Lib HQ, forget panic - it's time to put on the brown underpants!

ACT Electoral Commission have declared it.

Greens 4, Cliberal 6, ALP 7.

I thought we had to wait another week?

ABC reports it’s been declared and is all official as of 8:10pm ish…

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/25/2401247.htm?section=justin

And it was used to describe a Black Swan event.
For context, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/black_swan_theory

Ari said :

Hey Caf, black swan is bingo-callers’ slang for the number 2.

I don’t think it is referring to a particular poster.

Maybe it is a bingo call, but the Black swan was mentioned on Riotact as an arguing point in Zugzwang, but its was ns who used the phrase over in http://the-riotact.com/?p=9404

#12 posted by ns
(Rioter)
10:59, 22 Oct 2008

If the Greens get more than 3 seats I think you can definitely call this a Black Swan.

Look at what just came into my possession. An email from Gary Kent.

Dear all

I am writing to thank you for your tremendous help and support during the recent election campaign. Although I was not successful this was unrelated to your sterling efforts on my behalf. If I had my time over I would do a l lot of things differently but you live and learn. One of the pleasures of the campaign was the strengthening of old and making of new friendships and I am very grateful for that.

Right now we must all hope that the Canberra Liberals win the critical third seat in Molonglo and I wish Jeremy and Giulia all the best in that battle.

I think the Canberra Liberals team performed fantastically over the past few months and I pay a special tribute to Zed Seselja who captured Canberra’s imagination with his ability to drive forward the Liberal agenda and clearly rattle a defensive Chief Minister. It was a sterling performance and one of which we should all be very proud.

Congratulations to Alistair Coe and Steve Doszpot who each put in amazing efforts to win their seats.

Best regards to you all and thank you once again.

Gary Kent

Gary no congratulation to Vicki and Brendan, just your mates Coe & Doszpot – typical.

Enjoy your next visit to Caphs with them.

BTW we haven’t heard anymore about Jones and the printing thing in Queensland. Does anyone have any news on that.

I have to agree with VicePope.

They would have spent $400,000 on the campaign to promote and raise his profile and to only get 1.5 quotas is embarrassing to say the least. Vicepoe, I disagree his vote was dragged up by a lack lustre team, it was more that he wouldn’t let them talk. Notice only the right wingers received press.

Humphries got 1.6 quotas and they didn’t run a presidential campaign like this one. And when Humphries ran you knew who he was running with, they didn’t hide half their candidates.

When will they get it, Canberrans are looking for a socially conservative small “l” liberal, moderate party to vote for. Not a bunch of right wing bible bashing anti abortion anti euthanasia rednecks. Yes rednecks is the only way you can describe Zed, Vicki, Coe and Jones. Join the 21st century people.

It will be interesting to see what the AGM holds for the liberals – I smell a backlash against the right. Lets hope thats the case and we can get some decent liberals to vote for.

If you ran a corporation this way the CEO would be gone. Zed should fall on his sword as well as the others I mentioned higher up.

Be nice if the CT would pick up this thread.

Soolin – have to disagree again. Every story on WIN this year that had an ACT spin was accompanied by Zed or one of his happy gang saying whatever it is that politicians say. Ditto the radio. I wouldn’t have counted the Canberra Times stories. He was known out there – ultimately, the punters just didn’t want him.

Agree however on the coverage of NSW politics. It’s more exciting (a bearpit Assembly, Della Bosca, the lamentable Costa and Sartor a government in difficulties, an opposition with more ideologies and feuds than members and, locally, a “National Nine” news coverage fixated on NSW, ie Sydney. Good grief, they even had an assassination a few years back). Somehow, the local sandpit is just not as much fun.

I’m with Hobbyhorse1 on this. Zed didn’t get a lot of media coverage until the actual campaign – so that negates the honeymoon effect.

Canberrans could quite easily know more about what’s happening in NSW politics than what goes on right here. Shortly after Zed took over the leadership a lot of people couldn’t tell you his name. I think most Canberrans would get it right now.

