being elected).
The real question is at what point do the Libs decide that their partnership isn’t worth as much as challenging in seats like Richmond, which I don’t think the Nats can ever win again.
Anyway, good post Ben. I can’t stand Nats, I’m seriously considering going to Calare or Cowper to hand out HTV cards next election. The Libs would definately do much better in Richmond today, the Tweed has changed a lot since 1996 so that it’s basically just an extention of the Gold Coast now (tragically).
Hamish, definitely agree with you on Richmond. Nats aren’t going to win it back, but Libs still potentially could at some point in the future.
I wonder what will happen in Calare. If Cobb doesn’t contest it and it thus becomes an open seat will the Libs run there as well? They beat the Nats into fourth in Calare in 2004.
If you’re picking a seat to go to help defeat a Nat next year I’d go for Calare. Despite the margin Cowper is still very difficult territory for Labor to win. Labor’s best shot was last time, and they screwed it up when they dumped their original candidate after upgrading the seat to winnable and deciding that they apparently didn’t want that candidate becoming an MP!
Oh, and I meant to add that the Nats reps vote definitely wouldn’t hold up in a separate Senate ticket. As well as the people voting Nat because of no Lib candidate, there’s also a fair few Nats voters who would be voting for the christian right, shooters, et al in the Senate already. I’d guess the best they’d do with a separate ticket is about 4%, which doesn’t put them out of contention entirely, but everything else has to align in their favour.
The Nationals are starting to hold open preselections from around 2011 … similar to the US primary system … at the very least I believe this will reduce the threat of strong independents and if they’re lucky it will spark a few populist fires that could win them neighbouring seats. It’s an interesting experiment and if they carry through with it, I think a very rewarding one. However, I doubt the capacity for entrenched parliamentary parties to engage in real reform, so I bet they’ll hobble it in some way!
I would say it would increase the chance of an Indi challenging. If two candidates split the Nat base and one just wins, the other could stand a great chance.
It’s not a bad idea though.
Who’s actually going to bother voting in an open primary to select a Nationals candidate? I reckon the whole thing will be hijacked by some well-organised fringe group and the winning candidate ends up being someone unelectable, or someone the party doesn’t want. As Hamish says, it would probably increase the chances of more Ind challenges, with losing primary candidates having boosted their public profile through that campaign going on to split the vote at the election. I don’t see how open primaries are suited to the Australian context, but it will be fascinating to see how it plays out if they go through with it.
I disagree, Nick. I think in cases where there is a clear party favourite, that person will come out on top. The cases where independents have emerged from Nationals preselections tend to be where a less popular candidate comes out ahead of a much more popular candidate through the internal machinations of the party.
While a losing candidate may have raised their profile and built up their base, the winning candidate would have done that much more so. It’s extremely rare in the US that a candidate defeated in a primary comes back in the general, and when they do it is usually because they are much more welcome in the opposing party.
Let us hope they become extinct!
Ben, yes, probably unlikely that a defeated primary candidate would actually win the election, but they could take enough votes off the endorsed candidate to cost them the seat to someone else. Remember that under OPV a lot of votes will exhaust.
I stand by my belief that it’s not going to work, but there are so many possible scenarios that it will be fascinating to watch.
I just had another thought about this as well. How will political donations laws apply to the primary? Existing laws wouldn’t apply at all would they?
Alright, so I hadn’t caught up with the news from Totnes. If the UK Tories can get a quarter of eligible voters to participate in an open primary, then maybe it could work in Aus too.
The problem I see with open primaries is that you will see increasing policy convergence between party candidates. While this might seem appropriate (the public getting what they want) it equally means the end of the party as we know it. Essentially this is policy by public vote, and not one directed by the party – for instance, what if the Greens adopted the open primary, with people nominating with a range of ideas. Presumably the person closest to the political center would win. All well and good, except that party members may well have fought for policies that were politically unpalatable at present, only to see them lost as candidates campaign to the center. Climate change 10 years ago would be such an example. More corrosively, we would see an increasing conservatisation (hmmm, not a word I know, but lets go with it…) of political candidates and politics in general as candidates sought to minimise policy diffrences between themselves and prevailing issues in the media. This is not much different from how parties and candidates battle it out now in the media, but they can at least count on a block of voters who identify with a parties ideals to build upon.
