NSW election wrap-up

Yesterday was election day in NSW. Voters elected a new lower house (the Legislative Assembly) plus half the members of the upper house (Legislative Council). As all the world knows, or at least that portion of it with any interest in NSW, the Labor Government received the expected thrashing. Some seats are still in doubt, but the latest ABC projections fore the Legislative Assembly suggest:

• Labor 22 seats, down 24
• Liberals 51 seats, up 23
• Nationals 17 seats, up 4
• Independents  3 seats, down 3
• Greens no seats, no change 

These numbers will bounce around a bit, but the results are clear.

Youngest daughter worked as an official for the Electoral Commission at one of the booths and left home at 6.40am to get to work. A little later, I drove my wife to another of the booths where she was handing out how to vote cards.

This is a politically mixed household. At the last election, the four of us voted four different ways! 

I am something of an election tragic. I can't help myself. Here I was struck by  comment on Pollbludger, a blog for election tragics. eddieward wrote:

By way of credulity, this is the first election I haven’t worked on since 1977. I’d like to think I understand these things, so the next ten days will learn me some more I guess. One thing I do know is that this will require stamina. I’ve got a slab of barons, two bottles of vodka, a carton of cigarettes, three days firewood, a roast chicken and professional experience with sleep deprivation. I’ll be back quicker than a channel nine ad-break with an update.

What could be more tragic than that?

I know I have a small number of international readers such as Ramana (India) and Tikno (Indonesia). Tikno, by the way, has resumed regular posting and has had some stories recently that I suspect might interest Australian readers. Have a look.

I thought that I might treat this post as a chat to my international friends, explaining what I have been following and why.

Background

I need to start with a little background.

In our system, government goes to the party that gains a majority of seats in the lower house. There are, I think, 93 seats in the NSW Legislative Assembly with geographic boundaries structured in such a way that the number of voters in each seat are broadly equal. Voting is what is called optional preferential.

Under the old preferential voting system that I grew up with, something that was deeply entrenched in Australia, the winning candidate had to get 50% of the vote. That was done in this way.

Say there were ten candidates in your seat. You voted number one for your first choice, then ranked each of the remaining candidates two through to ten. If one candidate got a majority, then that candidate was immediately elected. If no candidate got a majority, then the candidate with the lowest number of votes was eliminated from the count, and his second preferences were distributed among the other candidates. This process continued until one candidate finally achieved a minority.

Technically, if no candidate achieved a majority after second preferences, you could continue the process with third preferences, then forth preferences and so on. In practice, distribution of second preferences achieved the desired result. The practical effect of all this was that winning candidates' majority combined those who wanted that person first plus those who wanted him/her second.

In its vast wisdom, the Labor Party Government decided that electors should have a choice as to whether they allocated preferences. This was called optional preferential, meaning that people could now just vote one or one two or whatever up to the number of candidates. The problem that arose is that candidates were now elected not on the combination of first and second choices for the entire electorate, but on the combination of first choices plus second choices from those who bothered to record preferences. This introduced a new and very random element into the process.

Upper house or Legislative Council voting is different. The Council consists of 42 members elected for eight year terms. Terms are staggered, with 21 members elected every four years at elections held in conjunction with the Legislative Assembly. Members are elected by proportional representation using the state as a single electorate. The quota for election is 4.55%.

Council voting is complicated because you can vote above or below the line with a somewhat complicated optional preference distribution system. This can make for some strange results.  

Things of interest in NSW

This NSW Labor Government had been in power for sixteen years. Labor itself has been in power for the great majority of time since 1942.

Labor's power base is geographic, reflecting concentration of certain voters in certain areas. As the original working class and union party, its strength has been in the working class suburbs of Sydney, the Illawarra and the Lower Hunter. This gave it a rusted on base along the coast from Newcastle in the north to Wollongong in the south sufficient to position it for power. Well, somebody provided a solid dose of WD40 to the rust; the Labor base collapsed!

Labor now holds no seats outside the Illawarra, Sydney or the Lower Hunter.

In the Illawarra, Labor has held Shellharbour and Kiera. Wollongong is still uncertain and may be claimed by an independent.

In the Lower Hunter, Labor somewhat unexpectedly held Cessnock plus Wallsend. Newcastle is still too close to call, with the Liberal Party ahead. This is actually a slightly better result than originally projected. At one stage it appeared Labor could lose all seats.

The remaining Labor seats are all in Sydney.

In Sydney, attention focused first on the inner west seats seats of Marrickville and Balmain where the Greens had hoped to gain their first lower house seats. They look likely to be disappointed. This is where optional preferential voting comes in.

In Marrickville, the Labor vote held up better than expected. To win, the Greens need Liberal preferences. Those preferences will not be there.

In Balmain too, the swing against Labor was a little less than expected, while the Liberals did much better than expected. On the first night count, the Libs are just ahead on the primary vote, followed by Labor and then the Greens. The most likely outcome appears to be a Labor win on the preferences of those Greens who did record preferences. This would be a remarkably good result for Labor's Verity Firth.

With the exception of Blacktown in Sydney's Northwest, Sydney's Labor seats run in a relatively thin strip west from Marrickville.

One of the interesting issues in Sydney this time was the Asian vote, with around one elector in ten born in Asia. Labor has had something of a lock-in on the ethnic vote and especially the Asian vote. This time it seemed to be shifting. One seat being watched was the very blue ribbon seat of Cabramatta, Sydney's most ethnically diverse seat. There  Vietnamese born Liberal Dai Le was running against the sitting Labor member, Egyptian born Serb Nick Lalich whose parents had escaped from Yugoslavia in 1944. Ms Lee scored a huge swing, 26.2%, but it was still not enough to take the seat.

In the bush, the main focus was on the country independents. Richard Torbay in Northern Tablelands always seemed safe. However, could the resurgent Nats take back Dubbo, Tamworth and Port Macquarie?

They did. Part of the reason for my interest here lay in the fact that Tamworth is part of the Tony Windsor held Federal seat of New England, Port Macquarie part of the Rob Oakshott held Federal seat of Lynne. As country independents, both were critical in allowing Federal Labor to cling to power.

Turning now to the Legislative Council where counting is still in its early stages, Pauline Hanson scored 52,305 votes, 1.83%. I had expected her to do better than this because of all the publicity, but looking at the huge ballot paper with the absence of any booth workers, I did wonder.

To vote for her, you actually had to find her group on the ballot paper because there was no specific identification. A small number of people at booths actually workers from other parties where her how to vote card was. She also lost votes to the Shooters and Fishers. 

Recognising how early it is in the count, at this stage the computer projections for the Legislative Council are:

• Coalition  19
• Labor 14
• Greens 5
• Shooters and Fishers 2
• Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group) 2.

As with the previous council, it looks as though the incoming government will need to rely on minor parties to get legislation through.    

NSW 2010: elections, prorogation and public policy

Just a bit of a round-up this morning.

For the benefit of international readers, NSW will be holding elections next March.

The latest Newspoll shows the Coalition in NSW with a still commanding two party lead of 61% to 39% on a two-party preferred basis. Again for the benefit of international readers, NSW has what's called an optional , preferential system. Voters can chose to allocate preferences, one, two, three etc. Should no candidate achieve an absolute majority on the primary vote, preferences are then allocated until one candidate achieves a majority.

