In the morning I was travelling to Newtown to buy coffee but at Central Station my right ankle packed it in and so I came home without making the purchase. Then I cancelled the movie I had organised to see that evening and sat down to watch the Wentworth by-election take place. I’ve filled out this account with some details that will make it easier for people outside Australia to understand. For various reasons this election was particularly important, although it was not part of a general election. General elections for federal Parliament are held every three years. As an extra, in this account there is a storm.
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had lost his job in August in a party-room coup and had been replaced by Scott Morrison. Wentworth was Turnbull’s seat. He then decided to resign from Parliament, making it necessary to hold an election for the seat outside the normal general election cycle, with the next scheduled to be held in May 2019. The by-election was critical for the government because the Liberal-National coalition held power in the lower house by only one seat. If the Liberal Party lost the by-election, the Parliament would be hung and getting legislation through it would be hampered by the necessity of making agreements with cross-benchers (members of the lower house who belong to neither of the two major parties, but who sit between them in the chamber).
Soon there was news that sausages on sale at polling places were being sold for $5 each. Normally, sausage sizzles like these charge a gold coin ($1 or $2) for a piece of bread with a sausage wrapped in it. This point was funny because Wentworth is home to some of the wealthiest parts of the city of Sydney. “Democracy is finished,” added Guardian journalist Greg Jericho to the retweet that contained the news. Later, he added, “Although to be fair it looks like they’re using hotdog rolls rather than a slice of [Woolies’] bread. And the snags do look rather big.” The reference was to the retailer Woolworths, which is a dominant player in the domestic grocery market. The original tweet, from Channel Ten reporter Jonathan Lea, had contained a photo that showed a man standing at a BBQ wearing a black T-shirt that had “I see a little silhouetto of a man” printed on it in white.
At 10.39am Health Nerd (who calls himself an epidemiologist and says he writes for the Guardian and the Observer) tweeted, “The fires have been started. The sausages are burning. Anthony Green has been called from the deep. THE VOTING HAS BEGUN.” The reference to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) psephologist would have reminded people that the usual post-election telecast covering the vote was scheduled to start at 6pm. Green always features heavily in these productions, sometimes bringing in accurate predictions ahead of official announcements as the counting by Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) volunteers and staff progresses once the polling places close at 6pm.
After getting back from my aborted outing I had ironed my shirts and changed the sheets on the bed, putting the used set into the washing machine to clean. Now, the machine told me its cycle had finished and so I put the top sheet in the dryer with the pillow case, set the dial, and turned the machine on.
At 10.51am Sean Bradbery tweeted, “So far Scott Morrison's only achievement has been to turn the 8th safest seat in the country into a marginal.” He was referring of course to the fact that Turnbull had held the seat of Wentworth by a margin of around 18 percent. The previous day as I had been driving in my car, the ABC had told listeners that opinion polls had an independent candidate, Kerryn Phelps, a local GP for many years as well as a former president of the Australian Medical Association, and a City of Sydney councillor, neck-and-neck on a two-party-preferred basis with the Liberal Party’s candidate Dave Sharma.
The acronym “2PP” is used in discussing opinion polls to indicate that the number under discussion is the two-party-preferred number. Another acronym that is used is "2CP", which means two-candidate-preferred, and this acronym was used for this election because Kerryn Phelps, the front-runner in the opinion polls, was an independent, and had no party affiliation. The acronyms rely on the tendency for voters to give their preferences in a predictable way. So, for example, people who vote for the Australian Greens tend to give their second preferences to the Labor Party. So, in most contests the votes given to Greens candidates will be apportioned to the candidates of the Australian Labor Party when the second preferences of those voters are counted by the AEC.
How-to-vote cards that are handed out by the competing parties at polling places are printed 4-colour leaflets that show how the party in question wants people to mark their votes on the ballot paper, which is filled out using pencil in the booth. The resident has to get their name crossed off a master list by a volunteer, then they are given a ballot paper and go to an empty booth. (In general elections, residents get two ballot papers: one for the House of Representatives and one for the Senate. In the Wentworth by-election, there was naturally no Senate contest.) The booths are made of folded cardboard. Once in the booth, the resident marks the ballot paper with numbers in the order they want to preference candidates. The voter can follow the how-to-vote card of their party or they can mark the names of the listed candidates in any other order they choose. All of the boxes on the ballot paper have to be marked with a number otherwise the ballot is counted as informal and if that is the case the marked votes are not given to any of the candidates whose names appear on it.
At 10.54am Greens candidate for the seat of Wentworth, Dominick Wy Kanak, the deputy mayor of Waverly Municipal Council, a local-government authority in the area, tweeted using the @IndigenousX account, “Busy Bondi with enthusiastic Greens at the gate.” The tweet came with a photo showing a group of people, some with the party’s green T-shirts on, standing in a street with how-to-vote flyers in their hands. Kanak was in the centre of the photo wearing a T-shirt with a design made to look like the Aboriginal flag, in red, yellow and black.
At 11.13am Jieh-Yung Lo, a commentator, tweeted, “I am not a resident of Wentworth but as an Australian who believes in a fair go, I'll be cheering for Dr Kerryn Phelps because the well-being & survival of children, refugees & asylum seekers are more important than the survival of the Morrison Government.”
