Liberal Speaker Greg Cornwell is not out of the woods yet after a weekend of counting in the ACT election.
The further counting also confirmed that Labor’s Andrew Whitecross has virtually no hope of winning back his seat. A report yesterday quoting some scrutineers relied too heavily on his lead in the first preferences over Labor rival John Hargreaves. Counting of preferences yesterday and details of the way preferences are likely to run under the Hare-Clark system confirmed reports published earlier last week that Mr Whitecross needs a miracle to win.
The count also showed that the last seat in Ginninderra — a fight between the Greens Shane Rattenbury and the Osborne Group’s Dave Rugendyke is still too close to call.
The same can be said for the fight in Brindabella between the two Liberals’ Trevor Kaine and Louise Littlewood.
There are now four candidates formally elected with a quota: Kate Carnell (the only candidate to get a quota on the night), Gary Humphries, Brendan Smyth and Paul Osborne.
The Electoral Commission has completed the first preference count in all electorates and struck the quota in each one. Molonglo is 9458; Brindabella is 9042; and Ginninderra is 8406. The commission distributed the surplus of successful candidates and began the process of excluding the lowest unsuccessful candidates.
In Molonglo, Mrs Carnell’s bumper surplus was distributed. Nearly all of it was consumed by Mr Humphries to get him over the quota. And by the time the rest of it dribbled down in the form of Mr Humphries’ surplus, there were a mere 220 votes for Mr Cornwell. He now has 3146 votes and needs a quota of 9458. There is no guarantee that as the next two Liberals are excluded that he will stay on top. None the less, he must still be favoured to do so.
At the weekend, the commission excluded 12 candidates in Molonglo, 10 in Brindabella and 14 in Ginninderra. Electoral Commission Phil Green said he hoped to finish the count in Ginninderra and Brindabella by mid-week and Molonglo by the end of the week or early next week.
(Federal elections typically take more than three weeks to determine the last seat in the House of Representatives and five weeks for the Senate.)
The reason Mr Whitecross has most likely lost, despite his good showing on the primary vote is that a lot of Labor voters voted one to five down the ballot paper in the Labor column — a party linear vote. The commission will exclude two Labor candidates (Kathryn Presdee and Karen Mow) before deciding between Mr Whitecross and Mr Hargreaves.
Unfortunately, for Mr Whitecross whenever Ms Presdee’s name appeared No 1 in the Labor column under the Robson rotation of ballot order, Ms Mow’s name was No 2. And whenever Ms Mow was No 1 or No 2 after Ms Presdee his name appears beneath that of Mr Hargreaves.
Ms Presdee was excluded at the weekend and nearly 70 per cent of her preferences went down the line to Ms Mow (1151 of 1675). When Ms Mow is excluded it is inevitable and the lion’s share of her preferences will end up with Mr Hargreaves, electing him over Mr Whitecross.
(Some, incidentally will go via Bill Wood who is still shy of a quota, but it will make no difference.)
A similar problem faces Ms Littlewood who was ahead of Mr Kaine on primaries, but faces a similar preference problem as Mr Whitecross, except the level of party linear vote is not as high among Liberals.
In Ginninderra, Vicki Dunne still cannot be excluded from causing an upset win over Harold Hird. She is 57 votes ahead of Mr Hird after the exclusion of Warwick Gow (63 per cent of Mr Gow’s vote appears to be party linear). Professor Terry Birtles is the next Liberal to be excluded. When he appears as No 1 on the ballot, Mr Hird appears above Mrs Dunne, but it is reasonable to assume that a much lower per cent of his vote will be party linear — just how much will determine who gets the seat.
In Ginninderra, preferences have gone in ways unpredicted. Twenty-three per cent of the preferences of Mr Rugendyke’s running mate Hilary Black leaked to other candidates. The Osborne Group got only 45 per cent of the preferences of the Fred Nile Group. And between 25 and 30 per cent of the preferences of excluded Green and Democrat candidates strayed from their party columns.