05/12/2001
The electorate of RYAN was won by the Liberal Party on preferences as their candidate, MICHAEL JOHNSON, obtained only 47.57% of the primary vote. Labor's Leonie Short won it in a by-election but saw her primary vote fall to 31.32%. Her time as a member of parliament was .....shortlived. I could not resist it. The One Nation vote fell from 5.25% in 1998 to 1.64%. This was 1339 out of 81,756 formal votes.
The most interesting aspect was the return of a National Party candidate, namely Stewart Gillies, who won 6.18%. The Green vote was 4.94% which is up from 3.83% in 1998. The Democrats felt the disapproval of the voters dislike of the GST . Their vote fell from 7.98% in 1998 to 5.8%. Once the preferences were allocated the Liberals had 58.62% of the vote,which is a swing of 0.9% against them on the comparable 1998 two party preferred vote.
Like most of the Queensland seats Ryan saw a good voter response to the Liberal's scare campaign on illegal immigration. Clearly the swinging voters are distinguishing between state Liberals and national Liberals as the Liberals copped a hiding in the February State Election. The now hold only 3 seats in the 89 seat State Parliament. I suspect Kim Beazley was a difficult person to sell in Queensland due to his style and the reluctance of the Federal ALP to advocate a termination of the GST and Business Activity Statements.
Lack of campaigning activity in Ryan was one reason for our low vote. Pualine Hanson has never been a popular figure in Brisbane partly because of the vehement opposition to her by journalists and the absence of very large numbers of migrants of a non-english speaking background in Brisbane. Booth data from some Sydney electorates with a large NESB migrant presence showed a rise in the One Nation vote in some areas. It was the immigration system's effects on Sydney which made me join ONE NATION. I was one of the founders of the Berowra Branch in Sydney.
When the One Nation vote was distributed the Nationals got 23.27% , Liberals 28.26% , Democrats 8.44% , Greens 18.88% , Labor 21.14%. This is an interesting dispersion which shows that the One Nation voters are not as right wing as is often believed. The local booth % vote for One Nation was:- .......City Hall 1.37 , Brookfield 0.88 , Chapel Hill 0.75 , Chapel Hill South 1.6 , Corinda 2.9 , Corinda South 1.43 , Darra 2.95 , Fig Tree Pocket 1.72 , Indooroopilly 0.52 , Indooroopily East 0.59 , Indooroopilly West 1.22 , Ironsides 0.72 , Jamboree Heights 1.71 , Jindalee 1.94 , Jindalee South 1.56 , Kenmore 1.03 , Kenmore South 0.9 , Middle Park 1.82 , Moggill 1.55 , Oxley 4.42 , Oxley South 4.67 , Pinjarra Hills 1.06 , Pullenvale 1.25 , Sinnamon Park 1.69 , Avalon Theatre 1.17 , Taringa 1.21 , The Gap 1.49 , The Gap East 1.28 , The Gap West 1.18 , Toowong 1.15 , West Toowong 1.24 , Upper Brookfield 3.55 , Absentees 2.46 , Postals 2.54 , Pre poll 1.81 , Provisionals 2.46.
A number of Labor Party people who I know from my days as an ALP member back in the 1970s expressed the view that Leonie Short tried hard but was a difficult person with which to enthuse the Ryan voters due to her personality and value system. It seem that she is actually quite left wing but desperately tried to tone it down in an effort to be elected again. She circulated a pamphlet in which she appeared in a photograph with the prominent aboriginal activist Jacki Huggins, an academic at the University of Queensland. This was not a good idea in Ryan. The massive no vote to the proposed preamble in 1999 in Ryan illustrated popular attitudes to aboriginal issues quite conclusively.
These same ALP members thought that the ALP campaign was not focussed effectively on hot issues such as illegal immigration and the GST. Being a former ALP member who was active in election campaigns in Sydney I suspect there are a lot of very angry ALP members around at present as they could have won with a more focussed campaign which should have capitalised on the anti GST and BAS sentiments in the community. When it came to strategy Beazley, Crean and the ALP National Secretary were a bunch of duds.
When the Queensland Senate election results are available in a detailed form I will put on this web site a description of the progress of the count which saw 2 liberals , 2 labor, one national and one democrat elected. Pauline ran seventh as the count was a repeat of the 1998 Blair election where she was preferenced out of a victory. At times like these you can realise just how much the other parties hate Pauline Hanson's One Nation. They will do anything to stop or hinder us.
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More information on the election is available at the Australian Electoral Commission site......www.aec.gov.au