Call of the board: Western Australia

Another deep dive into the result of the May federal election – this time focusing on Western Australia, which disappointed Labor yet again.

The Call of the Board wheel now turns to Western Australia, after previous instalments that probed into the federal election results for Sydney (here and here), regional New South Wales, Melbourne, regional Victoria, south-east Queensland and regional Queensland.

Western Australia has been disappointing federal Labor ever since Kim Beazley elevated the party’s vote in his home state in 1998 and 2001, and this time was no exception. After an unprecedented Labor landslide at the 2017 state election and expectations the state’s economic malaise would sour voters on the government, the May election in fact produced a statewide two-party swing of 0.9% to the Coalition, and no change on the existing configuration of 11 seats for the Liberals and five for Labor.

As illustrated by the maps below (click on the images to enlarge), which record the two-party swings at booth level, Perth typified the national trend in that Labor gained in inner urban areas, regardless of their political complexion, while copping a hit in the outer suburbs. This will be reflected in the seat-by-seat commentary below, which regularly invokes the shorthand of “inner urban” and “outer urban” effects. The map on the left is limited to seats that are clearly within the Perth metropolitan area, while the second adds the fringe seats of Pearce (north), Hasluck (east) and Canning (south).

For further illustration, the table below compares each electorate’s two-party result (the numbers shown are Labor’s) with a corresponding two-party Senate measure, which was derived from the AEC’s files recording the preference order of each ballot paper (with votes that did not preference either Labor or Liberal excluded). This potentially offers a pointer as to how much candidate factors affected the lower house results.

Brand (Labor 6.7%; 4.8% swing to Liberal): Like so many other suburban seats distant from central business districts across the land, Brand recorded a solid swing to the Liberals after going strongly the other way in 2016. This dynamic drowned out whatever impact candidate factors may have had: Labor’s Madeleine King picked up a 7.7% swing on debut in 2016, but this time copped a 4.8% reversal despite theoretically being in line for a sophomore surge. The Senate result was little different from the House, further suggesting candidate factors were not much of a feature.

Burt (Labor 5.0%; 2.1% swing to Liberal): On its creation in 2016, Burt recorded a swing to Labor of 13.2%, the biggest of the election. This partly reflected the dramatic boomtime suburban growth that had caused the seat to be created in the first place, and which has since ground to a halt. The Liberals swing of 2.1% this time was typical for suburbia outside the inner urban zone, overwhelming any sophomore effect for the seat’s inaugural member, Matt Keogh. However, Keogh very substantially outperformed the two-party Senate metric.

Canning (Liberal 11.6%; 4.8% swing to Liberal): Covering Perth’s outer southern fringes, Canning was another seat that typified outer suburbia in swinging heavily to the Liberals, in this case to the advantage of Andrew Hastie. Hastie came to the seat at a by-election held a week after Malcolm Turnbull’s rise to the prime ministership in September 2015, at which he survived a 6.6% swing to Labor, most of which stuck at the federal election the following July. The swing in his favour this time has returned the Liberal margin to the peaks of 2013.

Cowan (Labor 0.9%; 0.2% swing to Labor): Anne Aly gained Cowan for Labor in 2016 by a margin of 0.7%, slightly less than she would have needed to hold out the 0.9% statewide swing had it been uniform. She was in fact able to boost her margin by 0.2%, in a seat slightly out of the range of the wealthier inner urban areas where Labor did best in swing terms. The disparity between the House result and the two-party Senate metric, which records a 1.5% advantage for the Liberals, suggests Aly can take much of the credit for her win, over and above the exercise of the sophomore surge effect.

