Parkes – Australia 2022

Good chance this seat loses Dubbo in the next redistribution to either Calare or Riverina. If it does it won’t change the complexation of this seat as it is rock solid National. Curtin/Chifley Labor were competitive in these parts but that is long gone now. Today’s Labor have a better chance at winning every single seat in Melbourne than winning here.

The only bright spot for Labor would be an improvement in Broken Hill as I believe Labor did well in that area prior to the 2011 NSW state election. But to win this seat Dubbo and Broken Hill are not enough for Labor.

Negligible swing.

Daniel
I like to know how you see this “”Good chance this seat loses Dubbo in the next redistribution to either Calare or Riverina.””??. Have you accounted for at least 50-60000 voters being infused into Calare from Hunter ?. Where else can this overflow go ?
BTW i have no idea how the AEC will (or indeed won’t !!) deal with this.
cheers wd

Whilst you never know what a redistribution committee might come up with, western NSW is likely to undergo only modest boundary changes at the next redistribution. Dubbo is – by some distance – the largest population centre in Parkes. Moving it would be incredibly disruptive; and on the current enrolment figures I can see no justification for it.

Why did the LDP do so well here in 2019? Highest LDP primary I’ve seen in any lower house seat.

My guess would be rural frustration at the drought and water management issues. This was the perfect environment for major backlash but because ONP or Shooters didn’t run, the protest vote was spread amongst three candidates (LDP, IND, UAP). Still, these guys collectively managed over 20% of the vote!

In a seat with similar issues at play – Calare – the Shooters got 17% of the vote alone; the combined major party vote was only 67% there compared to 74% in Parkes.

David
A lot depends on whether Page moves west into N England. If that happens everything changes.

Part of the reason was name confusion with the Libs.

winediamond,

Upon closer inspection, I can see I did underestimate how much the north coast surplus will affect the western NSW seats. (The point about Dubbo stands though.) The most obvious outlet is the upper Hunter, and it may not be the only one. That will have a domino effect through some of the rural seats.

David
Yes. it will be really interesting won’t it ? One of the best solutions might be to restore the original federation seat of Gwddir in between NE, & Parkes. Or to name change NE at least.
cheers WD

logic would suggest Broken Hill And Dubbo remain in the same seat especially as bh is losing population ….. Page and Richmond should remain Coastal due to community of interest…… On state figures seats of Dubbo and Barwon were problems for the Nationals Barwon…. sff and Dubbo extremely close to an independent….. this suggests Rural disquiet.

Mick
Depends on WHOSE logic . Dealing with the travel distances of Broken Hill was a problem for the ministerial ambitions of Susan Ley. I think you’ll find that was the real reason for BH being returned to Parkes. Coulton is such an uninspiring “plodder” the best thing to do with him is to keep him “in transit” !!.

Therefore he is best suited to the largest NSW electorate
Don’t agree about Page. No reason why Tenterfield shouldn’t be in Page its much the same distance to Kyogle as Glen innes. Community of interest is rural
cheers wd

Unfortunately that’s the problem with the large outback seats is that the population, when it does increase, is doing so at a miniscule rate. The only way to have the “communities of interest” issue fixed is smaller electorates (i.e. 85,000 voters or less) which would in turn require changes to the size of the Senate. How do we know there’s going to be a redistribution anyway??

A redistribution must take place in 2023 (at the latest) due to the seven year rule.

Susan Ley;s electorate started at Albury and mainly followed the Murray River…. then up We go to Broken Hill………made as much sense as udders on a bull…. now much more compact. Also it makes more sense to have a major country town in an electorate….. Eg Forrest…..Bunbury, The solution of course to large electorates is to increase the number of seats….. The numbers changed I think in 1949 and 1984

Ryan Spencer
Agreed. The smaller electorate debate has been had here. Ben made/ issued a “dictum” which sort of settled it….! However i still lead the “resistance”!! against more politicians!!.
There was an interesting proposal in the last NT redistribution which was to split everything in two, including Darwin. By extension say amalgamating Maranoa, & Groom , or Herbert, & Kennedy & then splitting them in two might have merit.
cheers wd

yeah Mick this even extends to urban areas; Swan now contains High Wycombe, Forrestfield and Maida Vale, which are casually on the other side of the airport.

Could this end up as an IND vs Nat contest? Labor is weak here and while the Nats will hold, Howe might have a better shot.

