HOBART City Council is probably not the most dramatic of the many Tasmanian local government races going to the polls this spring, but it’s the one I’ve followed most closely over the years, partly for reasons that should be very obvious (see bio/disclaimer at bottom of this piece).

In the last two elections, about 18,300 voters have cast formal votes in HCC elections.

This year, seven seats are up for grabs, so if the turnout remains the same the quota for election as an alderman will be around 2300 votes.

The actual number of primary votes required for a candidate to get elected tends to be much lower. Since the introduction of postal voting in 1994, candidates have been elected with tallies as low as 0.20 quotas but the largest losing total has been 0.405 quotas. (Curiously both these records are held by the same candidate, former Alderman Andrew Hurburgh in 1994 and 1999 respectively.)

Typically, the primary vote total needed to win is much lower in elections in which a sitting Lord Mayor stands for re-election as both Lord Mayor and Alderman, because the sitting Mayor tends to poll a massive vote and have a large surplus. 2005 is such an election and it is possible we will see sitting aldermen hold their seats with as few as 500 primary votes. For non-sitting candidates, results of 800 votes or better should result in good winning chances. The reason for the difference is that preferences of those aldermen who reach their quota on primaries alone tend to follow strongly to other sitting aldermen, almost irrespective of politics.

One curious aspect of the lead-up to the Council elections has been the degree of debate about whether the council is stale and in need of new voices. Such claims were made, for instance, by Greens Alderman Patsy Jones in announcing her impending retirement, and can be seen in the Greens’ campaign motto “Refresh HCC” (as perhaps stencilled, student-politics style and unauthorised, on numerous pavements near you). Alderman John Freeman has also taken up the call for new voices on the conservative side.

All that can be said, though, is that after this election the Council must have at least one new voice, because seven seats are available but only six Aldermen are recontesting. It is not particularly likely that Council will have more than one new voice, as the Council is generally even harder to get voted off than to get elected to. Frequently, forecasts that particular Aldermen would lose their seats have proven incorrect, and even when these claims have been correct, the defeated Alderman has been far more competitive than expected. Some possible reasons for this include the difficulty of building name recognition in such a large city (giving incumbents a major publicity advantage) and Hobart by-laws that prevent election signs from being up for more than one month (unlike Glenorchy where they can be up for three.)

Negative personal publicity

To be precise, in the last seven elections only three sitting HCC Aldermen have been defeated. These were Dee Alty (beaten by Anne Warwick in 1996), Andrew Hurburgh (losing in 1999, in which year Jamieson Allom, Eva Ruzicka and Ron Christie were all elected for the first time – the last for a two-year term) and Ron Christie (replaced by Patsy Jones in 2000). Two of these (Alty and Christie) were defeated in “bases loaded” elections (in which the number of sitting aldermen equalled the number of vacancies). Alty was perceived as having been extremely inactive and living outside the electorate during her final term, but still lost by only 3.22 votes (votes are counted in hundredths so that votes reduced in value during the distribution of preferences remain in the system better.) Both Christie and Hurburgh had had lots of negative personal publicity in the media during the terms before they lost.

Furthermore, while the Greens have flagged their campaign as a push for the highest ever level of Green representation on Council, realistically it seems more like damage control. One of the “new voices” with which the Greens previously “refreshed the Council”, former Alderman Mat Hines, failed to even make it to the (delayed) election in the middle of his term before resigning to take up work commitments interstate. Helen Burnet replaced Hines on a recount, but now has to face this election as well as the seat held by Patsy Jones being up for grabs. This means that Hines’ failure to see out his term has forced the Greens to go from trying to defend one of six seats, to trying to defend two of seven, in order to hold their current representation. However, if they somehow manage to win two of the first six seats at this election, they will then be very well placed to increase their representation to at least three seats after the next one.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s it was common for HCC candidates to run on tickets for election. With the exception of the Greens ticket, these have generally ceased to exist, because repeated experience showed that they did not effectively lead to any better preference flows than if the same candidates ran alone. The Greens are an exception to this, because their use of party mailing lists enables them to ensure tighter flows.

