2023 Fadden By-Election

FADDEN (LNP Qld 10.63%)

July 15 by-election
Cause of by-election: Resignation of Stuart Robert (MP since 2007)
LNP should retain seat easily

Welcome to my brief guide to the second by-election of the Albanese government's first term, for the northern Gold Coast seat of Fadden.  Fadden has been vacated by former Minister Stuart Robert, an endlessly controversial MP and close ally of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison (whose career as member for Cook is widely believed to be approaching its end as well).  

Fadden was created in 1977 and was initially very slightly Coalition-leaning compared to the national average, running at just over 1 point above the national 2PP in 1977, 1980 and 1983.  On this basis Labor won it in 1983 but an adverse redistribution made it notionally Liberal and the one term ALP incumbent, David Beddall, decamped to Rankin.  The seat was won back by the Liberals in 1984 and remained fairly marginal through the Hawke/Keating years but was won with a large swing in 1996 (partly fuelled by a further redistribution) and since then has generally favoured the Coalition by between 10 and 13% compared to the national 2PP.  In this time only in 1998 did the 2PP go below 60% to Coalition so it is now a very solid LNP seat with a serious claim to be one of the most electorally boring seats in the nation.

Stuart Robert seems not to have taken much of a personal vote with him as his own 2PP (60.6%) runs only just above the Senate 2PP (60.3%) and that is in a seat with a pretty high One Nation/UAP vote (which does the Coalition no favours in the Senate 2PP.)  

Who's running? (13 candidates)

The LNP, obviously (cue the obvious preselection bunfight covered plenty elsewhere for what is probably a safe seat for life for the winner).  Update 4 June: Gold Coast councillor Cameron Caldwell has got the nod.  Caldwell was sacked as a candidate by the LNP in the 2012 Queensland state election, apparently for attending a pirate-themed swingers party, but has presumably done his time for that one as he won preselection easily.  Of rather more substance in 2017 Caldwell had to defend not removing himself from the room for a council development application from a donor (on which he abstained).

Labor called for preselections despite rumoured head office hesitancy, and ended up recycling 2022 candidate Letitia Del Fabbro, a nursing lecturer.  One Nation's 2022 candidate Sandy Roach is recontesting.  

The Greens (who almost always contest by-elections) are running Scott Turner, who polled a very respectable 15.4% in adjacent-but-one McPherson in 2022.  Legalise Cannabis are running Suzette Luyken.

Independent Belinda Jones is running and is actively canvassing for donations (by PayID, no less).  Jones is well known on Twitter as owner of one of the most prominent "water drip" accounts.  (The water drip symbol was started by Simon Holmes a Court as a protest against a water scandal involving Angus Taylor; these days it is nowadays used by Labor sycophants and some independent lefties while many of its original users have abandoned it in disgust at the embarrassing accounts that have since adopted it.)  Jones (often known as Bee) is a regular figure of fun among more discerning Twitter users and one of her tweets was crowned the worst tweet of the 2022 election campaign against all manner of stupid, unhinged and toxic twitter madness.  In the grand final of this competition it defeated ... another one of her tweets!  She has also invoked my ire by repeatedly falsely claiming that Newspoll was wrong more than 80 times in a row in the 2016-9 term.  (Only polls very close to the election can be tested as to whether they were right or wrong but in any case there were only 58 Newspolls in that term.  Jones made her false claim about Newspoll on at least 13 separate occasions in 2020-2021 despite being repeatedly corrected by yours truly.)  Jones is a frequent writer for the mostly terrible Independent Australia website; in the previous term a number of her articles targeted Stuart Robert (fair enough, no shortage of material to work with there.)

Determined to prevent Bee coming last (and they're not the only ones, see below), the Australian Citizens Party (nee Citizens Electoral Council) will clutter the ballot with their wacky conspiracy nonsense.  Their candidate is Jan Pukallus.

Stewart Brooker, who ran in 2022 as an independent and just got his deposit back (but most likely wouldn't have without drawing the donkey vote), is running again.  Brooker describes himself as a community independent and has praised the teal movement (while being sceptical of the money that goes with it) and says he preferenced Labor at the last election.  

