Following John Tattersall‘s ignominious defeat in the Victoria park by-election, there’s more bad news for the Socialist Alliance: on March 18 there was an election in South Australia, for the seat of Port Adelaide. At a time when disgust and rage with contemporary capitalism are profoundly felt and deeply rooted — and we are living through a period of many-sided struggle, conscious and unconscious, against the virulent disease that is the production-for-profit system — the SA contested it.
Here are the results:
Port Adelaide
Name // Party // Votes // % Swing
(Bold identifies the sitting MP)
Anne McMenamin // GRN // 980 // 6.3 // +2.5
James Troup // FFP // 838 // 5.4 // +5.4
Kevin Foley // ALP // 10,027 // 64.5 // +6.7
Anna Micheel // LIB // 2,903 // 18.7 // -4.9
Darren Fairweather // ONP // 234 // 1.5
Amy Van Oosten // DEM // 369 // 2.4 // -3.8
John McGill // [SA] // 205 // 1.3 // +1.3
[Informal // 802 // 4.2]
This could be considered a “bad” result. After all, for a socialist party to receive 29 votes less than a party on the far right isn’t exactly “good”… is it? Dunno, maybe March 18 was a time when disgust and rage with contemporary capitalism was only vaguely intuited, and the deeply rooted were in bed, fitfully sleeping through a period of many-sided struggle, almost always unconscious; dreaming, perhaps, of defeating the virulent disease that is the production-for-profit system… later.
Oh yeah.
There were also elections in Tasmania over the weekend. Never ones to set the media ablaze, the SA in Tasmania battled it out with the elusive ‘Tasmania First Party’ and those-who-choose-to-dress-casually for last place. Here are the results from the two seats — Denison and Franklin — in which the SA stood candidates.
Let’s see who won, shall we?
Denison
Party // Votes // % Quotas // Swing
Labor Party // 25,665 // 47.4 // 2.90 // -3.6
Liberal Party // 14,333 // 26.4 // 1.50 // +3.4
Greens // 12,981 // 23.9 // 1.30 // -0.6
Tasmania First // 283 // 0.5 // 0.00 // +0.5
Socialist Alliance // 216 // 0.4 // 0.00 // -0.3 [Linda Seaborn]
Group F // 401 // 0.7 // 0.00 // +0.7
Ungrouped // 437 // 0.8 // 0.00 // +0.8
Franklin
Party // Votes // % Quotas // Swing
Labor Party // 26,794 // 47.2 // 2.90 // -4.5
Liberal Party // 17,858 // 31.4 // 1.90 // +7.8
Greens // 10,888 // 19.2 // 1.10 // -1.2
Socialist Alliance // 232 // 0.4 // 0.00 // +0.1 [Matthew Holloway]
Ungrouped // 962 // 1.7 // 0.10 // +1.7
Hmmm… not exactly a doubleplusgood result there either comrades.
(I give it twelve more months, tops.)