HobbyHorse1 – disagree. As the leader for the campaign, Zed was responsible for its ultimate lack of success. His “personal vote” wasn’t all that high, and was dragged up by the limitations on his Molonglo colleagues – Burke was a known dud, Jones was known only for an inept ad about nothing, Hanson barely known at all, Kent as a divisive influence and White (who?). Anyone who wanted to vote Lib had little choice.

And I’d disagree about this being the best case. He had a one-year (nearly) honeymoon and should have done better.

Zed did well – check out his personal vote. Any issues were more to do with the baggage he inherited (which is now gone) and the leakage of preferences because of Mulchay, Cross Pangallo, moterists etc.

The Libs may have lost a seat (yet to be finalised) but have renewed at least 50% of the MLA’s and the party is united.

This was the best case scenario when Zed assumed the leadership.

Zed really has to go. In a gimme election, that was the Libs’ for the taking, their vote went down. They picked up nothing that leached from Labor. Zed was at the front of almost all promotional material and has to carry the can, tap the mat etc. There may be no-one better, but he’s clearly not what the electorate wanted – at least not this time. (My vague understanding was that he would be pushed by the end of 2008 if they lost and by the end of 2009 if they won, anyway, and if the people expected were elected).

What really cost the Libs was that their proxies – the Motorists and the C(R)AP – didn’t return votes to them. In fact, failures by their voters to preference probably cost seats. Funny in a way, because if they had a consistent policy it was pretty much to exile Jon Stanhope.

Bruce K, you miss my point – I agree Vicki is not fit to be leader.
Problem is she’d be the only alternative to Zed at this stage, so Zed stays.

Fact is the people of Gininderra voted for Coe, they could have voted for no BS accountant Myers but they voted for Coe.
Now perhaps he had an advantage as far as resources go being the head of their northern branch and all but the fact is enough people voted for him to get him elected.
I don’t know for sure I’m not a Liberal.

Part of their problem may well be that the of people who make up ‘soft’ liberal supporters (particularly in Canberra) aren’t very interested in being involved in the party while those who ARE interested are far more conservative.
Vicious cycle – the more ‘loopy’ their branches get the less non fruitloops can stomach it and leave/(never join), the more loopy their branches get.
And in Canberra’s electoral system, the ‘hard’ supporters will still get a few candidates over the line.
At least that’s one theory.

Just back to jimbocool’s analysis, how did you get the figure for remaining primary votes?

Liberals received a total of 27785 primary votes, according to the commission’s website, and in the latest table of distributed preferences, they have counted 19585 of them, leaving the liberals with 8200 yet to be counted. Do the same with Greens and they have 4528. That’s a lot more than jimbo’s figures.

Canberra needs a strong Opposition to keep the incumbent party/government on its toes. It is unfortunate that the Canberra Liberals persist in selecting such right wing candidates. They don’t seem to understand that the Canberra community is, compared to other jurisdictions, a progressive community: one looking for a mix of sound economic management with a sensible “progressive” approach. This election should have been theirs. Carnell tapped into that sentiment. Follett did. Stanhope has. Kaine was pragmatic. The problem for the Liberals these days is their Party branches are full of fruit loop right wingers running a strong christian agenda. They have conducted a nasty campaign over the last 7 years (post Carnell) targeting small l liberals. For example, some of Coe’s Young Liberal mates are terrifyingly naive, aggro and ultra conservative. The Young Libs have been in a constant state of ideological war within the Liberal Party. Until the Liberal Party allows for all facets of the broad church to be considered candidates they are doomed to opposition. Charismatic leaders like Carnell need to be revered not pilloried (as many Liberals did). Their only other leader (other than the accidental leader Humphries) , Kaine, left the Party. Isn’t there a message in that? Like many in the community, I will not vote for right wing people with socially conservative agendas. One day they might just get it (when they are down to about 4 members).