Unfortunately, I would forsee the end of policy articulation between groups of MPs (otherwise know as parties) and groups of electors (otherwise know as a policy constituency) disappear – to the detriment of good policy outcomes – without any real increase in democracy (other than a popularity poll).
So, for me a closed primary would be the only form of this kind of candidate selection that I would consider, but that opens up a different set of issues about voter registration. That may be appropriate for places with voluntary registration and voting, but what about countries with compulsory registration? If you sign up just after school do you have to pick a party then? What happens as you grow older (potentially changing your party allegiences) – do you have to re-register? And so on.
On the whole I don’t see this as the best way forward for candidate selection. I do see open ballots of party members for candidate selection as the best option (not always practiced by parties!). This has its own attendant issues about selection of candidates with problematic pasts or policy ideas wildly variant from the party, but at least it preserves internal party democracy.
A brilliant post, Ben; I always feel guilty when I go so long without checking your blog, as it’s consistently excellent.
This is something I’ve wondered about for a while now, if only because the Nats make it so hard to describe Australia’s party system to foreigners as ‘a two-party system’. I’m more optimistic (pessimistic?) about their chances than you are, in that I think there is ground for a Joyce-ish party to make real inroads. Western Australia is, of course, the ideal, but even South Australia presents a model. The Coalition is, I think, doomed.
A split is more likely than outright merger or secession — one faction goes down with the ship, another — maybe without organisational continuity, instead just banding together former disaffected Nats — fights a rearground action from existing seats. The Nats could evolve into something like the ICAN idea Peter Andren was pushing, a network of loosely-linked independents who campaign as socially conservative, economically populist ‘anti-politicians’.
Of course, my only real grounds for all of the above is that there’s a significant constituency for that kind of politician, broad enough to encompass both Andren and Hanson, and that if it’s not being represented at the moment the Nats might do it as well as anyone. I talk more about that in the following article:
http://www.fabian.org.au/1115.asp
I’m not sure how you describe Peter Andren as socially conservative. Windsor and Katter absolutely, and Katter’s take on ICAN did have more of a policy or philosophical agenda behind it, whereas Andren seemed merely interested in providing basic info to encourage other prospective independent candidates irrespective of their ideology (perhaps he was already secretly planning his Senate bid and was hoping it would help find more reps candidates who could support him).
@Nick C:
I do apologise if I gave that impression: Andren is a personal hero of mine. But what I meant was that he draws from a socially conservative constituency, even socially conservative voters who might otherwise vote for Labor. (Especially in Bathurst and Lithgow.) Think ‘Calwell Labor’: anti-economic rationalist, anti-multicultural, and divorced from both major parties. Andren never pandered to this community on social grounds, but much of his commentary on economic issues fell into this basic field.
And the relevance to ICAN is: that independents who draw upon this constituency are most likely to succeed, since a) these voters are disproportionately rural, and rural voters, more likely to live in small communities, seem to vote more upon personal ties and community sentiment than along the party line, and b) this constituency, although sizeable, isn’t particularly well-suited to Labor or Liberal.
[There are no serious prospects for the Nationals to win seats in Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia.]
Tell that to Clive Palmer. He’ll be bankrolling the Nationals’ campaign in WA at the next election with the express objective of winning the party a Senate seat.
[While they had previously threatened Wilson Tuckey in O’Connor, the WA redistribution has ended this possibility.]
Probably. And yet, if you transfer the booth results from the state election to the post-redistribution O’Connor (which I know you shouldn’t do because of sitting member factors, but what the hell), you get Nationals 38.0 per cent, Liberal 25.3 per cent, Labor 20.7 per cent. There would also have been pretty much a three-way Liberal-National-Labor tie on the primary vote in Durack.
I think Ben might’ve been a bit too pessimistic about the Nats chances of knocking off Tuckey – I wouldn’t write them off so quickly. The idea of them winning a Senate seat seems laughable though.
I guess the cautionary note is to recall that at the last election the SA Nats made a lot of noises about winning Barker, but it turned out to be a total fizzer.
All of you who thought the Nats are completely useless, well, if they can mount a strong challenge to Tuckey they may still be useful for something.
Ben, just a correction for you.
You wrote ‘it’s interesting to note that the seats of the last six Nationals leaders have been lost to the party’.
