Droughts - the 40,000 year story - posted by Graham

I've been following the story of the extinction of Australia's megafauna for some time. It originally seemed reasonable to blame man as the extinction occurred at about the same time as we arrived in Australia - about BC 40,000. This... More

A bitchy former leader spoils ABC election coverage - posted by Jeff Wall

I have been watching election night television and radio coverage for more than four decades, but it took until Saturday night’s ABC television coverage of the Victorian election to see the worst ever “performance” by a panellist. The ABC coverage... More

Can the Greens challenge the result? - posted by Graham

I'm unfamiliar with Victorian electoral laws, but in a just system, you'd think that the Greens would have the right to challenge the result, at least in Melbourne, if the Labor campaign was anything like it was in Northcote. The... More

Congratulations to Steve Bracks - posted by Graham

Steve Bracks joins John Cain as the only Labor Premier of Victoria to win three successive elections. As we predicted the Greens did well in a number of inner city seats, but not well enough to win any. Overall their... More

Water Politics - posted by Graham

This is a second piece of analysis by Mark Bahnisch, which you can also read at Crikey! The Victorian election is the first to be held since the crystallisation of the link between the drought and climate change has fundamentally... More

Lower House seats to watch for Greens influence - posted by Graham

Because of the small sample from the Victorian election (only 254 responses), and the strong skew to the Greens, I haven't done too much analysis of the data to-date. You can make some useful quantitative conclusions from our qualitative surveys... More

Focus group on Victorian election - posted by Graham

This is Mark Bahnisch's analysis of our focus group last night, a version of which also appears in Crikey! today. Victorian Premier Steve Bracks in an unguarded moment gave the game away – the election has been designed to be... More

Vic Liberals make correct call on Green preferences - posted by Graham

If the New South Wales Liberals had been on the ball, the Greens would have had their first lower house beach-head in mainland Australia in Port Jackson. If the Liberals had preferenced the Greens' Jamie Parker ahead of Sandra Nori,... More

Victorian Liberals - where the bloody hell are they? - posted by Graham

If the coming Victorian election were voluntary it looks to me from our polling that the Liberal Party would be all but wiped out. When we do our online polls we always hear from a disproportionate number of Greens, about... More

ABS wins the day at Liberal Convention - posted by Graham

Various people are portraying it as a victory for their faction, but the only thing that can be said with certainty about last weekend's Queensland Liberal Party convention is that it was a defeat for Santo Santoro. Whether it will... More