The current NSW Labor Government  has been on the political nose for quite some time. With pretty much everybody convinced that the Government should and must go, Premier Kristina Keneally has struggled to put together a new approach that might at least minimise defeat.

It's been interesting to watch. No less than 21 Labor MPs have announced their retirement in recent months. A 22nd was convicted of a criminal offence. Whether this leads to Party renewal in the short term really depends on just how many of those seats Labor can hold.  

The Government has also been clearing the decks in policy terms. They have got rid of some unpopular previous decisions such as the proposed Tillegra dam, while pushing forward on others such as the sale of some of the State's electricity assets. Here the Premier asked the Governor to prorogue Parliament to prevent the upper house, the Legislative Council, from holding an inquiry into the electricity sales.

In February, the use of this device in Canada led me to write Problems with prorogation. Interesting that the same issue should come up so quickly in a NSW context.

The practical effect is that the Government continues in an Executive role until the writs are issued for the next election, but the present Parliament itself has ceased. This raises an interesting constitutional issue, for the Legislative Council committee has apparently decided to push ahead. Here I quote from Imre Salusinszky's story in the Australian:

Ms Keneally last night released legal advice from the Crown Solicitor that the upper house standing committee "cannot function while the house of parliament which created it, and to which it is responsible and accountable, stands prorogued".

But Mr Nile will press ahead today, after getting contrary advice from upper house clerk Lynn Lovelock.

Ms Lovelock told The Australian: "The committee has the authority to meet and conduct the inquiry."

However, she expressed reservations about whether the committee would be well advised to "press ahead" if witnesses felt their protection under normal parliamentary privilege might be compromised.

I would have thought that there were other problems as well, including the simple question of funding the costs of any inquiry.

I have written on the electricity issue, but mainly in a New England context. Back in May, Sydney's 1995 electricity heist provided a somewhat partisan historical view of the process by which Sydney took over assets previously regarded as local and then raided them for cash. The current sale marks the end of this process.

I will write a little more on this issue because its part of the economic and social changes that took place across the broader New England during the second half of the twentieth century. Whatever the general arguments for what is called National Competition policy, it had quite differential on-ground effects.

In the lead-up to the last State elections, I was very critical of the policy approaches adopted by both sides. I called it the super market approach in which each side put forward a rag-bag of specific proposals; electors had then to decide which supermarket they preferred.

The problem with this type of approach is that it leads to a series of disconnected measures. Oppositions face particular difficulties because they lack the resources to properly cost and validate individual ideas. If they win, they are then bound to deliver on what may in fact not be good ideas.

We have an example of this at Federal level at the present time with the abandonment of the Green Loan/Green Start program. This is being presented as another example of the inability of the Federal Government to deliver. That may or may not be the case. However, it is an example of an ill-conceived election promise.

Another of the difficulties of the supermarket approach is that it can actually make it quite hard for public servants to respond sensibly.

At the last NSW elections, there was very little focus on opposition policies at officials' level because people had decided that the opposition could not win. That it is not the case this time. All the various state agencies are trying to work out what advice they might provide, how they might respond, to a new Government. They are all preparing ideas and briefings.

This is part of the liberating effect of a possible change in Government.

Over the last week or so I have chatted to officials with some involvement in the process across three major agencies. I got the feeling that they were all struggling to some degree. Their problem is that while you can cost and plan for a specific proposed activity, you also have to integrate that activity into existing programs and approaches, working out how the whole thing might fit together, what changes might need to be recommended.

To do this, you need a feel for the opposition's values and policy principles in general and in the particular areas that you are responsible for, something that you don't really get from the supermarket approach. At the moment, about the only thing on which there does appear to be agreement among officials is the likelihood of immediate cuts.

I will be watching developments here with interest.

Finally, I just wanted to note for my own purposes, to complete a story that I wrote on extensively at the time, that  Dr Mohamed Haneef and the Federal Government have apparently agreed terms of compensation for his wrongful detention.           

A rare tick for NSW Premier Rees

I have complained before that NSW did not make ministerial press releases available on line, making it harder to find relevant information.

I have just discovered, apparently all un-announced, that the Government changed its policy in September. Ministerial press releases are now available on Departmental web sites.

Reasons for the coalition loss in NSW, March 2007

Note to readers. The original version of this post mixed two very different things, the reasons for the coalition's loss in NSW with the future of the National Party. I have therefore broken them into two to avoid clouding matters.

In an interesting comment to a post on one of Neil's blogs, National MLC Trevor Khan provided a frank assessment on the coalition's failure to win the last NSW State election. I leave it to you to read the comment. However, the comment made me decide to summarise my own views.

In the run-up to the NSW election, I complained about what I saw as supermarket politics, a series of disconnected offerings, suggesting that the campaign was essentially a policy free zone on both sides.

Prior to this complaint, I had run an earlier series of posts looking at changing approaches to public administration and their impact on public policy. As part of this, I took the NSW Ten Year Plan as an example of the new approaches. In doing so, I took the broader New England as a case study, starting by analysing the area's problems and then comparing those to the approach in the Ten Year Plan. My conclusion was not positive.

This analysis bears upon my comment about supermarket politics at two levels.

Supermarket politics is part and parcel of current approaches to public administration with their emphasis on cascading outcomes and performance measures. In supermarket politics, you select some numbers, some individual activities and outcomes, and then put them forward in competition to your rivals. Coles versus Woolies or, in the case of the Nationals, perhaps IGA.

There is nothing wrong with an outcomes focus per se. But cascading outcomes set in isolation from an overarching policy framework, from vision, or indeed from full analysis of the needs to be addressed, means that effort is highly likely to be focused on the wrong things.

This is where the New England case study came in. Accepting that my analysis was partial, it did suggest that there was a substantial disconnect between the Ten Year Plan and New England's real needs.

So there was plenty of substance to criticise. We have seen this since the election in the apparent un-ending stream of policy failures within NSW. However, the supermarket approach to politics adopted by the NSW opposition made it hard for them to identify core problems, let along gain any traction in propounding solutions.

Here the opposition faced a further problem, credibility. By credibility, I mean no more than being accepted as a serious player. This has to be earned in advance of the election campaign. The opposition failed to do this.

The standard excuse put forward to justify this failure centres on the media. They would not give us coverage. I do not accept this.

Today people are so obsessed with the media, mass coverage and the sixty second sound bite that that they have lost sight of the most basic thing, you do not need media coverage to develop ideas and establish relations with key stakeholders. Indeed, if you are exploring ideas, you do not necessarily want media coverage at all.

Take any shadow minister as an example.

If you are interested in, say, education, you start by talking to those with an interest in the area. This builds networks and ideas. You test those ideas with selected speeches. In doing so, you are not trying to get votes, simply establish a position.

Do this well, and you will start to attract media attention. Now here you have to do something hard. Avoid party politics! Don't go for the headline. With fixed four year terms, there is really very little point in short term headlines. Unless, of course, you feel that there is something so important from a public policy perspective that it must be put on the public record.

If you and your colleagues do this, then by the election campaign you will be seen as a credible player. People may not agree with you, but they will treat you seriously. This includes the media.

To my mind, this was all the opposition needed to win the last election. Or, for that matter, the next.

