Well, This Is What I Think

 

Well, Dear Reader, we made such a total, unqualified balls up of predicting the result in the UK’s ‘Brexit’ referendum, (plus a minorly wrong call in the previous UK election), that we are loathe to write this post, and frankly we wouldn’t be if we hadn’t actually been ASKED to by a bunch of folks. (Oh, you gluttons for punishment, you.)

But as regular readers will know, we have long been a fan of Malcolm Turnbull, (if not of the more wild and swivel-eyed lunatics he enjoys as colleagues) and we are convinced that come mid-evening on Saturday he will already have been comfortably re-installed back in the Lodge. Indeed, despite the breathless reporting of Fairfax/Ipsos opinion polls showing the race to be neck and neck, we actually think the Coalition will win moderately easily.

In reality, the majority of seats in the Australian House of Representatives are locked into one party or another barring an absolute political earthquake, and there are no signs that the electorate are about to deliver an earthquake. (Mind you, we said that about IN/OUT/shakeitallabout and we were dead wrong. Caveat. Get out clause. Right there.)

A glance at the betting is a good indication of the mountain Labor have to climb to even be competitive. The Coalition are 1.16 to the dollar – virtually un-backable – that’s about 6-1 ON – and Labor are 5-1 against. Only in WA are Labor expected to do noticeably better, and there just aren’t enough seats there to make a difference to the overall result. The odds are even less encouraging for the ALP in key target seats for Labor, like Deakin in Victoria, for example.

There are 150 seats in the House of Representatives. If either side of politics can win 76 seats, or gain the support of cross bench members to reach 76, then they can form government. On the new electoral boundaries, and assuming a perfectly uniform pro-ALP swing, that means Labor needs 50.4% after preferences to win 76 seats. But we don’t think Labor will achieve an overall swing of that extent, although we expect them to pick up a few seats here and there. WA looks very good for Labor, but that’s about it.

What we will see is a lot of Liberal/National seats become much more marginal than they were last time – as many as 20 may be won on 2% or less. Which puts the next election into play, but not this one. This will mean, of course, that the TV studio pundits will be frothing at the mouth for a few hours, but not really to any good purpose.

We predict The Coalition will lose between 5 and 9 seats. The swing to Labor will be about 2.5%-3%. And Malcom Turnbull will duly have his own mandate to govern.

Yes, a hung Parliament is a remote possibility under some scenarios – Labor would have to do much better than we think they will – but we can really only see four lower house minority seats again this time, maximum five (if Barnaby Joyce gets rolled), which won’t bring them into play – and anyway one of those, Bob Katter, is an ironed on conservative.

There is just a remote chance that Nick Xenophon’s candidate will upset the Libs in Mayo in SA, but again, it wouldn’t actually make a difference based on the two-party split we predict.

In the Senate, Lord knows what will happen. Even under the new voting system, it remains impossibly hard to call. The Liberal-led Coalition won’t get a majority, we can say that. We think the Greens will do well, and so will Xenophon.

And huzzah, we say. We have always liked it when the Government of the day has to patiently negotiate their legislative programme with the Senate. It keeps them honest. And humble.

We’ll know soon enough. And then we can all get back to worrying about Donald Drumpf. He isn’t going to win, by the way. That we can guarantee right now.