Hobart City Council Elections Candidate Guide and Preview 2014

This election is now being counted - go here for counting commentary.

Introductory Waffle

I hope this piece will be a useful resource for readers in the Hobart (Tasmania) area.  Along similar lines to my state election and Legislative Council candidate guides, this guide is intended as a list of candidates running for Hobart City Council in 2014.  It includes a description of their past electoral form (if any known) and an assessment of prospects.  Obviously there is far more known form for the incumbents.  For this reason I've decided to split the guide into three sections - firstly the candidate list, then the form guide, then an assessment of prospects.  All these will be updated regularly.

During the campaign period voters have received official statements by the candidates, with photos supplied by them.  An online version includes web links.  This piece was initially published for the interest of those who didn't want to wait for the candidate statements, but I hope it will still be useful in presenting a less filtered view of candidate backgrounds.

If there is one suggestion I would send to voters, it is to not just automatically vote for all the same old names. By all means if you think an incumbent is doing a good job, vote for them.  But some voters just pick all the names they've heard of whether they have any good impression of that person's performance or not, and this makes it a little bit harder for new entries than it should be. 

This year we have a new election system with all sitting aldermen (except John Freeman, who has retired) facing the people at once and hence a much lower quota but also a much more competitive election.  We're also electing a Mayor and Deputy for the next four years instead of two.  These changes will mean the election is harder to predict, and I aim to post a lot about the counting when it happens.

Polling on the Mt Wellington Cable Car Proposal

The only cable car I expect to be going up any time soon - Fjellheisen, Tromso, Norway (image: Franklin Henderson)

This article is updated with new cable car polls and claimed polls as they arrive.  


Advance Summary (2014)

1. A new poll - the first to examine the issue credibly - shows statewide figures of 59% support 24% opposition for the proposed Mt Wellington cable car project.

2. Although these figures represent strong support statewide, they are weaker than those claimed for the proposal on the basis of a previous opt-in survey and a previous commissioned poll.

3. The likely main reason for weaker support in this poll is that it did not use a one-sided preamble likely to have skewed the poll results.

4. While the poll shows support in all electorates, opinion is most divided in Denison.

5. Modelling taking into account differences in party support across Denison suggests that within the crucial Hobart municipal area, public sentiment on the proposal is likely to be very closely divided.

6. On this basis while the project is generally welcomed statewide as a potential job creator and tourism opportunity, it will continue to encounter significant opposition in the area in which it is to be built.

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ReachTEL: Liberals With Solid Lead

ReachTEL (Tas State) Lib 48.1 ALP 28.7 Green 16 PUP 3.7 Other 3.4
Interpretation Lib 49.2 ALP 32.2 Green 13 PUP 2.7 Other 3
Outcome if election held now based on this poll: Liberal Majority (approx 14-8-3)
Current state "nowcast" aggregate of all polling: Liberal 14 Labor 9 Green 2

Since the Hodgman government's emphatic majority victory six months ago, two Tasmanian state polls have been seen.  The first EMRS (No Honeymoon For Liberals) showed very little difference to the election result, while the second (Closest Gap In Four Years) was underwhelming for the Liberals, though it still showed them in majority-winning territory.

Now a new ReachTEL robopoll published in today's Sunday Tasmanian, with a sample size larger than the two EMRS polls combined, provides some further evidence that Labor support is rebuilding, while suggesting the second EMRS could have been an outlier.  The poll is rosier for the Government than the second EMRS - on basic voting intentions - and suggests that much of the ALP rebuild is coming at the expense of Palmer United.  The poll also provides fairly good results for the Government's first Budget, but an indifferent response on job creation.

Poll Roundup: One Year On / The Magic Of Newspoll Rounding

2PP Aggregate: 51.7 to ALP (+0.1 since last week after no change in previous week)

The Government's First Year In Polling

This week's polling marks the end of the Abbott Government's first year in power.  In summary, the Government has spent most of that year behind in the polls.  Of the seven first-term governments for which polling exists, it is the first to spend most of its first year trailing in the 2PP vote, and only the second known to have been behind at all.  However, it ends its first year in arguably better shape than the Whitlam government did.  At the end of its first year the Whitlam government trailed 43-50 on primaries (equivalent to about 46:54 2PP) in a single Morgan poll, and while there was probably a bit of bouncing in that particular poll, it had been behind for a couple of months prior to that too.  Less than six months later, Whitlam's government went to an early election and was returned.

Hobart City Council Voting Patterns 2011-2014

Advance Summary

1. Traditionally, the Hobart City Council is loosely divided between "pro-development" aldermen and aldermen who stress environmental issues and/or the interests of impacted residents. 

2. The current term of Council was expected to be dominated by the "pro-development" grouping which I refer to as the "blues".

3. The first half of the current Council term supported this expectation, with seven aldermen displaying a blue voting pattern and an eighth displaying a tendency to support them.

4. An ordering of aldermen from "greenest" to "bluest" up til the end of 2012 was: Cocker, Burnet, Harvey, Ruzicka, Foley, Freeman, Thomas, Sexton, Hickey, Briscoe, Zucco, Christie.

5. In the 2013-4 half of this term of Council voting behaviour changed, with both the Green and the blue voting clusters becoming much less cohesive, so that it is not even accurate to classify some aldermen as still in the blue cluster.

6. An especially notable shift in this period was that both Jeff Briscoe and Ron Christie moved away from the "blues" and became much more Green-friendly than before, while John Freeman became more hardline.

