The government running the renewables crash-test-dummy state has lost
In South Australia, Jay Weatherill is gone. Resigned. Tally so far: Libs win 24 seats, Labor 18. Though according to commenters SA voters were choosing between Lite-Left and Hopeless-Left. The new premier will likely be less-bad. Xenophon (small alternate non-establishment player) was crushed. He didn’t side with either Labor or Libs, so voters probably felt they couldn’t afford to sit on the fence and risk more years of Weatherill’s reckless industry-destroying state government.
The Greens are down from 8.7% to 6.6%, a fall of 25% in their popularity. (Not that I could find any news headlines to that effect).
The message for the soft left:
Chris Kenny: [A Lib win] … will flash a warning to Labor in Victoria, Queensland and Canberra about the perils of ambitious renewable energy targets prioritising climate gestures over electricity affordability and reliability.
The Libs appear to have made the most of hi-tech analytic campaigning. The Kochs and others in the US have set up i360:
Through i360 the SA Liberals believe they have progressed to a new level of targeted campaigning… the MP called up a marginal seat, much like finding a suburb on Google Maps, then zoomed in to a street where pins identified addresses deemed to house swinging voters. Deeper dives on households contained genders, ages, voting intentions or lack thereof as well as policy interests. The information is collated from the party’s existing Feedback system, updates from doorknocking and calls, responses to surveys conducted via email, online or phone calls plus census data and the harvesting of social media data. This is Big Brother meets grassroots campaigning. Neither the data nor the technology is much use without quality information fed in and strong analysis leading to the right strategies, along with diligent personalised attention in follow-up visits and communications.
Billionaire US Republican sponsors Charles and David Koch are major investors in the firm, which openly canvasses only for “free-market” candidates. The SA Liberals purchased a product licence and have worked with i360 to modify systems for compulsory and preferential voting. Motivated by the frustration of 2014 where, despite a huge popular vote win, just a few hundred votes in the right seats would have made all the difference,…
–The Australian
Commenter RickWill on SA
The Libs are offering only 40,000 household batteries compared with Labor 50,000. They are also planning a stronger link to NSW. That will enable the good people of NSW to share the pain of high power prices experienced first in SA and now in Victoria due to the way intermittent generators destroy grid economics.
An interconnector to NSW will “spread the misery” – as both RickWill and Graeme No 3 point out. SA will be able to milk the national RET subsidies longer, and avoid paying for its own stable base. In NSW, increasing the access to subsidized solar and wind power will hurt the cheap providers there, destroying the profits of the cheapest generators.
In Victoria, in one seat, Greens lose to Labor, blame internal bickering
In Victoria a byelection was held in the inner-latte seat of Batman. Conservatives (Liberals) didn’t run. Labor won, though the Greens started out as favourites.
John Ferguson: “The Batman result is a disaster for the Greens and a significant campaigning achievement for Labor.”
As usual, the Greens search anywhere but their hypocritical policies. They could try having principles like caring about the environment instead of supporting big-banks, big business, and giant supernational unaccountable institutions. They could have an interest in science instead of doing their best to destroy it through namecalling to silence debate. If they had even one principle above “being elected” they would have some foundation instead of being the third leg, fashionable extra for people seeking vanity points.
Greens leader “blames internal ‘sabotage’ for loss”
The Greens are in soul-searching mode as tally room data from Saturday’s by-election shows the Greens squandered an initial lead to end the race 45 to 54 behind Labor in two party terms.
In a short statement to media, Senator Di Natale said he believed that the party had fallen prey to persistent leaks from insiders which had turned voters off.
“It is absolutely clear that we have to get our own house in order if we’re going to win back traditional Greens voters who were turned off by the leaking and sabotage from a few individuals with a destructive agenda,” he said.
Map: adapted from Wikimedia Christopher j hogg
