Gerard Henderson green faced over Greens, Libs and Fremantle
It amazes me what passes for political analysis in the Australian media these days. Ex DLP professional talking head and former Chief of Staff to John Howard Gerard Henderson has favoured us with his analysis of Saturday’s Fremantle by-election in today’s Sydney Morning Herald. The first thing that struck me was that this was being published in the Herald and not in his syndicated column in the West Australian. Given that he ignores some facts that are patently obvious to any Western Australian in his analysis, this might not be accidental.
For anyone who missed it, the Greens defeated the ALP in a seat that Labor had held for more than 80 years. Even better for the Greens/worse for the ALP, the Greens polled higher on the primary vote than the ALP did – a first anywhere in Australia. One’s things for sure, I wouldn’t want to be the WA State Secretary of the ALP at the moment.
The gist of his piece is this – the Libs have a policy of putting the Greens ahead of the Labor Party which helps the Greens in inner city seats where they are a serious challenge to the ALP (seats like Sydney, Melbourne, Grayndler get mentioned and I would add Kingsford-Smith to the list as well) – this is true. The Greens however do not return the favour in marginal seats in the suburbs, at best running spilt tickets which give equal amounts of preferences to Labor and the Liberals and then only in safe Liberal or Labor seats – also true. Therefore according to the man who was once the principal advisor to an opposition leader and hence someone who ought to know a thing or two about elections, the Libs should demand a preference swap in winnable seats or put the Greens below the ALP on their how to votes.
Several things stand out about this masterpiece of close reasoning:
Firstly and most importantly, what Gerard doesn’t seem to realise he’s calling for is for the Liberals to put the ALP ahead of the Greens in marginal seats, thereby giving their principal opponent a leg up on their preferences. I can almost hear the pundits at Liberal Party HQ laughing at him now. Take the seat of Swan in Perth for example, in many ways it typifies what a marginal seat looks like, it takes in the posh, yuppie filled riverside suburb of South Perth and also takes in some very working class areas in Belmont, Victoria Park and Bentley with a bit of a mortgage belt in places like Karawara thrown in. It’s not hard to guess which suburbs vote for which party. The balance of demographics makes it extremely marginal and it has flip-flopped between Labor and the Libs for ages, at the last election the Libs won it off Labor by only 164 votes out of 76,173 votes cast. For the Liberals to put Labor ahead of the Greens in such a contest, because the Greens wouldn’t put them ahead of the ALP elsewhere would spell electoral doom for the conservative candidate, the Labor candidate would effectively be elected off the back of their preferences. The preferences of other rightwing parties (i.e. the religious ones like the Christian Democratic Party and Family First) would not be strong enough to counteract the flow of Green preferences to Labor and in this case, the Liberal preferences to Labor. So there’s a key marginal seat that they would loose and have only themselves to blame for it. The Liberals don’t have much of a choice when it comes to preferences and the Greens know it, why should they play ball when they’ve got the Libs by the balls?
Secondly Gerard makes much of the Greens being “Australia's only left-wing party”/“Australia's only genuinely leftist party” (aside from the fact that there are lots of micro parties that are on the Left – the Communist Party of Australia, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Equality Party all run candidates in various elections and even right wingers would concede that the ALP was centre-left at least some of the time) but then thinks preference swaps with the people who are the Greens’ main opponents in the political (as opposed to the electoral) process would seriously be entertained. These preference swaps would be for the Greens what putting Labor higher than them on their how to vote cards would be for the Libs – electoral suicide. Labor would have a field day showing how voting Green equates to supporting the Liberals. In Victoria furtive attempts were made at a Greens/Liberals deal at the state election in 2006 and it was a disaster. The Greens got into bed with the Liberals in a short lived coalition in Tasmania between 1996 to 1998 and are rumoured to be considering doing it again if Labor doesn’t win the next Tasmanian state election (due next year) because they’re mightily pissed off about Gunns' pulp mill. The last time they did it, the government was unstable (because chalk and cheese don’t mix too well) and it alienated much of the support base of the Greens. Doing these sort of preference swaps would not be a good idea if the Greens want votes.
Thirdly whilst the Greens would love to pick up seats in the lower houses, they’re perfectly happy to be a balance of power party in the upper houses around the country, what’s more, in Australian politics you don’t need many seats to become incredibly powerful. Then Senator Harradine had a one man veto over government legislation during the early years of the Howard government as long as the other parties opposed it, which was most of the time. He used this to great effect get reactionary policies and pieces of legislation in which have only just been rolled back. What Harradine could do for the right, the Greens can do for the left, who cares if they win lower house seats? Three quarters of their upper house vote comes from Labor preferences (the rest from the doctors’ wives crew who vote 1 Liberal and 2 Greens) so they’re potentially sitting pretty anyway, why alienate the base?
