ALP 7.5% vs GRN
Incumbent MP
Carmel Tebbutt, since 2005. Previously Member of the Legislative Council 1998-2005.
Geography
Inner Western Sydney. The district of Marrickville covers most of the Marrickville local government area, with the exception of a small part at the western end of the council area and the southeastern corner of the area. The seat also covers a part of the City of Sydney. Suburbs covered include Darlington, Newtown, Stanmore, Enmore, Petersham, Lewisham, Dulwich Hill and Marrickville.
History
There has been an electoral district named Marrickville since 1894, with the exception of three elections in the 1920s when the seat was merged into the multi-member district of Western Suburbs. The seat has continuously elected Labor members since 1910.
The original district of Marrickville covered a smaller area, with the other seats of Newtown-Camperdown, Petersham, Darlington, Newtown-Erskine and Newtown-St Peters covering parts of the modern seat.
The seat was won in 1917 by the ALP’s Carlo Lazzarini, who defeated Thomas Crawford, a former Labor member who had joined the Nationalists over the issue of conscription.
In 1920 Lazzarini moved to the multi-member district of Western Suburbs. He briefly served as a minister from 1921 to 1922, and in 1927 he returned to the seat of Marrickville.
Lazzarini was opposed to Jack Lang’s leadership of the NSW Labor Party, and he was expelled from the ALP in 1936. He rejoined in 1937, but later joined the dissident Industrial Labor Party. Following Lang’s departure he served as an assistant minister in the new Labor state government from 1941 to 1944. He held Marrickville until his death in 1952.
Marrickville was won at the February 1953 election by the Mayor of Marrickville, Norm Ryan. He served as a minister in the state Labor government from 1959 to 1965, and retired in 1973.
Ryan stepped aside in 1973 in favour of Tom Cahill. The son of NSW Premier Joseph Cahill, Tom had won his father’s seat of Cook’s River after his father’s death in 1959. Cook’s River was abolished at the 1973 election, and he moved to Marrickville. He held that seat until his death in 1983.
The 1983 by-election was won by Andrew Refshauge. Following the ALP’s election defeat in 1988 he was elected Deputy Leader. He served in this role until 2005. Refshauge became Deputy Premier when the ALP gained power in 1995. He served in a variety of ministerial roles over the next decade.
In 1995, the Liberal Party was pushed into third place behind the No Aircraft Noise party, who polled over 23% of the primary vote. The Greens came second after preferences in 1999, and the Liberals have never again come in the top two in Marrickville.
When Premier Bob Carr announced his retirement in 2005, Refshauge also announced his retirement, along with senior minister Craig Knowles. The Marrickville by-election was held alongside by-elections in Maroubra and Macquarie Fields.
The ALP ran Carmel Tebbutt, a former Marrickville councillor who had been a Member of the Legislative Council since 1998 and a minister since 1999. The Greens ran Deputy Mayor of Marrickville, Sam Byrne. The ALP’s 10.7% margin was cut to 5.1% in the by-election.
Tebbutt was re-elected in 2007, winning with a 7.5% margin, less than in the 2003 election, but more than in the 2005 by-election.
Candidates
- James Cogan (Independent)
- Fiona Byrne (Greens)
- Carmel Tebbutt (Labor)
- Rosana Tyler (Liberal)
- Jimmy Liem (Family First)
- Kylie Laurence (Christian Democratic Party)
- Paul Quealy (Independent)
- Pip Hinman (Socialist Alliance)
Political situation
Marrickville is a marginal Labor seat. In the current environment, a 7.5% swing is certainly achievable for the Greens.
2007 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Carmel Tebbutt | ALP | 19,683 | 46.6 | -1.1 |
| Fiona Byrne | GRN | 13,735 | 32.5 | +4.1 |
| Ramzy Mansour | LIB | 5,305 | 12.6 | -0.2 |
| Angus Wood | IND | 716 | 1.7 | +1.7 |
| Martine Eve-Macleod | DEM | 688 | 1.6 | -0.8 |
| Pip Hinman | SA | 666 | 1.6 | -1.0 |
| Joseph Tuiletufuga | CDP | 634 | 1.5 | +1.5 |
| Grace Chen | UNI | 557 | 1.3 | -0.8 |
| Patrick O’Connor | IND | 216 | 0.5 | +0.5 |
2007 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Carmel Tebbutt | ALP | 21,073 | 57.5 | -2.6 |
| Fiona Byrne | GRN | 15,588 | 42.5 | +2.6 |
Booth breakdown
Booths in Marrickville have been divided into five areas based on key suburbs. The ALP won large majorities of 65-70% in the Marrickville and Dulwich Hill areas. They won a slim 53% majority in Petersham-Stanmore, but the Greens won majorities in the Newtown and Camperdown-Darlington.
