Rebecca White and Anne Urquhart To Run For House Of Reps

I have four (!) articles I'm aiming to write for this site in the next week or so but the first cab off the rank should be the one where my local knowledge is most relevant, that being today's news that Rebecca White and Anne Urquhart will be running for Labor in the federal House of Reps seats in Lyons and Braddon respectively, resigning their State and Senate seats to do so.  The candidate to take on Bridget Archer in Bass, Tasmania's other competitive House of Reps seat, has still not been announced.

Rumours about White and Urquhart running have been around for some time and frequently canvassed on the Fontcast podcast and at times in mainstream media, the White one steadily gathering pace despite having been denied by the candidate in a debate for the March state election.  The Urquhart rumour, together with one that Shane Broad might quit state parliament to run for the federal Braddon seat, has been on and off but it is now clearly on, with the Prime Minister's social media announcing both Urquhart and White as candidates during his visit to the state today.

Rebecca White and Lyons

Rebecca White has been a state MP for Lyons (Tasmania has multi-member Hare-Clark electorates) since being elected at the 2010 state election at the age of 27.  White's debut "Renewal in Lyons" ad campaign featured a brief glimpse of two Polly Waffle wrappers being pushed into a bin, widely interpreted as a shot at Labor veterans Michael Polley and David Llewellyn, the latter of whom White then displaced.  White polled strongly in the 2014 state election and became leader in 2017, elected unanimously in some haste after then-leader Bryan Green resigned.  

White served as leader from 2017 to the 2024 election except for a brief period following the 2021 election.  She resigned and made way for David O'Byrne following the 2021 election loss but O'Byrne's leadership lasted just 22 days before he was brought down by a sexual harassment scandal and White soon returned.  On White's watch as leader, Labor lost three state elections to the Liberals under, successively, Will Hodgman, Peter Gutwein and Jeremy Rockliff.  

The 2018 loss saw the party significantly rebuild its vote and seat share but the election was overshadowed by controversy over the party's poker machines policy, which only seemed to play well in the inner cities.  The 2021 election was a tough one for the party in view of Gutwein's hugely popular handling of COVID issues, but infighting in the party (primarily, a pro-union hard left faction trying to block the preselection of the Right's Dean Winter, who is now leader) never helped, and nor did the party's backflip (or as opponents had it, Becflip) on the poker machine plan.   Labor lost vote share in every seat with a 20-point crater in Clark.  The 2024 election was an opportunity for Labor to improve with a huge swing against the Rockliff government, but most of the spoils went to third parties and independents, with federal drag, policy misfires and a generally low-key campaign not helping matters.

Direct polling of White's popularity has been rare.  In the 2018 election leadup she was extremely popular with ratings as high as net +40 being referred to; I doubt this was still the case in 2021 but didn't see figures.  Outside of the "COVID moat" period in 2020-1, White has been unusually competitive for an Opposition Leader in EMRS preferred premier polling, beating Hodgman on this indicator several times, as well as Gutwein twice and Rockliff once in the early days of their premierships (when incumbents tend to do less well).  However her tendency to do extremely well on head to head polling has never seemed to translate to primary votes.  This is not the only head to head aspect where White has done very well - she flogged both Hodgman and Gutwein in election debates according to undecided voter panels. This to my mind partly reflects that pollsters are not very good at finding the right kind of undecided voter for such cases, but for sure she is a strong performer in such contexts.  

White has also topped the poll in Lyons at three consecutive elections, polling over 15,000 votes in each case (including polling exactly 16338 votes in both 2018 and 2021!)  Massive leakage from her surplus in 2024 showed that these were far from all just Labor voters picking the most prominent Labor candidate.  The state party will miss her vote-getting ability greatly, but it will also be an opportunity for them to spread their vote in Lyons among less well known candidates and improve their chances of picking up seats by that method.  

A common criticism of White's leadership has been that the party under her did not seem to stand for anything and that state Labor has lacked a clear political identity.  This said her replacement by Winter, who is pushing a jobs-based rebrand that partly harks back to the ALP of the early 2000s, has not yet lifted the party's polling.  

Lyons federally is a rural and fringe urban seat where personal connections to communities are very important and candidates are often preselected years in advance.  The seat used to be a seat for life for this reason and between 1946 and 1993 had only one change of MP! However it became more turbulent in 2013-6 with Eric Hutchinson (Liberal) winning it from Dick Adams (ALP) in an election where forestry issues killed Labor in northern Tasmania, then losing it to now-incumbent Brian Mitchell after just a single term.

