A surprising thing happened in Canberra – the Liberals took two seats off the Greens. That won’t stop the ALP and the Greens from continuing in government but you have to wonder – if the Greens are struggling in Canberra they might be in very serious trouble elsewhere.
Loved this picture of ACT Greens leader Meredith Hunter in the tally room.
This result is somewhat different to what the Canberra Times was predicting before the election.
Today’s exclusive Canberra Times poll puts Ms Gallagher in a winning position with Labor retaining its seven seats in an unchanged Assembly, with six seats for the Canberra Liberals and the ACT Greens retaining balance-of-power status with four seats.
…
The poll shows the Canberra Liberals have also increased their support in all three electorates but not by enough to capture any more seats in the 17-member Legislative Assembly.
The devil will be in the detail but I reckon Gillard and Milne will be very worried and looking very closely at the ACT election result.
Update: Keith in the open thread provides a link to the election results.
People who cant gain enough votes colluding to remain in power. Is that really democratic?
Raider580
21 Oct 12 at 7:01 pm
Raider580, yes it is fundamental in parliamentary democracy.
Token
21 Oct 12 at 7:05 pm
It wasn’t just federal issues. The ACT Liberals worked their arses off and ran a great campaign.
dd
21 Oct 12 at 7:07 pm
Milne has already blamed it on Liberals lying about rising rates
JamesK
21 Oct 12 at 7:08 pm
Yes – Zed is a good man.
Sinclair Davidson
21 Oct 12 at 7:08 pm
Canberra is a green powerhouse, but the greens are almost a completely urbanised political party with their constituents being mainly bureaucrats, arts and farts and other useless professionals and academics, so this result should be replicated in other cities.
Maybe some of these dickheads have finally done some sums and concluded the planet can look after itself; but don’t underestimate the ego of a green who is convinced they have the power to save the planet and should have the authority to manifest this act of benevolence, while the rest of us suckers foot the bill.
cohenite
21 Oct 12 at 7:10 pm
I wouldn’t say the Liberals picked up two seats from the Greens. Rather, the Liberals picked up two seats from Labor, who in turn picked up two seats from the Greens. That’s a much greater longer-term worry for Labor fighting on two fronts.
Steve
21 Oct 12 at 7:13 pm
It definitely wasn’t a lie, the Libs genuinely believe that Labor’s going to send rates through the roof, based on their costing of Labor policies.
dd
21 Oct 12 at 7:14 pm
It definitely wasn’t a lie, the Libs genuinely believe that Labor’s going to send rates through the roof, based on their costing of Labor policies
You can’t eliminate stamp duty without either massive spending cuts or a rates increase. The ALP’s argument that everyone’s rates wouldn’t triple is “technically” correct – because some people would see their rates quadruple.
Quentin George
21 Oct 12 at 7:18 pm
The hare – clark ‘system’ is an anti democratic sham.
The Liberals won the election, but thanks to HC, minority morons will ‘form’ a grubment.
HC should be banned – look at taxmania, FFS…
Rabz
21 Oct 12 at 7:21 pm
That’s right. Eliminate stamp duty, but keep spending millions on useless ugly sculptures like the Belconnen owl.
dd
21 Oct 12 at 7:23 pm
BTW, you can’t blame the grubby, thieving morons for wanting to abolish stamp duty – after the next feral election, no one will be purchasing property in the ACT for quite a while – not until laybore reappear, which won’t be for yonks, if ever…
Rabz
21 Oct 12 at 7:26 pm
Huge embarassment for the Canberra Times!
If Howard coming into government is anything to go by there will be a lot of house sales after an Abbott election. A lot of retrenched public servants leaving to go back to the state they came from originally. A great time to buy real estate
Rates increases in place of stamp duty should be more efficient. Too bad other states aren’t looking at implementing it.
btw I don’t think the Liberals have ever held government in the ACT with a clear majority. They’ve always relied on independents. No hope of it with the Greens though.