| Voter group | LIB % | ALP 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| Marrickville | 11.9 | 70.8 | 11,179 | 26.5 |
| Newtown | 8.9 | 44.2 | 9,156 | 21.7 |
| Petersham-Stanmore | 15.0 | 53.2 | 6,535 | 15.5 |
| Dulwich Hill | 14.8 | 65.4 | 4,877 | 11.6 |
| Camperdown-Darlington | 12.3 | 48.0 | 2,553 | 6.0 |
| Other votes | 14.5 | 54.5 | 7,900 | 18.7 |
Will certainly be an interesting seat to watch, I can’t see this being more than 2% either way.
I think one thing to consider is that the Swing won’t just be to the Greens, if Carmel loses enough of the primary vote to Liberals, Independents, etc, as well as the Greens it may be enough to push the Greens ahead in the 2pp because of optional preferences.
Using federal results to predict the election see Tebbutt being returned by 3%, but I didn’t calculate a proper 2PP for some booths that were Labor/Liberal at state level.
I agree with Ben Hammond. An interesting clash, but I expect Tebbutt to just hold on given her high personal profile. The Libs are likely to be 4th on primaries, which will probably exhaust.
In Victoria from memory about 25-30% of Liberal preferences went to the Greens – what happens if we assume that something like that proportion of Liberal votes will not exhaust and go the Greens?
DB: why would the Libs come fourth – is there an independent in the mix too?
There will be a left leaning independent running. I can’t say who yet.
Ben, while you are moderating, can you delete my duplicate post above, and use this instead? Careless spelling fixed, I’m all thumbs… US
@ DB. OK, you’ve got me guessing… The guy who stood for the Social Equality Party in August was pretty impressive, and actually scored a higher primary than Pip Hinman (Socialist Alliance), though that’s not saying much…
I can’t think of any “left leaning independent” who could put the Libs into 4th place. If such a candidate existed, they would take votes from the Greens and let Carmel Tebbutt off the hook.
Perhaps that is the point.
The degree of gentrification in Marrackville in the last 4 years will be a big factor in how much the Labor vote collapses. Every old Greek or Italian who departs the electoral roll is one less vote for Carmel.
It will be a lovely precursor for the departure of Big Daddy Albo in Grayndler 2012.
Millard Fillmore, what makes you say the next federal election will be in 2012? Assuming there isn’t a motion of no confidence passed before then, the next election shouldn’t be until 2013.
@ Millard Fillmore. Gentrification increases the Liberal vote more than any other. There is already one Liberal booth in Balmain, and 2011 will see several more. The three-way split may make Grayndler less predictable in 2012 (or sooner, this government won’t last), but by no means leads to Albo’s demise. As Victoria has just shown, the two majors can protect themselves by freezing the Greens out.
They just have to decide to do it.
Leichardt Council – Green 2008
Marrackville and Balmain – Green 2011
Grayndler – Green 2012
In 2004 senior ALP figures ordered its Leichhardt Councillors to side with the Liberals on Council to block the Greens. Voters correctly punished the ALP for this arrogance in 2008.
The rise of the Greens in the inner city can be delayed not stopped. Ironic social change saw the end of the Labor right’s dominance of the inner citys in the late 70’s and early 80s – the same social change will do in the Left.
Nice time line, Millard, from 24.8% to a majority without Liberal Party preferences is quite a jump. What the Libs gift you, they can take away, anytime they please.
If the Liberals gave preferences to Labor this state election or the next Federal election, they would have hell to pay in primary votes. I wouldn’t call Green wins in Balmain and Marrickville a definite win in Grayndler but I think its pretty darn likely.