The great bonus for the Greens comes not from Liberal preferences but from when there is no Liberal candidate, at the Western Australian state election last year Jim McGinty, Labor’s long serving MLA for Freo got exactly the same primary vote that his would be successor got on Saturday, but the Liberals out polled the Greens on primary votes in 2008 and Labor got back in. This time round, the Libs didn’t field a candidate, some of the Liberal vote went to Liberal-leaning independents; virtually none of it went to the religious parties so most Liberal voters voted for the Greens to deny Labor the seat. As Gerard points out, this was what happened in the federal seat of Cunningham in 2002, although the seat went back to Labor at the next election in 2004 when the Libs did field a candidate.
What this says is not that the Libs should reconsider their preference deals; they should consider whether it’s worth fielding candidates in inner city seats with high a Greens vote. Fremantle and Cunningham tell us that there are seats that the Greens can win if there’s no conservative candidate (at least in a by-election, what would happen in a general election remains to be seen) so is the loss of funding from conservative voters in those seats not voting 1 Liberal (parties get funding based on how many primary votes they get) because there is no Liberal candidate offset by potentially fucking up the ALP in what would otherwise be a safe Labor seat? I don’t know, but you can bet that question is being chewed over right now by Liberal politicians and strategists across the land.
Then there’s his analysis of Fremantle itself. Gerard seems to think that because the Greens won the state seat of Fremantle at Saturday’s by-election, its federal member Melissa Parke should be sweating on it at the federal election due next year. Probably not actually, because what Gerard’s failed to notice is that the federal seat is much bigger than the state one. Redistributions over the years have seen the state seat become more and more focused on the city of Fremantle itself whereas the federal electorate still takes in large areas of suburban Fremantle that have large numbers of Italian and Portuguese immigrants and second generation Australians who as a demographic are solidly Labor. A pretty obvious fact to most Western Australians but presumably not known to your average Sydneysider.
Finally he ignores the local factors that were at play on Saturday, Labor preselected Fremantle’s Mayor Peter Tagliaferri the same day he joined the party, his campaign was in trouble from the start, with letters going out to ALP members across Perth asking for money and volunteers, the Australian Services Union pointed out that he had cut wages for council employees whilst he was mayor – that didn’t help him in the left-wing cred stakes and he supported the North Port Quay development of posh apartments on due to build on 6 artificial islands off the coast of Fremantle – that didn’t help his green cred. In Cunningham, ALP rank and filers (mostly on the party’s left) were massively that a Labor Right member was being parachuted in from head office in Sydney and so was the community.
Gerard might want to get some lessons in how to parse over the wash-up from elections from Anthony Greene.
For anyone who missed it, the Greens defeated the ALP in a seat that Labor had held for more than 80 years. Even better for the Greens/worse for the ALP, the Greens polled higher on the primary vote than the ALP did – a first anywhere in Australia. One’s things for sure, I wouldn’t want to be the WA State Secretary of the ALP at the moment.
The gist of his piece is this – the Libs have a policy of putting the Greens ahead of the Labor Party which helps the Greens in inner city seats where they are a serious challenge to the ALP (seats like Sydney, Melbourne, Grayndler get mentioned and I would add Kingsford-Smith to the list as well) – this is true. The Greens however do not return the favour in marginal seats in the suburbs, at best running spilt tickets which give equal amounts of preferences to Labor and the Liberals and then only in safe Liberal or Labor seats – also true. Therefore according to the man who was once the principal advisor to an opposition leader and hence someone who ought to know a thing or two about elections, the Libs should demand a preference swap in winnable seats or put the Greens below the ALP on their how to votes.
Several things stand out about this masterpiece of close reasoning:
Firstly and most importantly, what Gerard doesn’t seem to realise he’s calling for is for the Liberals to put the ALP ahead of the Greens in marginal seats, thereby giving their principal opponent a leg up on their preferences. I can almost hear the pundits at Liberal Party HQ laughing at him now. Take the seat of Swan in Perth for example, in many ways it typifies what a marginal seat looks like, it takes in the posh, yuppie filled riverside suburb of South Perth and also takes in some very working class areas in Belmont, Victoria Park and Bentley with a bit of a mortgage belt in places like Karawara thrown in. It’s not hard to guess which suburbs vote for which party. The balance of demographics makes it extremely marginal and it has flip-flopped between Labor and the Libs for ages, at the last election the Libs won it off Labor by only 164 votes out of 76,173 votes cast. For the Liberals to put Labor ahead of the Greens in such a contest, because the Greens wouldn’t put them ahead of the ALP elsewhere would spell electoral doom for the conservative candidate, the Labor candidate would effectively be elected off the back of their preferences. The preferences of other rightwing parties (i.e. the religious ones like the Christian Democratic Party and Family First) would not be strong enough to counteract the flow of Green preferences to Labor and in this case, the Liberal preferences to Labor. So there’s a key marginal seat that they would loose and have only themselves to blame for it. The Liberals don’t have much of a choice when it comes to preferences and the Greens know it, why should they play ball when they’ve got the Libs by the balls?