Chris
21 Oct 12 at 7:40 pm
How long will Ms Milne last before they up Sarah HY or a.Bandt in.
candy
21 Oct 12 at 7:43 pm
Hee, hee….. Brown displayed a behavioural first, an engagement with reality. So resignation before the deluge beckoned.
Bobby knew his Greenoids, being a hiding place for the Socialist Workers Party and various extinct Trots, were going back to their nook with the fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Looks to be a sign here, Bobby.
Alfonso
21 Oct 12 at 7:45 pm
Is Brindabella the electorate that is least like a protected workshop? The swing to the Liberals there was 11.0%, against 5.6% and 5.7% in the other two.
H B Bear
21 Oct 12 at 7:46 pm
Brindabella contains Tuggeranong (a lower income area) and the rural areas of the ACT. It is where the rates increases would have the biggest impact on household budgets since the public servants there are on lower salaries.
Quentin George
21 Oct 12 at 7:48 pm
Antony Green is always worth reading.
Great to note that in Ginninderra, the Motorist Party scored 7.5% vs 10.3% for the Greens.
boy on a bike
21 Oct 12 at 7:52 pm
the inability of the TV to count to nine is surprising.
more so when other has near a whole quota in one electorate – much of it the motorists party and, in particular, Bullet Train for Canberra. these two parties have more votes that the greens in one seat
Jim Rose
21 Oct 12 at 7:53 pm
That statue is an owl???I thought it was Meredith Hunter..
max49
21 Oct 12 at 7:56 pm
The Greens result is a big deal here.
If the Greens cannot poll well in the ACT they are in serious trouble.
Milne is gone, but who then?
The ‘Eastern Bloc’, i.e. the Mainland Marxists have some clout but Bandt is under serious threat and actual Stalinists like Rhiannon are not that probable. Sarah Hanson Young is also quite likely to lose her seat.
If the Greens were smart Ludlum is a decent choice but the Greens are not very clever and will quite probably stick with the disastrous Milne or select someone else crazy.
The Greens could well be a spent force within 5-10 years. You catallaxy folks should celebrate.
Between that and the looming civil war of ALP book idiocy (McKew/Tanner and the inevitable Rudd/Gillard books) things are not looking bright for the Australian Left.
Steve X
21 Oct 12 at 8:18 pm
Thanks Quentin. Shoulda consulted Antony Green,
If Antony Green reckons a 10% swing is around the number for mortgage belt seats – it will be ugly. Federal Labor need to start looking for some Taragos.
H B Bear
21 Oct 12 at 8:19 pm
It cost $400,000.
dd
21 Oct 12 at 8:23 pm
Rabz, the ACT has proportional representation. the Libs won 40% of the vote and will get as many seats.
Jim Rose
21 Oct 12 at 8:29 pm
Ubique
21 Oct 12 at 8:37 pm
A brilliant photo of Hunter. She must have caught sight of her own vote count. If anyone deserves to lose their place it’s her. Pretends to be classy for the media, but behind closed doors apparently the inner Roxon is comes out.
Keith
21 Oct 12 at 8:46 pm
Why does a local council election attract this much national attention?
Mick Gold Coast QLD
21 Oct 12 at 8:56 pm
“This result is somewhat different to what the Canberra Times was predicting”
The Coalition has done better than polling in every election for the past four years. What is going wrong at the pollsters? They really need to do something better to adjust for “Shy Tory Syndrome”, because they are becoming a joke.
Still, when I take this into account while looking at the 53% federal polling, the ALP is clearly in for a drubbing next year.
2dogs
21 Oct 12 at 9:10 pm
I think you are correct. A very astute observation IMHO.
Septimus
21 Oct 12 at 9:38 pm
So that’s what a stunned mullet looks like…….
Louis Hissink
21 Oct 12 at 9:39 pm
Hare Clark, as a method of electing representatives is head and shoulders better than any other system used in Australia.
As a method for locking in a two party oligarchy, not so much.
In reality, the problem is with the upper house, not the lower. We’ve forgone the necessary limitation preventing those who derive the majority of their income from the government from voting in our upper houses.
