In my recent article “Queensland Libs do well – disaster elsewhere" (https://switzer.com.au/the-experts/malcolm-mackerras/queensland-libs-do-well-disaster-elsewhere/) I noted that Labor had won the Dunstan (SA) by-election held on Saturday 23 March, but I did not give the final statistics. Here they are:
General Election, 19 March 2022
Steven Marshall (Liberal) 12,135 votes 50.54%
Cressida O’Hanlon (Labor) 11,875 votes 49.46%
Margin 260 votes
By-election, 23 March 2024
Cressida O’Hanlon (Labor) 10,914 votes 50.84%
Anna Finizio (Liberal) 10,554 votes 49.16%
Margin 360 votes
So, the swing to Labor was 1.38%.
That was followed by the Cook (NSW) federal by-election held on Saturday 13 April. Here are its equivalent statistics – but note that I am comparing the Liberal vote with the relevant candidate of the party of the left, whereas in Dunstan Labor was that party on both occasions.
General Election, 21 May 2022
Scott Morrison (Liberal) 61,080 votes 62.44%
Simon Earle (Labor) 36,737 votes 37.56%
By-election, 13 April 2024
Simon Kennedy (Liberal) 60,823 votes 71.26%
Martin Moore (Greens) 24,526 votes 28.74%
So, the swing to Liberal was 8.82%.
These two by-elections had in common that each was quite un-necessary and was caused by the resignation of a sitting Liberal member, who had once been party leader and head of government. Each man had won a general election and then went out of office by losing a general election in the autumn of 2022. Having waited two years as an Opposition backbencher, each man then resigned his seat – but in each case the media described him as “retiring” rather than as “resigning”.
However, to be fair to both men, in a sense each had been given permission by his party to bring on a by-election at that time. Neither has blotted his copybook in the way Jeff Kennett did. In Kennett’s case, he led his Liberal Party to a wholly unexpected defeat in September-October 1999. His last day as Victorian Premier was 20 October 1999, he resigned his seat of Burwood on 2 November, and Labor won the Burwood by-election on 11 December 1999. Driven by pride Kennett was unable to contemplate the thought of a humiliating sit on the Opposition backbenches - so he resigned immediately and threw his seat away to Labor.
There are two lessons to learn from Dunstan and Cook. The first is that a former Liberal Party leader should be careful about throwing his seat to Labor in a by-election the party does not want. Ideally the former party leader should retire at the expiration of the term and not create a by-election. That is what former British PM John Major did in the United Kingdom in 2001, Jacinta Ardern did in New Zealand in 2023 and resigning Irish PM Leo Varadkar is doing today. There was no by-election in Huntingdon (UK) or Mount Albert (NZ). There will be no by-election in Dublin West because Varadkar, like Major and Ardern, is doing the right thing. Varadkar has resigned the top job but knows that in any by-election Sinn Fein would take that Dublin West seat from his conservative party Fine Gail.
Returning to Australia, I have formed the view that, with the notable exception of Queensland, the Liberal Party always performs worse at elections than it expects – and I propose to pursue this argument by noting that the Tasmanian state election was clearly such a case as I explained in my most recent article posted on Wednesday 10 April: “Did Tasmanian Liberal Party really win four general elections?” (https://switzer.com.au/the-experts/malcolm-mackerras/did-tasmanian-liberal-party-really-win-four-general-elections/https://switzer.com.au/the-experts/malcolm-mackerras/did-tasmanian-liberal-party-really-win-four-general-elections/). To buttress my case, I now consider all the by-elections occurring in the year 2023 and the first half of 2024.
I make two other general observations about the information. First, Labor has performed very well at by-elections caused by the death of a sitting Labor member. Second, three Labor premiers have resigned recently causing three by-elections. In all cases Labor won the seat at the by-election. In early June 2023 Mark McGowan (WA) resigned as Premier and resigned his seat of Rockingham. Labor held the seat on 29 July 2023. Late in September 2023 Daniel Andrews (Victoria) resigned as Premier and resigned his seat of Mulgrave. Labor won the by-election held on 18 November 2023. In December 2023 Annastacia Palaszczuk (Queensland) resigned as Premier and her seat of Inala. Labor won the Inala by-election on 16 March 2024. It is worth adding here that the Labor Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Natasha Fyles, resigned the top job in December 2023 and Eva Lawler became the 14th NT Chief Minister on 21 December 2023. However, Fyles continues to sit in her seat of Nightcliff in Darwin’s northern suburbs.
I now go through the jurisdictions but note there have been no by-elections in New South Wales, Tasmania or the Australian Capital Territory. In the case of the federal House of Representatives three former ministers in the Morrison government have resigned their seats and my predictions and analysis on Cook and Fadden can be found in my article posted on 7 June 2022 titled “Both Cook and Fadden are blue ribbon Liberal” (https://switzer.com.au/the-experts/malcolm-mackerras/both-cook-fadden-are-blue-ribbon-liberal/). Labor has had two federal by-election wins. The Aston by-election on 1 April 2023 was caused by the resignation of Alan Tudge (Liberal). Labor took the seat in a very rare event – a federal government gaining a seat from the Opposition at a by-election. The Dunkley by-election on 2 March 2024 was caused by the death of Labor’s Peta Murphy. Both Aston and Dunkley saw the Liberal candidate perform significantly worse than the party expected.