7. An ordering of aldermen from "greenest" to "bluest" since the start of 2013 is: Cocker, Burnet, Harvey, Ruzicka, Foley, Christie, Briscoe, Sexton, Hickey, Thomas, Freeman, Zucco.

8. Some of these changes are explained by changes in the issues mix, but by no means all.  Positioning for the upcoming Mayoral contest may explain some of the others.

(This article is long and some bits are technical.  However the really scary stuff has been shuttled off to a PDF link buried in the dark recesses of Tasmanian Times.)

EMRS: Closest Gap For Four Years

EMRS: Liberal 46 ALP 33 Green 16 PUP 1 Ind/Other 4
Interpretation: Liberal 46.5 ALP 35.5 Green 14 Others including PUP 4
Likely outcome based on this poll "if election held now": Liberal majority win (approx 13-10-2)
Note: If swing distributed unevenly, these figures could produce hung parliament (12-10-3).
New aggregate of all Tas polling: 13-9-3

A new EMRS poll of Tasmanian state voting intention has been released today.  On the headline rate the Liberals are down three to 46 (a 5% swing since the election), Labor are up eight to 33 (up six points on the election), the Greens are down five to 16 from a highly suspicious reading of 21 in the last poll (but still up two on the election) and it doesn't look like Jacqui Lambie's recent antics have produced any joy for Palmer United, with the party polling only 1%.

EMRS has a long history of producing results that overpredict the Green vote and underpredict Labor's, so it is possible that the improvement in Labor's position is even greater than shown and the Greens have not made any real gains since the election.  However, while my "interpretation" score sees the Liberals down five points since the election and the ALP up eight, if such a swing was anything like evenly distributed then the Government would cede only two seats to Labor (one in Braddon and one in Franklin) and retain government with a one seat majority (about 13-10-2 with Labor also taking a seat in Bass from the Greens).  However if such a swing was disproportionately focused in Lyons, and went more to the Greens than Labor, then a 12-10-3 hung parliament would also be quite possible on these figures (as would a range of other figures in these sorts of ballparks).

Senate Preferencing Reform: Reply To Electoral Reform Australia

Advance Summary 

(Note: This article has had content added at the bottom, and one wording correction, following further debate.)

1. Electoral Reform Australia, the NSW branch of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia, has recently sharply criticised various psephologists and lawyers for their input into Australian Senate reform.

2. Some of these criticisms are invalid in that they suggest that psephologists did not provide reasons for proposals when in fact sound justifications were - in some cases - presented.

3. The critique proposes a version of full optional preferential voting (without above the line boxes) and a method of dealing with exhaust that is used, for instance, in NSW, the ACT and Ireland.

4. However the jurisdictions in which that method of dealing with exhausting votes is used differ from the group's Senate reform proposals in various ways, including (i) in NSW, having a very low BTL voting rate (ii) in the ACT, instructing voters to number a certain number of squares (iii) in the ACT and Ireland, having a long history of use of Hare-Clark in that system, as well as small enrolment sizes per electorate.

5. Criticising alternative reform proposals as "just plain wrong" when they are defensible is an unhelpful distraction from the consensus among serious electoral observers that exhaustive group ticket preferencing must go, and that any of a wide range of alternatives (including ERA's, despite its risks) would be better than it.

Warning: the rest of this article is long, and probably about Wonk Factor 3 4 out of 5. 

Update 3/9: ERA have now responded to this article.  Their response and my comments appear at the bottom of this piece.  And a very short comment was added on 4/9.
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Poll Roundup: Sympathy For Shorten, But Not Votes

2PP Aggregate: 51.6 to Labor (-0.3 since late last week, -2.1 in six weeks)
Labor would probably still just win election "held right now"

Four federal polls have come in in the last few days, and the overall picture is more of the steady drift back to the Coalition that kicked off in mid-July following the MH-17 air disaster.

Two polls, ReachTEL and Newspoll, have put out 51:49s to Labor.  Both had 52s in their previous surveys though in the case of ReachTEL the previous survey must have been very close to rounding to 51 as well.  These two are the first polls by anyone other than  Essential to have it this close since mid-April.  ReachTEL got there via a slight rise in the Coalition primary at the expense of the Others column (especially Palmer United) while in Newspoll there was a two-point shift from the Labor-friendly Greens to the nonspecific Others.  As Newspoll continues not separating results for Palmer United, we do not know which Others those were.

Morgan encountered no 2PP change (still at 54:46 based on last election preferences, which equates to about 52.5:47.5 accounting for house effect) but concurred with ReachTEL in finding a drop in primary support for the Palmer United Party following various rants against China by Clive Palmer and Jacqui Lambie.  Finally, Essential remained at 52:48.

Recent Victorian and Queensland Polling

This week is officially a "boring week" in federal polling so far, with only Essential appearing to date.  Essential moved back to Labor by one point to 52:48, but that was from a Coalition-friendly excursion that no other pollster had been replicating, and so there is no net move on my aggregate, which stays at 52.3.  However, this will reset to 52.1 if nothing happens before midnight tonight, since the probably unrepresentative result of the Newspoll before last will fall out of the system. If there is nothing else today then the aggregate will briefly be based on just three current polls.  So much for too much polling!  At this stage, the touted Fairfax replacement for Nielsen has yet to surface.

The coming federal polling will be of interest to see whether Bill Shorten's clearing by Victoria Police of a decades-old rape claim has any impact on perceptions of Shorten as a leader; indeed, it will be the first time for quite a while that Shorten's ratings have been of much interest or driven by anything.  I don't think we'll know the answer right away.  There may well be sympathy for him in the short term, and then it depends on whether the whole story dies off or branches out in new directions.  More on that next week.