All this is tactics that can be implemented by a reasonably competent parliamentarian with the right staff support.

Rightly, we do not (or should not) expect our parliamentarians to be intellectual giants in their own right. This is not their role.

At the end of the day, the role of the parliamentarian is to understand and represent the people, to want to serve. They can do this so long as they are reasonably competent and have the ability to select the right people to support them.

To me, perhaps the greatest attributes of a good parliamentarian are the willingness to treat all people equally, a capacity to listen patiently, a passion for service. I won't name names, but I have seen some very bright people who were disasters because their intellect got between them and their key roles.

I used the word tactics to describe the above approach. What about strategy?

To my mind, politics should be more than just winning elections. The business of Government is not just service delivery. There was no over-arching vision in the opposition's election campaign, nor is there in the NSW Ten Year Plan. Further, beyond the obligatory references to family values, to law and order, both Government and opposition were essentially value free zones.

In all this, I have had particular expectations of the National Party.

Country people are different from city people. I do not mean this in any critical way, nor am I talking about values as such. Rather, about the expectations that country people invest in their MPs.

We expect our MPs to represent us. We expect to know them and have contact with them in a way that would (does) seem strange to a city person. This holds across parties. Once we know them, once we believe that they will do their best, we will hold with them even when we disagree with them.

My particular expectation of the National Party, however frustrated in practice, is that the Party as a country or regional party will articulate and represent country or regional interests in a way that cannot be done by parties dominated by the metros.

Articulation, representation, does not mean simply trading off one thing to get something else for a particular electorate. It does not mean being simply a junior partner in a conservative coalition. Rather, it involves the development of an overall vision for regional NSW, including New England.

I am out of time. I will continue this argument, very briefly, in a follow up post looking specifically at the Nationals.

Reference Posts

I started putting up reference posts to support this post, then realised after several hours that there were just too many, and of varying quality. So I have stopped, leaving an incomplete list but one that does at least give something of a flavour.

Changes in Public Administration

Changes in Public Administration - Notes. This post sets a broader context and looks at the raise and fall of the welfare state under the impact of the 1970s oils shocks combined with the rise of alternative views.

Publish or Perish - where did the this phrase come from? This post look at the rise of citation indexes as an example of the interest in measurement that forms a key element of modern approaches.

Changes in Public Administration - the New Zealand Model. This post looked the rise of Thatcherism, the development and implementation of the New Zealand model and the transfer of its ideas to Australia.

NSW Ten Year Plan - New England's needs starts my analysis of the NSW Government's Ten Year Plan, an example of the application of New Zealand approaches, by trying to define some of New England's needs to provide a benchmark for assessment.

Does the NSW Ten Year Plan meet New England's needs? reviews the Plan against the benchmarks established in the previous post.

NSW Ten Year Plan and New England - Conclusions sets out the my bottom line, that the gap between the Plan and New England's needs was huge.

NSW Ten Year Plan - praiseworthy but flawed provides an overall assessment of the Plan.

Public Policy Examples

Aborigines

• Stocktake - Belshaw Writings on Australian Aborigines 4; Policy Interlude. This post includes links to three previous posts in the series.
• Our Aborigines - practical success stories
• NSW's Aboriginal Population
• Aborigines and the Development of Public Policy - a Methodological Note
• Australia's Aborigines and the Community Housing and Infrastructure Program (CHIP)
• Australia's Regional Universities and Indigenous Advancement

Child Welfare

• David Henry Drummond and the Importance of Compassion. Story of the early days of a Ward of the State who went on to become NSW's longest serving Minister for Education and Child Welfare.
• NSW - Problems in Child Welfare includes historical material on the history of the NSW child welfare system to set a context for current problems.
• Musings - Inflation, Volunteering, Child Welfare and Educational Standards, musings on a number of related issues.

Education

• Gripes about Australian Education - 1
• Gripes About Australian Education - 2
• HSC, UAI and Education - a further note
• Problems with Performance Pay
• Ranking Australia's Universities

General

• Australia - failures in public policy sets out some of the reasons for public policy failure using examples.
• Quid custodit ipsos custodes? - Who will protect us from our protectors - and ourselves?
• Treatment of Risk in Public Policy
• Banner Headline: ICAC exposes corruption risks in HSC take-home assessments
• Risk - lock out and lock down arrive in Australian schools
• ICAC and the NSW HSC - the Legalisation of Australian Life
• Broken Record - Risk Avoidance and the Burden of Compliance contains links to a number of posts.
• The evils of "the Daily Telegraph" test
• Economic and demographic change, education, ethnicity and the maintenance of social cohesion in Australia provides an initial response to a Sydney Morning Herald campaign.
• Saturday Morning Musings - economic and demographic change, education, ethnicity and the maintenance of social cohesion in Australia 1, entry post for a still (at the time of writing) to be completed series of posts responding to the Herald's campaign in more detail.

NSW Government's coastal planning strategies - how they compare with reality

• Sydney Government releases draft Mid North Coast strategy
• Sydney Government's Coastal Planning Strategies
• Demographic Change in NSW - the future

Regional Development

• Community Creativity and Development - update

Constitutional Issues

• Australian Constitution & the High Court Decision on Work Choices
• Water, new states and the intellectual poverty of current Australian discussions on Federalism
• Australian Federalism in an International Context
• Constitutional Change in Australia - the view from 1926: Introduction
• Constitutional Change in Australia - the view from 1926: Three streams of constitutional thought
• Constitutional Change in Australia - the view from 1926: Constitutional principles
• Importance of Parliament
• Constitutional Change in Australia - the view from 1926: Power will be Exercised

Politics -with a particular focus on NSW

• Hicks, blogs and our view of the past
• The Howard Government, Dissent and the Pattern of Change in Australia
• The Howard Government, Dissent and the Pattern of Change in Australia 2 - A personal explanation
• Politics, the Media and the Immiseration of Public Policy - the supermarket approach to politics
• New England and the Immiseration of Public Policy
• Immiseration of Public Policy - a personal note
• Access to Information - a NSW oddity
• NSW 2007 - a very strange election
• Sydney's Bridge
• Australian Electoral Rules and Democracy
• Yet More on Australian Electoral Rules and Democracy
• NSW 2007 - a strange election becomes stranger still
• NSW Elections 2007 - the art of repackaging
• NSW Elections 2007 - Government is more than service provision
• Modern Political Myth - Oppositions and the Media
• Modern Political Myths - a follow up

Supporting Data

Belshaw posts on demography - entry page. As the name says.

Sydney, statistics and the need for caution

There are nuts and then there are statistical nuts. I may belong to the first class. I certainly belong to the second!

It's not just that I like numbers and patterns. I rely on them for evidence to support arguments. So I get upset when I find that I have been wrong, that I have misinterpreted data.

A key problem in interpreting statistics, especially when looking at change over time, is the way that definitions change. Unemployment is a case in point. It is very hard to compare present and past unemployment statistics because the way employment is defined has changed.

A second problem is the way in which changes made by Governments for other reasons affects statistics. As an example, local government changes - boundary changes, mergers - make it hard to compare population changes over time in specific areas.

I was sharply reminded of all this when trawling through statistical data on Sydney and NSW checking facts for my part completed series on the SMH's campaign.

