• 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.
Why no updates on WA Electoral Commission site?
Andos: Grylls just got very, very lucky. Two seats either way, and there’d be a majority government and his party would have continued on the way to nowhere… it’s fallen in pretty much an ideal point for the Nats. Imagine playing poker and getting dealt the ace and king of spades. 😉
MGM: I’m guessing they mean ALP + Adams + Bowler, and not the Nationals. That’d mean 28 ALP seats.
Andrew @ 99
Although that was at the beginning of the cycle with Bracks in Vic 1999.
But Labor might be lucky in this occasion – just wish the counting would hurry up – pity melbcity isn’t here degrading their commission for the woeful counting process- like he did with Vic re:2006
You’re not wrong there, Bird of Paradox.
Grylls bet everything on a bluff. And won.
Any updated figures for the 50-50 seats???
If Adams has won Kwinana it is as a result of being a ‘safe” depository of dissaffected Labor votes. Those who voted for her did so in the expectation that one way or the other they would end up with a Labor member or a Labor independent. I know the electorate and the people in it.
Adams is an intelligent woman and will know that she has a long term future as an independent in that seat only if she backs Labor. Otherwise she will be a one (short) term wonder.
100 MGM – I think it was saying Labor would be the only party in the minority government, the others would be independents. It was badly worded though.
103:
Whipping the WAEC would be quite unfair.
Carps called an early election when the WAEC were in the middle of training returning Officers , negotiating booth locations and finalising the roll. Furthermore the Commisoner was attending a conference in QLD at the time Carps called it.
they then had basically 2 weeks to have everything ready.
It was chaos.
Andos @ # 104
Is he using the same strategy now? In his negotiations….
So with ACT Election just around the corner – it could be another close contest with say – the Greens holding BOP or sharing it with one or two independents [the ex-lib and the mayor]. So it could be interesting how WA ends up – it’s still anyones game atm.
Zombie @ 108
That’s true though. Although there had been speculation about the election for a little while. I guess I’m just an impatient political junkie. 😛 needing my dose lol
The ABC is not updating at all, except for Upper House..
Wow, so the Libs lost ground in the Legislative Council.
Greetings bludgers, back from a newspaper and internet-free weekend in the country. See what happens when I go away?
Finnegans you forgot the Vic Nats who are not in Coalition.
Hence my comments about her boss Mike Dean having a meeting with Michelle Roberts on Saturday Night (I was there when the phone call was made).
So as I said – watch this space – Mike Dean is VERY friendly with Michelle Roberts, and despite Mike dipping his toes on Liberal policy, is mainly a supporter of the ALP.
Adam, the Vics got their coalition going again recently. 😉
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/libs-nats-revive-coalition/2008/02/11/1202578650786.html
#115 Actually, the Vic Nats ARE in Coalition with the Libs. They recently came back to the fold.
However, the Nats did pretty well last Vic election when they were not in Coalition with the Libs. The Vic Nats Leader, Peter Ryan, is a better politician than anything the Vic Libs have been able to offer recently.
#107
Not sure about that. We saw in Victoria in 1999 that independents in very conservative rural electorates installed Labor minority government. Two of the three survived the next election, the only one who didn’t was Susan Davies whose seat was abolished.
Peter Wellington in Qld is another example. Didn’t do him any harm.
Bird, thanks, I must have missed that earth-shaking news.
No. 26 I agree.
MDM: Kwinana is hardly a conservative rural electorate. It’s in the shadow of an oil refinery, and was Labor’s second safest seat until a couple of days ago. A MASSIVE thumb in the eye for Carpenter’s preselection process…
William@96
I would expect the Nationals to insist on a return to rural vote-weighting, especailly as it looks like they will have a Constitutional majority in the Council. The way they do it will be whats interesting – would it be a reversion to the old distribution (and a loss of seats in the city) or by additional seats in the country (keeping seats in the city but expanding parliament).
Information i am getting is that the Nats are pushing for 2 more bush seats.
I don’t profess knowlege of successful independents in other electorates, but I do know Kwinana.
Proudly working class, mostly surrounding industrial, cheap housing, usually high unemployment (though, temporarily, not now) young, struggling families, high crime and drug rates, high tenancy turnover, high truancy rates, long term Labor heartland. Things change, but not this fast.
Adams got lucky, right time, right place, right circumstances. It won’t happen again, no matter how good she turns out to be, unless she shows she is still mainstream Labor.
#115, OK Adam;
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.
6. Vic version where the Nats and Libs cannot stand each other.
btw Adam, the One is in trouble, big trouble, we told them, we told them: RCP National Average 45.7 46.7 McCain +1.0
We finally have an updated vote count on WAEC.