At 11.16am comedian Dan Ilic tweeted, “Bellevue Hill Public School #democracysausage review: Full bodied, tasty, good caramelisation of the onions, just a hint of forest floor, subtle flavours harking back to '07. Cheery fellas on the tongs. Good banter. $5.” The ironic tweet came with a photo showing a sausage held in a bread roll and a paper napkin held in the same hand.
At 11.19am Jack’s Project SafeCom tweeted a photo showing a cardboard sign that had been made for the by-election. It was branded with the name of the prominent independent candidate and had other words on it as well: “Where’s Malcolm? Vote 1 Kerryn Phelps. Send the Liberals a message.” The sign also featured a photo, in a cut-out, of the former prime minister.
At 11.26am Melbourne resident Lesley Howard retweeted a tweet from commentator Dee Madigan that had gone up at around 10am, and which had said, “No matter what happens today in Wentworth, climate change and the treatment of kids on Nauru are back on the political agenda. Massive kudos to @drkerrynphelps for that.”
At 10.28am Sydney resident Jodie Salmon tweeted a photo of her hand on her ballot paper in the booth. Her hand was holding a pencil. The tweet that came with the photo said, “The pen is mightier than the bonesaw.” The comment was a reference to the alleged Saudi killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, and was especially apposite as he had been killed for wanting to encourage more transparency in government in the Middle East. The tweet also had the hashtag #Journalismisnotacrime in it. The ballot paper in the photo was not numbered so it did not show how she had marked her preferences. The green slip of paper said at the top, “Number the boxes from 1 to 16 in the order of your choice.”
At 11.34am a professional photographer from Queanbeyan named Hilary tweeted a photo showing men and women wearing white T-shirts that had “Freedom for refugees” printed in black letters on the back and on the front. Some of them were holding their hands above their heads with their wrists crossed. The tweet also said, “Paddington.” The signage behind the volunteers was blue in colour and it was not immediately clear which party they were representing as they stood there on the pavement.
At 11.38am Blue Mountains resident Preston Towers retweeted a tweet that had gone up at around 11am from News-dot-com political reporter Sam Clench that had said, “I've located the best polling place in Wentworth - Paddington Public School. It has a market AND, even more importantly, cakes.” The tweet came with a photo showing a table covered with a white cloth on which a variety of cakes and other baked goods had been laid out. Towers had said, “THIS is more like it, though it’s not #DemocracySausage.”
I noticed at about the time I took the top sheet and the pillowcase out of the dryer, and put the bottom sheet in, that #wenthworthvotes had also been used by some people as well as the correct hashtag #wentworthvotes. The extra “h” was puzzling and I wondered how it had got in there.
At 11.46am Brisbane resident Fran Ross tweeted a tweet the progressive activist group GetUp! had put up about an hour before that retweeted one from Liberal Party MP Craig Laundy which had been posted at 9.29am, and which had said, “Bloke pulls up at a polling booth in a black BMW X5, gets out & and puts up a @GetUp sign .....”
At 12.06pm Towers put up another sausage tweet, this one retweeting one from ABC News’ Sydney digital editor, Riley Stuart, which said, “$5 for a sausage sizzle???! I’ll vote for anyone who brings these prices down ...” The tweet had a photo showing a hand holding a white bun with a sausage in it that had tomato sauce and mustard on it.
At 12.15pm LaLegale retweeted a tweet from a Geelong resident (“Grumpy, conservative old gay man”) named Eileen Twomey-Wright that had gone up about 30 minutes before, and which had said, “In the category of: Never Underestimate the Stupidity of the Electorate - #WenthworthVotes is trending number one on my list. Try: #WentworthVotes, people. Gawd.” The wrong hashtag was tending on Twitter.
At 12.20pm Central Coast man Troy Grant tweeted a tweet that Antony Green had put up about two hours before and that contained a photo showing the ABC’s psephologist standing on the pavement outside a voting booth dressed in Lycra. The tweet said, “The set-up at the Watson’s Bay polling place on my Tour de Wentworth ride this morning.”
At 12.23pm Milan resident Philippa Nicole Barr tweeted a photo showing a piece of A4 paper that had been stuck to the side of a garbage bin on a street. The paper had a picture of a polar bear on it and the caption, “Think of your children and your grandchildren. Vote Out Climate Deniers. Vote Out LNP.” Barr had commented, “Omg I love this. So DIY.”
At 12.40pm Jess ‘McGiggles’ Epps, who lives in Sydney, tweeted, “Would you like a damocrisy sossige with your misspelt hashtag?” The tweet came with a screenshot of the Twitter interface showing how many tweets the wrong hashtag had received. The people who had used it included ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas and the MEAA, the journalist’s union. Three minutes later Jodie M, a Melbourne resident, noted that the hashtags #voteWentworth and #WentworthByElection were also being used for the event.
At 12.47pm comedian Joel Creasey retweeted a tweet from theatre director Richard Carroll that had gone up at around 11.30am, that said, “Just voted for @kerrynwentworth @drkerrynphelps.” His tweet showed his face, with a fashionable, dark, three-day growth, as he stood in a suburban street outside a polling place.
At 12.53pm Maria, who only identified herself as living in Darug country, tweeted, “Sky news [sic] saying Dave Sharma is going to lose, but thinking it may be a scare tactic. Depends on preferences which are impossible to predict, my guess is as good as @AntonyGreenABC.”
At 1pm Melbourne resident Max Alexander retweeted a tweet from Jonathan Lea, who we have met before in this account, that had gone up an hour earlier and that said, “Government now telling me Wentworth is no longer conservative or their heartland but progressive. Say heartland is more Qld. Clearly repositioning to soften the blow for what’s coming...”
At 1.24pm shareholder rights activist Stephen Mayne retweeted a tweet from Sam Clench, who we have met before in this account, that had gone up a few minutes before, and that said, “Bit of juxtaposition going on here in Bondi.” The tweet came with a photo showing a poster of Scott Morrison putting his hand on the shoulder of Malcolm Turnbull. The poster also had the word “Remember” printed on it, and “Disunity. Dysfunction. Chaos.” In the background behind the poster was Bondi Beach, with its lifesavers’ tent and its blue and green waves and with people sitting on the sand in the sun. Bondi is in Wentworth.
At 3.23pm Fiona Caldarevic from the NSW town of Narrandera tweeted a photo that had gone up about five minutes before from ALPHRW founder Nart (there was no more information about him, but the ALPHRW might mean “ALP human rights watch”; it seemed to be an activist group) that showed a photo of the tourist advisory sign in the Blue Mountains that is set on a road indicating toward Wentworth Falls, a town that is situated there. The man after whom the federal division of Wentworth and the town are both named was William Charles Wentworth, a famous colonial-era statesman who was also an explorer in his youth. “Brilliant,” commented Caldarevic in her tweet.
At 3.24pm Jonathan Green, the editor of the literary magazine Meanjin, retweeted a tweet from Sky News Australia that had gone up on 17 October at around 10pm, that quoted a columnist for the News Corp vehicle The Australian, Chris Kenny, saying, ”The reason they're having the by-election is that @TurnbullMalcolm spat the dummy and ran away. He shouldn't be putting the Party through this. He's shown no loyalty to the Party that gave him the Prime Ministership.” Green added the comment, “They. Assassinated. Him.”
At 3.40pm Paul Colgan, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Business Insider Australia, tweeted, “All these people who like their martinis stirred rather than shaken coming out of the woodwork now. Fitting, given it's #WentworthVotes today.” The comment was a reference to the positions on some issues that had been voiced by the independent candidate Kerryn Phelps. In most elections, the ALP is the primary candidate against the Liberals, but in this election, because of the high net wealth of the average voter in the division, the ALP candidate was not considered a likely contender. But of course, the stakes in the contest were much more significant than Colgan had stated them, because it wasn’t just the personal philosophy of the two major contenders that was germane in the case, but rather what was in the balance on the day was the Coalition’s majority in Parliament. On top of that, Phelps has different views on such major issues as climate change and on the status of refugees detained in offshore camps operated by Australia. It was true however that on economic issues Phelps has a campaign platform that is not so different from that of the Liberals, including lower company taxes and policies that encourage entrepreneurship.
Phelps had said that if elected she would guarantee supply to the government (the ability to raise money for government business) but had not ruled out launching no-confidence motions in the lower house. The government’s ability to ensure supply and to avoid no-confidence motions in the lower house is critical to its survival. If it cannot ensure supply or if a no-confidence motion is successfully moved against it in the lower house, the outcome is likely to be a general election.
At 3.46pm Sam Clench tweeted, “One voter sums up the problem with the Liberals' stability argument: ‘That's a joke, isn't it? After what they did to Malcolm?’” The tweet contained a photo of the Kerryn Phelps cardboard sign mentioned earlier that featured a picture of the former prime minister.
Rain had been predicted for Sydney in the evening. At 3.49pm @giddeygirl tweeted, “Really raining now in Canberra. Thunder. Lightning. Wind. Heavy drops. Hooray.” The reference to the Queen song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was topical considering the T-shirt that the BBQ chef had been wearing in an earlier tweet. By 5.25pm the dark clouds had started to cover Sydney and thunder could be heard rumbling in the distance.
At 5.29pm @Roger192964382, a resident of Victoria, tweeted the odds that had been given that afternoon for the Wentworth 2PP contest by a betting agency. It wasn’t clear from the enclosed image which betting agency had given the odds, but the numbers were definitive. Phelps was on 1.32 (the lowest odds, meaning that she was the most likely to win based on the bets that had been received), Dave Sharma was on 3.20 and the ALP’s Tim Murray was on 16.
At 5.36pm I received a text message from my auto insurer notifying me that there was an increased chance of hail in my suburb. They send out these messages when storms come over the city. The last time I had received a similar message was in September. At 5.43pm Therese Taylor, a lecturer in history at Charles Sturt University in the Riverina, which is located in the southwest of NSW, tweeted, “Sydney settles down at the end of the day and waits to know the results of #WentworthVotes. A storm is rolling in, on the twilight sky. Atmospheric.” At 5.46pm the TV signal was lost for a few seconds due to the atmospheric disturbance the storm had created.
At 5.50pm @suthernx tweeted, “My prediction is Sharma will poll 30-35% of votes. Phelps will get up on the back of Greens preferences.” The TV signal was lost again momentarily. Outside, the sky was almost black with clouds, and thunder was sounding continuously with lightning flashing in the gloom. It was still 10 minutes before the polling places were scheduled to close and the storm was smothering the city in moisture and electricity. Rain was falling steadily and the sound of thunder was almost continuous. Flashes of lightning broke through the dark sky and from my apartment the city skyline was almost invisible. By about 5.07pm the centre of the storm had moved over my location just west of the central business district and the thunder had by then died down to a distant rumble that disturbed the evening from time to time. By then I was watching the ABC’s election coverage and the thunder could be heard in the background in the telecast as the storm moved east.
At 6.43pm Antony Green tweeted, “0.3% counted - LIB Projected [first preferences]=35.2%[,] down 27.1% [from the previous election, which was held in 2016].” The tweet contained a link to a story on the ABC’s website.
At 6.51pm Central Coast resident Bill Quinn tweeted, “My late mum always said that fair weather on polling day meant no change, and wild and/or wet weather meant a change. Just sayin'...”
At 6.52pm Antony Green tweeted:
At 7.04pm Edo Voloder, a resident of Dandenong in Victoria, tweeted, “By-election Primary Votes (1.6% counted): LIB 40.9 (-30.3) Phelps IND 33.1 (+33.1) ALP 9.9 (-2.1) GRN 8.8 (-3.6).”
At 7.13pm Antony Green tweeted:
At 8.10pm Canberra journalist Samantha Maiden tweeted, “The whole comedy of the Liberals trying to look into banning gay teachers from schools or gay teenagers from private schools or whatever and then Double Bay saying SCREW YOU WE ARE SENDING IN THE LESBIANS! Is also ...delicious.”
At just before 8.30pm I logged into the coffee company’s website and ordered a kilo of my usual blend to be shipped to my home.
UPDATE 21 October 10.32am: Margin in the contest narrowing with postal votes still being counted. Last I saw, Phelps' lead was down to 905 votes, with thousands of votes still to be appraised.
UPDATE 21 October 11.06am: Antony Green on ABC News says the result of the contest will not be known for several days.
UPDATE 21 October 1.14pm: In a tweet from Sydney artist Jeffrey Wood that was retweeted at this time, there was a screenshot showing a page from the AEC website which had Phelps 889 votes ahead of Sharma with the time-stamp in the comment of 12.51pm.
UPDATE 21 October 4.13pm: In a tweet, Antony Green said, "Check count corrects increase Phelps lead from 884 votes to 1186 votes. Two-candidate preferred percentages Phelps (IND) 50.8%, Sharma (LIB) 49.2%."
UPDATE 21 October 5.39pm: A tweet from Miranda Devine, the right wing commentator: "Dr Kerryn Phelps has increased her lead by another 679 votes, to more than 1700, after a check count at Bondi Beach public school booth." The tweet carried a link to a story in the Australian newspaper.
UPDATE 23 October 3.40pm: Phelps is ahead by 1540 votes in the continuing count and Antony Green says on ABC News that it is unlikely that Sharma can overtake her going by the trends in the postal votes that are being received by the AEC.
UPDATE 24 October 6.08pm: The Phelps lead at this time was 1643 votes.
UPDATE 27 October 9.34am: ABC News announces that Phelps has won the by-election.
UPDATE 29 October 7.01am: Checked the AEC website again this morning and the most recent results are dated 25 October at 6.03pm. They showed Phelps ahead by 1783 votes.
UPDATE 2 November 9.38am: This morning a person on Twitter asked if the Wentworth by-election result would be announced today and at 9.22am the AEC's Twitter account answered, "No. Today is the final day for late arriving postal votes. The AEC will issue a media release and tweet in advance of the day when a declaration will be scheduled."
UPDATE 4 November 3.56pm: A Sydney Morning Herald story published today said that the announcement of the victory of Kerryn Phelps would take place on Monday and that she would be found to have won the contest by a total of 1851 votes.
UPDATE 5 November 10.39am: Business Insider Australia tweeted that Phelps had officially won the election, with a link to the story which quoted the AEC. The final margin between the two leading candidates was 1851 votes.
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had lost his job in August in a party-room coup and had been replaced by Scott Morrison. Wentworth was Turnbull’s seat. He then decided to resign from Parliament, making it necessary to hold an election for the seat outside the normal general election cycle, with the next scheduled to be held in May 2019. The by-election was critical for the government because the Liberal-National coalition held power in the lower house by only one seat. If the Liberal Party lost the by-election, the Parliament would be hung and getting legislation through it would be hampered by the necessity of making agreements with cross-benchers (members of the lower house who belong to neither of the two major parties, but who sit between them in the chamber).
Soon there was news that sausages on sale at polling places were being sold for $5 each. Normally, sausage sizzles like these charge a gold coin ($1 or $2) for a piece of bread with a sausage wrapped in it. This point was funny because Wentworth is home to some of the wealthiest parts of the city of Sydney. “Democracy is finished,” added Guardian journalist Greg Jericho to the retweet that contained the news. Later, he added, “Although to be fair it looks like they’re using hotdog rolls rather than a slice of [Woolies’] bread. And the snags do look rather big.” The reference was to the retailer Woolworths, which is a dominant player in the domestic grocery market. The original tweet, from Channel Ten reporter Jonathan Lea, had contained a photo that showed a man standing at a BBQ wearing a black T-shirt that had “I see a little silhouetto of a man” printed on it in white.
At 10.39am Health Nerd (who calls himself an epidemiologist and says he writes for the Guardian and the Observer) tweeted, “The fires have been started. The sausages are burning. Anthony Green has been called from the deep. THE VOTING HAS BEGUN.” The reference to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) psephologist would have reminded people that the usual post-election telecast covering the vote was scheduled to start at 6pm. Green always features heavily in these productions, sometimes bringing in accurate predictions ahead of official announcements as the counting by Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) volunteers and staff progresses once the polling places close at 6pm.
After getting back from my aborted outing I had ironed my shirts and changed the sheets on the bed, putting the used set into the washing machine to clean. Now, the machine told me its cycle had finished and so I put the top sheet in the dryer with the pillow case, set the dial, and turned the machine on.
At 10.51am Sean Bradbery tweeted, “So far Scott Morrison's only achievement has been to turn the 8th safest seat in the country into a marginal.” He was referring of course to the fact that Turnbull had held the seat of Wentworth by a margin of around 18 percent. The previous day as I had been driving in my car, the ABC had told listeners that opinion polls had an independent candidate, Kerryn Phelps, a local GP for many years as well as a former president of the Australian Medical Association, and a City of Sydney councillor, neck-and-neck on a two-party-preferred basis with the Liberal Party’s candidate Dave Sharma.
The acronym “2PP” is used in discussing opinion polls to indicate that the number under discussion is the two-party-preferred number. Another acronym that is used is "2CP", which means two-candidate-preferred, and this acronym was used for this election because Kerryn Phelps, the front-runner in the opinion polls, was an independent, and had no party affiliation. The acronyms rely on the tendency for voters to give their preferences in a predictable way. So, for example, people who vote for the Australian Greens tend to give their second preferences to the Labor Party. So, in most contests the votes given to Greens candidates will be apportioned to the candidates of the Australian Labor Party when the second preferences of those voters are counted by the AEC.
How-to-vote cards that are handed out by the competing parties at polling places are printed 4-colour leaflets that show how the party in question wants people to mark their votes on the ballot paper, which is filled out using pencil in the booth. The resident has to get their name crossed off a master list by a volunteer, then they are given a ballot paper and go to an empty booth. (In general elections, residents get two ballot papers: one for the House of Representatives and one for the Senate. In the Wentworth by-election, there was naturally no Senate contest.) The booths are made of folded cardboard. Once in the booth, the resident marks the ballot paper with numbers in the order they want to preference candidates. The voter can follow the how-to-vote card of their party or they can mark the names of the listed candidates in any other order they choose. All of the boxes on the ballot paper have to be marked with a number otherwise the ballot is counted as informal and if that is the case the marked votes are not given to any of the candidates whose names appear on it.
At 10.54am Greens candidate for the seat of Wentworth, Dominick Wy Kanak, the deputy mayor of Waverly Municipal Council, a local-government authority in the area, tweeted using the @IndigenousX account, “Busy Bondi with enthusiastic Greens at the gate.” The tweet came with a photo showing a group of people, some with the party’s green T-shirts on, standing in a street with how-to-vote flyers in their hands. Kanak was in the centre of the photo wearing a T-shirt with a design made to look like the Aboriginal flag, in red, yellow and black.
At 11.13am Jieh-Yung Lo, a commentator, tweeted, “I am not a resident of Wentworth but as an Australian who believes in a fair go, I'll be cheering for Dr Kerryn Phelps because the well-being & survival of children, refugees & asylum seekers are more important than the survival of the Morrison Government.”
At 11.16am comedian Dan Ilic tweeted, “Bellevue Hill Public School #democracysausage review: Full bodied, tasty, good caramelisation of the onions, just a hint of forest floor, subtle flavours harking back to '07. Cheery fellas on the tongs. Good banter. $5.” The ironic tweet came with a photo showing a sausage held in a bread roll and a paper napkin held in the same hand.
At 11.19am Jack’s Project SafeCom tweeted a photo showing a cardboard sign that had been made for the by-election. It was branded with the name of the prominent independent candidate and had other words on it as well: “Where’s Malcolm? Vote 1 Kerryn Phelps. Send the Liberals a message.” The sign also featured a photo, in a cut-out, of the former prime minister.
At 11.26am Melbourne resident Lesley Howard retweeted a tweet from commentator Dee Madigan that had gone up at around 10am, and which had said, “No matter what happens today in Wentworth, climate change and the treatment of kids on Nauru are back on the political agenda. Massive kudos to @drkerrynphelps for that.”
At 10.28am Sydney resident Jodie Salmon tweeted a photo of her hand on her ballot paper in the booth. Her hand was holding a pencil. The tweet that came with the photo said, “The pen is mightier than the bonesaw.” The comment was a reference to the alleged Saudi killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, and was especially apposite as he had been killed for wanting to encourage more transparency in government in the Middle East. The tweet also had the hashtag #Journalismisnotacrime in it. The ballot paper in the photo was not numbered so it did not show how she had marked her preferences. The green slip of paper said at the top, “Number the boxes from 1 to 16 in the order of your choice.”
At 11.34am a professional photographer from Queanbeyan named Hilary tweeted a photo showing men and women wearing white T-shirts that had “Freedom for refugees” printed in black letters on the back and on the front. Some of them were holding their hands above their heads with their wrists crossed. The tweet also said, “Paddington.” The signage behind the volunteers was blue in colour and it was not immediately clear which party they were representing as they stood there on the pavement.
At 11.38am Blue Mountains resident Preston Towers retweeted a tweet that had gone up at around 11am from News-dot-com political reporter Sam Clench that had said, “I've located the best polling place in Wentworth - Paddington Public School. It has a market AND, even more importantly, cakes.” The tweet came with a photo showing a table covered with a white cloth on which a variety of cakes and other baked goods had been laid out. Towers had said, “THIS is more like it, though it’s not #DemocracySausage.”
I noticed at about the time I took the top sheet and the pillowcase out of the dryer, and put the bottom sheet in, that #wenthworthvotes had also been used by some people as well as the correct hashtag #wentworthvotes. The extra “h” was puzzling and I wondered how it had got in there.
At 11.46am Brisbane resident Fran Ross tweeted a tweet the progressive activist group GetUp! had put up about an hour before that retweeted one from Liberal Party MP Craig Laundy which had been posted at 9.29am, and which had said, “Bloke pulls up at a polling booth in a black BMW X5, gets out & and puts up a @GetUp sign .....”
At 12.06pm Towers put up another sausage tweet, this one retweeting one from ABC News’ Sydney digital editor, Riley Stuart, which said, “$5 for a sausage sizzle???! I’ll vote for anyone who brings these prices down ...” The tweet had a photo showing a hand holding a white bun with a sausage in it that had tomato sauce and mustard on it.
At 12.15pm LaLegale retweeted a tweet from a Geelong resident (“Grumpy, conservative old gay man”) named Eileen Twomey-Wright that had gone up about 30 minutes before, and which had said, “In the category of: Never Underestimate the Stupidity of the Electorate - #WenthworthVotes is trending number one on my list. Try: #WentworthVotes, people. Gawd.” The wrong hashtag was tending on Twitter.
At 12.20pm Central Coast man Troy Grant tweeted a tweet that Antony Green had put up about two hours before and that contained a photo showing the ABC’s psephologist standing on the pavement outside a voting booth dressed in Lycra. The tweet said, “The set-up at the Watson’s Bay polling place on my Tour de Wentworth ride this morning.”
At 12.23pm Milan resident Philippa Nicole Barr tweeted a photo showing a piece of A4 paper that had been stuck to the side of a garbage bin on a street. The paper had a picture of a polar bear on it and the caption, “Think of your children and your grandchildren. Vote Out Climate Deniers. Vote Out LNP.” Barr had commented, “Omg I love this. So DIY.”
At 12.40pm Jess ‘McGiggles’ Epps, who lives in Sydney, tweeted, “Would you like a damocrisy sossige with your misspelt hashtag?” The tweet came with a screenshot of the Twitter interface showing how many tweets the wrong hashtag had received. The people who had used it included ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas and the MEAA, the journalist’s union. Three minutes later Jodie M, a Melbourne resident, noted that the hashtags #voteWentworth and #WentworthByElection were also being used for the event.
At 12.47pm comedian Joel Creasey retweeted a tweet from theatre director Richard Carroll that had gone up at around 11.30am, that said, “Just voted for @kerrynwentworth @drkerrynphelps.” His tweet showed his face, with a fashionable, dark, three-day growth, as he stood in a suburban street outside a polling place.
At 12.53pm Maria, who only identified herself as living in Darug country, tweeted, “Sky news [sic] saying Dave Sharma is going to lose, but thinking it may be a scare tactic. Depends on preferences which are impossible to predict, my guess is as good as @AntonyGreenABC.”
At 1pm Melbourne resident Max Alexander retweeted a tweet from Jonathan Lea, who we have met before in this account, that had gone up an hour earlier and that said, “Government now telling me Wentworth is no longer conservative or their heartland but progressive. Say heartland is more Qld. Clearly repositioning to soften the blow for what’s coming...”
At 1.24pm shareholder rights activist Stephen Mayne retweeted a tweet from Sam Clench, who we have met before in this account, that had gone up a few minutes before, and that said, “Bit of juxtaposition going on here in Bondi.” The tweet came with a photo showing a poster of Scott Morrison putting his hand on the shoulder of Malcolm Turnbull. The poster also had the word “Remember” printed on it, and “Disunity. Dysfunction. Chaos.” In the background behind the poster was Bondi Beach, with its lifesavers’ tent and its blue and green waves and with people sitting on the sand in the sun. Bondi is in Wentworth.
At 3.23pm Fiona Caldarevic from the NSW town of Narrandera tweeted a photo that had gone up about five minutes before from ALPHRW founder Nart (there was no more information about him, but the ALPHRW might mean “ALP human rights watch”; it seemed to be an activist group) that showed a photo of the tourist advisory sign in the Blue Mountains that is set on a road indicating toward Wentworth Falls, a town that is situated there. The man after whom the federal division of Wentworth and the town are both named was William Charles Wentworth, a famous colonial-era statesman who was also an explorer in his youth. “Brilliant,” commented Caldarevic in her tweet.
At 3.24pm Jonathan Green, the editor of the literary magazine Meanjin, retweeted a tweet from Sky News Australia that had gone up on 17 October at around 10pm, that quoted a columnist for the News Corp vehicle The Australian, Chris Kenny, saying, ”The reason they're having the by-election is that @TurnbullMalcolm spat the dummy and ran away. He shouldn't be putting the Party through this. He's shown no loyalty to the Party that gave him the Prime Ministership.” Green added the comment, “They. Assassinated. Him.”
At 3.40pm Paul Colgan, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Business Insider Australia, tweeted, “All these people who like their martinis stirred rather than shaken coming out of the woodwork now. Fitting, given it's #WentworthVotes today.” The comment was a reference to the positions on some issues that had been voiced by the independent candidate Kerryn Phelps. In most elections, the ALP is the primary candidate against the Liberals, but in this election, because of the high net wealth of the average voter in the division, the ALP candidate was not considered a likely contender. But of course, the stakes in the contest were much more significant than Colgan had stated them, because it wasn’t just the personal philosophy of the two major contenders that was germane in the case, but rather what was in the balance on the day was the Coalition’s majority in Parliament. On top of that, Phelps has different views on such major issues as climate change and on the status of refugees detained in offshore camps operated by Australia. It was true however that on economic issues Phelps has a campaign platform that is not so different from that of the Liberals, including lower company taxes and policies that encourage entrepreneurship.
Phelps had said that if elected she would guarantee supply to the government (the ability to raise money for government business) but had not ruled out launching no-confidence motions in the lower house. The government’s ability to ensure supply and to avoid no-confidence motions in the lower house is critical to its survival. If it cannot ensure supply or if a no-confidence motion is successfully moved against it in the lower house, the outcome is likely to be a general election.
At 3.46pm Sam Clench tweeted, “One voter sums up the problem with the Liberals' stability argument: ‘That's a joke, isn't it? After what they did to Malcolm?’” The tweet contained a photo of the Kerryn Phelps cardboard sign mentioned earlier that featured a picture of the former prime minister.
Rain had been predicted for Sydney in the evening. At 3.49pm @giddeygirl tweeted, “Really raining now in Canberra. Thunder. Lightning. Wind. Heavy drops. Hooray.” The reference to the Queen song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was topical considering the T-shirt that the BBQ chef had been wearing in an earlier tweet. By 5.25pm the dark clouds had started to cover Sydney and thunder could be heard rumbling in the distance.
At 5.29pm @Roger192964382, a resident of Victoria, tweeted the odds that had been given that afternoon for the Wentworth 2PP contest by a betting agency. It wasn’t clear from the enclosed image which betting agency had given the odds, but the numbers were definitive. Phelps was on 1.32 (the lowest odds, meaning that she was the most likely to win based on the bets that had been received), Dave Sharma was on 3.20 and the ALP’s Tim Murray was on 16.
At 5.36pm I received a text message from my auto insurer notifying me that there was an increased chance of hail in my suburb. They send out these messages when storms come over the city. The last time I had received a similar message was in September. At 5.43pm Therese Taylor, a lecturer in history at Charles Sturt University in the Riverina, which is located in the southwest of NSW, tweeted, “Sydney settles down at the end of the day and waits to know the results of #WentworthVotes. A storm is rolling in, on the twilight sky. Atmospheric.” At 5.46pm the TV signal was lost for a few seconds due to the atmospheric disturbance the storm had created.
At 5.50pm @suthernx tweeted, “My prediction is Sharma will poll 30-35% of votes. Phelps will get up on the back of Greens preferences.” The TV signal was lost again momentarily. Outside, the sky was almost black with clouds, and thunder was sounding continuously with lightning flashing in the gloom. It was still 10 minutes before the polling places were scheduled to close and the storm was smothering the city in moisture and electricity. Rain was falling steadily and the sound of thunder was almost continuous. Flashes of lightning broke through the dark sky and from my apartment the city skyline was almost invisible. By about 5.07pm the centre of the storm had moved over my location just west of the central business district and the thunder had by then died down to a distant rumble that disturbed the evening from time to time. By then I was watching the ABC’s election coverage and the thunder could be heard in the background in the telecast as the storm moved east.
At 6.43pm Antony Green tweeted, “0.3% counted - LIB Projected [first preferences]=35.2%[,] down 27.1% [from the previous election, which was held in 2016].” The tweet contained a link to a story on the ABC’s website.
At 6.51pm Central Coast resident Bill Quinn tweeted, “My late mum always said that fair weather on polling day meant no change, and wild and/or wet weather meant a change. Just sayin'...”
At 6.52pm Antony Green tweeted:
2 of 41 counting centres reported.At 6.58pm Guardian journalist Katharine Murphy tweeted, “One [Darlinghurst] booth in now (Phelps territory), swing against the Liberals up to 30%.” “Terrible figures” for the Liberal Party, said Green on the TV just after 7pm adding that he wanted to wait a few minutes before making a prediction about the result.
PartyCode, First pref %, (matched PP [(polling places)] change in %)
LIB 57.1 (-23.4)
IND 23.9 (+23.9)
ALP 7.0 (-0.4)
OTH 6.2 (+1.9)
GRN 5.8 (-1.9)
At 7.04pm Edo Voloder, a resident of Dandenong in Victoria, tweeted, “By-election Primary Votes (1.6% counted): LIB 40.9 (-30.3) Phelps IND 33.1 (+33.1) ALP 9.9 (-2.1) GRN 8.8 (-3.6).”
At 7.13pm Antony Green tweeted:
6 of 41 counting centres reportedIt took more than a few minutes but at 7.17pm, less than 80 minutes after the polling places closed, Green called the election for Kerryn Phelps. At 7.20pm Katharine Murphy tweeted, “The Morrison government has lost its majority in the lower house.” At 7.21pm Green tweeted:
PartyCode, First pref %, (matched PP change in %)
IND 36.5 (+36.5)
LIB 33.9 (-24.6)
ALP 10.9 (-8.3)
GRN 10.4 (-6.9)
OTH 8.2 (+3.4)
9 of 41 counting centres reportedAt 7.23pm federal editor and Canberra bureau chief for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Bevan Shields, tweeted, “At the Paddington Central booth, the Liberal Party vote has collapsed from 60.43% under Malcolm Turnbull to just 33.7% now.” Just before 8pm on TV Green announced that, with 29.4 percent of the ballots counted, on a 2PP basis Phelps had won 54.7 percent of the votes. The TV coverage about 10 minutes later showed what was happening in North Bondi at the Phelps post-election event, where Macklemore’s 2017 song ‘Glorious’ was playing for the crowd. Phelps thanked her wife Kathy, her children, and her grandson.
PartyCode, First pref %, (matched PP change in %)
LIB 35.8 (-25.0)
IND 35.5 (+35.5)
ALP 10.9 (-7.2)
GRN 9.6 (-6.7)
OTH 8.2 (+3.4)
At 8.10pm Canberra journalist Samantha Maiden tweeted, “The whole comedy of the Liberals trying to look into banning gay teachers from schools or gay teenagers from private schools or whatever and then Double Bay saying SCREW YOU WE ARE SENDING IN THE LESBIANS! Is also ...delicious.”
At just before 8.30pm I logged into the coffee company’s website and ordered a kilo of my usual blend to be shipped to my home.
UPDATE 21 October 10.32am: Margin in the contest narrowing with postal votes still being counted. Last I saw, Phelps' lead was down to 905 votes, with thousands of votes still to be appraised.
UPDATE 21 October 11.06am: Antony Green on ABC News says the result of the contest will not be known for several days.
UPDATE 21 October 1.14pm: In a tweet from Sydney artist Jeffrey Wood that was retweeted at this time, there was a screenshot showing a page from the AEC website which had Phelps 889 votes ahead of Sharma with the time-stamp in the comment of 12.51pm.
UPDATE 21 October 4.13pm: In a tweet, Antony Green said, "Check count corrects increase Phelps lead from 884 votes to 1186 votes. Two-candidate preferred percentages Phelps (IND) 50.8%, Sharma (LIB) 49.2%."
UPDATE 21 October 5.39pm: A tweet from Miranda Devine, the right wing commentator: "Dr Kerryn Phelps has increased her lead by another 679 votes, to more than 1700, after a check count at Bondi Beach public school booth." The tweet carried a link to a story in the Australian newspaper.
UPDATE 23 October 3.40pm: Phelps is ahead by 1540 votes in the continuing count and Antony Green says on ABC News that it is unlikely that Sharma can overtake her going by the trends in the postal votes that are being received by the AEC.
UPDATE 24 October 6.08pm: The Phelps lead at this time was 1643 votes.
UPDATE 27 October 9.34am: ABC News announces that Phelps has won the by-election.
UPDATE 29 October 7.01am: Checked the AEC website again this morning and the most recent results are dated 25 October at 6.03pm. They showed Phelps ahead by 1783 votes.
UPDATE 2 November 9.38am: This morning a person on Twitter asked if the Wentworth by-election result would be announced today and at 9.22am the AEC's Twitter account answered, "No. Today is the final day for late arriving postal votes. The AEC will issue a media release and tweet in advance of the day when a declaration will be scheduled."
UPDATE 4 November 3.56pm: A Sydney Morning Herald story published today said that the announcement of the victory of Kerryn Phelps would take place on Monday and that she would be found to have won the contest by a total of 1851 votes.
UPDATE 5 November 10.39am: Business Insider Australia tweeted that Phelps had officially won the election, with a link to the story which quoted the AEC. The final margin between the two leading candidates was 1851 votes.
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