Accoding to the census stats, the resident population of the Sydney statistical division at the time of the 2006 census was 4,119,190 out of a total state population of 6,549,174. This is the number usually quoted when people talk about Sydney.

Then browsing through the recent Australian Bureau of Statistics publication, Sydney - A Social Atlas - 2006, I read that at the 2006 census there were 3,645,153 usual residents in Sydney, 55.7% of the NSW population. Now this is a very different number, so I was forced to investigate.

The social atlas defines Sydney as the area bounded by the suburbs of Palm Beach and Berowra in the north, Cronulla and Heathcote in the south, Camden in the south-west, Faulconbridge in the west, and Riverstone in the north-west. In broad terms, this is what most people today would think of as Sydney.

Now compare this to the Sydney statistical division. You will find all the Australian statistical divisions here. In addition to Sydney as defined in the social atlas, this adds a big additional swag of territory including all the Blue Mountains and Gosford-Wyong, areas that most people would not think of as being part of Sydney.

Does this matter? Well, it depends on what you want to use the statistics for.

At a macro level, I am interested in Sydney's population relative to the rest of NSW because shifts in Sydney's share of the state population over time have been a key political driver. If we are going to talk, as the SMH has done, about Sydney's relative decline, then we have to be able to measure it.

Much of my recent analysis has used the Sydney statistical division as the source of numbers on Sydney. This is clearly invalid for at least some of my arguments. Among other things, the use of the broader number conceals the extent of population shifts. Without checking the data, I think that it is a very long while since Sydney as normally defined has only had 55.7% of the NSW population.

At micro level, the inclusion of the Blue Mountains and Gosford-Wyong with their very different demographic structures affects the averages and percentages often used in discussions about Sydney. In particular, it conceals the extent of change within Sydney as normally defined.

I do not think that all this affects the arguments that I have begun developing. If anything, is strengthens them. However, it does mean that I have to re-check data.

In the meantime, I have been almost totally sidetracked by the detail in the Sydney Social Atlas. It is an absolute gold-mine for someone like me interested in patterns of social change.

NSW Demographic Snapshot as at 30 June 2006 - fastest growing councils 1

Streetscape: Inner Sydney

As at 30 June 2006, NSW as a whole had a population of 6.8 million.

Over the 2001-2006 census period, the state has a whole had an average annual population growth of 0.7%. However, this average concealed major variations at local level.

A list of the ten fastest growing local government areas follows ranked by annual average population growth over 2002-2006. It is a polyglot lot.

• Sydney 4.9%
• Palerang 3.5%
• Auburn 3%
• Strathfield 2.7%
• Baulkham Hills 2.6%
• Yass Valley 2.6%
• Camden 2.3%
• Queanbeyan 2.3%
• Tweed 2.2%
• Canada Bay 2%

The City of Sydney covers the CBD and immediately surrounding suburbs. In blogging terms, this is where James O'Brien, Neil Whitfield or for that matter I now live, since the last boundary changes added my suburb to the City of Sydney.

This is the Sydney that visitors know best since it includes the city itself with its attractions, as well as the surrounding gallery and restaurant areas.

In the period 2001-2006 the population of the City of Sydney grew from 129,696 to 164,547, marking a continuing and fundamental demographic shift.

This is the oldest area of Sydney, with the city core surrounded by many once working class areas where the workers lived who serviced the city and port, as well as the factories located in the inner city ring. A place of distinct localities. This was also the place where many intellectuals clustered, of bohemian life style.

Sydney has become gentrified and increasingly flatified as the factories closed, the original workers moved out and the middle class moved in. Recently, I have watched as the apartment blocks moved west along the main arteries, getting closer and closer to the street in which we live. Now the factories across the road are for sale.

This is increasingly a city of the younger professionals, of singles or share households attracted by the metro lifestyle. It has the lowest birth rate in NSW (0.91 babies per woman as compared to a state average of 1.79), as well as the lowest proportion of people holding a driving license (61% of those over 16 as compared to a state average of 83%).

For more demographic information on Sydney see Teasing Neil - but with a serious point.

Palerang, the next fastest growing local government area, caused a mental block for the moment. The size of its population, up from 10,876 to 12,913 over the census period, suggested a country location. But I could not remember where. But then, checking, I found I knew it very well indeed, just under its previous name.

Now that I know where it is, I should deal with it, Queanbeyan and Yass together since their growth is all linked.

At time of Federation, no one would agree with either Sydney or Melbourne becoming capital of the new Commonwealth of Australia, so a decision was made to build a new capital. This led to the creation of the Australian Capital Territory and the development of Canberra.

Canberra is one of the elephants in the NSW room, and not just because of the role of the national government.

The ACT's population is now just over 338,000, growing by 1.5% in the twelve months to 30 March 2007. This growth has spread into the adjoining areas of Yass, Queanbeyan and Palerang.

Queanbeyan is just over the ACT border to the south, a bit over 11k from Parliament House. Between 2001 and 2006, its population grew from 33,765 to 37,855, giving an annual average growth rate of 2.3%.

I lived in Queanbeyan, so know the place well. Queanbeyan began as a rural service centre, then grew because it housed the workers building Canberra. Canberra was dry at the time, so this is also where Canberra people went to have a drink.

This was one of the first truly polycultural communities in Australia, drawing workers from many parts of southern and eastern Europe. As they became wealthier and built bigger houses in Queanbeyan and Canberra, they developed styles we described in the early seventies as Italian Modern and Yugoslav Gothic, the start of the huge house on the small block now so common in Sydney.

Campaigning in Queanbeyan as I did was always interesting because of the variety of home produced food and drink offered in hospitality. This was strong, traditional Labor territory, so re-building the Country Party base was an interesting challenge!

Yass on the other side of the ACT was very different. It is further away (61k) and therefore less influenced by Canberra. It was also much much wealthier, the heart of a traditional grazing area. However, now Canberra's growth has spread to Yass.

Between 2001 and 2006, the population of the Yass Valley Council area grew from 12,103 to 13,747 for an annual average increase of 2.6%, direclty reflecting Canberra's growth.

Palerang lies to the east and south of Queanbeyan/Canberra and covers Braidwood, Bungendore and Captains Flat and the outlying villages of Araluen, Majors Creek, Mongarlowe and Nerriga. It also includes the areas of Wamboin, Burra, Bywong, Hoskinstown, and parts of Sutton, Royalla and Carwoola.

Again, its population growth directly reflects the growth of Canberra.

But why does all this make Canberra an elephant in the NSW room?

Quite simply, the city's growth not only affects the surrounding region in population and economic terms, but also in governance terms. Canberra's influence means that the broader capital region as it has become known incorporates increasing slabs of NSW and therefore has to be managed by the NSW and ACT Governments through collaborative arrangements.

Canberra is not the only elephant. We can see this same fragmentation process in the south and north of the state, where the growing influence of Victoria and Queensland creates similar issues.

The Tweed Shire Council, the ninth fastest growing local government area, covers 1,300 square kilometres in the far north east of NSW (and New England) next to the Queensland border, 828k (1o hours 41 minutes driving time) from Sydney. Between 2001 and 2006, Tweed's population grew from 74,577 to 82,955 for an annual average increase of 2.2%.

Tweed Heads lies next door to Queensland's fast growing Gold Coast, one of Australia's best known tourist destinations. Between 1986 and 2005, the Gold Coast grew by 267,000 people, and is expected to grow again by the same ammount in the next twent years.

