• Brian Costar

25 June 2008There's no doubt that the Nationals will win the coastal Victorian seat of Gippsland, writes BRIAN COSTAR

BECAUSE it is the first electoral test of the Rudd government since last November’s federal poll, we probably should not be surprised that too many of the political class are reading too much into this Saturday’s by-election for the Victorian seat of Gippsland.

It is not a test of either the prime minister’s or Brendon Nelson’s leaderships - for the simple reason that neither party has a realistic chance of winning the seat, which has been in National Party hands since 1922. As a federal seat Gippsland dates back to Federation; Labor has never won it and the Liberal Party has not stood a candidate there since 1983.

Nevertheless, we have been treated to some bizarre psephological contortions such as those in the Australian of 24 June 2008, where some very creative interpretation of the 2006 Census data and some muddling of primary and two-party preferred votes transformed Gippsland into a seat ripe for Labor’s taking.

In fact Labor has been in electoral retreat in the Gippsland region, where it lost two seats at the 2006 state election. This is partly the product of demographic changes linked to the downsizing of the workforce in the electricity generating industry in the La Trobe Valley. Adding to that problem is the fact that the Labor Party organisation in the region is wracked by destructive factionalism, some of which has been on public display during the by-election.

Despite some fleeting visitations from the usual political big shots, the campaign has been so parochial it has started to look like a local government election. The big issues are the closure of the Traralgon Post Office, the delay in connecting Lakes Entrance to natural gas and the relocation of the Sale netball centre. This will favour the Nationals’ Darren Chester because it deflects the likely impact of the prime minister’s still stellar national approval rating.

Broader issues that are biting are fuel costs (always an issue in the geographically elongated Gippsland) and water use and conservation. Neither of these are likely to harvest votes for Labor’s Darren McCubbin.

By contrast, the Coalition candidates seem to be getting on remarkably well - which is a surprise given the bloody electoral battles they used to fight at state elections in the region. Maybe the Liberals are in the contest not to win it but to help their National colleagues to win.

What does the electoral arithmetic look like? First, there are only five (all male) candidates on offer, which is unusual for a by-election these days. Running are the Nationals, the Liberals, Labor, the Greens and a perennial independent contesting this time on behalf of the Liberal and Democratic Party. Family First and What Women Want (which polled a combined 6 per cent in 2007) have decided to stay at home.

Because the election will be decided by preferences - as it was in 2007 - who polls how many primary votes and where they finish in the first count will be crucial to the final outcome.

My hunch is the primary vote will look roughly like this:

Greens 7% (+1)

Liberal 18% (+18)

LDP 3% (+0)

Labor 34% (-2)

National 38% (-10)

Others 0% (-7)

At first blush this looks like a terrible result for the National Party. But wait, there’s more - we have to distribute preferences. And when we do, according to registered how-to-vote cards and trends of the recent past, what do we get?

Nationals 57% (+1%)


Labor 43% (-1%)

Result: National retain. •

Brian Costar is Professor of Victorian Parliamentary Democracy in the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology

Photo: Katherine Alexander /iStockphoto.com