Lismore – NSW 2023

Because everyone seems to be interrogating the Greens vote this morning, I thought this one would be a fun one to look at.

Huge swings away from the Greens on first-preferences across many booths. One that stands out in particular is the Nimbin booth. A 34% collapse in the vote from last time. The Labor vs NAT TPP was almost unchanged, so a good chunk of Greens voters from last time just ended up voting for Labor instead. I would love to consider this booth’s results a little further.

The town of Nimbin has always been celebrated historically as a counter-cultural enclave. But I wonder if this is starting to fade as the population of Nimbin is getting older. The median age of Nimbin is now 50. Not too dissimilar from the town of Kyogle and similar towns further in from the coast. Regions with this age-profile aren’t generally what would be considered an area of Greens support. Because Nimbin is a small town and a bit of a trip from the coast, I’m not sure its location is attractive to the new generation of counter-cultural types and progressive voters. This new generation (with some money) have planted themselves much closer to the beaches. In the case of the Northern Rivers, around the periphery of Byron Bay and Mullumbimby (within the division of Ballina).

This age factor is also part of what contributes to the popularity of Janelle’s personal profile. She has similar age to a huge proportion of voters west of Murwillumbah and Lismore that would probably be otherwise be voting the Nationals. She might also have been a safe bet for tentative Greens voters (small ‘g’ voters) as she was well-known and had pro-environmental messaging going into this campaign. Her huge profile was established in the region due to the floods and fires, providing frequent commentary on ABC Local radio and some other local media (which remains intact in Northern Rivers).

I’m sure the people who did the most bullying of Mick over his opinions would happily apologise if I hadn’t permanently blocked them.

Janelle Saffin really shot the lights here, even in the villages that normally have a Greens primary vote of over 50%. Saffin came first on primary votes in the Greens primary just about everywhere north of the town of Lismore, including Nimbin, Jiggi, Dunoon, The Channon and Uki, where the Greens normally come first.

She’s a popular local member and has had to deal with floods and bushfires. Overall, there was a 19% swing to Labor and also double-digit drops in the Greens and Nats’ primary votes. She’s a one of a kind probably pulling off a one-off event but I wonder if this could be a textbook example of how Labor can defeat the Greens.

Think Saffin is a bit like Albanese and Plibersek in inner Sydney federally
Having a good local ALP rep over a faceless party hack is what is required if they want to keep these sort of strong green seats off the greens

It is hard to see Janelle Saffin running again – she will be 72 at the next election. Without her obviously high personal vote, Lismore will probably be a 3 way race between ALP, Greens and Nats. I suspect the big fall in the Greens vote this time was that they diverted all their resources into neighbouring Ballina.

Ged Kearney is another example. Extremely good and popular local Labor MP in Cooper, in what was once a Greens target. The Greens will never win Cooper while she is there. The Greens also couldn’t even win in Northcote in the Vic state election with Liberal preferences.

One aspect of the rise of social media as a source of information is that it provides the opportunity for an MP who uses it well to play a visible community leadership role in crisis situations in a way that wouldn’t have been possible in the past – if your go-to place for post-disaster information is the local MP’s Facebook page, it’s probably not going to harm that MP’s cause. In Lismore I think it’s telling that the incumbent federal and state MPs both performed exceptionally well in post-flood elections despite being from different parties.

@redistributed given it will be 2027 it will look good for the nats as labor will be in government at possibly both a federal and state level and will benefit from the anti govt vote. even if they dont ome 2031 lismore will have to move both south and west in the next redistribution and thats nat territory.

Interestingly despite their poor performance, for the first time the Greens actually won the 2CP vs Nats!

Granted it’s a very close result, and the ALP vs NAT margin is nearly 65/35 compared to the Greens 50.5/49.5 (looks like a lot of “just vote 1” major party voters flipped). This is a far cry from only 2% difference in the margins in 2015, and a similar result in 2019.

Greens also won the 2CP in Coogee vs Liberals, which is another seat where you could imagine a Lib->Grn->ALP order eventually. They did not in South Coast. In fact the only seat as far as I can tell where ALP vs L/NP was close than GRN vs L/NP is Ballina (even Newtown and Balmain have safer Labor results).

Seem to have been more “Just vote 1” Labor voters this time around in general.

Quite interesting to see the difference between state Labor and federal Labor here.

