There’s been some jockeying for positions over at The Little House of the Limestone Prairie is the past couple of weeks.
Part of it results from the drawing of the electoral boundaries.
The electoral committee carved out three electorates and we may as well get used to the new names now: Ginninderra equals Belconnen; Molonglo equals the centre and Brindabella equals Tuggeranong. I’ll use the new names from here on.
It’s a big problem for the major parties. The Labor Party has too many sitting members in Ginninderra and not enough in Brindabella. The Libs on the other hand have too many in Molonglo and no-one in Ginninderra.
Only the Independents, by serendipity more than design, have their disparate house in order with one in each electorate. More of the Independents’ jockeying for position later, especially Michael Moore’s politically astute move to woo Liberal second preferences.
Some Liberal and Labor MLAs are now more likely to turn to the real-estate and jobs sections than the stories on local politics. Very simply some MLAs are going to have to move house to another electorate or find another job.
The Labor line up is as follows. Wayne Berry, Roberta McRae, David Lamont and Ellnor Grassby all live in Ginninderra. Rosemary Follett, Terry Connolly and Bill Wood live in Molonglo and only Annette Ellis lives in Brindabella.
That’s great for Ellis. She has a solid base in the party and community in Brindabella and has no worries about a place on the ticket and certain re-election under the new boundaries at the election in February, 1995.
In Molonglo, Follett, Connolly and Wood are ripe for three certain Labor seats.
In Ginninderra, there is not room for all contenders. Someone will have to give. If Berry, Lamont, McRae and Grassby stand for Labor, only three at most can be elected, perhaps only two.
Grassby may not stand. Even so, that leaves a tussle between the remaining three: Berry, Lamont and McRae.
Under Robson rotation there is no effective ticket. Under the Labor Party column on the ballot paper, a some ballot papers will have Berry first, some will have Lamont first and others McRae. And unlike the Senate voting slip, there will be no provision to vote in a party box.
The Labor Party may well put out a how-to-vote card, but it will not correspond with the order on most people’s ballot paper. Intelligent people will make their own minds up without the how-to-vote card and morons will be so confused they will chuck it away and work out their own order.
The official card, for what little it is worth, will be Berry (as Deputy Leader he must head the ticket), McRae (under gender equity she must be second) and Lamont. In a Senate situation that would make Lamont’s position fairly desperate. Getting at third seat in a five-member electorate is not an easy task: Labor would have to score about 45 per cent of the primary vote and some preferences.
Under Robson rotation that leaves far too much to the whim of the electorate. People may well decide, for example, that the like what Lamont did in the Territory Plan in handing back great chunks of Latham and Melba to public land and have it in for Berry because they got a rough deal from the health system.
That would be rough for Berry, given that health is such a random, turbulent area at the best of times and perhaps give Lamont a dividend he only partially deserved given Independent Helen Szuty’s major role in giving more Belconnen land to public uses. But that’s politics.
No; someone is going to have to move house, or move House. Realistically, only two sitting Labor members can stand in Ginninderra and be assured of a continuing career in politics.
The Liberal line-up, too, will provide work for the removalists or the employment agencies.
Trevor Kaine and Tony de Domenico are safely ensconced in Brindabella, presuming that Kaine stands at all.
The other four Liberal MLAs live in Molonglo: Kate Carnell, Gary Humphries, Greg Cornwell and Lou Westende. And none live in Ginninderra. The Libs have a certain two out of the seven seats in Molonglo and a very likely third. Their hope a a fourth in Molonglo is about the same as that of John Hewson leading the Liberals to the next federal election or of an enforceable peace agreement in Bosnia.
Westende could easily realise that making office furniture is a more useful occupation than being a member on the Little House on the Limestone Prairie. Humphries might have got the nod to the Big House on the Limestone Hill. But these things are not certain and four into two does not go. And neither does four into three.
And the Libs have no sitting member living in Ginninderra. Bill Stefaniak, however, is an obliging bloke and will not take much convincing to have a crack at it. This time, of course, the party machine will look more favourably at him than before the last election when he was unceremoniously dumped to the unwinnable eighth position. That election was held under d’Hondt which enabled the politically moronic to tick a party box. Even so many people broke the ticket and put Stefaniak first because they liked his law-and-order style. Under Robson rotation, Move-Along Bill would be a distinct asset for the party, if not for the civil liberties of Canberrans.
Also, Harold Hird, who in pre-self-government days captured great chunks of the Belconnen vote as an independent, is a likely Liberal starter.
With those two hogging Ginninderra, is does not leave a lot of room for one of the present sitting members to move from Molonglo.
Geographically, the new Hare-Clark boundaries have been very inconsiderate to the sitting members of the major parties.
The sitting Independents are better divided. Moore will stand in Molonglo; Szuty in Ginninderra and Stevenson in Brindabella. No doubt an environmental, small-l liberal independent in the Szuty-Moore mould will stand in Brindabella and perhaps some far-right, militia forming Stevenson-type independents will stand in Molonglo and Ginninderra.
Independents in the two five-seat electorates will find the going tough. Szuty has been more alert to this than Stevenson who is strangely aloof from it. Szuty has plugged Belconnen incessantly recently and can take some credit for saving Latham District Park from the developers.
Moore is in the best position of the Independents, in the seven-member central seat.
And notice how he has been positioning himself politically, rather than geographically. In recent weeks he has taken on some capital-L Liberal causes that sit well with his small-l philosophic outlook: successful amendments to the Anti-discrimination Bill that allow penalise discrimination on the grounds of some belonging or not belonging to an organisation (read union); expose of union rorts before the estimates committee and a matter-of-public-importance speech that suggested a “”mateship” system based around a common background of being an ALP staffer. All stands that would enable any self-respecting capital-L liberal to give Moore a second preference over those grubby union- and mateship-dominated Labor people.