Mitchell recorded a 1.35% 2PP swing in his favour in 2019 (2.52% above the national Labor result) yet a 4.26% swing against in 2022 (7.92% below).  But both these Lyons campaigns were highly unusual.  In the 2019 campaign Mitchell won what would have otherwise been a very close contest after his Liberal opponent Jessica Whelan was disendorsed post-nomination over extreme social media content.  But in 2022 it was Mitchell himself who faced similar heat over material that had been known during the 2019 campaign but largely ignored then.  Prior to this episode Mitchell's larrikin persona and media-savvy posting had played well on social media and I believe being unable to campaign through such methods hurt him in a seat that is becoming harder for Labor through demographic realignment anyway (low-income, low-education-completion etc).  Mitchell's willingness to stand aside gracefully for White should be very much welcomed by the party should it continue.  

In my view Labor were, pre this announcement, in major danger of defeat in this seat by Liberal Susie Bower who has had another few years to build profile for her run against Mitchell. Having a replacement candidate available with a ready-made profile across this hard-to-cover electorate where incumbency matters so much looks like a get out of jail free card for the government - but that is not to say that victory should be taken for granted in a seat that seems to be fairly tough for the party (a recent Redbidge-Accent MRP nowcast the seat as a Coalition gain, though that model is blind to candidate factors).   If Rebecca White does get elected and the Albanese Government is returned, I will be interested to see what use is made of her experience. 

Recount for Lyons (state)

White at this stage intends to resign her state seat when the election is called though opponents will pressure her to quit earlier.  This will trigger a Hare-Clark recount.

The recount will be based solely on the votes White had when elected, which is all her primary votes.  The fact that Richard Goss was the last Labor candidate standing in the original count is irrelevant.  The winner will surely be one of the five unsuccessful Labor candidates.  Based on White's cutup, it is known they will start the recount with at least the following votes:

Ben Dudman 12.3%
Casey Farrell 10.1%
Richard Goss 9.0%
Carole McQueeney 8.9%
Edwin Batt 8.3%

35.1% of White's votes flowed to Jen Butler who was elected and 16.4% leaked to non-Labor candidates (mostly Jacqui Lambie Network, Greens and Liberal candidates in fairly even proportions).  It is not known where any of these votes went next.   It would not be that surprising if the White-Butler votes helped McQueeney by including an element voting specifically for female Labor candidates.  Candidates from other parties can nominate for the recount but all of them will be cut out before any of the Labor candidates are, leaving as many Labor candidates as nominate to fight out the seat.  Then it will simply be a race on preferences to determine the winner.

For those trying to predict this mess it's worth knowing that the vote for Labor minor candidates was highly regionalised, with Farrell the highest scorer behind White in the Derwent Valley, McQueeney on the east coast, Batt in the Southern Midlands, Goss in the Northern Midlands  and Dudman in most of Meander Valley (though Goss did better in some Launceston area Meander Valley booths).  All five are councillors for these LGAs.  I analysed the primary votes for these candidates weighted by how many votes White got in the booths and other vote groups where they got votes and on that analysis Goss came out slightly ahead of Dudman.  But it may be that voters who voted for White are more likely to be younger voters who also liked Dudman whereas Goss had more appeal to an older demographic, which could explain why Dudman gets more White preferences directly than Goss does.  (This factor can also help Farrell).  

Anne Urquhart and Braddon

Anne Urquhart has been a Labor Senator for Tasmania since 2011, having been elected at the 2010 half-Senate election.  She was second on the Labor ticket behind Helen Polley in 2010 and promoted to the top position above Polley in 2016, retaining it for 2022.  Prior to politics, Urquhart was a very long-serving AMWU state president and later secretary.  She has been Labor's Chief Whip in the Senate since 2016 and has had various other roles that are noted here.  She is also a past President of the state party and is Labor's "duty Senator" for Braddon, meaning she has been the Senator tasked with representing Braddon and commenting on its issues.  