Tweed's natural beauty (the popular New England tourist destination of Byron Bay - 30,635 people - also lies next door), the climate and the proximity to the Gold Coast have all combined to trigger growth that has transformed Tweed Heads into a major urban centre in a few short decades.

The growth of Tweed Heads and the immediately surrounding region has had quite profound on-ground effects.

The nearby city of Lismore (44,225) on the Richmond River, once New England's second largest city after Newcastle, has struggled to maintain its position in the face of the overwhelming retail power of the Gold Coast.

As with Canberra and the surrounding region, this northern area cannot be governed in isolation from a Queensland to which it increasingly belongs in economic terms. I will look more broadly at some of these governance issues in a later post.

The remaining fast growth areas - Auburn, Strathfield, Baulkham Hills, Camden and Canada Bay - all form part of greater Sydney. I will look at these areas in a different post because they raise different issues.

World Youth Day, the Jockey Club and the Roman Catholic Church - a very Sydney story

Next year, the Roman Catholic Church will be holding World Youth Day in Sydney. The Pope will be coming, and up to 500,000 people will attend an open air mass to celebrate the event. But here there is a problem.

The plan is to hold it at Royal Randwick, Sydney's premier race track. But the Australian Jockey Club, the lessors, have problems with this. I have been conscious of the dispute between the Church and Club, but I now see from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald that the problem is getting worse.

In Australia racing is a religion. It appears that the leaders of the racing religion and the Catholic prelates are on a serious collision course. In the meantime, the Sydney (aka NSW) Government appears to be sitting on the fence hoping that the problem will go away.

I have no idea of the rights and wrongs of all this. But it is a rather nice story that deserves wider coverage!

NSW Elections 2007 - final Legislative Assembly results

We now have final results for the Legislative Assembly from the recent election. While the overall outcome was clear on election night, results in the last few seats really bounced around.

I found this a confusing election, especially in trying to compare the results with those in the previous election. There was the redistribution, then in the run up to the election itself a number of sitting members left their parties to sit on the cross-benches, increasing the technical number of independents from six to ten.

I also found the weight placed on the two party preferred vote confusing and indeed at times misleading.

Preferential Voting

For the benefit of international readers, to win Government, you must achieve a majority in the Legislative Assembly or lower house.

NSW has what is called an optional preferential voting system. Under this, you vote one for the candidate of your choice. You may then, if you wish (this is the optional part), vote for other candidates in order of preference, two, three, four etc. If a candidate does not get a majority of votes, then the preferences of the candidates with the lowest vote are distributed until a majority is achieved.

Given the existence of a preferential system, a lot of analysis including most polls present data in two party preferred terms between the Labor Party and the Liberal/National Party coalition. This creates two major problems.

First, in an increasing number of seats - I have not counted them exactly, but I think that it is around 17 of the 93 assembly seats - the candidate with the second highest votes does not in fact come from either of the major blocks. This makes the standard two party preferred approach misleading.

Secondly, in an optional preferential system the changing number of electors who either do not put in preferences (this exhausts their vote) or if they do put in preferences do not follow the party line can have dramatic impacts on the final results in individual seats. This does not matter in an aggregate sense when, as in this case, the final results are clear. However, it can be very important in close elections.

Turning now to outcomes.

ALP

At the 2003 elections, Labor won 55 of the 93 seats. They finally ended this election with 52 seats, so down three. As late as last Wednesday the ALP still hoped to get 53-54 seats, so final counting went against them.

All Labor's losses came outside Sydney.

In the Lower Hunter they finally managed to hold off the independent challenge in Newcastle and Maitland, although it was line ball in Newcastle for some time. However, they lost Lake Macquarie to the independent, Port Stephens to the Liberal Party. Elsewhere. they lost Tweed and Murray-Darling to the National Party.

The Liberal Party

At the 2003 elections, the Liberal Party won 20 seats. They ended this election with 22 seats, so up two. They regained Pittwater, a seat they lost in a by-election following 2003 so counted as one of their 2003 seats, defeated the independent sitting member in Manly and gained Port Stephens.

The Nationals

At the 2003 elections, the Nationals won 12 seats. The Party then had one seat abolished in the redistribution and faced major challenges from independents, so the Nationals were in a degree of trouble. They ended the election with 13 seats, gaining Tweed and Murray-Darling from Labor. Importantly, while the Party failed to win independent seats back, they also withstood independent challenges in the seats they did hold.

Independents

At the 2003 election, independents won 6 seats, 2 in Sydney, 4 in the bush. This increased to 10 seats by election night with one by-election win plus defections They ended this election still with 6 seats.

With the exception of Clover Moore in the seat of Sydney itself, all the Sydney independents went down. Outside Sydney, the position was far more complex.

Independent candidates mounted major challenges in the Lower Hunter seats to Labor, to the Nationals in Barwon and the Liberals in Goulburn. These challenges failed with the exception of Lake Macquarie. However, the independents also held off all challenges in the seats they held elsewhere in the state, although the Nationals came close to defeating them in Dubbo. The net result was a one seat increase outside Sydney.

The future of the independent movement is interesting. Outside Sydney, they have in some ways consolidated their position as a natural country alternative to the National Party especially in that party's New England heartland. However, they have also not been able to extend their reach.

The Greens

Finally, the Greens. They ran candidates in all 93 seats, increased their vote slightly, and will gain increased upper house representation. But the big question, as it was in Victoria, was the Party's capacity now or in the future to break through in terms of lower house seats. Here I do not think that the signs are hopeful for the Greens.

To test this, I went through all 93 seats to identify seats where the Greens scored more than 10 per cent of the vote. I do not pretend the following analysis is either rigorous or error free. It is just a quick test.

The Greens gained more than 10 per cent of the vote in 24 of the 93 seats. I

The Party scored more than 25 per cent of the primary vote in two seats, both inner city:

• Marrickville 33 per cent, coming second after the ALP (47 per cent) with the Liberal Party on 13 per cent.
• Balmain 30 per cent, coming second after the ALP (39 per cent) with the Liberal Party on 24 per cent.

The Party scored between 20 and 25 per cent of the primary vote in four seats:

• Coogee 21 per cent, coming third after ALP (39 per cent) and the Liberals (36 per cent)
• Ballina 20 per cent, coming third after National (53 per cent) and the ALP (24 per cent)
• Heffron 20 per cent, coming third after the ALP (56 per cent) and the Liberal Party (22 per cent)
• Vaucluse 20 per cent, coming equal second with the ALP (also 20 per cent) and behind the Liberal Part (60 per cent)

Heffron is inner Sydney, while Coogee and Vaucluse are both Sydney Eastern Suburbs. Ballina is a New England seat in the north east corner of NSW.

The Party scored between 15 and 20 per cent of the primary vote in five seats:

• Lismore 18 per cent, coming third after the National Party (54 per cent) and the ALP (26 per cent)
• North Shore 18 per cent, coming equal second with the ALP (also 18 per cent) and behind the Liberal Party (53 per cent)
• Blue Mountains 16 per cent, coming third after the ALP (41 per cent) and the Liberal Party (28 per cent)
• Sydney 16 per cent, coming fourth after independent (40 per cent), Liberal Party 22 per cent and the ALP (20 per cent)
• Lane Cove 15 per cent, coming third after the Liberal Party (52 per cent) and the ALP (24 per cent)

From this point the Green vote tails away. There were 13 seats with a vote between 11 and 15, a solid number in the range 7-10 per cent, then the vote falls away especially in outer Sydney areas and country NSW.

