I’ve been following the story of the extinction of Australia’s megafauna for some time. It originally seemed reasonable to blame man as the extinction occurred at about the same time as we arrived in Australia – about BC 40,000. This fitted the pattern of other extinctions in other parts of the world where the arrival of the highest order predator in the history of the world led to various beasts dying out.
The most recent research, reported by the Herald Sun in this article suggests that it was climate change that did it, not the mighty hunter. This research has an AGW application. If you check out the East Antarctica temperature chart I published in an earlier post here you’ll see that 40,000 years ago it was very much colder than it is now (40,000 years ago coincides with the second trough from the right).
Somewhere around this time, without any help from manmade CO2 emissions, there were significant temperature fluctuations of around 2.5 to 3.5 degrees. We probably don’t know how much these contributed to the change in rainfall, but what it does demonstrate is that climate change is a constant, even in the absence of man. And it underscores the fact that this is a world where climate can and does change.
In the face of this our response to increasing CO2 levels is to wring our hands and talk about taming CO2 as a way of “combatting climate change”, when the correct response ought to be to ensure that, unlike the mega-fauna, we are in a position to adapt to it. We also invent excuses for our inaction, such as – “This is the worst drought in 100/1,000 years”. You can’t absolutely fight climate change, but as evolution shows, you can learn to live with it. But that sometimes means taking tough decisions.

I have been watching election night television and radio coverage for more than four decades, but it took until Saturday night’s ABC television coverage of the Victorian election to see the worst ever “performance” by a panellist.
The ABC coverage normally leads the way – with Kerry O’Brien as anchor, and Antony Greene doing the stats – but its coverage on Saturday night must surely cause the ABC to be more discerning about its panellists from the major parties.
Labor was represented by Treasurer, John Brumby – who may one day be remembered as the best Premier Victoria never had – while the Liberal “representative” was former Leader, and retiring MP, Robert Doyle.
Doyle was dressed as though he was on his way to a job interview with Tobin Brothers Funeral Directors. And on the basis of what followed, he would be a shoe in for the job.
The party panellists are supposed to be there to give the “inside knowledge” on trends in key seats – drawing on information phoned in by scrutineers. I’d be surprised if Doyle took one call, and if he did he took no notice of it.
Form the first figures Doyle had one message – the Liberal Shadow Ministers were a pack of bludgers, and too many MP’s had spent the last four years protecting their pre-selections. What went unsaid was that all of them were a pack of backstabbers as well.
He even proffered the view that one Shadow Minister would not have done “ten hours work” on policy in his portfolio area in the last four years!
As the figures came in and the continuing woes of the Victorian Liberals became apparent, Doyle gave his successor a real backhander by declaring the Liberals need to start preparing for 2014 – as the next election in 2010 was a hopeless cause!
The politically savvy John Brumby could not believe his good fortune. He said very little – why rain on your opponents debacle while one of them is raining hail stones on it himself?
All Brumby needed to do was to stick to the one figure that embarrassed the Liberals the most – their failure to lift their primary vote from the 2002 rock bottom.
But Doyle was not only mean spirited towards his former colleagues – the Bracks Government was given no credit for another crushing victory, and the Nationals (who had been written off during the campaign) were not even mentioned.
If Doyle blamed the Shadow Ministers once he did so ten times. John Brumby struggled to hide his smile, and even Kerry O’Brien looked bewildered.
Is it any wonder that Doyle led the Liberals to their worst ever result four years ago- and laid the “foundations” for an almost as bad result on Saturday?

I’m unfamiliar with Victorian electoral laws, but in a just system, you’d think that the Greens would have the right to challenge the result, at least in Melbourne, if the Labor campaign was anything like it was in Northcote.
The pamphletts reproduced below were provided by Benno Spearritt who lives in Northcote. One would assume that they are virtually identical to what went out in Melbourne as well. They quite clearly show that the ALP campaign lied about the Greens position on preferencing the Liberal Party.
Something happened on the ground late in the campaign. One poll, which I haven’t been able to track-down, had the Greens neck and neck with Labor in the seat of Melbourne, with both close to 40%. But on the day their vote was only 27%. Even so, they came within 2.3% of winning. Did brochures like these make the difference, scaring the protest vote away from the Greens just in case voting for them could inadvertently elect a Liberal government?
This first brochure is merely misleading. It sets up the theme that voting for Greens could be the same thing as voting for Liberals.

The quotes from the newspapers give a fair view of the situation – if you bother to read the body of the text.

This is where the deception sets in. A split ticket – effectively recommending voters make up their own mind is not the same thing as directing preferences.

And the crowning deceit – a “Liberal-Greens” alliance

The Greens response is not great. Why put the candidate’s photo on the front? Is denying the Labor claim the best tactic? Wouldn’t it have been better to answer the real charge – that voting Greens could inadvertently elect a Liberal government – and turn it around on the government as demonstrating the need for a party to keep the bastards honest?

