I was interviewed by 2GB’s John Stanley this morning about my current predictions for the next federal election due before May 17, which currently puts Peter Dutton ahead in the race to win a majority of seats in the House of Representatives and hence form a Coalition Government with Peter Dutton as Prime Minister.
Here’s the link to my interview with John Stanley:
This currently puts Peter Dutton ahead in the race to win a majority of seats in House of Representatives with big gains in seats from New South Wales and Victoria.
There’s a lot that can happen to impact these outcomes in seats between now and May 17 (the deadline for the election), but the best available evidence right now points to a narrow win for Peter Dutton and the Coalition, with solid gains in both New South Wales and Victoria.
The range of swings is currently benefiting the ALP at the expense of the Greens in the higher income inner urban seats now being contested by the Greens, with the Greens picking up some Labor votes in working class seats that the Greens can’t win. But in net terms, the Greens are standing still in terms of total votes, while the ALP is heading down for a primary vote below 30 percent. In mathematical and spatial terms, these trends leave the Coalition the big winners in the traditional swinging voter urban seats.
Here’s a chart which sums up the trends across income ranges for families with kids.
At the far left we see the primary votes for both the Greens and for the Coalition have risen at the expense of the ALP since 2022 in seats where one in four family incomes are below $100k per annum. For seats where one in four families have incomes between $100k and $150k, the swings aren’t significant.
One in four aspirational families have incomes between $150k and $200k per annum and their seats are swinging strongly against the Greens and pulling down the ALP vote after preferences. For wealthier seats with family incomes above $200k, the ALP have gained some swings at the expense of the Greens, but not enough to lift the ALP 2PP vote.
I had a chat with Laura Tingle on the ABC 7:30 Report on Monday night about the possible range of outcomes for the political parties and independents at the national elections, due by May 17 next year.
We also canvassed some of the issues driving voters when they make their voting decision.
We are pleased to welcome back Australia’s living economic legend Saul Eslake to our Education Geographics Webinars on November 15, when Saul will focus on the impact of the US Presidential Election on the Australian economy in the lead-up to the Australian General Election due by May 2025.
Whoever wins, the outcome of the United States elections for the US President and for the Congress will have profound impacts for the next four years on world trade, on global inflation, and our regional stability.
For example, big increases in US Tariffs could force up inflation in the United States, and this would soon be felt in Australia, increasing inflationary pressures and reducing the likelihood of Interest Rate cuts in the lead-up to the Australian election.
It’s for clients only and If you are a client of Education Geographics, Health Geographics, or Australian Development Strategies and you haven’t yet received your invitation, get in touch with us via https://www.educationgeographics.net.au/contact-us/
I was interviewed by 2GB’s John Stanley this week, following my articles in the Australian Financial Review and my social media post on last weekend’s Queensland State election.
The interview with John was longer than usual and gave us a chance to deal a bit more in-depth with the political implications of the State election for the major political parties and for the Federal election, due next May.
The story is headlined:Queensland vote a pivotal moment for Greens,as it analyses the electoral fortunes of the Greens since the party rose from the ashes of the old Australian Democrats 20 years ago. The story explored the demographics underlying the fact that the Greens’ vote has remained frozen at between eight and ten percent since the early noughties and speculated on what the new aggressive Greens approach to the ALP could mean last weekend for both the Greens and the ALP. And of course for the LNP.
The article is headed Labor can take no comfort from Queensland Election. The implications of the results for Queensland Federal seats are canvassed and this now depends largely on how effectively the new Premier David Crisafulli governs the state during the next six months and on whether State Labor can accept the verdict of the electorate and move to recover its lost support outside the southeast corner of the State. The story outlines the demographics the Greens lost, in pursuit of primary votes from Labor by blocking Labor Legislation in the Senate with the support of the Coalition, rather than by working with the Labor Government to secure acceptable amendments. The story also charts some of the impacts of the election boondoggles offered by the State ALP Government before the election. Did any of them work?
You can do some of your own analysis of these questions by looking at the map prepared by our ADS spatial science expert Dr Jeanine McMullan. https://egs-au.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=3e7a2e2105974c06bf22ea7d4991a32f Jeanine has published the Esri map to the public, so access is free. It shows the ALP/LNP 2PP votes and swings and the Greens Primary votes and Swings. To help you get some feel for the impact of the State seat results for the next Federal election, Jeanine has superimposed the boundaries of Queensland Federal seats over the state seat results.
Last weekend The Australian Financial Review published my short review of the role of religion and ethnicity in Australian politics since the 1960s.
My article was written in the context of the rise of the Muslim vote in the UK election last week and the implications of this outcome for the Australian General election, scheduled for 2025.
I based part of the article on the huge swings which took place against the UK Labour Party in electorates with large Muslim populations and canvassed how this sort of campaign and result could be translated into Australian Federal electorates, virtually all of which are now held by Labor MPs.
I did some follow up interviews with 2GB, including one with John Stanley, which you can access here:
The interview with John Stanley was one of a series of interviews we have done profiling of Australian elections. This time we canvassed the Financial Review article and rise of strategic voting and the additional impact this could have for ALP MPs in 2025 , as it did for Liberal MPs during the 2022 challenges from Teal candidates.