Driftforge
21 Oct 12 at 9:59 pm
Need I add , that along with Brown ,Milne , Wilkie et al , Hare Clark was a Tasmanian contribution to Australian polity
blind freddy
21 Oct 12 at 10:17 pm
“We’ve forgone the necessary limitation preventing those who derive the majority of their income from the government from voting in our upper houses.”
Still waging a lost class war, Driftforge?
Jarrah
21 Oct 12 at 10:36 pm
I simply don’t get it – Hare Clark, Greens and Labor leeches and all.
What in the devil is ACT doing with a “17-member Legislative Assembly”? What do they assemble to discuss – bus timetables? National defence policy?
The ACT “government” web site announces, breathlessly, on its front page roadworks closures this weekend, changing the fluorescent globes in Acton tunnel and washing the walls, and – wait for it – the Weekly Mowing Report.
For this they employ 20,000 people. Gold Coast Council, a wholly unimpressive collection of sloths shuffling about doing stuff all, employs 2,500 people to minister to a population 50% bigger than Canberra’s, occupying 65% more space! The council muddles through with three fewer useless councillors too.
I lived there for a bit in 1978, doing civil construction stuff in the new outer fringe subdivisions of Kaleen and Kambah, and in design of Belconnen Square. These eventually merged into the homogenous mass unnecessarily gobbling up moderately good grazing land.
Just how much disagreement in parliament can be generated by these 17 best and brightest about the Weekly Mowing Report for Kaleen and Kambah?
Mick Gold Coast QLD
21 Oct 12 at 11:33 pm
It was between 1955 and 1972. Remember the DLP?
They gave their second preferences to the Liberals, effectively denying Labor power.
There was no blogosphere at that time – but there was also nowhere near as much wailing and gnashing of teeth. That’s something we’ve picked up from across the Pacific. Many rightists are blissfully ignorant of our electoral system and equate it to the US.
Hence the drivel posted above.
1735099
22 Oct 12 at 5:14 am
Nothing to do with class Jarrah.
Has to do with moral hazard.
If there is no constraint that allows those who end up paying for the cost of government to limit that cost, then you end up in situation we have in Tasmania where most of the population is on government money of one sort or another.
Inevitably.
DriftForge
22 Oct 12 at 5:53 am
I was at my (then) local community meeting in inner-south Canberra in 2009 discussing a proposed development. Shane Rattenbury attended the meeting. He didn’t really say much but at the end of the night smugly noted that the Greens would win government in their own right the ‘next time round.’
Yup.
PoliticoNT
22 Oct 12 at 7:34 am
The photo of Hunter had that Betty Farrelly look …… “but I don’t know ANYONE who votes Liberal”
Leigh Lowe
22 Oct 12 at 8:01 am
Mick, the ACT government is both a local government (potholes, public toilets etc) and a state government (education and health). We actually voted many moons ago not to have self-government but it was given to us anyway. It should be stressed that the Labor Greens alliance here haven’t been as catastrophically bad as the Federal one. We don’t have any real industry so there is nothing for them to destroy anyway so pretty much all they have done in the past few years is implement the stupid plastic bag ban. To be fair they have built a dam (albeit over budget). At any rate, other than the rates issue I doubt anybody is that upset about anything they have done or is likely to do. It would predominantly be about people choosing conservative goverments when they are worried about their hip-pockets. So forget the polls. Federal Labor is in serious strife.
rtp
22 Oct 12 at 9:36 am
The ACT government is a sort of combo of council and state government duties. It does both, and the good thing about it is that there’s one less level of government than elsewhere. Of your examples, defense is out, but bus timetables are part of the brief, as are schools, hospitals, roads, and development.
dd
22 Oct 12 at 11:38 am
You’re kidding, right?
dd
22 Oct 12 at 11:40 am
“This result is somewhat different to what the Canberra Times was predicting”
Oh, why am I not surprised? Another triumph for the most slothful, most bloated, least intelligent newspaper (to be very generous to it in using that name) in Australia. The CT is little other than a sheltered workshop for lightweight leftoids and tiny-minded greenie panic-mongers.
