Tasmania Senate 2019: Prospects and Guide

SUMMARY
Likely 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green + last seat depending on Lambie's performance
If Lambie vote falters then Labor, Liberal, perhaps someone else could win the final seat
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Tasmania's list of Senate candidates has been released. There are 44 candidates in 16 groups including 4 ungrouped (two of them party candidates), a gratifying decline from the 58 in 21 groups plus ungrouped last time (see my 2016 guide).  Looks like some people are finally getting the message that the new Senate system does not reward parties that cannot get even 1% of the vote!

This piece gives some basic information and views about the parties and lead candidates, and some general background to the contest.  The party candidate section, in places, represents my own opinions of the candidates and parties.  There are always a few obnoxious candidates on the Tasmanian ballot and I have no hesitation in warning voters about these people.  There are also some parties that may not be what they seem.   More content will be added in as time permits, so it may be worth checking back before voting to see if I've added any more details about candidates.

Section 44: Could Parry Peril Unelect McKim?

Warning:  Section 44 has now reached Wonk Factor 5/5.  

The Section 44 citizenship crisis affecting the Federal Parliament has reached a new level of electoral law murkiness today with the news that a Tasmanian Senator, Senate President Stephen Parry, is investigating whether he may be a UK dual citizen by descent.  Parry's father was born in the UK but moved to Australia as a child.  If it turns out Parry is ineligible, he is expected to resign from the Senate immediately, and following a referral the High Court would presumably follow the precedents set in Re Canavan regarding Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash and give him the flick.

That might all be the straightforward end of proceedings.  The possibility of a special count for Parry's seat (a recount of all votes as if the departing Senator had died before the poll) creates new problems in dealing with the replacements for ineligible Senators.   The reasons for this concern two unusual features of the Tasmanian Senate count: the very high rate of below-the-line voting and the extremely close result for the final seat.  Incumbent Nick McKim (Green) held off Kate McCulloch (One Nation) by just 141 votes.  McKim should have been re-elected easily but the Greens vote was damaged by the successful campaign to save Lisa Singh, who had been dumped to a normally unwinnable position by her party.  

More Section 44 Cases In Spotlight

A very long time ago now two Greens Senators resigned after discovering they were dual citizens.  The Senate will refer their cases to the Court of Disputed Returns (typically the High Court) which will determine whether they were eligible to have been elected in the first place and, assuming that they weren't, will initiate a "special count" to fill their places.  In the weeks since then, however, many more MPs have come under the spotlight of the dual citizenship rule in Section 44 of the Constitution, and it's unlikely it has claimed its final victim yet.

The Constitution is very black and white about dual citizenships - section 44 says that if you are a citizen of another country, you are not eligible to be chosen or to sit in Parliament.  It doesn't seem to allow any ifs or buts about all that.  However, the High Court in Sykes v Cleary [1992] found that the Constitution was unrealistic and had to be "read down".  After all, if it were that straightforward then another nation could maliciously impose citizenship on Australian MPs and refuse to withdraw it.  Alternatively, for a given citizen of a given nation, procedures for getting rid of an unwanted citizenship might be unrealistically expensive, time-consuming, slow, dangerous, unreliable or unreasonable.

Gaynor's Clueless Call For Senate Recount

A reader today drew my attention to this piece by Bernard Gaynor claiming apparent irregularities in the Tasmanian Senate count, and calling for a recount, even including a petition to the AEC to that effect.  Gaynor's concern is that as a result of this outcome Australia will have one less Pauline Hanson and one more Sarah Hanson-Young.  Luckily for those who think one of either or both in the Senate is one too many, both these Senators are actually unique. Neither is affected by the outcome in Tasmania.

In this piece I'll examine the basis for Gaynor's call in some detail, but firstly I should point out that the call for a recount is in itself misconceived.  The reason for this is that it comes too late.  The time for calling for a recount in a seat is before the declaration of the poll (S278 Commonwealth Electoral Act).  In 2013, requests for a recount in Western Australia were granted (on appeal) because of a much closer apparent margin (14 votes) at a tipping point during the preference distribution and the declaration of the poll was delayed while the recount was conducted.  I followed the progress of that recount in an article at the time.

