With the outcome of the Western Australian election in doubt and upheavals in New South Wales, the aftershocks of the weekend’s ruptures in the Labor Party will be felt in Canberra. But other parties also have their problems. From coast-to-coast Labor governments to coast-to-coast confusion has taken a mere 10 months.
Rob Oakeshott’s crushing victory in Lyne is a clear example of how, if they are offered the choice of an independent candidate with a strong track record, electors in regional and rural areas who feel their local interests aren’t being addressed or are being sacrificed to other interests, will ignore their traditional party allegiances.
Resurgent Liberal leader Colin Barnett, who put aside plans of retirement to contest the election, will meet Brendon Grylls today, in order to try to lock in the four seats the Nationals are expected to win. Mr Grylls has promised to support the party most willing to back his “royalties for regions” plan.
The Nationals have made their royalties for regions plan the non-negotiable starting point for their support of either major party following Saturday’s inconclusive poll. Neither party is likely to be able to form government in their own right following a 6 per cent swing against the governing Labor party.
Nationals leader Brendon Grylls says he will form government with whichever party endorses his plan to earmark a quarter of the state’s mining and petroleum royalties for regional Western Australia. Earlier, Mr Grylls stated that he is not interested in the lure of the deputy premier’s job or a frontbench position in the new cabinet.
This week saw big problems emerge for the Labor Party in New South Wales and Western Australia, while federally the Nationals shrank even further with the loss of Lyne. In the Senate, Steve Fielding voted down the luxury car tax increase, while in the United States, Sarah Palin has garnered an immediate and positive reaction.
Whatever the outcome of the next few days, Western Australia’s regional area seems set to hold the whip hand. It is an ironic twist, given that the one-vote, one-value electoral redistribution was supposed to dilute the power of the bush. Instead, the swing to the Liberals will give regional WA more power than ever.
Rob Oakeshott, a former member of the Nationals, was widely tipped to win the Lyne by-election, which was triggered by former deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile’s resignation from politics earlier this year. Mr Oakeshott stepped down from his state seat of Port Macquarie, which he held for 12 years, to contest the election.
Needing to win nine seats to form a conservative government with the help of the Nationals, the Liberals were almost certain to win ten after yesterday’s state election. Huge swings of more than six per cent against the government in many seats exceeded poll predictions of a four per cent swing to the opposition.
As has been widely reported, Gov. Sarah Palin is a former beauty queen who hunts. Matron’s back. And she’s hot. And she’s armed. Call it the dominatrix effect; it’s the same element that used to turn grown men into fawning, wobbling supplicants before the former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.