Bragg says mistake for Libs not to retake teal seats
Coalition faced with the mammoth task of winning seats that Labor now holds on margins of 3.3 per cent or more.
The Coalition’s path back to government will require the opposition to win seats Labor now holds on margins at least up to 3.3 per cent and likely higher, based on final counting from the May 21 election.
The challenge will be greater if the teal independents who stormed the Coalition’s blue-ribbon heartland and the new Greens in Brisbane prove strong enough to win second terms at the next election, forcing the opposition to look to win seats on higher margins.
To complicate matters even further, almost half of the 58 seats the Coalition has left are officially marginal, with 24 opposition seats held by less than the Australian Electoral Commission threshold of 6 per cent.
Liberal senator Andrew Bragg said it would be a mistake to follow a push from some in the party to abandon heartland seats won by teal independents in favour of targeting outer suburban and regional seats held by Labor.
Senator Bragg said the average primary vote in affluent Sydney seats targeted or held by teal independents and Labor was 41 per cent, compared to an average primary vote of 23 per cent in western Sydney seats held by the government.
“The lift in the primary vote required to win back heartland seats is around 6 per cent, whereas the average primary vote lift required in non heartland seats is more like 27 per cent,” he said.
“The idea that the path back to government is viable in the short term without winning back heartland seats is enumerate.”
But a conservative MP said there was “fertile ground in working-class suburbs” held by Labor, more so than wealthy electorates held by teals.
After the AEC announced the final lower-house seat declarations this week, Labor enters the 47th parliament with 77 seats, the Coalition has 58 and between them will sit a Senate-sized crossbench of 16 MPs.
The Coalition requires a net gain of 18 seats to win back majority government, which looks a difficult challenge at the next election, due in 2025. Even if the Liberal Party won back the six seats claimed by Climate 200-backed independents, the Coalition would still need to claim another 12 seats from Labor. The government’s 12th most marginal seat is Parramatta in western Sydney on a margin of 4.6 per cent.
Should all six teals prove immovable come 2025, the Coalition would need to win seats on margins at least up to Labor’s 18th most marginal electorate: Dunkley in Melbourne at 6.3 per cent.
Half of Labor’s 18 lowest-margin seats lie in NSW, including 2022 losses Bennelong, Robertson and Reid.
Both Labor and the Liberals now have four ultra-marginal seats, won by less than 1 per cent.
The NSW south coast seat of Gilmore, which Labor’s Fiona Phillips narrowly retained despite the Liberal Party selecting former NSW minister Andrew Constance, is the most marginal in the country, held by just 0.17 per cent.
That put it narrowly ahead of the eastern Melbourne electorate of Deakin, which Liberal MP Michael Sukkar retained on a margin of just 0.19 per cent.
The new federal election margin tower, published in Inquirer today, shows that two of Labor’s four safest seats – Fremantle and Brand – are now in Western Australia, a state that has long been a difficult hunting ground for the ALP but swung heavily away from the Morrison government. And whereas Victoria is usually Labor’s bastion of safe seats, only two of the top 16 are from the southern state, while NSW and WA collectively account for 12.
The demise of the Liberal vote in the cities is highlighted by the fact the Coalition’s nine safest seats are held by Nationals or rural Liberals. Defeated prime minister Scott Morrison’s Cook is the safest urban Liberal seat, at 12.4 per cent, and only one other Liberal capital city electorate, Mitchell, in Sydney, is on more than 10 per cent.
The flight of voters away from the major parties led to a record 27 seats – just over one in six – where the final two-candidate-preferred contest involved an independent or minor-party candidate.
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