Curtin (Liberal 14.3%; 6.4% swing to Labor): The most prestigious Liberal seat in the west had a complicated story to tell at this election: Julie Bishop retired after more than two decades as member; the party raised some eyebrows locally by endorsing a Christian conservative, Celia Hammond, despite the seat’s small-l liberal complexion; and Labor initially endorsed former Fremantle MP Melissa Parke, who shortly withdrew after copping static over contentious pronouncements about Israel. An independent, Louise Stewart, held out some promise of harnessing support from Malcolm Turnbull loyalists, but her campaign was torpedoed after polling she circulated showing her well placed to win proved to be fabricated. Stewart claimed to have been the victim of a trick, while the Liberal response to the episode betrayed a certain inconsistency in attitude towards the dissemination of fraudulent documents for political purposes. The loss of Bishop’s personal support and the broader inner urban effect were evident on the scoreboard, with the Liberals down 11.3% on the primary vote and 6.4% on two-party preferred. The Greens continue to fall just shy of edging Labor into second – this time they trailed 17.6% to 15.6% on the primary vote and 20.4% to 19.6% at the last preference exclusion. Louise Stewart finished a distant fourth with 7.8%.

Durack (Liberal 14.8%; 3.7% swing to Liberal): When she first came to the seat covering northern Western Australia in 2013, Melissa Price had to fight off the Nationals, over whom she prevailed by 4.0%. However, she has since gone undisturbed over two elections as the Nationals have fallen to earth. The applecart was upset slightly on this occasion by the entry of One Nation, who scored 9.5%, contributing to respective drops of 4.3% and 5.8% for Labor and the Nationals, while Price’s primary vote rose 2.6%.

Forrest (Liberal 14.6%; 2.0% swing to Liberal): Nola Marino was re-elected with a modest swing amid a generally uneventful result. One Nation and Shooters Fishers and Farmers were in the field this time whereas the Nationals were not, but this was rather academic as the primary votes for all concerned were inside 6%.

Fremantle (Labor 6.9%; 0.6% swing to Liberal): The scoreline in Fremantle was not particularly interesting, with little change on two-party preferred, and downward primary vote movements for the established parties that reflected only a larger field of candidates. However, the results map illustrates particularly noteworthy geographic variation, with the area around Fremantle proper swinging to Labor in line with the inner urban effect, while the less fashionable suburbia that constitutes the electorate’s southern half went the other way (a pattern maintained across the boundary with Brand, where there was a 4.6% swing in favour of the Liberals). Labor member Josh Wilson was in line for a sophomore surge effect, although this was not his first bid for re-election thanks to a Section 44 by-election in July 2018, which passed without incident in the absence of a Liberal candidate.

Hasluck (Liberal 5.2%; 3.2% swing to Liberal): The Liberals’ most marginal Western Australian seat going into the election, Hasluck delivered Labor a particularly dispiriting defeat, with Ken Wyatt securing the biggest margin of his four election career. The swing reflected the general outer urban effect, although Labor did manage to pick up a few swings around relatively affluent Kalamunda.

Moore (Liberal 11.7%; 0.6% swing to Liberal): This northern suburbs beachside electorate is affluent enough to be safe Liberal, but not fashionable enough to have partaken in the inner urban effect. Third term member Ian Goodenough picked up a very slight swing, as the primary vote told a familiar story of the three established parties all being slightly down amid a larger field of candidates.

O’Connor (Liberal 14.5%; 0.6% swing to Labor): Covering the southern part of regional Western Australia, O’Connor was held by the Nationals for a term after Tony Crook unseated Wilson Tuckey in 2010, but Rick Wilson narrowly recovered it for the Liberals when Crook bowed out after a term in 2013, and the Nationals have not troubled him since. One Nation entered the race this time, but managed only a modest 8.4%.

Pearce (Liberal 7.5%; 3.9% swing to Liberal): Among the many Liberal scalps that went unclaimed by Labor was that of Christian Porter, who emerged the beneficiary of the outer urban effect after being widely written off in the wake of the state election landslide and the coup against Malcolm Turnbull. One Nation landed a fairly solid 8.2%, contributing to a solid 5.2% primary vote slump for Labor.

