Will Jeff Seeney be the Next Premier of Queensland?
This blog post is prompted by a Courier-Mail article last week by Madonna King that began “Jeff Seeney is likely to become Queensland Premier – at least in the short term.”
In one of those great journalistic stand bys, the article stated that “Mr Seeney did not rule out taking on the role of interim Premier until a winner is declared in Ashgrove”.
I don’t think this is likely at all. The idea that Jeff Seeney must become Premier if the result in Ashgrove is unclear ignores that it is normal constitutional practice for a period to elapse between polling day and the swearing in of a new government.
Indeed the last two changes of government occurred around two weeks after the election, 13 days in the case of Peter Beattie in 1998 and 16 days for Rob Borbidge after the Mundingburra by-election in 1996. Even Wayne Goss had a delay of five days after winning a clear victory at the 1989 election.
The table below sets out in detail the number of days between elections and the swearing in of new governments for most changes of government in Australia since 1970. The average delay between an election and the swearing in of the new ministry is 9 days. That means it is perfectly normal for the defeated government to carry on in caretaker mode for more than a week after its defeat.
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March 16, 2012
ABC Queensland Election Calculator now LIVE!
It is long delayed, but the ABC’s re-developed election calculator is now live at http://www.abc.net.au/elections/qld/2012/calculator/.
What started as a simple design to allow more appropriate dealing with Independent held seats was greatly complicated by changing technology.
The current calculator was designed in 2007. Since then the ABC has implemented a new content management system, has broadened the area of screen taken up by content, and has also had to adjust code to deal with new platforms such as tablet computers. The various widgets that had been used to run the calculator also needed updating, and we also wanted the capacity to be able to embed the calculator into news stories.
So, after a much longer development than intended, welcome to the new calculator.
On the Queensland version you can :
- Move the sliders left for a swing to Labor or right for a swing to LNP. We’ve ended up duplicating the +/- 20% swing from the NSW election, though I would be surprised if the actual swing was in double figures.
- You can use the drop-down menu at the top of the screen to select a recent published opinion poll.
- Click the ‘Set swings at regional level’ box to apply different swing in the South-East compared to the rest of the state.
- Click the ‘Factor retiring MPs’ to turn off the factor for retiring MPs. This factor also adds so-called ‘sophomore surge’ to some of the LNP members newly elected in 2009.
- Click ‘Select individual seats’ to choose which party you think will win the electorates of Beaudesert, Burnett, Dalrymple, Gladstone, Maryborough, Mount Isa, Nanango and Nicklin. As you select each winning candidate, the total of seats changes.
We might add Ashgrove to the list of selectable seats next week once we work out a few remaining gremlins in the mechanism.
As in the past, the bottom of the display shows the seats re-arranged by newly calculated margins. Note that in the seats where you choose the winning party, the seat has no new margin and gets sorted to the bottom of the party list.
If you have any comments and suggestions on how the calculator works, I’m happy to receive them over the weekend. Bugs we iron out with this version will give us a better calculator for the next Federal election where individual seat selection will again be important.