Victoria is an interesting case. There have been two state by-elections, Warrandyte on 26 August 2023 and Mulgrave on 18 November 2023. Warrandyte is interesting because of its comparability with Cook. As with the Cook by-election I am comparing the Liberal vote with the relevant candidate of the party of the left. In both cases Labor left that honour to the Greens. Here are the statistics:
General Election, 26 November 2022
Ryan Smith (Liberal) 24,482 votes 54.31%
Naomi Oakley (Labor) 20,593 votes 45.69%
By-election, 26 August 2023
Nicole Werner (Liberal) 27,334 votes 70.99%
Tomas Lightbody (Greens) 11,172 votes 29.01%
The swing to Liberal was 16.68%. Therefore, compare the two. The swing to Liberal in Warrandyte was 16.68% but in Cook it was only 8.82%. So, the Liberal Party cannot claim that it enjoyed a good win in Cook! And note another thing. In Warrandyte the Liberal Party transferred a blue-ribbon seat from a man to a woman. Most unusual. The Liberal Party typically does the reverse! In Cook it did its usual thing. It put up its standard sign for blue-ribbon seats: “No woman need apply”.
The by-election for Mulgrave was another very disappointing result for the Liberal Party. It expected its candidate would come in second – but he finished third! Had he come in second he could have claimed that there had been a swing to Liberal of 5.53% – but it was not to be. At the second final count the votes were 17,958 for Ms. Eden Foster (Labor), 9,122 for Mr. Ian Cook (Independent) and 8,964 for Mr. Courtney Mann (Liberal). Ms. Foster went on to win the seat with 20,363 votes votes compared with 15,681 for Cook.
The same thing happened in Western Australia when the by-election for McGowan’s seat of Rockingham took place. The Liberal Party did not expect to win the seat, but it did expect a good swing. However, an independent candidate, Hayley Edwards, beat the Liberal candidate, Peter Hudson, into third place. Edwards was the deputy mayor of Rockingham who had sought Labor preselection but was rebuffed. The final count was this:
Rockingham By-election, 29 July 2023
Ms. Magenta Marshall (Labor) 13,412 votes 61.37%
Ms. Hayley Edwards (Independent) 8,443 votes 38.63%
The state in which the Liberal Party should feel most ashamed of itself is South Australia. It always knew that it was likely to lose Dunstan, but it could have held the seat were it not for the factional stupidity it displayed one weekend before the Dunstan polling day. It chose its Senate team for the 2025 federal election. Common sense would have told it that Renmark resident Anne Ruston would get the top position. She had been the minister for social services and a cabinet member under Morrison. She is the shadow health minister under Dutton. But instead, the Liberal Party chose junior senator Alex Antic, a backbencher, for that honour. Why? – presumably because he comes from the hard right of the party and is a man. Ruston is thought to be a moderate and is a woman. When offered two candidates of equal merit the misogynistic Liberal Party will always choose the man – and the further to the right he is the better. So, the consequence was that the Liberal Party threw its state seat of Dunstan away to Labor.
I don’t intend to repeat the comments I made in my article “Queensland Libs do well – disaster elsewhere” other than to say that Queensland is the only part of Australia where the Liberals perform well and up to expectation. There is a detail, however, that should be noted. During the current Queensland parliamentary term Labor has performed well in only one of the four by-elections. This exceptional case was for the South Brisbane seat of Stretton and the by-election was held on 24 July 2021. Labor’s James Martin won the vacant seat at the by-election created by the death of former Labor member Duncan Pegg.
The third case of a by-election caused by the death of a Labor member was Arafura in the Northern Territory. At the general election held on 22 August 2020 Labor’s Lawrence Costa won the seat with 1,388 votes (53.56%) to 1,203 votes (46.44%) for the Country Liberal Party candidate. Costa died in January 2023 and the by-election was held on 18 March 2023. The Labor candidate, Michael Brown, won 2,113 votes (69.17%) to 942 for the CLP candidate Leslie Tungatalum (30.83%). The swing to Labor, therefore, was a staggering 15.61%.
Finally, I have dealt so far with contests between the Liberals and Labor. I have not forgotten the Nationals. They have retained the state seat of North West Central (WA) when the Nationals incumbent, Vincent Catania, resigned his seat during the winter of 2022. The by-election was held on 17 September 2022 and was won by Ms. Merome Beard of the Nationals. This electoral district is enormous in area – some 900,000 square kilometres - and is to be abolished under the current “one vote, one value” redistribution. Ms. Beard has decided to switch to the Liberal Party under whose banner she likely will fail to be re-elected, since neither Nationals nor Liberals will give her a decent seat to contest.
The Nationals will face another test likely in July when there will be a by-election in Northern Tablelands (NSW) created by the forthcoming resignation of Adam Marshall (Nat). It is such a safe seat for the Nationals it is hard to imagine they would lose it but, as the conventional wisdom now goes, there is no such thing as a safe lower house seat. Genuinely safe seats are now confined to upper houses where party machines can appoint senators and members of Legislative Councils.