Perth (Labor 4.9%; 1.6% swing to Labor): One of Labor’s few reliable seats in the west, Perth has undergone frequent personnel changes since Stephen Smith retired in 2013, with Alannah MacTiernan bowing out to return to state politics in 2016, and her successor Tim Hammond failing to make it through a full term. This complicates sophomore surge considerations for current member Patrick Gorman, who retained the seat without Liberal opposition at a by-election in July last year. The swing in his favour reflected the inner urban effect, but he also managed to outperform Labor’s two-part Senate metric for the seat.

Stirling (Liberal 5.6%; 0.5% swing to Labor): In a once marginal seat that looked increasingly secure for the Liberals after Michael Keenan gained it in 2004, this election loomed as a litmus test of how secure the party would look when stripped of his personal vote. The results were encouraging for the party, with new candidate Vince Connelly suffering only a slight swing. The results map suggests a pattern in which the beachside suburbs and areas near the city swung to Labor, while the unfashionable area around Balga at the centre of the electorate went the other way.

Swan (Liberal 2.7%; 0.9% swing to Labor): Together with Pearce and Hasluck, Swan was one of three seats in Labor’s firing line, but Steve Irons was able to secure a fifth successive win in what has traditionally been a knife-edge seat. This was despite the pedigree of Labor candidate Hannah Beazley, whose father Kim Beazley held the seat from 1980 to 1996, when he jumped ship for Brand. The results map tells a family story in that the affluent western end of the electorate swung to Labor, while the lower income suburbs in the east went the other way.

Tangney (Liberal 11.5%; 0.4% swing to Liberal): Liberal sophomore Ben Morton held his ground in this safe Liberal seat, despite the riverside suburbia of Applecross and Attadale partaking of the inner urban effect. He gained 4.8% on the primary vote in the absence of former member Dennis Jensen, who polled 11.9% as an independent in 2016 after being defeated by Morton for preselection.

ANNOUNCEMENT: If this painstakingly compiled post interested you enough that you have made it all the way through to the end, perhaps you might care to make a donation. These are gratefully received via the “become a supporter” button that appears just below, or the PressPatron button at the top of the page.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,840 comments on “Call of the board: Western Australia”

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  1. This is what it looks like when a country is serious about global warming …

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/07/majority-of-uk-public-back-2030-zero-carbon-target-poll

    YouGov found that 56% of people back the total decarbonisation of the UK economy by 2030 and just under half support public spending to make large swathes of public transport free to use.

    The findings appear to highlight a growing awareness of the scale of the climate crisis and the increasingly radical policy solutions the public is willing to support.

    Last week a separate survey found that the climate emergency would influence how most people vote, with almost two-thirds agreeing it was the biggest issue facing humankind.

    Meanwhile, back in “The Lucky Country”, Labor is still trying to figure out how it lost the unlosable election.

    It’s not rocket science, people … 🙁

  3. “ Wait until Albo’s seat is threatened by the Greens- then the ALP will be wanting the inner-City lefty votes.”

    Bukake – I’ve already written it off, and SYDNEY as well, once Albo and Tanya retire.

    I could be wrong of course, and I hope labor hangs on, but regardless of the threat of seats shifting from Labor to Green because of gentrification, Labor should be distracted from the larger picture.

  4. Douglas and Milko
    Thursday, November 7th, 2019 – 6:06 pm
    Comment #1684

    Bear with me

    Obviously a freudian slip. Brown Bear will be pleased.

    While I’m on the couch (are you facing away and taking notes>) the lady with the boots bring to mind an old time fetish and possible delusion – (see below)*

    ♫Well all of my life I been a ♪ tryin’ to save to get a ♫ pair of cowboy boots
    ♫Sixteen years of my life ♫ I gave to get a pair of ♪ cowboy boots
    I ♫ wanna go where the ♪ money’s free ♫ Hollywood is a ♫ callin’ me
    ♫ Oh what a great ♫ big star I’ll be in a pair ♫ of cowboy boots

    *Acting now from post hypnotics suggestion when I confess that ladies wearing cowboy boots (as they increasingly do locally) tend to be of the largish bottom variety. I can’t help it – the devil makes me say this.