Tasmania Senate 2016 Button Press And Analysis

Result

Order 1 Abetz (Lib) 2 Urquhart (ALP) 3 Whish-Wilson (Green) 4 Lambie (JLN) 5 Parry (Lib) 6 Polley (ALP) 7 Duniam (Lib) 8 Brown (ALP) 9 Bushby (Lib) 10 Singh (ALP) 11 Bilyk (ALP) 12 McKim (Green) 
Colbeck (Lib) was passed by McKim and McCulloch and excluded
5 Labor 4 Liberal 2 Green 1 Lambie

I would like to thank all the AEC staff in Hobart for all their help with information on the count and congratulate them on their efficient and punctual delivery of the Tasmanian outcomes.

2016 Tasmania Senate: A Model Of What Might Occur

Button press imminent - results and discussion will be posted on a new thread.  Thanks all for the comments - this has been the most commented thread in this site's history by a long way!

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Tasmanian Senate model

Outcome of model based on current data: 
Likely outcome 5 Labor 4 Liberal 2 Green 1 Lambie
Next most likely outcome is 5-5-1-1.
Nick McKim and Richard Colbeck main contenders for final seat. McKim appears somewhat better placed on my sampling but contest is too close to call.
Significant chance of Colbeck not making final two and final contest being McKim vs McCulloch

Outside chance of McCulloch (One Nation) win, other micro-parties don't appear competitive.

Note: updates added through count including second model run from Thursday 21 July  - scroll to bottom.

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Postcount: 2016 Tasmanian Senate

Seats Won: 4 Labor 4 Liberal 1 Green 1 Lambie
Seats In Doubt: 2 (Labor vs Green vs Liberal vs various micro-parties)
It appears likely Labor will win five seats
Lisa Singh has very good chance of re-election. 
Richard Colbeck's position is not yet clear.
It appears difficult for micro-parties to win (One Nation has a remote chance, it is hard to find a realistic chance for others)

Expected to be returned easily: Urquhart (ALP), Polley (ALP), Brown (ALP), Abetz (Lib), Parry (Lib), Duniam (Lib), Whish-Wilson (Green), Lambie (JLN)

Bilyk (ALP), Singh (ALP), McKim (Green), Bushby (Lib), Colbeck (Lib) are contesting final four seats, together with various micro-party lead candidates.

Current assessment 5-4-2-1 to Labor or 5-5-1-1 are most likely

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Note: I have decided to put some new modelling of this contest in a new post.  Go to Tasmania Senate: A Model Of What Might Occur for my latest comments, though those below are also often still relevant.

Greens Change Leaders And Replacing Milne As Senator

Christine Milne resigned last week as leader of the Australian Greens, and was replace by Richard Di Natale before anyone could blink.  Di Natale looks like the safe choice and the one most likely to push for mainstream respectability and continue the trend towards inner-city gains while also pushing for a broad policy focus.  It was all done so quickly - and as usual for the Greens, opaquely - that any public commentary on the best replacement would have been irrelevant.   In my view the most viable and perhaps the only other really viable - and more exciting but also more excitable and hence riskier - choice would have been Scott Ludlam. Others are too low-profile, at too much risk of losing their seats, or at least seen as too far along one end of the moderate/radical spectrum.

Results And Polling Under Milne's Leadership

Christine Milne took over leadership of the Australian Greens from Bob Brown in April 2012.  As shown in this graph of the Greens primary vote by Phantom Trend, the Green's polled vote shed around three points in the first year of Milne's leadership, but the plunge started reversing a few months before the 2013 federal election.  The Greens' result in that election was very disappointing in primary vote terms (down from 11.76% in the House of Representatives to 8.65%) but acceptable in seat terms with the party retaining its House of Representatives seat and gaining one Senate seat.  Since then the party has rebuilt vote share in polling and is currently in a similar position to where it was when Milne took over.