These numbers scope the challenge facing the Greens.

The Green vote is high enough to give them upper house seats. However, their strong lower house vote is especially concentrated in two relatively small areas, the inner suburbs of Sydney with a smaller concentration on the far north coast.

In the first they seem to appeal especially to a generally younger, left of center metro group that forms a much higher proportion of the population than elsewhere and would otherwise have voted Labor or Democrat. The far north coast is a little different. This an area where environmental issues have been important and is also the original heart of the counter culture movement.

There is an interesting dichotomy here. Intuitively, you would expect these drivers to also affect, if to a lesser extent, the Green vote elsewhere on the New England coastline and on the Tablelands especially around Armidale. However, this is also independent heartland. My rough check of the figures suggests that the independents have been able to capture a significant part of the vote that would otherwise have gone Green.

The Greens face another problem as well. To get lower house seats in their core areas, they need second preferences. On the surface, they might have won Balmain this time with Liberal preferences. Here they face an enormous problem in terms of the attitudes of their members and supporters as well as views in other parties about deals with the Greens.

These problems won't go away. In the absence of some as yet undefined change, they mean that the chances of the Greens actually winning lower house seats do not appear high.

NSW Elections 2007 - Government is more than service provision

One thing that I got crankier and crankier about as the NSW election campaign proceeded was the constant repetition of the message - media included - that the NSW Government is or should be all about service delivery as though that was the end of the policy story. To me, this encapsulated the total policy failure on both sides that I have been trying to explain.

This really deserves a long post because it is a symptom of a broader problem, one not limited to NSW. But just to illustrate the point.

Is "law and order", to use a phrase favoured by both sides, simply an issue of service delivery? If so, what services are we talking about?

Is education simply an issue of service delivery? If so, what services are we talking about?

Is economic development, or its absence, simply an issue of service delivery? If so, what services are we talking about?

Are New England's poor towns, or the problems faced by NSW Aboriginal people, simply an issue of service delivery? I don't think so.

I won't go on. My point is that far too many people are caught in an intellectual trap, I almost wrote crap, that prevents them seriously thinking about the problems we face, the things we want to, or should want to, achieve.

NSW Elections 2007 - The Polls Were Right

So the polls were pretty correct. Having stuck my neck out on Friday to forecast either a hung parliament or an opposition win, it was already clear on Saturday morning that that forecast was likely to be wrong. And so it was.

Information Sources

Before going on, you will find the ABC coverage of the election results here. The Poll Bludger analysis and especially the comments on posts continue to be interesting because many of those commenting have individual on-ground information.

Perhaps most importantly, the Electoral Commission's Virtual Talley Room provides Assembly and Council voting details down to individual booth levels for each electorate. This makes it easy to check results in individual seats that you might be interested in.

Overview

Labor ran candidates in all 93 lower house seats. As at 11.08 last night, the party had 39.5 per cent of the vote, down 3.2 per cent, giving it 53 projected seats including one still in doubt.

The Liberal Party ran candidates in 73 lower house seats gaining 26.8 per cent of the vote, up 2.1 per cent, giving it 21 projected seats including one still in doubt.

The Nationals ran candidates in 20 lower house seats gaining 9.8 per cent of the vote, up 0.2 per cent, giving it 13 projected seats.

So the coalition in total gathered 36.6 per cent of the vote for a projected 34 seats as compared to Labor's 39.5 per cent with 53 seats.

The Greens ran candidates in 93 lower house seats gaining 8.8 of the vote, up 0.5, for zero projected seats.

There were 70 independent candidates in all, with a number of seats having multiple independent candidates. Independents gained 9 per cent of the vote, an increase of 5.3 per cent, with a projected six seats, including one in doubt.

There were also various other parties including the Christian Democrats (57 candidates, 2.5 per cent of the vote), Australians Against Further Immigration ( 56 candidates, 1.4 per cent of the vote), Unity (30 candidates, 1.1 per cent of the vote) and the Australian Democrats (26 candidates, 0.5 per cent of the vote).

I must say that I was pleased at the very low vote achieved by Australians Against Further Immigration. Conversely, I was saddened by the low Democrat vote, a sign of further decline. However, the Party did better in the Upper House, achieving 1.54 per cent of the vote so far counted.

It looks as though this will not be enough to save Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, the very hard working Democrat member. Here Poll-Bludger concluded at 5.05 am this morning (William, did you sleep at all last night?):

Looks like the Coalition vote continued to build as upper house voting continued into the wee hours, probably putting the final seat beyond the reach of the Democrats, AAFI and Fishing Party. Likely result: Labor 9, Coalition 8, Greens 2, CDP 1, Shooters Party 1.

Commentary

There were two key factors that I underestimated last night.

The first was the incumbency factor, the way in which people at times of confusion will often go for the local sitting member they know. The second was the optional preference system, leading to considerable variability in outcomes. This combined with the secrecy attached to Party preferences created uncertainty in individual seats.

Overall, the votes last night were all over the place, allowing all parties with the exception of the Liberals to take some comfort from the results.

The Luck of the ALP

The ALP could hardly believe its luck.

There was considerable depression among ministerial staffers in the last days before the poll because, despite the polls, they saw the Party as vulnerable with even Labor stalwarts saying that the Party did not deserve to win. But win they did, even holding off to some degree the independent challenge in the lower Hunter.

In Newcastle Labor candidate Jodi McKay got just 31.2 per cent of the vote but should win because of the preference arrangements. In Maitland Frank Terenzini for the ALP got 39.8 per cent of the vote but should again hold on preferences.

Only in Lake Macquarie does it appear that the ALP has gone down. There ALP candidate Jeff Hunter managed to get 41.8 per cent, the highest ALP vote of the three seats, but still looks likely to lose the seat to independent Greg Piper on preferences.

In the midst of the euphoria, I see two longer term problems for the ALP.

If my analysis is correct, Monaro is now the only seat held by Labor outside Sydney, the Central Coast and its traditional industrial heartland of the Illawarra and lower Hunter. Further, Labor's habit of seat targeting and tactical voting, support for independents in Tamworth and Goulburn are examples, leaves a disheartened and diminishing pool of Labor activists in many parts of NSW.

The second is the rise of the Greens.

The Greens Consolidate

The Greens are happy with the results because they gained a swing plus two upper house seats. I find more interesting the way the Party appears to be consolidating its position as the natural second or third opposition party in certain areas. This poses a threat to the major partes.

I have not done a detailed seat by seat analysis, but let me illustrate by taking a few examples.

Take some of the inner Sydney/Eastern suburbs seats minus Vaucluse itself which somehow seems to be missing from the on-line numbers.