    The dreaded Brown Shoes syndrome has raised its evil head again. Trust and brown shoes parted company early in the jurassic.

    The jack russell cross, which has been named Dilyn, was chauffeured into the prime minister’s residence in a different kind of red box on Monday morning.

    The dog has been adopted by Boris Johnson and his partner, Carrie Symonds, from Friends of Animals Wales in Rhondda; it was abandoned by a puppy farmer because of its undershot and misaligned jaw.

    The TV vet Marc Abraham, who has worked with the charity’s founder, Eileen Jones, said he made the couple aware of the shelter.

    “It was important to shine a light on the work she’s doing,” he told the BBC. “It’s entirely voluntary with huge vets’ bills so they only rescue and rehabilitate the ones with the most problems.”

    The arrival of the dog may come as a shock to 12-year-old Larry, the No 10 cat which has served three prime ministers.

    I’m not sure whether any of this qualifies Mr. Johnson to be regarded as a certified human being.

    News has just come to hand that there is a MD river flow. HGIT ❓

  5. Player One says:
    Thursday, November 7, 2019 at 6:58 pm

    The election was a Referendum on Climate Change- this was made clear by the ALP and Greens. They lost.

  6. “ This is what it looks like when a country is serious about global warming”

    Of course, this also requires ignoring that said country destroyed the last of its truly wild places 1,000 years ago …

  7. Bucephalus – yes it’s nominally supposed to be water taken from Adelaide that is replaced by running a desal plant.

    I can’t accept that taking X water out at point A and magicking it back into existence at point B doesn’t have an environmental impact since there is simply less water flowing between A and B regardless of the accounting.

  9. So there we have it. Labor right thinks it’s in the centre being for privatisation.

    That’s backing the elite rich monopolies

    That’s how far from the centre so called Labor right posters on this blog have gone.
    Right of John Hewson.

  11. https://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/too-late-to-leave-emergency-warnings-for-multiple-bushfires-across-nsw-20191107-p538fq.html

    Emergency warnings have been issued for five out-of-control bushfires burning in the northern part of NSW, as firefighters brace for “extreme” conditions on Friday.

    The NSW Rural Fire Service said it was “too late to leave” for residents in the path of a large blaze in Tenterfield near the Queensland border that has already burnt almost 8000 hectares.

  12. Hamish Macdonald is not only going to QandA – does this mean Fran Kelly is at least partly losing her spot on RN breakfast?

    From The Project to Q&A: ABC announces Tony Jones replacement

    Award-winning journalist Hamish Macdonald will also contribute to Foreign Correspondent and Radio National’s breakfast program.

    2 hours ago by Michael Lallo (Nine/Fairfax headline)

  13. CC –

    So the flows to irrigators is bad?

    The environment got dudded already in the formation of the MDBP, and then it’s been subject to death by a thousand cuts from Joyce and his NSW mates screwing the system.

    There is a basic lack of integrity to the whole thing, and now we get Morrison coming along and just waving a magic wand without, I imagine, any concern as to what happens to the actual river systems that are, themselves, being affected by the same drought.

    When I can have no faith in the system, how am I supposed to support what appears to be ad hoc creative water accounting? Irrigators can have water taken from these rivers after the environment has been properly looked after.

  15. I think the terms right and left are basically redundant nowadays because what people perceive as right or left is merely dictated by who they think is the right or left of them.

    progressive versus conservative would be more indicative.

    The current LibNat coalition is very conservative (I believe a former leader of the party outlined that this morning).

    Labor wants to be progressive … but the party still harbours many conservative elements so there is an inherent tension.

    I do not think the Greens are very progressive when you think about many of their policies – in many ways I see their policies as creating a stasis … with perhaps progressive ideas on climate change but using old-fashioned methods to promote their stance.

  16. ‘The environment got dudded already in the formation of the MDBP…’

    Incorrect. The MDBP was formulated because water was over allocated and this meant that there was no excess water for the environment. By putting caps on water allocations and buying back water, the MDBP has helped the environment.

    Of course, there is more to be done, and the present Federal government is certainly not helping.