And the final ballot draw revealed a further five wasting electoral resources: Chris Simpson (Democrats), Marnee Laree Davis (Indigenous-Aboriginal), Quentin Bye (Sustainable Australia), Kevin Young (who claims to be "Australia's most successful property investor" but wasn't always so successful, and who is recruiting for an intended new registered party called the Owners and Renters Party) , James Tayler (Federation Party - conspiracy theory minnows who lost their deposit in every division they contested in 2022).  This is the largest field in a by-election in Queensland.  

Prospects

The historic boilover happened in Aston but Fadden is immensely more difficult.  Partly because of the margin and partly because the Queensland LNP appear to be actually getting their act together, unlike the Victorian Liberals who blighted the Aston campaign with their farcical Moira Deeming fighting.  Furthermore the federal Coalition leadership has changed to a Queenslander since the federal election and that should be worth a little bit.  And the error of preselecting a ring-in from way outside the electorate has not been repeated.  In the final week though there has been some interesting backdrop with federal figures criticising the state LNP's support for the state government's Treaty process and state leader David Crisafulli has shot back by undermining Peter Dutton's push for nuclear energy.

Any spin from Labor about the average by-election swing being 4-5% to Oppositions should be ignored.  This is an Opposition seat by-election and the historic average (further dented by Aston) is only about 1% to opposition.  The following factors can be added to that:

* Federal governments that are polling well tend to do better in by-elections than those that are polling badly - this could favour Labor by a couple of points.  However there are some signs that the federal government's honeymoon

* The ballot paper draw is extremely favourable to Labor, drawing the donkey vote while the LNP has drawn second-last on a long ballot.  That might be worth 1% or so.  

* Stuart Robert had a lower personal vote than many incumbents who resign.  This may assist the LNP in swing terms, but one of the reasons he had a lower personal vote (his scandal-prone nature) is being used against them with the release of the robodebt Royal Commission report.   

After thinking that maybe Labor should get a swing of 2% or so I now think the arguments for a swing either way are pretty finely balanced, maybe just favouring Labor.  Either major party will get bragging rights if it gets a 2PP swing of 3% or more without serious primary vote damage, but if the LNP get a significant swing it is likely the state ALP will be blamed.

The Labor primary is of interest if Labor doesn't get a 2PP swing; a soft primary in a large field could attract some attention should that occur.  (They do have the donkey vote making this less likely).  

One Nation?  I would think not; although the minor party did finish third after preferences in 2022 it did so with only 16.9% 3CP (needing an 8.2% swing vs Labor to get into second and still lose.)  I also think ON are on the wane in general and wouldn't be a threat even if Labor didn't contest.   

Claims have been seen that low turnout will hurt Labor in this by-election.  In fact (i) by-elections pretty much always have reduced turnout (ii) such claims were seen in Aston too, where Labor did fine (iii) the Aston turnout was actually not unusually deflated.  It was down 6.86% on the general election, but this is the 9th smallest drop in 25 by-elections since 2000.  

The battle between the minor parties and independents is of some interest (at least to me). In the 2022 race for the seat One Nation started in fourth but leapfrogged the Greens thanks to a 63% split of UAP preferences vs LNP, Labor and Greens.  Failure to finish in the top three would be a bit embarrassing for the party.

This was the breakdown of Senate votes for the parties that are contesting as it gives a good idea of how little support some of them are likely to have.  

LNP 40.36

ALP 20.56

GRN 9.49

PHON 7.26

LCANN 5.74

I-APA 0.79

SUSAUS 0.77

DEM 0.29

CIT 0.18

FED 0.17

The UAP polled 5.89% in the Senate.  

Polling

No public polling has been released.  On 13 July the SMH and Age for about five hours carried a comment that "Queensland LNP members who spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on the condition of anonymity said they expected a swing of between 3 and 4 per cent."  This was mysteriously replaced with a line about an MP expecting "a small swing against the party" (citing robodebt).  Some internal polling has been reported as in the field (including one which erroneously reached at least two voters in Tasmania!)