Why bother with a back-page when it says exactly the same as the front? Could have saved the ink.

If I were the Greens I’d do a poll now of the electorates where they came close to see what proportion thought they had done a deal to direct preferences to the Liberal Party and what proportion thought this might lead to a Liberal government. I’d also be asking for an indication of whether people had changed their vote on the basis of either of these two claims. If it looked like it was close to the election-winning margin I’d pass the hat around and have a go at getting the argument up in court.
It certainly debauches the political process when parties are allowed to distribute material which is as dishonest as some of this.

Steve Bracks joins John Cain as the only Labor Premier of Victoria to win three successive elections. As we predicted the Greens did well in a number of inner city seats, but not well enough to win any. Overall their vote was similar to last election, so hardly a resounding success. It augurs well for the Australian Democrats in the next Federal election because it demonstrates that the Greens have not consolidated their position as a party of protest.
The Liberals did OK, considering the last four years. The election result shows that changing leaders doesn’t win elections. I suspect Robert Doyle would have done just as well as Ted Baillieu, which is not a criticism of Baillieu. It is a recognition that it takes more than 6 months for a new leader to be able to make any impression on the electorate, at least when you run a conventional campaign.
Bracks should have lost more seats, although he didn’t deserve to lose the election. The Opposition wasn’t able to take any from him because they couldn’t find a reason for voters to switch allegiance. While water was the leading issue it was a waste of time campaigning on it because voters didn’t think that either side had the answer to lack of rainfall. The only Liberal wins look to be in the region of the Scoresby Freeway, where the issue of tolls, over which politicians do have some power, swung votes.
The National Party did better than expected by the pundits. Undoubtedly one reason for this was that unlike the Liberals they weren’t positioning themselves as an alternative government. As an effective party of protest they merited voters’ attention. They also weren’t making the sorts of grand promises that the Liberals were, so presented as a small target.
The other thing that the election shows is the benefits of incumbency, particularly at a state level. With state governments mostly responsible for service delivery it takes a real crisis to shake them loose, or an incompetent campaign. Once the Libs under Kennett let the ALP back in they were destined to be in the wilderness for quite some time.
There’s a lesson there for the all-conquering Bracks as well.

This is a second piece of analysis by Mark Bahnisch, which you can also read at Crikey!
The Victorian election is the first to be held since the crystallisation of the link between the drought and climate change has fundamentally shifted the politics of both the environment and infrastructure across Australia.
Quantitative and qualitative research conducted by Graham Young and me for The National Forum http://elections.nationalforum.com.au/victoria-election-2006/ shines a light on the importance of these issues. Water has been one of the few issues in the campaign to get much traction in the public mind. In our quantitative polling, 36% of 250 respondents nominated water as a key issue.
While Melbourne faces only level two water restrictions, regional cities are not so lucky. Bendigo and Ballarat are both at level four, and Geelong is about to join them. Victorian voters are keenly aware of the water crisis, and many have made the link with climate change. The polling is intriguing, therefore, in that it sheds light on how these issues will play out electorally.
The story is good news for the Bracks government. Respondents were appreciative of the appointment of John Thwaites to a portfolio including water, and there’s no evidence that voters are inclined to ascribe blame to Labor.
The Baillieu led Opposition has tried to dramatise the issue by promising to build a desalination plant, and a new dam on the Maribynong River. Neither promise has cut much ice with voters in our focus group. They’re sceptical about whether desalination is either viable or cost effective. And the dam is dismissed with scorn, with one focus group participant deriding it as “fatuous”. Several respondents pointed out that for a dam to fill, you need rain.
As David, 80, of Fairfield, put it, “Perhaps Family First could all pray for rain”.
Baillieu’s promises seem to be consistent with the Liberals’ policy approach generally – promising quick and expensive fixes to problems voters perceive as ingrained. But they’re met with scepticism, while Labor’s policy work on water was characterised by Jamie, 59, of Frankston:
“Bracks and co were the first to realize that water needed real attention. A dedicated, senior minister. Again, real policy takes time and work. They started 4 yrs ago.”
There’s probably a message for the Federal Government too. Voters are sceptical of responses which can be characterised as “pulling a rabbit out of a hat” and respectful of a record of serious recognition of environmental issues and their infrastructure implications.