I hope the day comes when Fairfax shares reach break-up value (if they are not already there) and the corporate raiders pounce and dismember the body. I’d be so happy if they sold the CT to Gina Reinhart, to give her a start in the wonderful world of newspapers.
ACTOldFart
22 Oct 12 at 11:58 am
Goodie goodie gum drops.
Well, what I mean is, that’s pleasing.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
22 Oct 12 at 2:39 pm
No dd I’m not. Happy to be shown to be wrong – I can assure you I didn’t vote for them – but in comparison to the Federal government’s lies and incompetencies the ACT government looks like a well-oiled machine. People don’t like them but they don’t like the Libs either (I personally think Seselja is very good). But there was nothing like the level of antipathy towards them that NSW/Qld voters had for their respective governments.
rtp
22 Oct 12 at 2:39 pm
‘For this they employ 20,000 people’
I worked as a contractor in the ACT Public Service a few years ago. I found it an organisation that combined the work ethic of a municipality – the levels of waste, laziness and absenteeism were, as they say, an eye opener – with the pretentions of a Commonwealth policy department.
There was because the ACT has, somewhat surreally, has a full Westminster style system of goverment tacked on to and overlaying the administration of a middle sized city. It was always bracing to see ‘Senior Executives’, many of whom wouldn’t have made middle management in the Commonwealth, let alone the private sector, running about with ‘cabinet submissions’ and ‘question time briefs’ like they worked in Prime Minister and Cabinet and were managing the national interest! But it was also very wasteful and expensive and presumable continues to be.
It always reminded me of Kafka’s ‘The Castle”!
Des Deskperson
22 Oct 12 at 4:47 pm
Meredith’s face betrays fear and astonishment. Very prescient too. Anthony Green’s latest forecast (4.45 pm Mon 22) is Labor 8, Greens 1 (possibly only the little heard and seen Le Couter), and Liberals 8.
The Liberals are better off in Opposition, not least because when the fiscal sh** hits the fan, they will not have to raise rates (as they promised not to do).
rafiki
22 Oct 12 at 5:47 pm
Big increases for Berry and Bourke this late in the count. They’ve overtaken both Hunter and Henry.
Antony Green :
Strong wording from Antony. He should have been using that word in regard to the last federal election.
If Henry can overtake Hunter (only 22 votes behind), he will be next cab of the rank if someone dies/retires during the next term.
Another great photo of Hunter.
If she was wearing pearls, she’d be clutching them.
Keith
22 Oct 12 at 6:48 pm
That’s not necessarily a measure of their competence.
As just one example – it might seem minor to you but I think it is indicative of the mindset – the ACT has insane, draconian tree-protection laws. It is very difficult to get permission to remove even a dangerous or troublesome tree from your property. I know one home where the family had to build the house further back from the street than the other houses, and further back than they wanted, just to preserve a big tree that was already on the block. The tree’s still there, of course.
To give a second example that I mentioned earlier, they squandered millions of dollars on third rate, hideous sculptures by local ‘artists.’ All paid for, of course, by rates and stamp duty.
Third example. ACT housing prices are the highest in the nation. There’s no good market reason for this, as the city is in the middle of nowhere and while people are going up to their eyeballs in mortgages -and while rent has climbed to extortionate levels – there are vast tracts of scrub and grassland quite close to the city. But apparently they’ve run out of room.
These are not symptoms of ‘pretty good’ government. Also, in regard to your comment about there being no industry, there’s no reason why a wealthy industrialised city with great infrastructure shouldn’t be able to grow some industry. Pro-industry policies would certainly have some kind of impact, if they were ever implemented.
dd
22 Oct 12 at 8:15 pm
dd
I don’t disagree with any of your points, I just don’t think pointless sculptures and the lack of a manufacturing industry were on the minds of too many of the voters.
It was rates and the fact that people are starting to vote with their hip-pockets rather than lofty idealism. This also explains the difference between opinion polls and actual polls in the ACT and every state election we have seen.
rtp
23 Oct 12 at 2:01 pm