MATTHEW DENHOLM, The Australian
THE outcome of last weekend’s Pembroke state by-election is still technically in doubt, but there is one certainty: it is not good news for Labor. An excruciatingly slow preference distribution, delayed by the need to wait for a handful of postal votes, has left Liberal candidate Vanessa Goodwin, the likely winner, in temporary limbo.
Although anything is possible when there are eight candidates and the leading one has less than 40 per cent of the primary vote, it seems more or less certain that Goodwin will fill the Legislative Council vacancy.
Even in the event of an upset in the late stages of the preference carve-up, there are worrying signs for Labor. The ALP decided not to endorse its proposed candidate, lawyer James Crotty. The party feared a loss for an endorsed Crotty in a previously Labor-held seat would provide the Liberals with too big a momentum boost ahead of the state election in March next year.
So Labor stepped aside from the contest, effectively abandoning the seat previously held by a Labor minister, Allison Ritchie, out of cowardice or pragmatism, depending on your viewpoint.
Given that Ritchie won 42.8 per cent of the primary vote in the upper house seat, based on Hobart’s eastern shore, just two years ago, it was a remarkable acknowledgment of Labor’s rapid fall from grace.
Crotty, who stood as an independent with Labor values and did nothing to hide his Labor links, received just 8.8 per cent of the primary vote last Saturday.
Honey Bacon, widow of Labor premier Jim Bacon, performed a little better, with 10.2 per cent of the primary vote. While Bacon has been a savage critic of elements of Labor policy of late, Premier David Bartlett welcomed her entry into the race and her Labor connections were obvious in voters’ minds.
So both Labor-linked candidates — Crotty and Bacon — each finished behind the Greens (12.7 per cent) and independent Richard James (11.4 per cent). Goodwin, a criminologist known to the electorate through past tilts at the overlapping state and federal lower house seats of Franklin, blitzed the primary vote with 38.7 per cent.