Because of the small sample from the Victorian election (only 254 responses), and the strong skew to the Greens, I haven’t done too much analysis of the data to-date. You can make some useful quantitative conclusions from our qualitative surveys when there is a large enough sample, and if you are very careful (and maybe a little bit lucky). But with only 254 responses, and only 9% of them Liberal and 46% Greens, making broader predictions would be really pushing my luck. However, it does give a very good window into the minds of Greens voters, of whom there are 116 in the sample.
I’m going to share this information gradually, because I’m not sure how much time I will have to devote to it today – so best to blog a bit of information as it comes to hand.
The first thing that I have done is anlayse the Greens vote in terms of the seats that it comes from. Now if you assume that our Greens responses are distributed around the state in similar proportions to how they are in real life, then we can pinpoint the seats where they are going to have the most effect. In order, these would appear to be:
Richmond 13%
Northcote 12%
Brunswick 9%
Melbourne 9%
Eltham 6%
Footscray 5%
I’ve included Footscray and Eltham, because, while they are significantly smaller percentages than for the others, with a potential sample error of 9%, they could be much higher. The percentages in the others could also be much lower.
However, the Liberals are preferencing against the Greens in Footscray and Eltham, so it will be interesting to see whether this was a good judgement on their part. Footscray is safe Labor, and preferencing the Greens could help if there is a possibility of them finishing in the high 20 percent range. This is a possibility. Polls are showing the Greens on around 40% of the vote in Melbourne. So, proportionately, Eltham could be five-ninths of this, or 22%. Throw in the margin for error, and the Greens could feasibly exceed this by enough to be in the high 20s, or even better.
Eltham is marginal Labor, so it is probably unlikely that the Greens could win that. The Liberals should know how the Greens are travelling in Eltham, because as a marginal seat they should be polling it. Their guess is likely to be not even as good as ours in the case as Footscray as it is so safe you wouldn’t generally waste money polling it.

This is Mark Bahnisch’s analysis of our focus group last night, a version of which also appears in Crikey! today.
Victorian Premier Steve Bracks in an unguarded moment gave the game away – the election has been designed to be boring. Bracks is invoking the ghosts of the Kennett era and running a controlled campaign designed to reinforce his strengths as a cautious, conservative and nice guy leader. Hence it’s no surprise that such passion as there is has been generated by factors which are basically part of the process itself – the rhetorical contest between Labor and the Greens over preferences, and the composition of the newly restructured Upper House, the Nats’ chances of holding seats.
But quantitative and qualitative research conducted by Graham Young and me for The National Forum at OzElections tells an interesting story about the dynamics of the campaign.
In many ways, there are strong parallels with the recent Queensland election. This is perhaps not surprising as both Bracks and Beattie have similar political approaches, if radically different personae. And it’s not surprising either as in both cases a long term Labor government can parry voter dissatisfaction with lack of delivery on services by pointing to a divided and unconvincing opposition.
Voters surveyed hold Bracks to account to some degree for the slowness of delivery on services targets and major projects. But at the same time, some ALP voters recognise that the legacy of the Kennett era conditioned Labor’s approach to government. But while Liberal voters are attracted to the Opposition Leader, very few voters of any persuasion believe that Baillieu will deliver on his wish list. That’s either because he’s seen as being out of step with his party (more socially liberal, an accidental leader) or because the voters have correctly perceived that funding the utopia Victoria would become under Premier Baillieu would simply be impossible.
There are more resonances with the Queensland campaign. Promises by the Liberals to increase the health workforce are discounted because voters are too smart to believe that the staffing problems in health are easily fixable. For a variety of reasons, state governments have succeeded in convincing electors that the issues for which they have responsibility are often shaped by factors beyond their control, whether it’s climate change or medical training. Perhaps this is a reflection of the generally diminished role of the states. It does mean that reasonably competent governments have a big advantage from incumbency. The only ideological point of differentiation available to the Liberals is also their achilles heel – privatisation Kennett style.
Bracks is almost certainly headed for victory. The fact that he won’t do as well as Beattie in holding most of the seats gained in his landslide is more a reflection of the lack of Liberal implosions in the campaign.

If the New South Wales Liberals had been on the ball, the Greens would have had their first lower house beach-head in mainland Australia in Port Jackson. If the Liberals had preferenced the Greens’ Jamie Parker ahead of Sandra Nori, Parker would have won the seat.
Our polling that election showed that a possible Greens boil-over was on – they were polling around 30%, more than usual in our polls. According to our poll on Victoria the Greens are polling 45% of our sample. While they won’t do that in the real world, it is an indication of how motivated, numerous and active they are, and it means they are in a position to win seats, but to be sure they need the Liberals to preference them.
A win in one lower house seat in Victoria, and maybe more, would be a great result for the Greens. There is a large group of passionate Australians who are disenfranchised by the mainstream parties. They have gravitated to the Greens and this would be accelerated by a Greens win. The Greens have lost momentum to the Democrats in the polls, but they could make this a mere statistical blip with the right result.
A win for the Greens would also be a win for the Liberals. Not only would it deny Labor one or two seats, important if there is a close result, but it potentially forces Labor to the left.
The political battles in Australia are won by occupying one side or the other of the socio-demographic divide and reaching into the conservative blue-collar vote. John Howard has achieved this federally. The failure of the state Liberals is almost entirely due to their inability to duplicate the trick because state Labor has firmly grasped this constituency. A Greens win, if it moves Labor to the left, will losen its grip and free these voters up so that the Liberals can have a chance of winning them over.
Full marks to the Victorian Liberal Party machine for cunning, and the Greens for coming of age.

