Thursday, April 13, 2023

Legislative Council 2023: Rumney

Welcome to this year's coverage of Tasmania's three Legislative Council seat elections.  Yesterday I released a survey of the Council's recent voting patterns.  Guides to Launceston and Murchison have followed.  There will be live coverage on the night of May 6th.  

The Legislative Council currently stands at four Liberal, four Labor and seven independents.  Three of the independents are conservative, three are well to the left of Labor and one (Ruth Forrest) has moved from the left to the centre in recent years.  While the Liberal Government therefore has a relatively easy time of it and wins the majority of contested votes, it still needs to convince someone from the left or centre to support it on major legislation.  I'm starting with Rumney because it is the seat with a major party contest although that contest has less excitement about it so far than last time.  

Seat Profile

Rumney is an urban fringe semi-rural seat on Hobart's eastern shore.  The 2017 redistribution reduced the size of Rumney with Sorell and the Tasman and Forestier Peninsulas going to the new seat of Prosser.  Rumney is now primarily the outer part of the Clarence council boundary, including Risdon Vale, Richmond, Lauderdale, Cambridge, Seven Mile Beach and South Arm.  It surrounds Pembroke which contains the inner Clarence suburbs.  Rumney also includes the commuter suburb of Midway Point (which is part of Sorell council) and Old Beach (Brighton).  


Rumney is a relatively strong area for Labor.  At the 2021 state election booths within Rumney retuned about 43% for the Liberals, 36.6% for Labor and 14.0% for the Greens, though a fair number of Rumney voters are likely to have voted at booths near them that are in Pembroke.  At federal level Labor wins every booth in Rumney and the seat includes some outer suburban booths (Risdon Vale, Rokeby, Clarendon Vale) with 2PPs of over 70%.

Historically Rumney has been a swing seat.  Previously known as Monmouth, it was held by conservative independent Stephen Wilson for three terms ending 1999 when Labor's Lin Thorp beat him by 65 votes.  A scandal-plagued second term saw Thorp beaten by "independent liberal" Tony Mulder in 2011 but Mulder was in turn beaten by Labor's Sarah Lovell in 2017.  Lovell won narrowly with 52.26% after preferences.  The redistribution would not have much affected her notional margin.

Incumbent

Labor MLC Sarah Lovell (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, candidacy announcement) is seeking a second term.  Lovell is currently Shadow Minister for the following portfolios: Child Safety, Workplace Relations, Parks & Environment, Youth, Community Services and Development.  She was previously also Shadow Minister for Health.  Prior to winning Rumney, Lovell was relatively little-known with a background as Lead Organiser with United Voice and as a volunteer for St Vincent de Paul and Edmund Rice Camps.  

Political differences of opinion aside, Lovell has had a trouble-free first term with no personal controversies at all.  She has been one of the more high-profile MLCs including during the 2021 
election campaign (where she acted as campaign spokesperson including re the curious date life of Adam Brooks) and on health and youth protection issues.  Lovell lives within the electorate.

Challengers (3)

Gregory Brown (Facebook, candidacy announcement) is the endorsed Liberal challenger for Rumney.  Brown owns a farming business at Sandford (within the electorate) and is a former bartender, licensee and raceday controller.  He has stated he was a Labor voter until about 2000 and is reportedly related to Labor Senator Carol Brown.  Gregory Brown contested the 2022 Pembroke by-election, at which time he was living in Bellerive (within Pembroke).  He has previously lived in several Rumney suburbs.

Brown was thumped 63.3-36.7 by Labor councillor Luke Edmunds in the battle for Pembroke, an especially wide margin given that the seat was vacant.  However the commentariat consensus was that Brown had run a good campaign and the scale of the loss was not his fault (cost of living issues and Labor's head-start in campaigning for the seat being two issued here).

Independent Tony Mulder (Facebook, Twitter) was the MLC for Rumney between 2011 and 2017 as mentioned above.  Mulder, a former police commander, has been a Clarence Councillor from 2005 to 2011 and 2018 to present, either side of his tenure as MLC.  In 2022 he ran for Clarence Mayor and was very narrowly defeated by Liberal councillor Brendan Blomeley (the two have a long-running feud described by one observer as "Shakespearean".) 