Leaving aside Millard Fillmore’s dubious ethnic stereotyping (“old Italian and Greeks”), I’ll still contend that gentrifications benefits the Libs more than anyone else. Especially as bohos age, they get very crusty… At any rate, look at Haberfield where the “old Italians” have stayed put, and the new arrivals are mostly high earning professionals. There’s a very high Liberal primary, and absolutely no joy for the Greens on prefs.
I need to correct my 24.8% above. The Greens primary in Grayndler was 25.9% (sorry). Still not enough, they can only win Grayndler of prefs. NSW’s voting system does make the predictions trickier, but if all party’s exhaust, then I’m tipping Lab for Marrickville, Lib for Balmain.
Though Labor may commit suicide and preference the Greens in both seats, even without reciprocation. Yes, they are THAT confused.
In State elections it is not necessary to direct preferences
I am a campaign helper for my Liberal candidate and I have discussed the prefence situation with him.
The candidate can show preferences on his ‘how to vote card’ but the voter can just place a 1 in the box of choice and leave it at that
That’s how I read it
Ben Hammond – I can’t see the Liberals preferencing anyone in the State Election. Simply, they don’t have to. In the next Federal election, I suspect you will see the Liberals preferencing the ALP marginally above the Greens in all seats (both will be bottom 2 though). Why wouldn’t they? If they put the ALP at ‘6’ and the Greens at ‘7’, it won’t cost them a single vote across the country.
DB, I know that. I was saying I really cannot see the Liberals giving preferences to Labor in this election, that isn’t to say that the Greens will get them either. I do believe that they would lose primary votes if they helped their traditional nemesis keep seats in the Federal but that is just my view, fact is they can put Labor second last but if they fall into third place preferences are still going to prop up Labor and I think that is something that would lose them primary votes and vice versa.
I would seriously doubt predictions that the Liberal Party is likely to finish fourth in this seat.
Word amongst union people is that Carmel is shopping for a job.
Re: Stewart J. Not so long ago she quit a cabinet post to “spend more time with her family”. That only lasted about 6 months, but recently many more Labor people have noticed they have families.
I think most analysts are pencilling this in for the Greens.
Pip Hinman is running again for the Socialist Alliance here.
Does anyone have any thoughts as to what kind of effect the lunacy of local council will have on the Green vote?
There is the story in the newspaper today about Marrickville council allocating a day to support the plight of Western Sahara (a country which technically doesn’t exist) and this is on the back of the story a couple of weeks ago about the local council boycotting all Israeli products.
Clearly this Green run council is focusing too much time on (bizarre) foreign affairs issues as opposed to fulfilling their role as local councilors. Does anybody feel that this will have a negative effect on their primary vote at a state level?
JoeyD – while it seems unusual in Australia, using local government elections to express a view on foreign policy is relatively common in Britain. For example, Liberal Democrats did quite well in council elections when the Iraq War was a hot issue (as well as at the 2005 general election).
But that is also because party politics is the norm in British local government elections, whereas it is not all that common here.
The real question is who will replace Peter Primrose in the Upper House post March 26? Carmel? Verity or maybe even David Borger.
Will be delicious to watch.
I doubt it Joey D. While you may be focussed intently on what the local media are reporting (or not reporting), most of the electorate is not trying so hard to read between the lines. The situation is not dissimilar to what anyone in Eastern Europe experienced before 1991. Marrickville (like the rest of the inner west) has one News Ltd newspaper, and in such situations, “news” as we know has a particular flavour. After real estate, local Councils represent the largest source of advertising revenue for the local press. The media will not do anything to upset their income or the cosy patronage arrangements that inevitably develop. No matter how “mad” those Councils are (and in Marrickville and Leichhardt, those Greens run ones are very mad), readers of local newspapers will need a finely attuned antennae to work out what is really going on. Or alternative sources of information.
I’m going to have to eat my words after my last post 10 days ago… This week the News Ltd local paper did report the Marrickville madness over Israel in a fairly derogatory front page story. It produced an avalanche of critical comment on its website, so intense the editor had to plead for “restraint” and warn posters that inflammatory material would be deleted.
I’m a bit puzzled as to why that front page happened. Possibly because the editor is new to the job, and hasn’t yet sussed out what he expected to do. But full credit to him for having the courage to go against the council sanctioned PC tide in Marrickville, though I doubt the situation will last.