The fate of the seat vacated by Jones (assuming no sitting aldermen lose their seats) has great significance for the balance of the Council. Although there is no formal party representation on Council except for The Greens (at least four Liberal Party memberships notwithstanding) the present Council is evenly balanced between Liberal/”business” aligned aldermen and the remainder. The former group, existing as a loosely discernable “side of Council” (“faction” would be technically too strong a word) although there is no love lost between some of its “members”, includes aldermen Freeman, Christie, Briscoe, Hayes, Archer and Zucco. Four of these aldermen (Freeman, Christie, Hayes and Archer) have run on pro-business tickets, while Briscoe, formerly a Green, was originally elected on a progressive/community ticket but has subsequently joined the Liberal Party. Zucco has always run independently of tickets. The remainder of council can be split into three groups — the Greens (Burnet and Jones), aldermen originally elected on progressive/community tickets (Lord Mayor Valentine and Deputy Lord Mayor Ruzicka) and two unaligned aldermen (Haigh and Sexton).

It’s not very easy to predict HCC elections at the start of the campaign, with a large number of little-known candidates running, but here’s a rough outline of what I think might happen.

Lord Mayor

After winning very narrowly on preferences in 1999 (51% to 49%), Rob Valentine thrashed John Freeman by percentage margins of 66-34 in 2000 and 74-26 in 2002. This election he faces Marti Zucco and Jeff Briscoe. He will most likely outpoll both combined and might poll in the high fifties. A comparable result would be the 1999 DLM poll in which Pru Bonham had 55% of preferences with Lyn Archer and Briscoe still remaining in the count.

Deputy Lord Mayor

This one will be closer. Eva Ruzicka was elected to this position with a 54-46% margin on preferences over Lyn Archer in the 2002 election, and Darlene Haigh (21% primary vote) and Ron Christie (15%) were the other unsuccessful candidates — Christie was not on the Council at the time. This election is similar except that Christie is now an alderman again and Peter Sexton is standing instead of Archer. Given that Sexton finished close behind Haigh in the last Aldermanic poll after only eighteen months on Council, it seems likely that Sexton will outpoll both Haigh and Christie, and it is very likely he will benefit strongly from the preferences of the latter. Whether Sexton would then win or not would depend upon the strength of Ruzicka’s primary vote. Ruzicka, who polled 36.9% of primaries for this position in 2002, has had three years to build her profile as incumbent DLM, but has also been on the receiving end of quite a volume of mud from her opponents.

Aldermen (7 vacancies)

Rob Valentine increased his vote from 12.5% in 1996 (when standing for Mayor unsuccessfully at the end of his first aldermanic term) to 36.9% in 2000 (when he had been Mayor for eighteen months). He will top the poll again and is likely (my comparison points are the vote increases of former Glenorchy Mayor Terry Martin and Clarence Mayor Cathy Edwards from 1994 to 1999) to slightly increase his vote, perhaps to around 45%. He will have a massive surplus, which, in the absence of him endorsing any other candidate, will tend to favour incumbents.

John Freeman polled 27.4% in 1996 when he narrowly defended his Lord Mayor position. After losing the mayoralty to Valentine in 1999, Freeman quit the council for 18 months, but was still elected again as an alderman in 2000 with relatively little damage to his personal vote (20.0%). He will be re-elected and will probably be the second alderman elected on the first count. His vote may well decline without the publicity of a mayoral run but even if so, he should still be over a quota on the first count.

Marti Zucco’s aldermanic primary vote declined from 11.0% in 1996 to 6.2% in 2000. However, that 6.2% was actually a solid result as his position in the 2000 count after the elections of Valentine and Freeman was better (0.83 quotas in a six-seat election, clear third place) than in 1996 (0.82 quotas in a six-seat election, distant fourth). With the added publicity of a mayoral run Zucco will very probably be re-elected and should be third to fifth over the line. Zucco polarises voters, but under the Hare-Clark system an alderman with a solid minority following can always keep getting elected.