If the coming Victorian election were voluntary it looks to me from our polling that the Liberal Party would be all but wiped out. When we do our online polls we always hear from a disproportionate number of Greens, about two-thirds the number of Labor voters you would expect, and only about half the percentage of Liberals in the general population.
Response rates vary from election to election and issue to issue, and generally seem to follow strength of feeling. For instance, while National Party voters are generally only a few percentage points, when we did a recent poll on a proposed amalgamation of the Liberal and National Parties in Queensland the National Party respondents outnumbered the Liberals.
The reason for these ruminations is that in our current poll on the Victorian election (you can complete the questionnaire by clicking here) we have found a record low number of Liberal respondents – three percent. This lack of enthusiasm means that the Liberals are most likely heading for a drubbing because even their support base doesn’t want to support them. It also means that Labor ought to be very scared of the Greens in a number of seats.
Greens are a record 49% of our sample. Obviously this support is not as high in the general community, but will be concentrated in some areas rather than others. We don’t have enough postcodes to be definitive about this, but inner-Melbourne is where they are likely to mostly live. The Greens are obviously going to do well in the Upper House, but our polling would suggest that they will also possibly do well in the Assembly. With the Liberal supporters so unenthusiastic, there is a good chance of a large number of them voting for the Greens strategically in seats which are safe Labor vis-a-vis a Liberal candidate, but potentially marginal if it was a contest between Greens and Labor.
We’d love to hear from more Liberals, so if you know any, please send them the URL for the questionnaire (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/surveys/vic-election-2006.asp if they need to copy and paste into their browser address bar). Maybe its just something peculiar to our polls and Victoria.

Various people are portraying it as a victory for their faction, but the only thing that can be said with certainty about last weekend’s Queensland Liberal Party convention is that it was a defeat for Santo Santoro. Whether it will remain a defeat for long remains to be seen. The Anyone But Santo (ABS) grouping is triumphant for now, but Santoro’s come back from much worse positions than this before.
The Santoro faction was shaping up to lay the blame for the state election result on parliamentary leader Bruce Flegg. Instead they lost every position that they contested, bar two. One of those was the Presidency, where the anti-Santoro forces made a decision to leave Warwick Parer in place. The other was the Northern Vice-President. This is a stunning reversal from the last 7 years of conventions where Santoro and allies have always been able to comfortably dominate the elections.
Santoro’s reversal of fortune was achieved largely because of one factor – Ryan MP Michael Johnson moved his troops from the Santoro side of the ledger to that occupied by the “Tucker” faction. This also involved a similar movement by the Carroll/Brandis faction.
I put “Tucker” in inverted commas because from what I see Tucker wasn’t a significant player in these arrangements. In fact, if the new alignments are to endure, they involve legitimising and accepting Johnson as Ryan MP and George Brandis as Senator. So, inasumuch as there are winners from this arrangement it is Brandis and Johnson. They originally aligned with Santoro because he was prepared to support them against Tucker, they’ve now aligned against him because they have fallen out with him and were concerned about their preselections. In the meantime both have contributed significantly to the corruption of the party organisation and its processes.
Not that the Tucker faction has gone away empty-handed. Flegg’s position is strengthened, and some of their members, most notably John Caris, one of the newly-elected Vice-Presidents, are well-positioned to turn-around the party’s organisational wing – a necessary task if they are ever to do well in elections again.
Their most urgent task will be to expand the unlikely coalition that they have put together. Despite the shambles that Santoro has created of the party organisation, the “rainbow coalition”, as they like to call themselves, only won most votes by about 10%, meaning that Santoro supporters, despite everything, represent around 40 to 45 percent of delegates. (Somewhere around 40 delegates who were expected to vote against Santoro were ruled constitutionally ineligible, so the margin may be a little more comfortable.)
A good place to start would be bringing some of their enemies into the tent on the various committees of the party. They should also look at reforming the election process for executive positions which virtually guarantee the winning side a clean sweep of positions. It’s worked in their favour this time, but won’t always do so. The lack of diversity on the executive that it creates has been one of the problems of the last few years.
They also need to move Warwick Parer along from the Presidency along with State Director Geoff Greene. For Queenslanders to have any confidence in the party, and be prepared to risk voting for it, there needs to be a clean sweep and a fresh start.