Meanwhile on Marrickville, the Greens have decided to exhaust and not offer a slither of hope to Carmel Tebbutt. But I’ll be brave, and still predict she will just hang on.
Greens Preferences will have no impact in Marrickville, or the Upper House… it is likely in both situations that the Greens will be still there at the final counts…
Yes in the case of Marrickville green preferences don’t matter… but else where and in the upper house it is different. If green votes exhaust they can help the liberals win lower house seats & maybe make the difference between a left aligned and right aligned upper house
Any gains made by the Coalition will be made in the western side of this seat (around Marrickville and Dulwich Hill), where the split is almost completely ALP / LIB. Moving further east moves into Greens territory around Sydney Uni.
For Fiona Byrne to win, she will need to continue to make gains along Parramatta Road (I think) into Petersham/Stanmore (along the Northern Border). She can do it.
My prediction: Green gain, 10-15% swing and Labor to finish second.
One interesting twist in this contest is Israel. Fiona Byrne and Marrickville Council have recently passed a motion to boycott Israel which has raised real concern in the community (though perhaps not so much as in eastern suburbs seats). The Liberal candidate is Rosana Tyler, who also happens to be vice-president of the Newtown synagogue.
The Israel boycott IS and interesting twist, and is certainly generating lots of heat in local online forums (as in the “what are those people smoking?” type). While ownership of this idiocy has to be borne by the Mayor Fiona Byrne, the actual motion was a Labor one. Albanese (and Tebbutt) have denounced it though, and when you hear the ridicule and scorn being tipped over the Greens on this, even from nice sympathetic voices like those on the Herald and ABC702, my guess is this WILL cut into the Greens vote…
The question “what were they smoking? ” is fair enough. It was dumb for the Greens to let this happen. They are “making history” alright: For stupidity.
For anyone who lives in the area, has anyone noticed that a few days ago almost all the Greens posters were ripped down and replaced with Carmel Tebbutt’s? (I noticed this so far on Enmore Rd, Stanmore Rd, Llewellyn St, Liberty St and Black St).
Seems to me that Labor (possibly someone associated with or a die-hard supporter of Labor) are going to extraordinary lengths to avoid losing the seat.
Sadly Disco Stu, that sort of behaviour has been seen before in the inner west. At the last August election, all of Allbanese’s signage at his electorate office was vandalised and defaced with “No coal” etc slogans on the friday night before the election.
And on direct responsibility – rather than the conjecture in the hope of scoring a point, Disco Stu (relax, you are amongst friends) – dig out an old issue of the Inner West Courier just prior to the 2008 council election. In Leichhardt a bunch of activists defaced a rival Labor candidate’s poster because they thought his logo was “too small”. They were so proud of their work they arranged a photo op with the local Murdoch press, who ran their “amusing” handiwork (vandalising a rivals poster) with a caption identifying the Greens party members involved on the front page.
Now have a look an a vandalised Verity Firth poster on page 6 of this weeks green friendly “City News” (Feb 24). Under the headline “ Graffiti of Week” they show the Labor candidate with teeth missing, moustache (so clever!) demonic eyes, witty scrawled observations like “CRAP” etc. The caption, about her battle to keep the seat, reads “The Greens are snapping at her heels”. Indeed.
Large campaigns often hire security guards to stay overnight on major polling booths to make sure people don’t deface buntings and corflutes before polling day. And yet without fail each time one site will always have somebody attempting to deface it.
In Melbourne last state election Labor’s EO itself got trashed by Greens supporters at night.
Albanese at the last federal election, as previously said, had many of his corflutes defaced.
Just a few nights ago I had to personally remove several defaced Verity corflutes.
So all I can say is….tit for tat, Disco Stu, tit for tat.
Another candidate listed on Antony’s guide is Marianne O’Connell for the CDP.
Good CFMEU source says that its all hands to the wheel to save Carmel. As posted elsewhere a lot of votes will exhaust, Not all protest votes will go to Byrne and gentrification – as astutely pointed out above – helps the Libs above anyone. Byrne needs something well north of 32 percent primary to be a chance.
Has anyone seen the ridiculous odds bookies are offering on Marrickville? Tebbutt, being ALP royalty, is still the frontrunner in all this, yet she’s paying up to five bucks in what is effectively a two horse race. Good odds
This seat could go anywhich way.