• Sydney: Independent 41.2, Liberal 20.6, ALP 19.9, Green 15.3
• Heffron: ALP 58, Liberal 21, Green 19
• Balmain: ALP 39.6, Green 29.5, Liberal 23.5
• Marrickville: ALP 47.3, Green 32.5, Liberal 12.1
• Canterbury: ALP 57.7, Liberal 17.8, Green12.6
• Coogee ALP 39.1, Liberal 35.7, Green 21.3

Population in the inner Sydney suburbs is growing quite rapidly, creating a Green sympathetic demographic. The Liberal Party appears to have largely given up in some areas - there were no Liberal workers at all at the two booths I visited in Heffron, creating considerable anger among Liberal voters - consolidating the Green position.

The danger for both Liberal and Labor at the next election is that an entrenched Green position may cost both seats at the next election, Labor loosing to Greens, Greens stopping Liberals winning others.

Nationals Consolidate

The elections saw the Nationals consolidate their position.

The Nationals went into the election having lost one seat through redistribution. The Party also faced major threats from high profile independents. They came out winning two seats from Labor (Murray Darling and Tweed) while heading off the independent challenge.

The Party failed to win back Tamworth from the independent and has probably failed to unseat the independent in Dubbo, although this one is still too close to call for the moment. Still, the Party can take considerable satisfaction from the results.

I found the North Coast results especially interesting. If we look at seats here we find:

• Tweed: National 46.6, ALP 37.8, Green 8.4
• Ballina: National 46.6, ALP 23.5, Green 19.9
• Lismore: National 53.7, ALP 23.5, Green 19.9
• Clarence: National 52.6, ALP 30, Independent 7.8, Green 7.0
• Coffs Harbour: National 51.8, ALP 20.6, Independent 15.0, Green 7.5
• Port Macquarie: Independent 67.4, National 19.6, ALP 9.0, Green 2.6
• Oxley: National 59.6, ALP 24.9, Green 10.5
• Myall Lakes: National 48.5, ALP 20.7, Independent 19.4, Green 5.9

With the exception of Port Macquarie where the independent Rober Oakeshott increased his vote, the Nationals have strengthened their hold along the coast.

The ALP vote is clearly in trouble, and indeed outside Tweed the ALP really ran dead. In the words of one commentator on Poll Bludger.

There is now virtually no Labor infrastructure on the coast. This is the result of targeting marginal seats in the city and expecting independents to do Labor’s work in the country. For this policy to work Labor must run dead and this is the message we get from Sussex st.

It saddens me to say that this deadness extends to policy concerns as well - failure to restore the Murwillambah railway particularly when Qld is building a railway to the border and the Grafton Bridge are prime examples. Even good actions of the government e.g. rescuing Port Mac Base Hospital from private ownership get attributed to independents. This leaves very little room for Labor.

The demographic changes that Labor should be taking advantage of are being wasted. Where Labor had 3 seats two elections ago (Tweed, Clarence and Port Stephens) - they are in a good position to have none this year.

The point about demographic change is well taken.

The broader New England has always been Country or National Party heartland. After winning Murray Darling, the Party holds just four seats outside the broader New England, five if it wins Dubbo back. This pattern has been replicated at most elections since the Party's original formation.

Within New England, the independents have cut a swath through the centre of the Party's heartland from Tamworth through Northern Tablelands to Port Macquarie. Inland populations have also been stagnant, coastal populations growing, leading to continuing seat losses through redistribution.

This was a make or break election for the Nationals. The Party absolutely had to hold, especially in the North East corner where the higher Green vote is a sign of coastal demographic change. All this makes the Nationals the greatest winner after the ALP's retention of Government.

Liberals and Independents

What can one say about the Liberal Party?

On the plus side, the Party won two seats, Manly and Pittwater, back from independents. It also recaptured Hawkesbury where the sitting member had left the Party. It may yet hold Goulburn where star candidate Pue Goward faced a major challenge from the mayor of Goulburn running as an independent.

Beyond this, the Party got biggish swings in some of its own seats where it did not need it, much smaller swings in those seats where it did need them. The best gloss that the Party can put on the whole thing is that they did get the first swing to them since (I think) 1988 and that the margin now required is much smaller.

This leaves just the independents to look at. As best I can see, the results suggest that the independent movement has peaked.

There is, I think, only one independent member left in Sydney. Outside Sydney, at this stage confirmed independents are all in the broader New England (Lake Macquarie, Northern Tablelands, Port Macquarie and Tamworth.). Elsewhere Dubbo looks as though it will stay independent, while there is a very outside chance that Goulburn may still fall.

At this point, the most likely result is six independents, down one.

As a note, some readers may be surprised to see me include Lake Macquarie in the broader New England. Here I am using the New England boundaries set by the Nicholas Royal Commission into new states since they reflect historical patterns of interest.

NSW Elections 2007 - Strangeness continues

Graphic: Results of public opinion poll, Sydney Morning Herald.

In a way the attached graphic from the Sydney Morning Herald says it all.

Fifty two per cent of the electorate believes Labor does not deserve to be elected. Normally this would be the kiss of death for any Government. But in this case 57 per cent of the electorate believes the opposition does not deserve to win. That 5 per cent gap translates to a significant Labor victory as measured by the latest poll.

Neither the pollsters or commentators including myself have ever seen an election like this. Well, I am now going to stick my neck out.

My original forecast on this blog was that neither Government or opposition would get a majority, with independents holding the balance of power. I have changed my position, although there is a chance that this outcome will still happen.

I now forecast this. I believe that the ALP vote will collapse back to the true believers, those who cannot vote any other way. Part of this vote will go to the Greens and certain of the independents, especially independents standing in blue ribbon ALP seats such as the Lower Hunter seats. The rest will flow to the opposition leading either to an opposition win or a hung Parliament.

Now I have no scientific reason for saying this, only straws in the wind.

Straw one was the switch in my youngest daughter's vote. You will remember that she is a Green/ALP supporter.

Straw two is the reaction of the staunch ALP people I know, and I know a fair number of them. Never in my years following politics have I seen a situation where the Party faithful so universally say that their Party does not deserve to win. They will vote ALP, but without enthusiasm. This has to flow through to people less committed.

Straw three is the independent vote as shown by the polls. Now this one is a bit technical, so bear with me.

In very polarised elections such as the national election in1975, smaller parties and independents suffer because voters go the major parties in each electorate.

As I understand it, the polls are showing a state wide independent vote of 8 per cent. This is a good vote, but is also roughly the same as the percentage independents received in the last state election.

This time there are some high profile independents standing such as the Lower Hunter mayors who appear to have a good chance of winning. There is also widespread dissatisfaction with the Government. Yet the independent percentage in the polls does not appear to have not increased.

All this suggest polarisation, with a decline in the in the independent vote outside those electorates where they are the natural alternative.

The last straw, so to speak, is the metropolitan newspapers. Today the Sydney papers the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald came out telling voters that they must vote for the opposition, as did the national daily, The Australian.

The Herald editorial began on the top of the front page under the banner Why New South Wales cannot afford four more years of Labor. All the papers are critical of Mr Debnam, but I have never seen such a concentrated and withering attack on a Government on the day before polling.

I have no idea how all this will play out, other than my gut feel as to the results. I do know that I will be glued to the TV Saturday night while also having the computers on.

NSW Elections 2007 - the art of repackaging

During the week I had cause to look at a new NSW Government election commitment. When I dropped below the headline number I found very little new money. This caused me to go to the NSW Treasury web site to actually check the costing information.