I was just looking at this topic again to answer a question someone asked me about the Nats, and I noticed that it’s not just their last six leaders’ seats that have been lost to the party, in fact, the seats of all of their past leaders except Earle Page (Cowper) have been lost to the party.
I can’t help but wonder whether the bias shown in comments is against the Nationals or against rural Australia.
I’d like you to point out where there is such a ‘bias’ (a ridiculous concept anyway – we’re not the ABC) against the Nationals. I don’t see how pointing out the downward spiral of support for the Nationals is a ‘bias against rural Australia’.
Senex, I would suggest that any perceived ‘bias’ is against the Nationals. But bias is the wrong word – if some of us seem take a jaundiced view about the Nationals maybe its because in the eastern states they have been less than inspiring. Brendan Grylls in WA seems to have taken them in a different political direction there, and Kaylene Maywald has broken the Lib-Nat nexus in SA as well. As for Tuckey, I think they will have a chance against him – the royalties scheme seems to have done them some good, and Grylls is well liked from what I know. I also suspect that the ALP & Greens might run with a view to assisting in unseating Tuckey (always fun to tip the troglodytes out) – maybe there’s a deal in there somewhere? I say this because I would have thought the ALP would have had no chance in O’Connor (and a much lessened chance in Durack than in Kalgoorlie pre-redistribution).
Ben, I merely posed the question. It is often an idea that gets conflated in politics, between Nationals representatives and regional and rural Australia. I would also like to point out despite popular ‘right wing’ opinion there is very little bias on the ABC.
Stewart J, I’m not sure what anyone here has against the word ‘bias’ but a jaundiced view is often synonymous with a bias view. I, however, find myself in complete agreement with people’s disillusionment with the vast majority of National party members due to a seeming lack of flexibility in their positions on issues.
In the electorate of Hume, I often consider Alby Schultz a National based on his behaviour, despite him being a member of the Liberal party.
Commentary on the Nats does often veer into misunderstandings about rural voters, and indeed, misunderstandings about the reasons why voters for any party vote for that party, sometimes there’s an underlying degree of what could feel like ‘bias’ against rural Australia, but usually it’s just misunderstanding. There is one commenter on this thread whom I do think misunderstands rural Australia, but I didn’t want to get into what would’ve been a very lengthy debate on the subject.
Generally speaking though I think the analysis of the Nats has been quite fair, and there’s been nothing which could really he called ‘bias’ against rural Australia.
Ben Re: your comment:
“while the last I heard the plan in Queensland was for Barnaby Joyce to take Ron Boswell’s seat when he loses his campaign for re-election in 2010 in the fourth position on the ticket.”
I have no idea where you heard that. The word I am getting is the Barnaby will stand at number two on a joint Ticket. Sitting members will then be given a chance to re-contest and the selection will go 2 x libs 1 x Nat thereafter. In a few short years the merged entity will elect their own candidates as a merged entity.
Barnaby Joyce would now be the most popular Senator in Qld and if the libs want to hold any credibiity at all they wont be placing him fourth in the selection.
As leader of the Nationals Senate team and with his popularity is only fitting that he take the number two on the ticket.
The problem for the Queensland LNP is that they have four incumbents when at the most only three can be re-elected. That is where I heard that Joyce would take Boswell’s seat.
Tuckey’s one of the best things the left has going for them. While it may be fun to see him lose his seat, if it’s only to a Nat I think that given the embarrasment that Tuckey gives to the conservative side, it’s better to see him hold on.
Boswell was suppose to retire to make way for the young David Goodwin.
This was to have happened prior to March this year to achieve this. I think his seat will now be sought by one of the outgoing liberals in the 2010. This would keep inline with the 2 x lib 1 x Nat rotation with serving members to take priority.
This is an interesting post, and I congratulate Ben on starting this discussion.
In terms of the Senate, I think we won’t see the Nats get anywhere above 6 Senators unless they manage to continue growth in WA, or there is a double dissolution there, or they miraculously rebuild the party in SA or Tasmania. 1 Victorian, 2 NSW (though if the swing is high enough, Nash might be motivated to run her own ticket if Coalition #3 becomes tenuous), 2 Qld, and 1 NT (by convention, the CLP Senator sits with the Nats, and Scullion is party deputy leader).