    But without the MDBP, there would be less water for the environment than there is at present.

  18. Andrew_Earlwood @ #1694 Thursday, November 7th, 2019 – 6:26 pm

    ‘News for you. The centre is not the right.’

    But it is for you and your ilk. The centre (I’m referring to actual voters, not the politically engaged) are not aching for ‘the left’, if they were the Greens wouldn’t be stuck at 10%, or less than half of that in outer urbs electorates.

    You are also wrong to say that Labor is ‘supposed’ to of the left. This is just nonesense. Labor is meant to be the bridge between the left, centre-left and the centre. It is falling in this regard. Doubling down on leftism will be a disaster. Luckily that does not seem likely to happen.

    So my leftist friend: Labor is prepared to make common cause with you (on mutually acceptable terms) but ‘we’ are not ‘you’. Never were. Never will be.

    AE,

    they should do it our way or fuck off!

    I can’t be any more conciliatory than that, can I?

  19. CC –
    I’m not pretending that any parts of these systems can realistically be returned to any sort of pre-settlement pristine state; I don’t expect that and I’m not demanding that. Humans have seriously altered the whole continent, that’s just reality.

    My bottom line is that we should look after the habitats and diversity of ecosystems that are left, and part of that means not simply prioritizing farming over everything whenever things get a bit sticky out in Nationals’ heartland.

  21. zoomster –
    That’s not what I meant. I remember the footage of the farmers holding plan-burning bonfires when the initial draft of the plan was put out, and having Tony Windsor brought in to calm things down and do a politically palatable deal. But when the actual plan came into being it had cut significantly below the absolute minimum recommended by the experts. The environment got dudded from the very beginning, and it’s only gotten worse since then.

  22. Gawler is a long way from the mouth of the Murray.
    Check before you type but you meant Goolwa

    There was so much wrong with that post I didnt know where to start.

  27. ScoMo on tbe “up to one billion dollar” drought assistance:

    “This isn’t {the dreaded} welfare. It’s to maintain viability.”

    Jesus fucking wept.

  30. Trump is so thin skinned he has retweeted an Alabama SGA warning for people to refrain from protesting against Trump at the upcoming game or they will lose their seat, even tho the SGA had walked back from that threat.

    I hope nothing gets out of hand at the game and people respect others right to heckle the president.

  32. $1.5B for farmers in drought nationwide, $.75B for a new fish market in Sydney. 50% on a tourist facility, I’m sure there’s some logic in it somewhere.

  35. “ So there we have it. Labor right thinks it’s in the centre being for privatisation.

    That’s backing the elite rich monopolies

    That’s how far from the centre so called Labor right posters on this blog have gone.
    Right of John Hewson.”

    What the actual fuck? ‘The centre’ (again I’m referring to actual voters) ain’t for further privatisation. labor doesn’t stand for that. It campaigns against that, and has done so for at least the last decade.

  36. Simon Katich @ #1729 Thursday, November 7th, 2019 – 7:44 pm

    Trump is so thin skinned he has retweeted an Alabama SGA warning for people to refrain from protesting against Trump at the upcoming game or they will lose their seat even tho the SGA had walked back from that threat.

    I hope nothing gets out of hand at the game and people respect others right to heckle the president.

    It will be like the 1990 AFL Grand final. People went to a fight and a football game broke out.

  39. AE

    Well you should have a look at the policies you are saying are so socialist.

    Just because the GOP says they are doesn’t make them so.
    Warren could be a Labor Prime Minister with her policies.

    That’s the point.

    That’s what happens when you label other people according to your bias. You get it wrong.

  40. CC –

    When there is a drought shouldn’t environmental flows be less just?

    Of course a “natural” flow will be affected by “natural” droughts, and various (non-stressed!) Australian ecosystems will be able to cope with water variability (and quite possibly need that variability, within certain limits), and that presumably has to be taken into account when managing the various river systems.

    If the decisions about environmental flows were made by experts at arms’ length from politics with minimum enforced standards for maintenance of habitats then I could be ok with that.

