The rebuilding effort for the Family First Party (FFP) led by its new National Director Lyle Shelton has received a taste of just how hard it will be to build a political home for Christian and other social conservatives.
The sudden resignation of former SA Liberal heavyweight Vickie Chapman forced her electorate of Bragg into a bye-election within weeks of the state election. FFP scored a low vote of 2.3 per cent at the Bragg with the result declared today. The Liberal candidate, Jack Batty, scraped home with 50.5 per cent of the first preference vote.
The big improvers were the greens who boosted their vote to 14.9 per cent – an increase that matched the FFP vote.
Chapman was especially unpopular with FFP because of her steering decriminalisation of abortion through the State parliament while Attorney-General in the Liberal government ousted in March. In common with new laws passed in other states, the new abortion law makes terminations more widely available.
But Bragg is hardly Bible belt territory – if Adelaide has one. It consists of “teal-like” wealthy suburbs in the inner east of Adelaide. And as Matthew Abrahams, a prominent SA political columnist points out, Bragg was a weird bye-election. It is unusual for a prominent opposition member to resign from parliament so quickly after losing government.
“Within weeks of a crushing election defeat for her party, our Vickie decided she didn’t want to stick around for the next four years,” Abrahams wrote.
“Quitting a safe seat for no good reason while the ashes of an election are still hot created the perfect conditions for losing a by-election. And the Liberals really deserved to lose Bragg.”
In the March state election, FFP scored 2.9 per cent of the upper house vote but came third among the minor parties behind One nation and the Liberal Democrats.
FFP scored 4.9 per cent of the Bragg vote at the state election.
This result means at the bye-election, with the FF party resources focused on Bragg, their vote halved in few weeks.
Most likely because Labor and the Libs concentrated their firepower on Bragg.
But FFP can take comfort from coming first among the minor parties this time around.
John, a big element of why the Family First vote halved is because Christians woke up to the fact that Family First preferenced Labor in many key seats, helping achieve a landslide victory for the ALP in the State election. The Family First vote is based largely around the Christian right and pro-life communities which would generally lean Liberal. Additionally, Family First trumpeted the alleged slightly more pro-life views of Jack Batty, the Liberal candidate, thus consigning themselves to irrelevance.
Thanks, Peter. FFP and the ACL have both switched from their traditional support for second preferences to the Liberal party, to endorsing individuals. In part in SA that was due to how politicians voted on abortion. You make the interesting point that their base did not like this change.