WD I agree you can not predetermine redistributions in individual seats by looking at those seats in isolation. My gut feeiling is that redistribution committees start in Metropolis and work outwards. They can achieve their legislated goals easily by moving 35 Houses 70 Voters plus 0.8 square Km 200metres down the road with no difficulty. As they move to outer suburbs the same 70 voters have doubled in numbers the 0.8 square Kilometres has become 20 square Kilometres and the distance 10 Km. Complaints remain manageable. As the Committee moves fiurther out the same 70 voter numbers 20 square Kilometres becomes a few hundred Square kilometres. By the time the redistribution commodittre have backed themselves into Parkes or Kennedy the 70 voters involve thousands of squirrels Kilometres, breaking towns and named cities from
Their community centre resulting in Highfields not being part of Toowoomba Groom and Blackwater being part of Bunfdaberg (Flynne). The complaints at this point become un manageable.
one solution that I have never seen discussed is MP’s not having 1 parliamentary vote but 120,000 votes in City electorate A but 80,000 Parlismentary votes in Far Western zDivision xyz. This would completely eliminate the redistribution issue and destroy all arguments for limitations on Divisional voter numbers. I can see that immediately there would be a rush to increase city voter numbers and screams of anguish from those who at the moment automatically get a more powerful say in order to get adequate representation.
Note I am not advocating this weighted system only discussing it.

Now finally being able to access all of the YouGov MRP results I am quite skeptical of them. I understand it is not perfect and will contain some errors but even so… I chose to comment under this seat specifically because while there are quite a few more I find very difficult to believe this one is the biggest place that stands out. They have the Nats winning against Labor by only a 4% margin here. I would have believed this decades ago but I can’t possibly see that even in the realm of possibility today.

Why did Labor come 2nd here? Why did nobody take my prediction of OTH vs NAT seriously? This is absolutely no different to other country seats like Cowper and New England. and this entire seat has SFF representatives in the state parliament.

OTH did outpoll Labor if you combine the minor parties here. A Teal independent probably couldn’t win here here in future but a Dai Le/Bob Katter/Liz Cunningham style independent surely could. It might not happen while Coulton is around. But watch this when he retires.

The only Labor area I can think of in this seat is Broken Hill. but that doesn’t make a majority of this seat, So I still fail to understand why this remains NAT vs LAB.

Daniel, if you want to be taken seriously, a good start would be not spouting statements like “This is absolutely no different to other country seats like Cowper and New England”. It should be self-evident that these are all entirely different seats and not just to be classed under one umbrella. For goodness sake, you even mention SFF representatives for this seat in the next sentence. When have the other two seats had SFF representatives? Why would a climate-focussed independent be able to run the Nationals close here like what happened in Cowper?

I can’t explain why the independent didn’t get up seeing as I have no knowledge of the candidate or the seat. Unless you can provide such information yourself to guide your reasoning, it doesn’t seem as if you should be expressing such confidence in them to do so. It will always be Labor making the 2CP in the absence of an insufficiently strong third party or independent.

That should be sufficiently strong in that last line. Wish there was an edit function.

Strong swings against Labor in the remaining strong Labor booths here like in Broken Hill with Labor winning Broken Hill booths around 55-60% 2PP after swings of 5-10% to the Nationals. It probably won’t be too long until the Nationals start winning booths in Broken Hill.

From what I understand, Broken Hill has a long unionist/Labor history like the Hunter region so I guess it’ll be a bit of a symbolic milestone if/when Labor stop winning booths here. It always surprises me the Labor vote has held up so well for so long in Broken Hill over the decades despite its decline in mining jobs and population. As recently as the 2016 federal election, Labor received huge swings in Broken Hill and was winning booths with around 70% 2PP.

@ GPPS, good point raised. However, i would not use the Hunter region as a comparison. In the Hunter Region it is more the case that the climate wars are affecting the result especially if you look at Shortland which is quite an urbanized seat but Labor has under performed their past results. In Broken Hill there has been relative population decline compared to the rest of the seat. In the past, Broken Hill made a larger % of the seat of Parkes which is why Labor came close to winning it in 1993. A better compassion would be the SA seat of Grey where the relative population decline in the Iron Triangle towns as well as redistributions to take in Agricultural territory has led to Grey becoming a safe Liberal seat. Once upon a time Maranoa was a safe Labor seat and the Labor party was founded their under the Tree of Knowledge. The Outback is where Labor seems to have permanently declined along with the Inner City (to Greens) that has been offset with the sea change/tree change areas along with new immigrant heavy suburbs.

@Nimalan @GPPS Labor winning in even a few Broken Hill booths seems weird to me. But while regional Victoria (i.e Ballarat and Bendigo) and regional (non-outback) Queensland have both previously been Labor-voting historically (but not anymore), regional NSW has not.