Tetranitrate said :

At least Labor has a few competent people to replace Stanhope with – who do the liberals have?
There’s no way they would accept Smyth so that leaves Vicki Dunne and several new MLA’s who aren’t going to realistically be able to become leader in the near future.
Do you really think Vicki Dunne is a good choice for leader?

Tet, Vicki Dunne couldn’t run a mass in Rome – sorry yes she could thats the problem. As “disenfranchised” said time for Zed and his brother in law Seteven Doyle to pull their heads in. Their campaign smacks of our old friend from the NSW right David Clarke sticking his nose in to make sure more of the right get in. NSW here we come again. It will take 4 years to fix this F….up that Zed and his mates have created.

Shame on you, call yourself a christian, no true christain would behave the way you have.

At least Labor has a few competent people to replace Stanhope with – who do the liberals have?
There’s no way they would accept Smyth so that leaves Vicki Dunne and several new MLA’s who aren’t going to realistically be able to become leader in the near future.
Do you really think Vicki Dunne is a good choice for leader?

disenfranchised – fall on his sword? are you joking?
If indeed you’re correct that they’re too socially conservative Zed’s the least of your worries.

Even without Giulia, right wingers are now at least half the parliamentary party (anyone know where Hanson stands?).
Dunne, Doszpot, Coe.
Hanson expressed a lot of support for Zed on election night so assuming that’s true, Zed has a reliable 3.

With equal votes would this mean they flip a coin on who gets to be leader next time they have a spill?
How ironic.

Hey Caf, black swan is bingo-callers’ slang for the number 2.

I don’t think it is referring to a particular poster.

As Jimbocool says: Kudos to whoever it was who called “Black Swan” on two Greens in Molonglo.

So, yes, Mackerras gets the kudos.

caf said :

Black Swan my shapely butt…

Need evidence for the shapely butt, please.

Black Swan my shapely butt, in my book all the kudos goes to Malcolm Mackerras for predicting exactly this (as reported in Mumble, October 18).

It has been interesting to observe Seselja’s bravado. He leads a party for 10 months (which is more than long enough these days – ask Barnett), achieves a swing AGAINST his party of over 3 per cent, at a time when there was a massive community falling out with Stanhope and his team, and now wants the prize of government. The result in this election has been that the Liberals garnered around 30 per cent of the vote – that is a very POOR result. Smyth did better in 2004 overall. That’s right – check the figures. Is it too much to ask that Seselja and his Chief of Staff Doyle pull their heads in and get rid of the swagger? By the way I thought employing family in your office was frowned upon. The Liberals have become right wing Catholic dominated. Not a hint of “small l” about that group. This election shows they are unelectable with their current right wing hue. It is plain silly to be declaring victory, trying to mask the underlying failure of this campaign. This was their best opportunity for a decade and they could only get 30 per cent across the board! If Jones loses, Seselja must fall on his sword. Six seats would be an unmitigated failure. Equally, it is time for Stanhope to go too. There are rumblings already in both camps.

Hey Jimbocool – perhaps one of these is a way out of your current dilemma – http://www.thescreamonline.com/strange/strange2-2/hatsofmeat.html

And thanks for the psephological goodness.

Zed’s dead baby! Zed is dead.

Jimbo – you and your slide rule have been an inspiration over the last week. Great work.

No, the greens can still decide who governs, but labor has a much stronger mandate now.

It’s all very puzzling, but the good guys might do even better. But. will this not mean that Labor have the largest number of candidates in? And can therefore claim gov’t without anyone’s help? Although I guess if the greens then hopped in with the Liberals, they’d have it.

Most puzzling. I hope the greens do it however.

So Hanson gets up, Jones doesn’t? sorry, that isn’t entirely clear to me, need sleep

damn you sepi! And after all I did in explaining Hare Clark! Let’s just wait until the poll is declared…hat eating may well just be a non-core promise!

Kewl – now who was going to eat their hat???

You’ve made my evening jimbocool- great news!