Secondly Gerard makes much of the Greens being “Australia's only left-wing party”/“Australia's only genuinely leftist party” (aside from the fact that there are lots of micro parties that are on the Left – the Communist Party of Australia, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Equality Party all run candidates in various elections and even right wingers would concede that the ALP was centre-left at least some of the time) but then thinks preference swaps with the people who are the Greens’ main opponents in the political (as opposed to the electoral) process would seriously be entertained. These preference swaps would be for the Greens what putting Labor higher than them on their how to vote cards would be for the Libs – electoral suicide. Labor would have a field day showing how voting Green equates to supporting the Liberals. In Victoria furtive attempts were made at a Greens/Liberals deal at the state election in 2006 and it was a disaster. The Greens got into bed with the Liberals in a short lived coalition in Tasmania between 1996 to 1998 and are rumoured to be considering doing it again if Labor doesn’t win the next Tasmanian state election (due next year) because they’re mightily pissed off about Gunns' pulp mill. The last time they did it, the government was unstable (because chalk and cheese don’t mix too well) and it alienated much of the support base of the Greens. Doing these sort of preference swaps would not be a good idea if the Greens want votes.
Thirdly whilst the Greens would love to pick up seats in the lower houses, they’re perfectly happy to be a balance of power party in the upper houses around the country, what’s more, in Australian politics you don’t need many seats to become incredibly powerful. Then Senator Harradine had a one man veto over government legislation during the early years of the Howard government as long as the other parties opposed it, which was most of the time. He used this to great effect get reactionary policies and pieces of legislation in which have only just been rolled back. What Harradine could do for the right, the Greens can do for the left, who cares if they win lower house seats? Three quarters of their upper house vote comes from Labor preferences (the rest from the doctors’ wives crew who vote 1 Liberal and 2 Greens) so they’re potentially sitting pretty anyway, why alienate the base?
The great bonus for the Greens comes not from Liberal preferences but from when there is no Liberal candidate, at the Western Australian state election last year Jim McGinty, Labor’s long serving MLA for Freo got exactly the same primary vote that his would be successor got on Saturday, but the Liberals out polled the Greens on primary votes in 2008 and Labor got back in. This time round, the Libs didn’t field a candidate, some of the Liberal vote went to Liberal-leaning independents; virtually none of it went to the religious parties so most Liberal voters voted for the Greens to deny Labor the seat. As Gerard points out, this was what happened in the federal seat of Cunningham in 2002, although the seat went back to Labor at the next election in 2004 when the Libs did field a candidate.
What this says is not that the Libs should reconsider their preference deals; they should consider whether it’s worth fielding candidates in inner city seats with high a Greens vote. Fremantle and Cunningham tell us that there are seats that the Greens can win if there’s no conservative candidate (at least in a by-election, what would happen in a general election remains to be seen) so is the loss of funding from conservative voters in those seats not voting 1 Liberal (parties get funding based on how many primary votes they get) because there is no Liberal candidate offset by potentially fucking up the ALP in what would otherwise be a safe Labor seat? I don’t know, but you can bet that question is being chewed over right now by Liberal politicians and strategists across the land.
Then there’s his analysis of Fremantle itself. Gerard seems to think that because the Greens won the state seat of Fremantle at Saturday’s by-election, its federal member Melissa Parke should be sweating on it at the federal election due next year. Probably not actually, because what Gerard’s failed to notice is that the federal seat is much bigger than the state one. Redistributions over the years have seen the state seat become more and more focused on the city of Fremantle itself whereas the federal electorate still takes in large areas of suburban Fremantle that have large numbers of Italian and Portuguese immigrants and second generation Australians who as a demographic are solidly Labor. A pretty obvious fact to most Western Australians but presumably not known to your average Sydneysider.
Finally he ignores the local factors that were at play on Saturday, Labor preselected Fremantle’s Mayor Peter Tagliaferri the same day he joined the party, his campaign was in trouble from the start, with letters going out to ALP members across Perth asking for money and volunteers, the Australian Services Union pointed out that he had cut wages for council employees whilst he was mayor – that didn’t help him in the left-wing cred stakes and he supported the North Port Quay development of posh apartments on due to build on 6 artificial islands off the coast of Fremantle – that didn’t help his green cred. In Cunningham, ALP rank and filers (mostly on the party’s left) were massively that a Labor Right member was being parachuted in from head office in Sydney and so was the community.
Gerard might want to get some lessons in how to parse over the wash-up from elections from Anthony Greene.