1514 primary votes added in Wanneroo, putting the Liberals in front. Below lists raw figures with percentage in brackets, following by the percentage of previously counted votes.
Lib 405 (46.4%) 45.9
ALP 312 (35.7%) 42.3
Grn 75 (8.6%) 9.0
FFP 36 (4.1%) 2.8
CDP 24 (2.7%) 2.8
IND 21 (2.4%) 2.2
And the same with Midland – Michelle only suffered a 1.5% swing against her. And they don’t forget about Richard Court closing the Workshops either, despite the Liberal Candidate crying crocodile tears about it and kicking an own goal.
That does it.
If Palin manages to win the election for the Republicans I’m moving to Mars.
Earth’s just not going to be safe anymore.
#122
I meant Inds from conservative electorates backed Labor, and prospered, so it doesn’t automatically follow that an Ind from working-class Kwinana would be punished for supporting the conservatives.
Bird you are wrong about Kwinana and the preselection process.
1. Kwinana wasn’t a carpenter pick. Cook is a longstanding ALP member & activist who was preselected by the left. The independent candidate, and the greens, eroded the ALP vote there. Not a great result for the ALP, but not a thumb in the eye for carps.
Note that Adams did not win more primary votes than Cook in any booth except one. So much for her local profile. She is handsomely supported by prefs from Green and Liberal (how honourable for a supposed Unionist is that?).
2. Janine Freeman in Nollamara, Chris Tallentire in Gosnells and Lisa Baker in Maylands all romped it home in safe labor seats. Freeman’s the only one of those 3 who didn’t need a waive from State Exec to get preselected because she wasn’t a member of the party already. None of them were Carpenter picks, they were left-endorsed.
In those seats the Labor voters didn’t mind a new candidate with progressive views.
3. It was the 2 high-profile journalists picked by Carps who attracted a lot of spite and publicity from other journalists (who are too gutless to run themselves – they would rather ‘comment’ on what the major parties should do), who suffered at the polls.
the funniest thing is the MSM commentary that seems to go something like the state WA result is bad for Rudd, yet the federal results of losing Lyne and almost losing Mayo is somehow not so bad for the coalition. Great spinning
125 fulvio said it.
Finns I agree, with the caveat that Palin is a high-risk pick that could easily explode in McCain’s face. But so far it has worked very well, particularly her record of overturning the corrupt Repub leaders in AK. Obama is paying the price for months of platitudinous speeches that thrill the elites but leave the key demographics cold. That’s why he got no bounce from the Dem convention while McCain has got one from his convention. Now that McCain has the convention behind him he can ditch Bush and run as an independent, and if he sticks to that and makes no serious errors he will win.
Andrew at 133 – You obviously haven’t been listening to the same media I have.
It has been presented a bad result for all or perhaps better put a bit like a curate’s egg – good in parts for everyone.
Could we please leave US politics off the WA election threads.
Exactly – how dare they turn to the darkside. I wonder if the LIbs endorsed some high profile Journos would they have done the same thing ?
Oh and as I said on the other thread, D’Orazio’s love vote can be also attributed to the bulk of his old Ballajura seat being moved into West Swan to benefit Rita Saffioti 🙂
Better news for Labor from Riverton: 617 votes added, probably putting McRae back in front after preferences.
ALP 233 (36.1%) 38.2
LIB 226 (36.6%) 39.6
GRN 82 (13.3%) 9.5
CDP 24 (3.9%) 3.2
FFP 20 (3.2%) 2.6
IND 18 (2.9%) 1.9
Sorry WB, It’s just Adam suddenly appeared.
That should be LOW vote 🙂
(please can we have an “edit” function ?)
farking hell.
hold on to ya hats boys.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/08/2358365.htm
apprently 60,000 declartion votes in total ie absentee, proviosnal.
that is a shed load.
an e-shed load actualy ( e-shed in freo hired by waec for counting …)
OK William despite my current deep disapproval of all Sandgropers I will desist.
“… we’re not in a position to start the formal distribution of preferences…”
“I’m endeavouring to commence that over the weekend.”
So, no result until next week, eh?
how is “Nahan” pronounced? “Narn”? “NAY-hun”?
Remember, those postals were sent out during the first 2 weeks before the dirt really started flying, so it will be interesting really favoured.
it’s pronounced Nah-Harn.
it’s pronounced Neo-cOn
David Weber of the ABC says one National MP (doesn’t say who) says he won’t work with Labor.
I wonder if it’s Grant Woodhams ? 🙂