Newspoll: It's All Over

Newspoll: Liberal 53 Labor 23 Green 16 PUP 4 Others 4

Seat breakdown based on this poll: Liberal majority win (approx 14-7-4 or 15-6-4)

Aggregate and forecast both 14-7-4.

Note: On election night (Saturday) I will be live-blogging for the Mercury online from c. 6-11pm.  A link will be posted here.  Anyone not working for the Mercury should not attempt to call me in this time. 

Newspoll hath spoken.  The Tasmanian state election appears over as a contest, although it could be said it has been over now for years.  What was the Labor-Green coalition government faces a combined swing against it of almost 20 points (even more than the 16.7 points in the most recent ReachTEL).  It might not be quite that bad on election day, but it will still be very, very bad indeed.

ReachTEL: The Campaign Has Changed Nothing

ReachTEL: Liberal 47.4 Labor 23.6 Green 18.2 PUP 6.7 Other 4.1
Outcome if election was held now based on this poll: Liberal Majority (14-5-5-1 based on sum of individual breakdowns, though Labor would more likely get one more seat somewhere)
New aggregate of all state polls: Liberal 14 Labor 6 Green 4 PUP 1
My current forecast: Liberal 14 Labor 6 Green 4 PUP 1 

In the three weeks since the last public opinion polling most of the formal 2014 state election campaign has gone by.  People often expect events that happen during campaigns (such as campaign incidents or policy announcements) to affect the outcome, but the great majority don't have much impact.  With the release of the most recent ReachTEL, taken just nine days from polling day and with prepoll voting already open, it doesn't look like this campaign period has offered any respite for a Labor government on the verge of being put out of its misery.  Indeed, this poll is if anything a shade worse for the government than its predecessor (see ReachTEL: The PUP Surge Has Landed), which was also at the low end of Labor's recent form.  Not so much because of the loss of a point of support (an insignificant difference), but because the distribution of votes between seats is even nastier.

Paul Harriss To Contest Franklin

A grenade has been tossed into the already explosive race for Franklin at next year's Tasmanian state election with the announcement that Paul Harriss MLC will (if preselected) resign his Upper House seat and run for Franklin for the Liberals.

The Electorate

Generally the signs from polling have been that the Liberals are on track to win three seats at least in each of Bass, Braddon and Lyons, are likely to only win two in Denison and may win either two or three in Franklin.  What makes Franklin so tight is that if the Liberals do win three seats they will need to unseat at least one of Premier Lara Giddings,  David O'Byrne or Greens Leader Nick McKim.  Yet my interpretation of recent polling is that the Liberals are running at very close to the support level needed to dislodge one of these three.

The difficulty for the Liberals in Franklin is leakage.  Will Hodgman polled 1.90 quotas in his own right out of a party total of 2.47 in 2010.  He may well poll even more this time around.  I will be surprised if any of Jacquie Petrusma, Paul Harriss or Bernadette Black poll close to a quota.  If two of them are going to win then they will be doing so from Will Hodgman's surplus, plus the votes of the unsuccessful Liberal candidates.  Between them the two potential Liberal winners might well be needing well over a quota in preferences to win.  This compares with McKim, Giddings and O'Byrne, who between them will poll nearly all the votes for their tickets, with probably very little opportunity for leakage.

Brenton Best Crosses the Floor!

I was going to write a pretty standard number-crunchy thing about prospects for the Tasmanian Senate, given that the Greens have just polled below a Senate quota in state-level polling on the EMRS headline rate for the first time in a very long time.  (In short, this is some cause for concern, but probably not a major one at present).
However that can wait a bit because on Thursday we saw something very unusual in Tasmanian politics, when Labor backbench lifer Brenton Best crossed the floor to vote with a Liberal motion of no-confidence in Corrections Minister (and Greens Leader) Nick McKim.  It was not just a once-off, with an unrepentant Best on Friday repeating his critique of Nick McKim and extending it to the whole Labor-Green coalition. 

While I wasn't watching live at the time, it's quite clear from the footage and also even from the bare bones Votes and Proceedings that there was a party keen for Mr Best to have his say, and it wasn't his own: