The Upper Hunter by-election – How the pundits spun the result and why that matters for us.

You would need to suspend reality to portray a swing against the Labor party to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation as a “shift to the left and against coal”, but that is precisely what the political and media punditry have attempted to do with the results of the Upper Hunter by-election.

The main result of the by-election is pretty unremarkable in and of itself; the NSW National Party comfortably retained a seat it has held since 1927.

Labor was never a chance to win the seat, but swings away from oppositions in by-elections are rare – and the type of swing suffered by Labor (7.5%) caused a rash of introspection and the toppling of yet another leader.

The narrative that we are supposed to believe is that an “anti-coal independent” (Kristy O’Connell) took all of Labor’s votes (she polled 8.8%). If you look at the overall results for the electorate you can make that case, if you dig deeper however, and look at the individual voting booths, a very different story emerges, one that jars with the cultural bias of the political and media elite, seemingly so much so that they simply ignore it.

This matters for us because hunting, for better or worse, is crudely seen by the elite as a conservative, outer suburban/regional issue – what might be termed as a group of voters rooted in “traditional values”. Now, we know that this is a gross generalisation, but nuance is typically lost when broad policy positions are set. If policy makers can be convinced that the progressive “inner urban” agenda is a political winner everywhere, that makes it easier for them to be more sympathetic to causes like banning duck hunting and further restricting firearm use.

We have written before about the effect that an “inner urban” mindset has on political decisions. Of the one hundred and fifty-one seats in the Australian House of Representatives, forty-four are classified as “Inner Metropolitan”. These areas are home to one third of Australians, but, most of our important cultural institutions—our media, our universities, our public authorities, our political parties, our peak bodies, our trade unions, our sporting teams and our big businesses are based there, as are the people who run them. All but a handful of the seventy-six elected Senators in our house of review live, work and play there also. What this does is skew political power away from the majority and towards what is often referred to as “the cultural elite”. Whilst the term is often misused by right wing shock jocks (who seem to miss the irony that they are, in fact, amongst the elite themselves) it does have a legitimate definition and use in political science as a descriptor for the set of beliefs, values and habits of the most influential participants in a political system. Understanding this is particularly relevant for sectional interests such as ours, because, our values sit outside of this bubble and there is little sympathy for us within it.

So back to the Upper Hunter. Despite headlines like “NSW Labor followed the Joel Fitzgibbon playbook in the Hunter and look what happened” and “They seem to have gone coal mad: major parties sing as one, but Upper Hunter voters are not sure”, the big winner out of all of the losers in the Upper Hunter was not the “anti-coal” Kristy O’Connell, it was the brash, reactionary, conservative Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which garnered 40% more votes than O’Connell. That is despite O’Connell’s breathless media support fuelled by the high profile backing of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

If the mainstream commentary was valid then why did the Greens also suffer a swing against them? If it’s true then why did both the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party (SFFP) and One Nation garner more votes than O’Connell. But talk is cheap, and whilst the mainstream commentary arguably suits the people making it, our rebuttal of it clearly suits us – the difference is that we can back what we are saying with data.

At the five polling booths where Labor suffered their worst swings, One Nation outpolled O’Connell at all of them (not to mention the SFFP’s vote). The average swing against Labor in these five booths was 18.26%, the average gain by One Nation in those same booths was 18.16%. O’Connell averaged 7.82%.

This could best be explained as blue collar voters turning away from Labor but not being prepared to take the proverbial leap over to the Coalition.

At the two worst performing booths for the Nationals, the big shift in votes was to Kristy O’Connell, at their next three worst it was to One Nation.

This could best be explained as Liberal “wet” voters who typically hold their noses and vote for the Nationals, finally having another option (endorsed by none less than Malcolm Turnbull) and giving her their vote.

Regional and Outer Metropolitan areas with similar profiles to the Upper Hunter are important electorally at both State and Federal levels as a number of marginal seats fit that profile. It is important that the major parties in particular have a clear understanding of what is really going on outside of the “goats cheese curtain” so that they don’t formulate policy which would damage our interests as well as their own.