In terms of the lower house, if they go below the current 9 then they will risk losing critical mass, and that will be the end at a federal level. Going into 2010 I think they will hold all existing seats; Hinkler is the only question mark but Paul Neville looks like continuing and the alcopops issue would have reinforced his base there. Flynn and Dawson are good chances to fall with the ETS and James Bidgood being a nutter, and if Hajnal Ban is preselected for Wright she’d sit with the Nats. It’d also be interesting to see who is selected to run in Leichhardt, if its a former Lib or Nat. So I’d say Qld offers a potential 3-4 seats in the medium term.
In Victoria when Sharman Stone retires you’d think they would win Murray as long as they don’t run a dud which is why they lost Black Jack’s seat in 1996. All the state seats are heavily National, and they’d be an outside chance in Wannon if the Libs stuff up their pre-selection.
As mentioned earlier Durack and O’Connor in WA are good prospects. For NSW, the challenge is to get back seats like Richmond, Page, Hume, Farrer, New England, Lyne maybe even Eden-Monaro (they usually hold the state seat). If they adopted the WA strategy of targeting mining/industrial areas, then maybe anti-ETS campaigns in the Illawarra and Hunter regions might get them new supporters and votes, though winning would be difficult.
When Alby Schultz retires I think they have a good chance in Hume, especially if they choose Fiona Nash with a view to having her in the Cabinet and potential leader as she’s from the area. Lyne is Oakeshott’s for life, and Windsor might retire soon so they’d be a chance there. Sussan Ley isn’t overly liked in Farrer, so who knows what will happen there down the track.
Basically they are at the point where particularly in NSW they need to be more aggressive and courageous in running in regional seats they haven’t held for a while or traditionally haven’t had to broaden the base.
In a 150 seat house they should aim to have 15 MHRs and 6 Senators, which is roughly 10% of the Federal Parliament.
The Nats will never again hold Eden-Monaro or Farrer. I suspect not Richmond either.
And they won’t ever hold Page again if I have anything to do with it…
Murray is a definite possibility, but I gather the Nats have never won back a seat that they lost to the Libs, so it’ll be ‘historic.’
The Nats in NSW are being driven inland; their hold on towns like Coffs and Port Mac is dissapearing. Good riddance.
Interesting story here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/30/2670941.htm
In O’Connor (Wilson Tuckey’s seat), the Nats are running the same candidate who came fairly close to winning the state seat of Kalgoorlie last year (ex-ALP minister won as an independent). They seem to be trying to make Royalties for Regions a national thing, and use as an example GST revenues being taken from WA to the eastern states. Never mind any other parties, that’s gonna go down like a lead balloon with NSW / Vic Nats. Should be interesting to see how this goes.
Surely they won’t win back seats lost to the Liberals. The coalition agreement probably prevents them contesting those seats in the first place.
The interesting thing in Page is the parochial Clarence Valley vote, the effect of which can be seen in the 2001 and 2004 results, when Labor had a candidate from there in the first case, and one from the Lismore area on the second occasion. The size of the swing to Labor in the Clarence Valley booths in 2007 was quite surprising given their candidate was again from Lismore and the new Nat candidate was from the Clarence Valley. Labor did seem to be assisted by favourable coverage from the local media in that area – indeed the former editor of the Grafton Daily Examiner is now Janelle’s CoS, and issues such as Turnbull’s dam plan and funding for Grafton Hospital would’ve helped Labor a bit too, but I do tend to think it also had to do with voters focusing more on the choice of PM rather than local factors to a much greater extent than in the preceding elections.
Without voters feeling that impetuous to vote for Rudd next time, the focus of voters minds may turn back to local candidates. Last I heard Richie Williamson, breakfast radio presenter and Mayor of Clarence Valley Council, was still the hot tip to be the next Nationals candidate, and allegedly being groomed for the job. If it is him, I’d imagine he’d bring their vote back up at least a couple of percentage points down there, and the result could be line-ball.
The Northern Rivers Greens have already publicly announced that unless certain policy commitments are met they won’t be recommending preferences to Labor, provoking plenty of controversy. It might’ve been less controversial had the decision been presented as part of a negotiating process rather than an ‘ultimatum’, but in any case I’m already on the record as saying that I think Green voters will preference Labor in a similar proportion regardless of what the HTVs say, so I don’t know how much effect that might have on the result.
I’d certainly rank Page up there with Robertson as the Labor seats in NSW which have the biggest chance of swinging back to the Coalition in 2010, but Labor will probably just hold on.