Darlene Haigh’s primary vote collapsed even more in 2000, from 12.0% in 1996 to 3.9%. Unlike for Zucco, this represented a real loss of effective support, from 0.99 quotas and clear third place in the count after the elections of Valentine and Freeman in 1996, to 0.66 quotas and distant fourth at the same point in 2000. I think her vote will decline again, and if there were no vacancies, I would consider her to be at serious risk of losing her seat. As it is, she is the sitting alderman at most apparent risk, but I believe she will be re-elected, probably in around sixth place.

Peter Sexton polled 3.3% in 1996, finishing tenth. He was then elected on Freeman’s recount when Freeman temporarily resigned. In 2000, he polled 3.7% and was elected fifth just behind Haigh after only eighteen months on council. He will build on that performance and will easily be re-elected, probably in third to fifth place.

Greens favourites to win a second seat

Helen Burnet polled an exceptionally strong 5.3% as the second Greens candidate (behind Mat Hines, who polled 8.5% as the endorsed #1) in the 2002 poll. Burnet continued to perform impressively through the count, gathering preferences much faster than Hines to go within 200 votes of beating him and also within about the same amount of securing a second Green seat. She was then elected on his recount when he resigned. Burnet’s vote at the top of the Green ticket should exceed the 5.3% polled by Jones in 2000, and she should be comfortably elected, probably competing with Zucco and Sexton for positions three to five.

Unless they can be elected ahead of one of the sitting aldermen (or a sitting alderman loses), the council’s new alderman will be elected seventh and only serve half a term before facing re-election. On the basis of the Greens’ excellent result in 2002, the reduced quota for this election should make them favourites to win a second seat, probably electing endorsed #2 candidate Philip Cocker. However, one reason for some caution about such a projection is that the election of two Greens alongside Valentine and two “unaligned” aldermen could represent a more left-leaning outcome than the results of the 2002 poll suggest. Another is that the Greens coming so close to two seats in 2002 may have had more to do with the strength of their #2 candidate at that poll, Burnet, who in my view they should certainly have preselected ahead of Hines. Since Burnet is unlikely to secure a quota on primaries alone, preferences following the Greens ticket strictly will probably never be distributed, so if a second Green is elected there is an outside chance it will be someone other than Cocker. The only one who has stood recently for HCC is Bill Harvey, who polled a respectable 518 votes in 2002. The other Greens are Robert Vincent and Helen Hutchinson.

Few of the ten non-sitting non-Green candidates have much past electoral form to run a ruler over. Peter Donnelly polled only 444 votes in 1999 (coming 14th out of 21 candidates) and did not run in 2000, but then polled 1009 votes in 2002 (finishing 8th). He is unlikely to poll so high a primary vote in an election including the Lord Mayor, but must have some chance of winning the final seat on the strength of that result. David Edwards finished 11th in 1996 and Margaretta Pos has stood for Legislative Council without getting anywhere near elected (but Council is much easier). The remainder (Michael Shea, Reshma Dutta, Gary Winter, Heath Michael, Leo Foley, John Thwaites and Mark Furmage) are unknown electoral quantities until their campaigns have been seen, but Google searching suggests Foley has by far the highest community profile. Michael, a Liberal Party member and advisor to Eric Abetz, announced his candidacy publicly in June.

If time permits and after I have seen the campaigns, I may post some updated impressions later.

THE PSEPHOLOGIST: Kevin Bonham is Tasmania’s answer to some very stupid psephological question, and has been a scrutineer at every Council election cut-up since 1988. He has scrutineered for several of the above candidates at various elections, including on at least one occasion (not necessarily Council) each of Valentine, Zucco, Ruzicka and possibly others, and has been variously paid in pizza, chocolate, sashimi and other such outrageous bribes. He knows about half of the candidates personally, but is not actively involved in any candidate’s campaign. He is the son of former Hobart Deputy Lord Mayor Pru Bonham, but any person assuming his opinions are necessarily hers, or vice versa, or attempting to hold either accountable for the views of the other, is really incredibly silly.

Earlier:
QUESTIONS for the candidates