I am a Coalition voter and I grew up in Port Macquarie and still go there often. Port Macquarie is a middle-class regional city with just over 50,000 people and is in regional NSW (I’m sure you probably knew at least the second bit). It currently has a federal Nationals MP (Pat Conaghan in Cowper), a state Liberal MP (Leslie Williams in Port Macquarie) and an independent-turned-Nationals Mayor (Peta Pinson for the Port Macquarie-Hastings Council). The demographics are, again, regional middle-class city, many people who are over 50 (although I kinda feel that the presence of retirees is a bit over-exaggerated), mostly liberal conservative locals (e.g mostly voted “yes” to same-sex marriage), mostly of European or Indigenous origin but a growing number of migrants, particularly from Asia (especially China and India), also live here. Port Macquarie is on the Mid North Coast, which has a history of voting for the Coalition. Until 2013, Port Macquarie was in Lyne (which includes places like Taree and Forster) but since 2013 it has been in Cowper (which also includes places like Coffs Harbour and Kempsey). Lyne has only ever been Nationals-held with the exception of a brief period with the ex-National independent and former state MP Rob Oakeshott (who was booted out, like Tony Windsor was in New England, because of his support for Gillard, simply because he wanted Turnbull to have been leader not Abbott). Cowper has been Nationals-held since Federation (when it was created) with the exception of that one time Labor marginally won it when Sir Earle Page died before the seat was called (i.e in 1961), but even then Port Macquarie was in Lyne back then, not Cowper. The state electorate of Port Macquarie has never been Labor-held either, only Nationals, except for two occasions: now (because it’s Liberal-held, so still Coalition-held) and a period of time ages ago when Rob Oakeshott defected from the Nationals, sat as an independent, resigned in 2008 to contest Lyne and was replaced by his advisor Peter Besseling (who was booted out in 2011 mostly because of his association with Oakeshott).

In summary, regional and rural NSW has been a stronghold for the Coalition throughout history and still is now, just like northern Sydney and certain pockets of Melbourne have been (well, at least pre-2022 for the latter two).

@ neither portal

Good points above. interestingly regional NSW does not tend to be really socially conservative. regional NSW for example had a stronger support for SSM than Greater Sydney. also a higher percent of people claiming no religion. This a very different situation to the US where regional areas are much more religious and socially conservative than big cities. the hunter seats had very strong support for SSM and very irreligious unlike West Virginia or Kentucky both coal mining areas

I’m not sure we can necessarily equate support for SSM as the same as a blanket social conservativism. I’m sure support for other culture war issues (like race relations) that would be considered social conservatism would be different compared to say Western Sydney vs Regional NSW.

@Nimalan true. @Dan M yes, because mostly Labor seats in Western Sydney had the highest no votes, e.g Blaxland (Jason Clare’s seat, formerly Paul Keating’s seat):

@ Dan M/Neither Portal

It will be interesting whether other culture war issues such as race relations will win support. It certainly will not win support in highly diverse areas such as Blaxland, Calwell, Watson etc. I suspect that some of this will be targeted at more Anglo parts of Outer Western Sydney such as Lindsay, parts of the Shire, Camden, Wollondilly etc. Regional NSW often has a different media market so there is a less focus on issue such as ethnic gang etc.

I am fairly confident that the Voice referendum will see a higher “yes” vote in Blaxland than a seat like Lyne, and definitely more than Maranoa. Different issues will see different support among different demographics – the same sex marriage plebiscite is a (non-compulsory) vote on one issue, not a proxy for “social conservatism” of different areas.

@Adda I don’t know how Cowper and Lyne will vote. Like most of regional NSW, they have a long history of being Nationals-held as I stated above and they did vote yes to gay marriage. But the while the Nationals oppose the Voice, that doesn’t mean their supporters all do or even all Nationals MPs. The NSW Coalition officially supports the Voice (they have a conscience vote but still). Maranoa will probably have a no vote like it did for gay marriage.

The demographic that most opposes the Voice is older, white, multi-generational Australians. Basically, rural and regional voters. There’s been enough polling out by now telling a similar story there. City voters and immigrants by contrast are significantly more supportive (although the latter hasn’t that that much polling data to support it, more of Redbridge’s word). Same sex marriage had very different results for parts of Western Sydney specifically thanks to the religion factor behind the “no” vote that isn’t present for the Voice.

@ Nether Portal Maranoa will have one of the highest No votes in the country. Depending on how much support the Voice garners both nationwide and within Queensland as well, the most likely regional (or rather those outside SEQ) electorates within the state to vote Yes are Herbert and Leichardt. I’m not especially confident in that despite their track record on SSM, since it’s a fundamentally different issue, and for other reasons I won’t go into here.

@Laine what about Brisbane/Gold Coast seats? Do you think they’ll vote “yes” or “no”?

@Nimalan good point about the Hunter not being a good comparison point to Broken Hill – as you say, not all mining areas are comparable, and we can observe that with different areas showing differing rates of decline in the ALP vote. I guess as a general statement, it seems safe to say that the ALP vote is declining in regional mining areas. Perhaps this is a similar but delayed trend to what seems to have happened in some parts of the US, where heavily unionised and mining areas like West Virginia used to vote for the Democrats but have now seen a conservative shift in their voting patterns.