• The image below indicates the notional margins in metropolitan seats going into the election, and the results as of the close of count on election night. Click on the image to toggle between the two. Colour coding runs from very light for below 2 per cent to very heavy for above 15 per cent.
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• Exchange from 6PR election night broadcast between former Liberal leader Matt Birney, broadcaster Howard Sattler and former Labor MP Graham Edwards. Much more remains to be said on The West Australian’s extraordinary coverage of this campaign, but Birney hits on the main themes.
MB: The West Australian newspaper, the journalists down there have been having running fights and personality clashes with Alan Carpenter and his senior ministers including Jim McGinty who once banned them. And I’ll tell you what, they have taken it upon themselves to punish those ministers for those personality clashes, and some of the articles have appeared day after day after day on The West Australian newspaper I think have just damaged the hell out of the Labor Party, and I might say as a Liberal, I’m prepared to say, some of them very unfairly.
HS: And yet today the paper said … today editorial in the paper said vote Labor!
MB: No it didn’t at all, that was Paul Armstrong trying to cover his backside in case the board tapped him on the shoulder and say, what do you think you’re doing.
HS: I know what you mean, but 95 per cent of the editorial bagged the Carpenter government and the last 5 per cent said vote for him (laughs) …
MB: Can I just respond to that? For those people who read the editorial, they’d realise that the editorial was absolutely scathing of the Labor Party …
HS: It was.
MB: … and then in the very last line said, but it’s probably a safe vote to vote Labor. Do you know what that was? That was Paul Armstrong, the editor of The West Australian, covering his backside in case he got a phone call from Peter Mansell, the chairman of the board, saying “I think you guys have allowed your personality clashes with these ministers to play out in the pages of our newspaper” …
During the campaign in particular there were a number of articles that were completely beaten up. For instance, the headline saying Michelle Roberts has dared the Premier to sack her. Well, she never did any such thing. The Premier flies to Albany, as you do when you’re a leader, to announce a renewble energy policy, and The West focus in on how much fuel he used in the aeroplane. You know, The West said “oh, the Labor Party aren’t in fact the green party because they’re bringing on 1100MW of coal and gas-fired power”. Well, if they didn’t do that the state would be on its knees. I could go on and on …
GE: Certainly the campaign between The West and the Carpenter government was a very intriguing one. It was there and it was real and I think Matt’s hit the nail on the head.
MB: It was juvenile, wasn’t it? … I don’t think that The West have a left-wing bias, I think that their journalists get into a fight with a politician, they then go back to their office and they say, “right, I’ll stitch that bloke up”, and then they find the worst headline and the worst story they can and they beat the hell out of it, and they then stick it into the paper for the next day and they say “there you go, cop that one, you want to be …”.
HS: So it’s all about megalomania.
MB: Oh, it’s out of control, it’s a teenage rampage down there at The West Australian at the moment.
• Another highlight of the 6PR coverage, from Gary Gray:
Whoever was running that campaign panicked about the middle of last week, and they got away from the solid Vision, Stability, Leadership campaign they’d been running before in a fairly focused way and started pulling out scare ads of the uranium kinds and other things, and I think it was a huge error to do that.
Where are all the conservative gloaters?
This is hardly a great result for either of the major parties. The Liberals should have done a lot better.
Those people who think the outcome is clear one way or the other are smoking dope…. there are about half a dozen seats where the outcome is simply too close to call.
In all of these seats there is a large number of primary votes still to be counted. Moreover, the 2pp results shown so far generally are based on a smaller number of votes than the current primary count.
In other words, the preferences for a huge number of primaries still need to be distributed, plus a whole raft of primaries still need to be counted….
In this context any seat that is fairly close is still up in the air
What seat is Smith talking about in that article?
52 10pse – absolutley true.
Anyone know what the Nats’ attitude is to uranium mining and GM crops? Carpenter nailed his colours to the mast on those issues, and would look pretty shonky if he had to cave in to Grylls and allow them to go ahead, just to cling to a much-diminished share of power. And we can probably say goodbye to any same-sex union recognition.