You will find the results in a short post on the New England Australia blog. I knew the NSW Labor Government had developed policy repackaging into an art form, but I had not realised the extent.

I know that I sound like a broken record when I complain about about the current poverty of policy development, but it is another case. Nearly everybody, media included, goes for the headline, none checks the details or the pattern.

I am amazed that no opposition staffer had the sense to check this stuff. I would have thought that there were a number of stories here, like the actual reduction in spend on country water supply and sewerage over the next few years. Mind you, they may have written the stories but found the media unwilling to carry them.

NSW 2007 - a strange election becomes stranger still

I will be glad when this election is over and I can resume normal posting. My obsession with the election must seem strange to readers outside NSW, but it is really a very odd election.

Both Sydney dailies have been running stories and editorial content with the same theme: the Government deserves to go, but the opposition cannot win. Now I don't know about this. I am just confused.

Yesterday morning youngest, she is seventeen so cannot vote this time, amazed us all by saying that if she could vote she would vote for Mr Debnam. I say amazed because this is a girl who normally leans to Labor or the Greens. She herself prefaced her statement with the words "I never thought that I would say this."

Clare gave two reasons for her view, one not so surprising, one very surprising.

She said first that she was tired of Labor's negative advertising. The opposition is doing this as well, but the Labor Party has just so much more money that their ads swamp everything else. We all feel this, so that's not surprising.

She then said that she thought that the opposition's policies were better. This did come as a surprise. It appears that the constant dumping on opposition leader Debnam has actually caused her to listen (she rarely reads newspapers) to some of what passes for policy debate in this election.

I have no idea as to whether Clare is an isolated example or not. But I have been noticing a change in the commentary over recent days. I cannot pin this down precisely. All commentators are still saying that the opposition cannot win, but you are starting to get comments like "Debnam is not as bad as he is presented."

I also noticed that National Party Leader Andrew Stoner is getting more of a run on at least Sydney radio.

Normally the Nationals as a NSW country based party do not get Sydney air time, certainly not positive air time. Stoner is a much more down to earth person than Debnam, a typical country bloke, and comes across well on radio.

In a talk back segment on ABC local radio a caller, obviously a Labor supporter, said to Stoner that he (Stoner) would be Deputy Premier after the election should the opposition win but that he (the caller) knew nothing about him. The caller's theme was really why should he buy a pig in a poke?

Stoner handled this well, explaining something about himself and then adding that he would have loved to get more Sydney media coverage, but the Sydney media simply did not cover either the National Party or NSW regional issues.

I was especially impressed by the way in which Stoner, the opposition's shadow transport minister, handled the very parochial Sydney concerns. He could have gone down here very badly, but showed that he actually knew the details. He sounded like a minister. So it's a pity they couldn't get him in there sooner.

Mind you, Andrew has his own concerns defending the National's position outside Sydney in the face of the growing challenge from the Richard Torbay led independents. As I said in an earlier post, the independents have become the Party you have when you are not having a Party.

This brings me to a broader point, the way in which this election has split into two completely separate campaigns, Sydney and the rest. And the rest of NSW had better watch out.

The orchestrated campaign by the Sydney media about the city's problems means that regardless of who wins the election a lot of money is going to be spent fixing infrastructure. There is not going to be a lot of money left over for the rest of the state.

Yet More on Australian Electoral Rules and Democracy

In a recent post I explained some of the anti-democratic features that had crept into Australia's electoral systems. Now Poll Bludger has pointed to another specifically NSW feature that I can only describe as bizarre.

Before quoting the post, I should note that Poll Bludger continues to be, I think, the best blog for all those interested in the detail of Australian elections.

Poll Bludger notes that the arrangements that govern public disclosure of how-to-vote cards for New South Wales elections have to be read about in depth to be believed . As ABC election analyst Antony Green explained it on Poll Bludger:

If you are on the electoral roll for a NSW district, you will be allowed to visit your local Returning Officer on Saturday and examine registered material. But you cannot do it beforehand and you cannot look at it unless registered for that district. Parties are currently distributing pre-poll how-to-vote cards, but this does not mean the same preferences will be recommended on how-to-votes on Saturday. As for lower house preferences, you are only allowed to examine how-to-votes for your own district. The law prevents you from looking at how-to-votes in the other 92 districts. And access is only allowed on Saturday during the hours of polling.

Antony Green then amplified his comments on Crikey, also quoted by Poll Bludger.

Remember last November when the Liberal Party directed preferences against inner-Melbourne Green candidates in pre-poll voting, but on polling day recommended preferences to the Greens. Many candidates may play the same trick in NSW. As in Victoria, all how-to-vote material must be registered and approved. Unlike Victoria, there is no public access to the material before election day …

Now let me plead self-interest here. On Saturday, I’d like to know as much as I can about how preferences might flow. In other states that register how-to-vote material, the answer is to visit the Electoral Commission and examine the material. In NSW, that is not allowed. Instead, on Saturday I will visit the Returning Officer for my own electoral district of Marrickville, where I will be allowed to examine material registered for Marrickville, and registered material for the upper house. The law prevents me from examining material for any other electoral district, even if I visit those offices.

The stupidity of the laws may yet create a farce on Saturday. The problem is, how will party workers know that material being distributed by other parties and candidates is correctly registered? The answer is, they can’t. The only legal access to the material is in the office of each Returning Officer. The material cannot be examined in polling places. So if a candidate is handing out dodgy how-to-vote material in Deniliquin this Saturday, the only way anyone can check this material is registered is by checking with the Returning Officer in Broken Hill, several hundred kilometres away.

I am very much with Antony on this one as yet another example of NSW electoral stupidity.

Access to Information - a NSW oddity

Did you know that NSW appears to be the only jurisdiction in Australia where you cannot find Government press releases? This may sound odd, but it appears to be true.

Elsewhere in Australia minsters have all their releases on line, they want you to read them. There is no NSW equivalent.

I found this out by accident when I was trying to research material on the NSW elections.

Being a logical kind of person, I thought let's have a look at what the Premier has said so that I can see the pattern, the things that he and the Government focus on. I searched and searched. Can't be done. The NSW Government does not make releases available on line.

I find this odd. I find it odder still that no one has commented on it.

Pause for Reflection

Thank you Neil for your positive comment on my latest post on the NSW Government's Ten Year Plan. I am now going to take a break until next week, although I reserve the right to change my mind.

Writing the type of posts I do takes time, sometimes a lot of time. The analysis of the NSW Plan has taken days of time across two blogs. The reason I do this is that I want my readers to understand where I am coming from, to then then put my views in a context.

In writing I am conscious that the majority of my readers are not from Australia. So if I am going to write on NSW or Australian issues, I have to put them in a context that a broader readership will understand. The best way of doing this is to link them to broader trends. Again, time is involved.

To my readers who are Australian Labor Party supporters, I have no idea of the numbers here, do not worry that I will not expose the non-Labor parties to the same scrutiny. In this context, next week I propose to take Peter Debnam's releases (he is the leader of the NSW opposition) and subject them to the same analysis.

I am only guessing at this point, but I expect to find the following:

1. Most will be simply attacks on the Government
2. The ideological base as it applies to the role of government will be identical to that of the Government
3. There will be very few substantive releases warranting detailed analysis.

I may be wrong. I will be interested in the outcomes.