Higgins By-election

Well, I live in the Higgins electorate in Melbourne where there will be a by-election on the 5th of December. There are a number of interesting candidates standing in the election.

List of candidates at the AEC website

Fiona Patten is standing as a candidate for the Australian Sex Party. Their policies are based on small-l liberal principles. The ASP could be the only truly liberal party in Australian politics at the moment. Good luck to them because we really do need an alternative to the corporate party machines. The one policy that I don’t agree with, however, is: “To hold a referendum to create mandatory equal numbers of women in the Senate and State Upper Houses.” I would like to see a mandatory alternation between men and women for the singular position of our head of state but apart from that I think it is better to elect people into the upper houses based on merit alone, that is, by their support in the electorate.

Clive Hamilton is standing for the Greens and is a well known public intellectual. On his website he states that: “I am extremely worried about global warming. We have virtually no time left to take the actions needed to avoid a catastrophic change to the global climate.” I agree that we have a huge problem to deal with, but I am also worried that proposed solutions may be hammered out in a panic and may actually be counter-productive. I think that we can turn things around, and I have written many posts about a general approach to these issues, but warm and fuzzy quick fix solutions are more likely to prevail if we rely on populist politics and a panic induced urgency.

The candidate for the Liberal Party, Kelly O’Dwyer, is expected to be a shoo-in to easily win this seat. The ALP is not fielding a candidate.

29/11/09

The leadership crisis for the Liberals and the lack of a clear opposition candidate could make the results unpredictable. The Greens could have cleaned up if they had a good local candidate. The electorate also includes areas that might have a large number of people willing to give a cheeky first preference to the ASP. Sexpo is in Melbourne this weekend as well. I think it will be a three horse race and that depending on who comes second, the result might be close after preferences. Liberal voters in this blue ribbon seat may feel that they have been taken for granted or they might take the by-election as a way to send a signal to the party about their policy direction on the global warming issue or they might rally behind their pretty, young (32 years old) but inexperienced candidate. They might also want to use the vote to take a pot shot at Costello for taking off in a hurry and sending in one of his staffers to fill the position. On paper it looks like the Liberal candidate would easily win, but it might not turn out that way.

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5 December 2009 – 9:20 pm

The Liberals won the election with a slight 2cp swing in their favour. The Greens polled very strongly with an increase of about 24 percent on their previous results. The ASP only have 3.52 percent of the first preferences. For a starting single issue political party this is a good result, but they didn’t make it to the 4 percent marker.  The Democrats polled at 2.36 percent which is double their usual vote.  One Nation came last. Family First and the ALP didn’t field candidates.  The race was always between the Liberal Party and the Greens and it didn’t even have to go to preferences. Both parties will take this result as a big win for them.

I’d also like to note that Brian BUCKLEY, the independent candidate for Bradfield, was standing on the issue of the republic and he received 470 votes (0.81 percent) with 65.23 percent of the total votes for the by-election counted. It is very difficult to raise issues through the election process as an independent.