BrissyRod – There is no such thing as a conservative gloater. We leave such immature antics to the Leftoids.
Does anyone know when the counts will start being updated on the WAEC/ABC (assuming they’ve started counting again by now)?
The reality is that Labor could still win enough seats to form a minority government with Labor leaning independents, without the Nationals… similarly the Liberals could still get enough seats to form a minority government either with the Nationals, or with the Nationals and Liberal leaning independents.
Either outcome is entirely possible
56 – you are obviously new to this blog
If Uranium mining is a 40b dollar industry, Cautious and Sniff can give Grylls a big piece of that pie?
yes 1-pse, if the ALP win 3 out ofthe 5 in doubt seats they could govern with the 2 labor-leaning independants. Heard Antony Green on ABC saying that Libs may not get enough even with Nats so will require independants too
56 Steve Annabelle – I’m not sure if that comment of yours is tongue in cheek or not but if it isn’t just read all of the people on these WA blogs? I won’t mention any names but you’ll get the drift.
this might put a slightly different aspect on things.
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,24311172-5005962,00.html
61 – who are the 2 labor leaning independents? I thought there was only 1.
Very hard to be a conservative gloater when you haven’t won an election in the country in over 10 years (and possibly still haven’t)
65 – um, are you forgetting 1998, 2001, 2004 federally??
1 labor independent said she wont support Carps, the MP for Kwinana and she’s got not intention of backing the ALP.
67 – yes Glen, thats the one I was thinking of. Over to you Nationals.
clip from article at 63
LABOR says it has picked up a data entry error in a crucial seat in the West Australia election which now means the party can form a minority government in its own right.
Foreign Minister and senior Labor Party strategist Stephen Smith said a a re-examination of the count in one of the state’s northwest seats showed it would fall to Labor.
“A close look at the figures over the weekend and people’s attention being drawn to the data entry error in the northwest Cape (coast) seat, that seat in my view has clearly been won by Labor,” Mr Smith said in Perth today.
“So it now opens up the technical possibility that Labor could govern in its own right with the support of two independents.”
We’ve known about Labor winning North West since late Saturday night, but this is the first I’ve heard of a “data entry error”. I assumed it was because Labor received higher than expected Nationals preferences.
Was referring to winning an election from opposition
Also, can anyone suggest what (say) Peter van Onselen knows about Morley that I don’t? The notional count gave the Liberals 8327 and Labor 7804, which would be very hard to come back from. But the WAEC have strangely decided to remove this from their site.
I must say as a small c Conservative I find any gloating quite puerile. I assume most of us left High School many years ago.
It is obvious that the end result is not going to be known for a few days and neither side has any right to gloat.
If Labor wins it will be by the smallest margin and by relying on people they should not rely on.
If the Libs win it will be by selling the farm to the Nats (pun intended).
WA has 4 years of unstable government ahead of it.
This swing is a disaster for ALP, but the result is hardly satisfactory for the Libs.
“technical possibility” are two important words here and I’m sure he is not suggesting there ARE two independents who will support Labor. However in other states conservative leaning independents have backed Labor before.
67 Glen: Is there a link to a story about Carol Adams, or did you just think that up yourself?
William,
The notional count for Morley is here: http://www.waec.wa.gov.au/elections/state_elections/election_results/2008_State_General_Election/District_of_Morley/notional_distribution_of_preferences.php
73 Steve Annabelle – I agree 100%
Agreed – this result is bad for both major parties. It will make the next 4 years very interesting. However, I suspect it will be harder for Labor to govern and would be better for them to go into Opposition.
The ABC page for Morley (http://www.abc.net.au/elections/wa/2008/guide/morl.htm) shows that none of the booths 2CP vote has been counted. Does this mean that assumptions about a 2CP result are based on guesses about preference flows? I would be loathe to make any assumptions about how D’Orazio’s preferences will flow.
Carol Adams hates Carps as much as Cautious does, and if Labor want to form Government with someone under investigation for corruption with Brian Burke (Bowler) then fine but it will be more of the same.
The Libs still are in a strong chance to form a government.
Amazing news here. Data entry problems.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24311172-29277,00.html
BrissyRod # 78 And even harder if Carpenter wants to stay on as leader!