Particularly fascinated by areas that overlap with the state seat of Lismore (ALP Janelle Saffin) and the federal seat of New England (NAT Barnaby Joyce). Take a town like Tenterfield. In 2022, it voted for Barnaby Joyce by 73/27 over Labor. But in 2023, the Nats only won it 56/44 over Janelle Saffin.

The point is that when Labor put some effort into these supposedly futile areas, they have can keep the margins of defeat down and potentially be competitive, especially if they run up the margins in the bigger towns.

The problem is that it’s a self-fulfilling cycle. Labor sees the massive margins they have to overcome in regional areas so they decide not put in any effort, and of course they get a poor result, which reinforces their strategic thinking not to put any effort in.

The results here should give state and federal Labor some hope and reason to put some effort into areas/electorates that don’t immediately seem appealing. I’m thinking areas like Albury, Ararat, Armidale, Grafton, Mildura Warrnambool etc. It won’t be an immediate pay-off – maybe it never will pay off, but you wonder what the “real” margins in some of these rural areas could be if Labor put some serious effort in.

@Greens Political Party Supporter

There’s no way they’d win any of the cities and towns you mentioned: they’re conservative country areas other than Warrnambool which is blue ribbon. I’ve travelled extensively to Armidale and Grafton having grown up near Port Macquarie (where the Coalition wins every booth easily, my high school has a particularly high Liberal/Nationals vote) and they aren’t places with Labor votes. They may be working-class but remember about half of all Nationals voters describe themselves as “working-class”; they aren’t unionised however, which deters them from voting Labor.

GPPS and NP
In much of inland NSW, Labor effectively outsourced their efforts to independents (WIndsor, Torbay, the SFF, the guy in Dubbo). These indepedents delivered a non National vote and they could come on side with Labor when necessary. In the process, the Labor primary vote fell, local organisations withered and the result is today the Nats hold seats like Northern Tablelands and Cootamundra by massive margins – seats that had Labor MPs til the late 80’s. They have picked seats through demographic change but they have allowed huge area (and potential votes) to wither on the vine.

To pick up on your Tenterfield example. Never underestimate electoral effort and resources – a good example are towns like Tumut and Tumbarumba – they have gone in and out of Eden Monaro a few times in recent redistrubution cycles. The Labor is usually about 15% higher when they are in EM.

@Nether Portal, I think it’s too strong to say Labor would never win any of these towns.

– Labor are already winning the 2PP in parts of Armidale (New England)
– Labor won the 2PP in Grafton during Janelle Saffin’s tenure as the federal member for Page – in fact, in 2010, Saffin managed 61% 2PP at the “Grafton” booth – comparably, Labor only got 37% 2PP there in 2022. – In many booths in Warrnambool, the Liberals only narrowly won the (notional) 2PP vs Labor with 50-55% of the vote. Same with Ararat.
– Albury (Farrer) was also very competitive – Labor won one booth (52% 2PP), and the Coalition only won the remaining booths with only 50%, 55%, 60%, 55% and 52% of the vote. In 2004 the Liberals won all these booths with between 59%-66% of the vote. Clearly they’re not managing anything near that anymore.
– Labor won the notional 2PP in two Wodonga booths (Indi).
– Though I concede I was too bullish on Labor’s prospects and results in Mildura – Labor are no where near competitive there.

Over all, the results show that Labor is already competitive in many of these regional towns, and that’s without them putting any effort in (I understand Labor only run token campaigns in Farrer, New England, Wannon, Indi etc).

@ GPPS
Ararat often votes Labor at a state level and towns such as Port Fairy, Portland & Warrnambool sometimes vote Labor during good years but having said that Wannon has too much rural conservative territory for Labor to be competitive these days. In the state electorate of Ripon there is enough Labor towns that the seat is often Labor held. Maryborough (Vic) is good for Labor as well.
However, this often due to the history of the towns. Goldfields towns in Victoria are still good for Labor almost 170 years after the Gold Rush, some of the coastal towns in Wannon that i mentioned have a Maritime heritage. However, areas like Echuca, Mildura etc dont have that left-wing heritage so i dont think Labor will ever bother.

Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and some of their towns nearby tends to have a strong Labor vote in a very massive contrast to the rest of regional Victoria which is lib/nat strongholds. I think it might be due to these areas are historically populated with less religious gold rush settlers alongside the strong unions from the factories.
I think this is different for Murray Darling Basin and Regional Queensland where is populated by more religious settlers from Europe and strong agrarian industries (tends to be anti union).