Observer: the Libs would have to really stuff up in Wannon for the Nats to be a chance. The corresponding state seats are Polwarth and South West Coast, and they’re both Liberal. Murray would be the Nats’ main bet in Victoria.
Interesting post Nick, I didn’t know that about the Examiner Ed.
With compulsary preferencing Green HTV cards aren’t as important as OPV. I’d be dissapointed if the Greens didn’t preference Labor in Page given that the other choice is a Nat who wouldn’t even pretend to act on CC.
Likewise with state seats Lismore and Ballina. Both have fairly equal Green/Labor votes, but the lack of preferencing between the two have seen the Nat members have huge margins and basically ignore the areas and put in very limited campaign funds (and marginal seat pork barrelling) to the area, choosing instead Tweed and Clarence. I think the Greens and Labor have close to an equal chance of coming second in Lissie and Ballina at the next State election; and they should preference each other in the name of keeping the Nat margin down and keeping the local member honest.
Hamish, they did preference each other in Lismore in 2007, and in fact the rate of flow of Greens prefs to Labor was the highest in the state (by a significant margin as I recall). Elsewhere in the state I think there was only on average about a 15% difference in the rate of preference flow between the seats where they did preference Labor and those where they ran an open ticket. Federally, under full preferential, the rate of preference flow to Labor was in the same range in Tasmania, where they ran an open ticket, to what it was on the mainland.
The problem with Lismore and Ballina is twofold. Firstly, the Nats primary vote is too high, and secondly Labor hasn’t bothered actually mounting a serious campaign in either seat for a long time. Apparently local ALP branches haven’t even wanted to field candidates at the last two elections.
I certainly think Green voters in Page will preference Labor regardless of what the HTV says, but that doesn’t mean the Greens shouldn’t make the symbolic gesture of demonstrating their independence by not making a preference recommendation. Anyway, I’m not getting into my own views on this specific topic beyond what I’ve already said publicly previously, and I’m confining my commentary to what is already on the public record on this subject.
Accepting the fact that the Nats only run in country seats they’re not doing too badly at state elections – they hold the lion’s share of country seats in the NSW parliament and seven of the eight north coast seats. Contrast to the ALP who don’t even bother with serious candidates in country seats any more.
City based commentators struggle to understand the Nats (particularly the idea of a party that can’t be defined as part of a left-right spectrum). This ignorance exemplifies the reason why country seats are going to keep electing members who do not belong to the Liberal or Labor parties – because the metropolitan leadership of these parties struggles to understand rural issues. For all those wishing for the demise of the Nats, rest assured that their replacements will not be Labor or Liberal but local independents like Tony Windsor or Bob Katter (who was “too National Party for the National Party”). Seats like Parkes aren’t going to be coming back to the major parties any time soon.
Just for the record Ben Alby Schultz would have had a snowflake’s chance in hell of beating Kay Hull had the Bradman proposal got up – Kay is one of the most popular members in the country and Alby struggles to beat second-rate Labor candidates.
Why can’t the Nats be defined as part of a left-right spectrum any more than any other party can’t be?
http://www.northernstar.com.au/story/2009/09/16/libs-may-field-page-candidate/
Will be an interesting test if it happens, to see whether the Nats are at the stage of slipping behind the Libs on the north coast yet.
Nick, they said that about Page and Richmond last election but didn’t stand in either. Given that Saffin and Elliott are both odds on to hold, I’d be surprised if the Libs will hurt that relationship with the Nats for a shot – much more likely to wait another term to have a shot when the seat is winnable. Still, if the Libs do stand I would put them at about 30/70 to do better than the Nats in Page, and maybe 60/40 in Richmond. I put the Libs odds as fairly low in Page because of the last time the Libs contested page back in 1996 they only pulled 16% to the Nats 36%. (Admittedly Richmond in 1996 was similar, but the Tweed has changed a lot more than Lismore/Ballina/Grafton.)
Any guesses on who would run for the Libs in Page or Richmond?
Hamish, yes, you’re right, they did say something similar before the last election, and I heard that in Richmond they didn’t run because they didn’t get any nominations – not sure if that’s true though.
No idea who likely candidates could be, but there are a few Libs around, especially in the Tweed, where there’s even a Young Libs branch, or was a couple of years ago at least. They’re still very thin on the ground compared to the Nats though, unless they’re just keeping a lower profile.
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