On Saturday October 19 there will be a general election for the Legislative Assembly of the Australian Capital Territory and a “mini general election” on the Sydney northside – by which I mean three by-elections for NSW Legislative Assembly seats that were once described as “blue ribbon Liberal”. These two events provide an interesting compare/contrast exercise for pundits like me.
The first similarity is that each electorate has roughly the same number of voters on the roll. In the ACT Brindabella has 67,023 electors, Ginninderra 65,281, Kurrajong 59,047, Murrumbidgee 63,889 and Yerrabi 63,363, a total of 318,603. For the three NSW seats, the precise numbers are not yet available, but I know the numbers at the March 2023 general election. They were 60,291 in Hornsby, 58,728 in Epping and 56,181 in Pittwater. Those numbers would now be noticeably higher.
The second similarity is that optional preferential voting applies in both jurisdictions. As the website of Elections ACT explains it: ‘If you only write “1” next to one candidate your vote still counts’. The directions for voting at state elections in NSW are explicit on this point. They are: ’Write the number “1” in the square next to the candidate of your choice. You can show more choices, if you want to, by writing numbers in the other squares, starting with the number “2”’.
The big difference is that five members are to be elected for each ACT electorate but only one in each of Hornsby, Epping and Pittwater. Another difference, however, is that I am willing to predict confidently the winners in NSW but am a bit tentative in my ACT predictions. The three NSW by-elections were created by the resignations of male Liberal Party members in each seat. I predict only Hornsby will stay male. My forecasts for the winners are James Wallace (Liberal) in Hornsby, Monica Tudehope (Liberal) in Epping and Jacquie Scruby (Independent) in Pittwater.
The Liberal Party will be devastated at the Pittwater loss, but they must know it is coming. Controversially, they chose a male candidate in 2023, and the final result was 23,365 votes for Rory Amon (Liberal) and 22,759 for Scruby. Amon has now resigned in disgrace and there would be general surprise if the new Liberal candidate, Georgia Ryburn, were to hold the seat for the party.
For the ACT I record first that the Hare-Clark system of proportional representation operates. As I have written in several Switzer Daily articles over the years I think of Hare-Clark as being a very good system, but it only operates in two jurisdictions, Tasmania and the ACT, in each case for lower houses. Hare-Clark is, in my description, the “proper” kind of the Australian single transferable vote system in that it is candidate-based, as STV was always meant to be. However, the demands of the machines of big political parties have meant that STV has been, in my description, “corrupted” for all Australian mainland upper houses, the Senate and the Legislative Councils of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. The instrument for that corruption is above-the-line voting which effectively converts the system from being candidate-based to being party based.
However, I record that I give a higher mark to the Tasmanian Hare-Clark system than to that operating in the ACT. The main difference is that seven members are elected for each of the five Tasmanian electorates but only five in the ACT. Tasmanian Hare-Clark, therefore, is more proportional than the Hare-Clark operating in the ACT. It is also more generous to independents.
ACT elections take place on the third Saturday of October every four years. The party system operating at the elections of 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020 has meant that there are three big parties and only they have won seats. That will probably change in 2024, as I now forecast.
At the general election held on Saturday 17 October 2020 the result was ten seats for Labor, nine Liberals and six Greens. Labor’s ten consisted of it winning two seats in all five electorates. The Canberra Liberals won two of the five seats in four electorates, Brindabella, Ginninderra, Murrumbidgee and Yerrabi but secured the election of only one member (party leader Elizabeth Lee) from the inner-city electorate of Kurrajong. The Greens won two seats in Kurrajong and one in each of the other four electorates. That produced a Labor-Greens coalition government with 16 seats of the total 25 in the Legislative Assembly.
My prediction is that Labor will simply keep its present ten seats, the Liberals will have nine, the Greens four and the Family First Party having its first member - with one Independent being elected. I predict that the results in Kurrajong and Yerrabi will be the same by party as in 2020. That means change will come in Brindabella, Murrumbidgee and Ginninderra.
In Brindabella (occupying three-quarters of the area of the ACT, mainly southern suburban but partly rural) I predict that the Greens member, Laura Nuttall, will be defeated and the Liberals will have three of the five members and Labor two. In Murrumbidgee (through which the Murrumbidgee River flows) I predict that the Greens member Emma Davidson will be defeated, and the Independent Fiona Carrick will take her place.
In several ways Ginninderra provides a more interesting contest than Brindabella or Murrumbidgee. At the 2020 election the Liberals secured the election of two members, both on the conservative side of the party. They were Mr Peter Cain and Mrs Elizabeth Kikkert. For some inexplicable reason, however, the Liberals decided not to endorse Kikkert again. She immediately, therefore, resigned from the Liberal Party and joined Family First. I predict that the five incumbents will be re-elected but the party balance on the right will change, as described above. Labor will hold its two seats, with ministers Yvette Berry and Tara Cheyne returned. Jo Clay of the Greens will also hold her seat.
Though I do not predict it, the possibility remains of a minority Liberal government. That would occur if the Liberals were to win a third seat in Yerrabi and a second in Kurrajong. The former prospect is more likely, the latter unlikely. That would leave the electorate in which I vote continuing to be called, jocularly, “The People’s Republic of Kurrajong”, reflecting the reality that there are more Greens in central Canberra than Liberals. The Greens get their strength here from renters and university students, in both of which classes there are many Canberrans living close to the central business district.