That’s because they have been populated by people moving from Melbourne but who still commute there for work

@ John
Disagree there. Beechworth is an example of a town that is left-wing and again a gold rush town. It is no where near Melbourne and with no easy where to commute to Melbourne for work. Ararat and Maryborough also dont have frequent trains to Melbourne. Portland is closer to the SA border than it is to Melbourne. Like Marh said it is the different histories of these towns. For example if Shepperton had a faster rail to Melbourne i dont believe it will turn left wing so quickly where there is no tradition of voting Labor. I do believe the original settlers to places like Ballarat where different, often Irish Catholics who where landless laborers in their home country in contrast to the Protestant landed gentry that formed the Western District. The Eureka stockade happened in Ballarat. The Gold rush did shape Australia’s history and still does.

@GPPS Grafton is very Nationals-voting. Also since when was Labor winning booths in Armidale?

Nether Portal,
Labor has been winning booths in Armidale for a long time.
The most recent was May 2022 federal election, when Labor won 4 of the 7 booths.

Armidale is a university town (University of New England) so there are many academics and students living there.

Nimalan,
I agree about the religious divide in Australian voting patterns but I suspect there is more to it in some of places you mentioned.
Until 25 years ago, Ballarat and Bendigo were typical swinging seats at both state and federal level. Any ideas on what changed at that time?
Some of the towns mentioned have established manufacturing industries.
Portland – aluminium smelter
Ararat – electrical cable manufacturing, halal meat processing. Jail is also a large employer.
Maryborough – alarge printing company
Warrnambool – large cheese and dairy manufacturer

I don’t know to what extent these industries impact voting patterns.

Will make a separate post relating to Lismore which may explain Shepparton.

@ Watson Watch
Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong have also improved for Labor since the election of Steve Bracks at both levels of goverment state Labor has invested a lot into those regions (especially rail) and it has paid dividends in the more than 2 decades since. There has also been a shift towards more public service jobs being relocated.
I agree with you on the various manufacturing business i would also add that Marybrough once had knitting mills from all the wool grown in the Western District. Fletcher Jones started in Warrnambool as well.

I would also add this is a similar trend for Wollongong and Newcastle in NSW where there were historically more progressive settlers, strong unions, and recently more white-collar sea changers moving in.

Nimalan,
Thanks for the information. It is much appreciated.

I assume that you are familiar with the soldier settler scheme, where return soldiers were given blocks of land to farm. The schemes commenced during WW1 and were operated by the state governments. The NSW soldier settler scheme commenced in 1916 and was still going in the late 1950s.
The blocks of land were often too small to be viable farms, so the soldier settlers formed lobby groups in order to get price floors and marketing boards. By the end of WW1, they were running political candidates under groupings such as ‘Farmers and Settlers’ and ‘Farmers Union’. These groups formed the Country Party (now misnamed as National Party).

The National (nee Country) Party’s strength has always been in the soldier settler areas. In NSW, that is the north east of the state. One of the NSW Country Party’s main policies, was a separate state for North East NSW.

From what I can find, the largest soldier settler area in Australia was around Shepparton, which may explain current voting patterns in that area.
https://www.numurkahhistoricalsociety.com.au/display-locations/memorial-park/soldier-settlement

This sounds pretty similar to Canada Prairies where many settler moved to populate the Prairies (especially Alberta) which is why they havr ultra strong margins for the Conservatives

marh,
IMHO, similar but different. The soldier settlers wanted minimum prices and collective bargaining with suppliers and customers. Sounds the same as trade unions – minimum wage and collective bargaining.

In Canada, the farmers and trade unions saw they wanted the same thing. They formed one party, called the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), to represent both farmers and trade unionists. In 1961, CCF was renamed to the New Democratic Party (NDP). The NDP are considered the most leftwing of the three main Canadian political parties. The NDP are currently in government in British Columbia and Manitoba and are the official opposition in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario.

Thanks Watson watch
Good insight about the soldier settlement scheme.

i was tihnking for next redistribution Northern tablelands could take in tenterfield and tweed take in Murwillumbah from lismore which can then take in rihcmond valley lga from clarence. thoughts?

Are current electoral role statistics available for NSW? I looked through the NSWEC website but could not find them.

@redistributed yea i saw them earlier in the year but forgot where

@redistributed @john
I had trouble googling it but I found it via accessing the page of one of the electorates
https://roll.elections.nsw.gov.au/stats

@leon yea thanks i already found it, anyway after saffin retires or in 2031 after its redistributed again (whichever comes first) i imagin e the nats will regain this.