Political Opinion polls can be pretty unreliable at times, but lately they’ve all been moving in the same direction, which is down for the satisfaction for Anthony Albanese as PM, down for the ALP primary vote, down for the Two Party Preferred Labor vote and down for the job the Albanese Govt is doing on some of it’s key portfolios, such as the Environment, the Economy and Immigration.
On Monday we had two polls telling a similar story: the Resolve Strategic in the Sydney Morning Herald and Freshwater Strategy in the Australian Financial Review and they show a continued slide for Labor in evidence since the Voice Referendum support began fading in mid-2023.
I canvas some of the underlying demographics to this trend with John Stanley on Monday and the link the podcast is here: ……
Health Geographics has won the prestigious InfoSol 2024 Award for the Best Business Dashboard 2024, for its Private Health Care Australia Dash App.
Paul Grill, the CEO of Infosol personally congratulated HGS and its CEO Dr Jeanine McMullan on the achievement which has previously been won by major international marketing companies such as Salesforce.
Paul said: “Congratulations to you and your team for an outstanding presentation and submission. The Best Business Dashboard represents the best business use case and result and the judges really liked your use of the cube.”
The nine-cell Cube was developed by Dr McMullan to explain the profiles of more than 14 million Australians with private health insurance. It shows increasing per capita membership of health care funds on one axis and increase benefits paid per member on the other axis.
Dr McMullan said: “Some demographics on the Cube have very high levels of private health insurance, but draw very little in benefits per member, while others have relatively low levels of insurance, but rely heavily on benefits provided by health insurance, due to chronic illness.
“We used the Cube as a consistent measure across both the Dashboard and the associated Map, as it explains not just the importance of demographic profiles of PHA members, but also the significance of where they live for policy makers and politicians.”
Health Geographics is a sister company of Education Geographics, which won the InfoSol 2023 Award for the Most Valuable Dashboard.
EGS and HGS were established, using the knowledge base developed by their parent company Australian Development Strategies over 50 years of profiling spatial data on political, demographic and economic trends across Australia.
Former Australian Senator and ADS Founder John Black congratulated the HGS team on the new interactive dashboard design and its associated online Esri map.
Mr Black said: “As a former Australian Senator, I know how hard it can be to access National Cabinet Ministers and to hold their attention for more than 30 seconds when you do.
“So, when Private Healthcare Australia asked us to help, we looked at it from the point of view of the person on the other side of the desk, the Cabinet Minister, who wants to know who pays and who benefits.
“We worked with our stats team to break down and model a huge wall of data from the health bureaucracy into two dependent variables: the percentage of persons with health insurance and the benefits per member.
“Our Health Geographics CEO Dr Jeanine McMullan then designed an innovative multi-dimensional cube, tracking who pays on one axis and who benefits on the other and describing each coloured and numbered cell with its own key political stereotype which was displayed on a map of Australian electorates.
“Our award-winning designer Reg Kernke linked the stereotypes to an Infosol Dashboard which summarised each cell in the Cube in both words and tables.
“In a series of moving dials for each Australian electorate, the dashboard goes on to show health indicators – along with the numbers of swinging voters and how they voted last election.
“The dashboard does a deep dive into the demographics of each cell on the cube and links that with our national database with a thousand variables across 50 detailed interactive charts and tables of the top seats.
“And finally, the Cabinet Minister could zoom in on our national ESRI map to find their own electorate and see how it scored on the key economic, demographic and political drivers.”
The CEO of Private Healthcare Australia Dr Rachel David congratulated Health Geographics and Dr McMullan.
“Private Healthcare Australia (PHA) engaged Health Geographics to develop and design a dashboard (demographic mapping tool) to assist with its engagement and policy advocacy with the Australian Government, and to support member health funds better understand the changing demographics of private health insurance members and how best to address the needs of their customers.
“Health Geographics developed an accessible, easy to use visual asset which provides a demographic analysis, profiling and mapping of PHI membership across Australia and mapped data from PHA, Australian Bureau of Statistics, including the latest census data to specific federal electorates, including information on age, profession, cultural background and income bands which provides an insight into what members are expecting of both private health insurers and government.
“PHA is working with the Australian Government to ensure the private health system is fit for purpose, the participation levers for private insurance are appropriately targeted and the needs of the Australian public are met now and into the future.
“In 2023, Health Geographics updated the dashboard with the latest demographic data and electorate mapping to ensure it is current and effective. The upgrade included providing secure access to member health funds for use in research, evaluating, delivering and designing better quality products and services, and developing pro-consumer policy.
I caught up with John Stanley from 2GB/4BC on Tuesday night for an informal chat about an election review article I’d written for the Australian Financial Review on Monday. Here is a .pdf link to that page.
John and I talked about demographic and political events and themes over the timeline since the May 21, Federal 2022 election, including the curious cases of State and Federal leaders from supposedly opposing parties, and why they manage to share what, for them and their constituents, can be a mutually beneficial political relationship, as Frenemies.
As I was often told when I was a member of the Australian Senate: Your enemies aren’t the ones sitting opposite you mate, they’re the ones behind you.
I’ve just finished writing a longer piece for the AFR on the long term Australian demographic trends dominating Federal politics now and into the next decade, which is in the AFR Easter Edition today. I hope you enjoy it.
