The finalisation of the upper house count today has left Labor a seat short of where it would have liked to be, with Labor on 14 and the Greens on four accounting for exactly half the chamber’s 36 numbers. They will amount to a majority on the floor if Labor succeeds in its endeavour to persuade Simon O’Brien, a Liberal, to take the President’s chair. Otherwise, they will need an extra number out of the four Nationals, three One Nation, one Shooters Fishers and Farmers, and one Liberal Democrats. Substantial reform to the Legislative Council, such as would address Labor’s present situation of facing a shaky upper house after a landslide election win, would require nineteen votes on the floor. Featured below is commentary on each result together with links to the full preference distributions, which as yet have not been published on the Electoral Commission site.

Agricultural

1. Martin Aldridge (Nationals); 2. Darren West (Labor); 3. Jim Chown (Liberal); 4. Colin de Grussa (Nationals); 5. Laurie Graham (Labor); 6. Rick Mazza (Shooters).
Click here for preference distribution spreadsheet

There were 88,175 votes in the count and a quota of 12,597. The Nationals started with two quotas, Labor and Liberal with one apiece. The micro-party snowball didn’t amount to much, with the Liberal Democrats going out before the Greens. Labor was then elected with preferences not just from the Greens, but also the Daylight Saving Party, Flux the System and the enigmatic Family First. Presumably this reflected a partial deal with the Glenn Druery bloc, in which the Liberal Democrats and Fluoride Free refused to participate. That left One Nation on 10,777, Shooters on 8,752 and Liberal #2 on 4,241, after which preferences from elected Labor and excluded Liberal went to Shooters, who defeated One Nation at the final count by 13,299 and 10,820. In other words, Liberal preferences could have elected One Nation if they had gone that way, but they actually had them third behind Shooters.

East Metropolitan

1. Alanna Clohesy (Labor); 2. Donna Faragher (Liberal); 3. Samantha Rowe (Labor); 4. Matthew Swinbourn (Labor); 5. Tim Clifford (Greens); 6. Charles Smith (One Nation).
Click here for preference distribution spreadsheet

Labor elected three members from the primary vote, and the Liberals one. The Greens made it to the fifth seat with the Labor surplus and three of the Glenn Druery bloc (Fluoride Free, Daylight Saving and Flux the System). As explained in the previous post, One Nation then proceeded to win the final seat at the expense of the third Liberal due to a distinctive feature of the counting system, which meant that Labor and Greens votes were used up electing the Greens, while Animal Justice votes proceeded unmolested to the final count, at which point they went to One Nation ahead of the Liberals.

Mining and Pastoral

1. Stephen Dawson (Labor); 2. Jacqui Boydell (Nationals); 3. Ken Baston (Liberal); 4. Kyle McGinn (Labor); 5. Robin Scott (One Nation); 6. Robin Chapple (Greens).
Click here for preference distribution spreadsheet

Out of 49,311 formal votes, Robin Chapple’s win for the Greens in Mining and Pastoral came down to margins of 189 votes over Labor at the penultimate count, and 736 over Shooters Fishers and Farmers at the end. The quota was 7045, of which Labor had two off the bat, the Nationals and Liberals one apiece. One Nation got there when the exclusion of Australian Christians unlocked preferences from the Liberals, whose group voting ticket had the Christians second and One Nation third. The final seat came down to Shooters (3507 votes), Greens (2873), Labor #3 (2821), Nationals #2 (2380) and Flux the System (2478), who gathered the micro-party preference snowball. Nationals preferences then flowed to Shooters, and the Flux pinata scattered every which way, leaving the score at Shooters 6563, Greens 3854 and Labor 3665. Labor preferences then flowed to the Greens, who finished with 7389 to the Shooters’ 6653. A different Liberal preference strategy might have elected Shooters ahead of One Nation, or Labor #3 ahead of the Greens (though not both).

North Metropolitan

1. Alannah MacTiernan (Labor); Peter Collier (Liberal); 3. Martin Pritchard (Labor); 4. Michael Mischin (Liberal); 5. Alison Xamon (Greens); 6. Tjorn Sibma (Liberal).
Click here for preference distribution spreadsheet

Labor slightly outpolled the Liberals, with each electing two candidates off the primary vote. However, preferences from Family First and Liberal Democrats pushed the third Liberal, Tjorn Sibma, ahead of the third Labor, Kelly Shea, by 33,298 votes to 31,561. Had they not done so, Sibma would have dropped out and his preferences would have elected One Nation to the fifth seat, followed by Shea’s exclusion and Xamon’s election to the sixth seat. As it transpired, Xamon was elected to the fifth seat after Shea’s exclusion with a large surplus, which then flowed to Sibma ahead of One Nation.

South Metropolitan

1. Sue Ellery (Labor); 2. Nick Goiran (Liberal); 3. Kate Doust (Labor); 4. Pierre Yang (Labor); 5. Aaron Stonehouse (Liberal Democrats); 6. Simon O’Brien (Liberal)
Click here for preference distribution spreadsheet

Lynn MacLaren actually polled a greater share of the vote than three of her four elected Greens colleagues, and increased her vote from 2013. But she fell victim to a Goldilocks-in-reverse performance by Labor, who were neither strong enough to bequeath a big surplus to the Greens after the election of their third candidate, as they were in East Metropolitan, nor weak enough to fall below three quotas, as they were in North Metropolitan. Addition of below-the-line votes to the count added 0.6% to the Greens and took 0.3% from the Liberals, but it also took 0.7% from Labor, which flowed through to MacLaren. At the final count, the second Liberal, Simon O’Brien, led MacLaren by 51,332 to 47,591, with a quota of 49,570.

The most vulnerable point for the Liberal Democrats was the exclusion of the Daylight Saving Party, who had been given second preference by everyone in the Glenn Druery network. The Liberal Democrats had 14,105 at that point compared with 13,112 for Daylight Saving, and then received the latter’s preferences as the last party standing in the Druery network. That pushed them ahead of Australian Christians and One Nation, and the preferences of the latter put them well over a quota with 59,150. Their surplus of 9580 votes then went mostly to O’Brien ahead of MacLaren, deciding the result.

South West

1. Sally Talbot (Labor); 2. Steve Thomas (Liberal); 3. Adele Farina (Labor); 4. Colin Tincknell (One Nation); 5. Colin Holt (Nationals); 6. Diane Evers (Greens).
Click here for preference distribution spreadsheet

Labor elected two candidates off full quotas and the Liberals one, with first One Nation and then the Nationals building up to quotas as various parties’ preferences were distributed. The third Labor candidate, John Mondy, began with a slight lead over Diane Evers of the Greens in the race for the remaining seat, but preferences from Animal Justice and three of the Glenn Druery bloc parties (Daylight Saving, Fluoride Free and Flux the System) pushed Evers ahead, and Mondy’s eliminiation and preference distribution secured her the seat.

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