Jeranglism – agree that Tebbutt is good odds at $5. But it is a tall order.
Both Carmel and Verity have gotten a disproportionate amount of union, young left and branch help. But then the Greens are putting in even more probably. I’d still put Fiona as front runner here.
I think it’s amusing that left wing unions like AMWU gives funding to both Labor Left and Greens. Surely that’s a bit counter productive in this climate where Labor Left and Greens are in direct opposition? They’re essentially funding both sides of the same war.
What they should do is put caveats on funding (hard to enforce, I know). So Labor Left are only to use their resources in campaigns against Tories (ie. Toongabbie, Granville etc.) Greens are only to use their resources in campaigns where they are in the top two (ie. North Sydney, Vaucluse)
The Greens NSW don’t take money from unions, crazedmongoose, I don’t know what you are talking about.
The AMWU is a left wing union? I thought it was a make work scheme for unemployable ex-student politicians. Boy, did they do well out of the Accord or what! The lefts Smartest Men In The Room. Still, if they can afford to give EMC seven figure sums for their “communications” then that should rebuild their declining membership. Right?
My friend who works at AMWU tells me that for this election the left wing unions are giving money to progressive candidates, as opposed to just the ALP. Somewhat in line with Unions NSW who are running their Better Services campaign seperate to the ALP campaign?
Oh yes! The Better Services Campaign. How much did Unions NSW pay EMC for that? And boy, hasn’t it captured the hearts and minds of the electorate! I can’t go down the street without someone button-holing me abouit the Better Services campaign.
There’s a reason why Mark Lennon used so much passive language when discussing that campaign because if he was asked for specifics he couldn’t come up with any. They knew they would have shot themselves in the foot if they had of come out with a blanket Vote Labor message, so they had to conjure up these mysterious ‘progressive candidates’. As if any candidate in their right mind would take coin from the bagmen for the party that gave us such progressive candidates as Reba Meagher, Milton Orkopoulos, Macleay junior, Paluzzanno, Tony Aquilina, Joe Tripodi, Jodi Mackay, Ian Macdonald, Michael Costa, Paul Landa, Rex Jackson, yadda yadda (that’s just off the top of my head – I could go on for days)
It’s over crazedmongoose. From Hawke onwards you clowns have manufactured a politics that has seen executive government dealt out of the key policy driving function in society and replaced it with a corporate sector that pretty much does what it wants and a social agenda that’s set by some throwbacks to Cromwell’s Protestant Taliban. It’s over mate. Fold the tent. The politics of spin has given an uninformed and irrational media control of policy levers and now it’s too late. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. MSM will run a corporate friendly agenda because no one has the Cohones to stare the b*stards down, or has anything like the sort of political machine that Greame Richardson and the ACTU dismantled in the seventies to ‘modernise’ the ALP.
Out in the burbs they will suck it up and keep on in sullen anger until…oh look, manchester fifty percent off!
Poor fellow my country.
The point of the better services campaign is to pin down all candidates on the issues important to Unions and Union members, like protecting the NSW IR system, workplace safety laws, and ensuring that public utilities and services are well funded and stay in public ownership.
Unions got burned in 2007 giving automatic support to Labor Right morons like Michael Costa, Karen Palluzano, Joe Tripodi and Reba Meagher, who were happy to accept union support and donations, only to turn around and piss all over union members later (eg electricity and prison privatisation).
At this election, union support for any candidate, Labor or otherwise, is dependent on whether they sign the better services pledge. If a candidate doesn’t sign the pledge, they don’t get helped. If they do, they can be held accountable for their committments later on.
Most ALP and Greens candidates have signed the better services pledge, as well as some independents. Nobody from the liberals has signed it. I wonder why.
Guys, if you have ideological axes to grind, please – take it somewhere else. Ben’s site is great because we don’t do that here. We talk about the numbers in a calm, emotion-free fashion.
hughie: mate, I’ve always applauded Ben and this site for doing that. A few days ago I got emotional talking about the DLP’s prospects in East Hills and then retroactively apologized and requested Ben remove my post.
It’s Jeranglism and a whole host of third party candidates trying to turn this place into a political forum.
crazedmongoose – certainly agree with your last sentence.