    But that is clearly not what is happening, and this kind of “oh we’ve got this political pressure, so come up with this accounting fudge to get some water to these guys” is absolutely the wrong basis for making such decisions.

  41. Bushfire Billsays:

    ScoMo on tbe “up to one billion dollar” drought assistance:

    Just wait until the farmers discover Scrott has borrowed the NBN’s “up to”.

  43. The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists had this to say about the MDBP in 2012:

    http://wentworthgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Statement-on-the-2011-Draft-Basin-Plan.pdf

    The draft Plan released for public comment by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority on the 28 November 2011 does not provide the most basic information required to allow anybody to make an informed decision on the future management of the water resources of the Basin.

    The absence of this information makes it impossible for the community, science or Parliament to understand the implications or have confidence the Plan has any prospect of delivering a healthy working river:
    :::
    Each of the above points is examined in detail in the attachment.

    As it stands, the Australian Parliament should reject this plan.

    Over the past four years significant progress has been made in the understanding and modelling of the Murray-Darling Basin river system and the volumes of water required for a healthy working river system. Progress has also been made in understanding the social and economic costs resulting from changes in the use of water in the Basin.

    This good work has not been capitalised on by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to develop a comprehensive and transparent Draft Basin Plan. Instead the Murray-Darling Basin Authority ignores much of the good work and has instead produced a draft Plan that manipulates science in an attempt to engineer a pre-determined political outcome.

    The Commonwealth government should stop the process, instruct the Authority to withdraw the draft Plan, abandon the proposal for a 2015 review and instead take the time necessary to include the science and social science now. The Draft Plans failings are of such significance that iterative changes will not lead to a good Plan.

    The government should also suspend the current infrastructure grants and water buyback programs, and use this opportunity to establish a genuine industry reform which is aimed at delivering water reform. This must respect the knowledge and expertise of communities in those localities that are likely to experience significant impacts.
    :::
    The Gillard government went to the Australian people in 2007 and 2010 with a promise torestore the Murray-Darling Basin to a healthy condition. They also promised evi dence-based policy based on the best available science. There is ample science. What the Authority has done is stop this science being made available and has refused to subject it to transparent independent review so that people can make informed decisions.

    If the Basin Plan does not deal with the fundamental bio-physical needs of the system, such as moving sufficient water down the system to restore medium-size floods, managing the Murray mouth during times of drought and
    discharging the salts, it will be impossible to restore the health of the Murray-Darling Basin.

  45. Katharine Murphy’s take of the Labor review report:

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/07/labors-election-review-reads-like-a-disaster-movie-with-a-few-clues-for-the-stunned-survivors

    Implicit in this review is a challenge: Labor in 2019 needs to learn how to walk all sides of the street.

    There is a view doing the rounds in the right faction post-election that progressive, values-driven voters are less important than the traditional base, because they can vote Green and the preferences flow back – but the campaign review is emphatic on this point: one constituency can’t be sacrificed for another.

    Fusing constituencies with different experiences, values and objectives in an age of mass intolerance is really bloody difficult, but this, in a nutshell, is the core challenge of the current term.

    Weatherill and Emerson are crystal clear: if Labor can’t do this, if it fails to square this circle, it will not win the next election.

  46. ‘Roger Miller @ #1741 Thursday, November 7th, 2019 – 8:00 pm

    At what point do we stop calling it a drought and start calling it climate change?’

    We don’t have enough data points to answer that question very well at all, IMO.

    We know that there is a drying trend but the latest unpleasantness is a dramatic outlier within that trend – in terms of both temperatures and rainfall.

  47. AE

    A reminder too that socialist Senator Sanders wants a Scandinavian style economy. If you don’t listen to the GOP that’s what you get.

    His big “Socialist” Policy like Warren is Universal Healthcare.
    Very Labor I would have thought.

  48. Once the salinity levels in the Coorong goes above that of the sea then surely the barrages should be fully removed and sea water be allowed in as would naturally occur.

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