Mulder was originally a Liberal Party member and ended up running as an "independent liberal" for the seat in 2011, apparently as a result of a preselection stalemate.  Running as an indie against endorsed Liberal Jane Howlett for Prosser in 2018 (he finished fourth) saw Mulder kicked out of the party.  He also ran for Pembroke in 2019, and came third with 18.4%.  On Clarence Council he is actually slightly left of centre, though on Clarence party ties are a weak predictor of voting behaviour anyway.  Mulder (see 2017 profile) was always a small-l liberal and a very outspoken contrarian.  Lately he targets the state Liberal government, in the last few Facebook posts alone calling Michael Ferguson a "Dictator" who he says is bullying local government, and calling a proposal to relocate Ashley Youth Detention Centre to Hobart the "STUPID" work of "troglodytes".  Mulder lives at Howrah, very slightly outside the electorate.

Adrian Pickin (Facebook) is the endorsed Shooters, Fishers and Farmers candidate.  Pickin is a Senior Regulations and Pricing Analyst at TasWater and a practitioner of hunting using ferrets.  He has also been involved in soccer working with migrant communities, and has an interest in wilderness and "community projects that aim to reconnect people with nature and promote outdoor activities".  Pickin has recently spoken in support of duck hunting.  He lives at Claremont on the wrong side of the river for this electorate.  

Campaign 

Both major party candidates have had doorknocking teams in the field over the past several weeks with several political celebrity inclusions.  It has been notable that prominent Liberals "backing Brownie" have often been on the right of the party.  

As with Pembroke and elections generally at the moment I expect cost of living issues to be the major focus.   Labor especially is pushing the issue of power prices which were a successful focus point in Pembroke, but is also focusing on housing costs and the public housing waitlist.  Rumney is an electorate with a lot of low-income voters likely to be experiencing financial stresses.  Brown has spruiked redevelopment of Cambridge Primary School and opening of affordable units in Clarendon Vale as announceables in the electorate.  

Brown has campaigned on law and order issues including hooning and mandatory sentencing for child sex offenders.  The latter is a long-running culture-war issue for the government in which its legislation is routinely blocked by the Legislative Council.  Brown's comments were enthusiastically backed by Police Minister Felix Ellis but led to an intervention by Attorney-General Elise Archer, who has said she "cannot support this issue being used at this time for political purposes when the Commission of Inquiry is yet to hand down its report and recommendations".  The appearance of highly unusual tensions within the Government over campaign tactics - especially interesting given that Archer has also been on the conservative side of the party - attracted extensive attention towards the end of the most recent Fontcast.

On 2 May it was revealed Brown had liked a Facebook comment suggesting Labor and the Greens only opposed mandatory sentencing because they were "kidy predators"; the comment has since been unliked and removed.  Brown was defended by the Tas Liberal social media account which suggested Brown's comments had been "trauma-informed" in contrast to Archer's earlier comment which used the same expression.

The proposed Macquarie Point stadium is also appearing in the campaign.  As there is already a stadium at Bellerive, it should be easy to mobilise eastern shore complaint against one being built on the other side of the river.  

Mulder is running the common argument that independents are best for the upper house because major party members are either marking their own "homework" or that of the other side.  In any form, this argument seems less potent in these campaigns than it once was. Mulder is however running it with a twist - that opposition MPs are reluctant to curb government powers they might some day want to use themselves.  

The election comes amid a turbulent time for the government, which has been under criticism recently over a multifaceted harness racing scandal, computer hacking and conflict of interest claims against the Speaker Mark Shelton.  The government has however tried to highlight state Labor's own problems by suggesting Lovell needs to say what action she supports concerning former leader David O'Byrne.

Prospects

Incumbent Labor MLCs are generally re-elected (indeed Thorp mentioned above was the last to be defeated, since which Labor has had four comfortable retains).  There is nothing in the issues mix or the general news cycle to suggest that the government will have an easy time of it here and my expectation is that Lovell will retain, comfortably at the least.  It would be foolish to bet otherwise after what happened in Pembroke.

The presence of Mulder makes things a little more interesting because he is likely to poll some sort of vote despite a late start and might in theory knock the Liberals out of the top two.  There has however been a recent trend of independents struggling to do this when both major parties contest (with Huon last year being an exception where the independent won).  My suspicion is that even if Mulder does make the top two, it would most likely be from well behind on primaries and the preference flow to him from the Liberals would be weak.  The Liberal Party itself will not want Mulder back in the upper house and might even prefer the incumbent.

The Shooters continue to find some interesting candidates but there is never much market for what they are selling.  

1 comment:

  1. Lovell's leaflet campaign may be a little enthusiastic; we received a copy here, unfortunately we're on the wrong side of the Mornington boundary.

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