82 – yes, agree.
http://news.smh.com.au/national/wa-election-shows-case-for-mergers-20080908-4bl2.html
So true, if there was an LNP in WA like in QLD the ALP would be done.
We all know the initial preference count in Morley was screwed up, due to the WAEC dictating that the liberal preferences be distributed between Whitby and D’Orazio. My thoughts are that the absentee and postal votes are going to flow very heavily to Whitby, and these votes will be untainted by D’Orazio HTV that directed preferences away from Whitby to Britza. I think there is sill life in Morley.
If there was an LNP in WA there may have been some leakage of the Nationals’ vote to the ALP. You can’t assume that all those who voted National on Saturday would’ve voted LNP.
Glen (80), I’m going to take that as a ‘no’.
Out of the 4 independents, Adams is far and away most likely to plump for Labor. Bowler’s on the fence and Carpenter probably doesn’t want him anyway (he fired him not too long ago!), and Woollard and Constable will go for Barnett. Adams most likely just wanted to see Carpenter’s nose bloodied for his stupid preselection process, and she’s certainly got that.
The more I think about it, the stupider Springborg’s comments seem to me…
Surely one conclusion we can draw from Saturday’s results is the strong endorsement of an independent National Party that is seen to be standing up for the regions. A merged LNP would represent the opposite of this. WA is not QLD.
ALP may be able to lead minority WA govt.
[Meanwhile, federal opposition deputy leader Julie Bishop says WA will most likely be ruled by a Liberal-National Party coalition. Ms Bishop, who is a West Australian MP, Monday said it would be “very odd” if the Nationals formed a coalition with the Labor Party, after Labor tried to “eliminate” them as a political force.]
http://news.smh.com.au/national/alp-may-be-able-to-lead-minority-wa-govt-20080908-4bl3.html
Very ODD, indeed, Ms.Bishop is absolutely right, the Nats is a very odd creature at the moment. As far as I can tell there are 5 incarnations of the Nats:
1. The Bananaland version where it is in meshed and tangled up together with the Libs.
2. WA version where it is supposed to be “independent”
3. SA version where it is in “coalition” with Labor.
4. NSW version where it is in “coalition” with the Libs
5. Fed Version where it is simply the country branch of the Libs.
I think the Nats are actually the one in trouble because they dont know who they are and what they are.
I hardly think the ALP would win seats like Moore, Central Wheat Belt ect the Nats simply held what they already had and a merged Party would have been able to achieve the same result.
89 – The Finnigans
It may well be that the current situation is good the Nationals… Consider each separate jurisdiction as a sort of experiment of different approaches to government. Each jurisdiction can learn lessons from the other. Grylls has indicated that the SA precedent is informing his thinking, and Truss has indicated that Grylls’ position is guiding the federal party’s potential move towards a more independent position.
Lots of wishful speculation there Glen… not for the first time
#91, It might be good for the Nats to “experiment” but the punters will only get confuse. as someone mentioned earlier, it will end up as a party of independents.
Rediculous statement, Glen at 84.
If there was an LNP in WA, then it would be a completely different landscape and there are absolutely no analogies that can be drawn from this real-life election result.
Neither the ALP nor Lib primary vote was flash.
But in the rush to horsetrade, what’s become of the good ol’ 1v-1v argument that the major party with over 50% of the TPP deserves minority government??
And what kind of electoral reform might we expected if the Nationals hold the balance of power in both houses?
89 – I think you will find this is due the historically state based structure of the Nationals. Unlike the Liberals federated model, they could be better described as a group of otherwise independant state branches.
With that in mind, how successful was the “One Vote, One Value” reform?
It now seems that the governance of WA may be held hostage by some 80 thousand voters that elected 4 Nationals MPs.
GB, Bracks ruled in Vic for one term with the support of 3 independants, 2 of whom where thought to be conservative leaning. It is possible. BTW he won reelection in a landslide after that
Something about that story about the data entry error strikes me.
It says that this will anble Labor to form a “minority government in its own right”. Is it just me or is this a contradiction in terms??