I would struggle greatly to write as many words quickly about Urquhart as I have written above about White.  The reason for this is that with rare exceptions such as former Senators Lisa Singh and Eric Abetz (and from time to time Polley though usually for the wrong reasons) most Tasmanian major party Senators are famously invisible!  Even seasoned Tasmanian politicos will usually struggle to name the full set!  But a search for media mentions of Urquhart shows plenty of activity this year with over 100 distinct references in the last six months alone (and similar in 2023 so this is not a sudden upswing in mentions either.)  A high proportion of these are talking about local issues, including the current hot potato for the government in the seat, the management of the endangered Maugean Skate in Macquarie Harbour.  Among the hits I found was a classic from June 13 with Urquhart telling The Advocate that the ALP Braddon candidate (now known to all to be her) would be "a fantastic local candidate [..] who knows what matters here and can deliver a stronger better Braddon".

Urquhart - long a major figure in the Tasmanian ALP left - has rarely been controversial but did ruffle some feathers in 2021 with her support for David O'Byrne, firstly in the leadership contest and then following his forced resignation from caucus. 

For some elections, federal Braddon was not far behind federal Bass in having a bloodthirsty response to incumbent MPs.  It threw out Labor's Sid Sidebottom in 2013 (having also kicked him out for a term in 2004), the Liberals' Brett Whiteley in 2016 and Labor's Justine Keay in 2019 (after she had survived a mid-term by-election).  Braddon is very rich in natural resources; it loves logging, mining and farming and is a dead zone for the Greens.  Demographically the seat is one where Labor has been struggling at state and federal level, though the state result there this year was a lot less bad than some feared.    

One might look at the 8% margin from 2022 and wonder why Labor is wasting any even remotely good candidate on this seat.  However that margin was recorded by Gavin Pearce as a first-term incumbent with a 4.9% swing in his favour (the highest to a sitting Liberal in the country).  Realignment was one factor there but another was the news that Labor candidate Chris Lynch had a 1994 conviction for meth trafficking on his record.  There are few seats in the country where that sort of thing, even from 28 years ago, plays worse.  Now Pearce has quit politics meaning that the seat is vacant, while Urquhart if not that high-profile is still a more than replacement level Labor candidate in existing profile terms taking over from a bad choice.  The road to Pearce quitting also involved him grumbling a fair bit, including a failed attempt to get Bridget Archer blasted out of Bass via deselection.  His replacement Mal Hingston is not especially high-profile.  

Nonetheless, it's 8%. Are those things worth 8%?  I doubt it.  And the above mentioned skate/fish-farming issue is potentially a big problem for Labor at this election, much as forestry has been in the same seat in the past.  Even though Labor is now making noises to try to downplay the controversy, I am doubting that the local industry groups will accept that it is sorted.  

Casual vacancy

To run for Braddon, Urquhart will need to resign from the Senate.  This will create a casual vacancy unless Labor has opted for a double dissolution.  Labor could (subject to its Help to Buy bill being rejected again) call a double dissolution for late February or March though dates in late March would involve unduly long campaigns.  If Labor did opt for a double dissolution it would be interesting to see the shape of the party's ticket in Tasmania and how many if any of the other Labor incumbents recontested (economist Richard Dowling has already been anointed by Albanese to replace Catryna Bilyk on the half-Senate ticket should Bilyk retire).

Assuming it's a normal half-Senate election, Urquhart resigning would trigger a casual vacancy replacement process for her seat through to mid-2028.  Casual vacancies are filled by appointment by a joint sitting of the state parliament but the person appointed must be a member of the party the vacating Senator was elected for.  In practice this means that the party's nominee gets the spot, generally without incident - in theory the parliament might refuse to endorse the nominee as Tasmania briefly did with John Devereux in 1987.  

In theory a Senator might resign, run for the House of Representatives, lose and then get appointed to their own casual vacancy, but this has never so far happened (there have been cases of this at state level in NSW).  It would leave the Senate seat vacant for months, albeit at a period when federal Parliament wasn't sitting.  I am not sure if this is why it has not happened (there is a view that normally state parliament should be recalled to fill vacancies within weeks) or if it is just the case that it has never come up because MPs who resign from the Senate to run for the Reps almost always win (Kristina Keneally, one exception to this, was at the end of her term anyway).  A theory I've already seen floated here is that if Urquhart and White both lose, White could fill Urquhart's casual vacancy.  It may be none of this chicanery is on the cards and Labor will simply find another new Senator to replace Urquhart, who was likely to be close to retirement anyway.