Talk:1998 Australian federal election

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discrepancy

What is disputed? 49.02 is the biggest discrepancy for the two party preferred vote count that established in 1949. Timeshift (talk) 03:53, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

First, how do you define "biggest discrepancy"? e.g. in 1975, the coalition won 55.7% of the 2pp vote but won 91/127 = 71.7% of the seats, a discrepancy of 16%. I suspect what you are trying to says is "the highest 2pp vote by a party to not win government", and if so it should be worded that way. Second point, you should provide a source saying this is the highest 2PP by a losing party. If you cannot find a source, perhaps it is not significant. In fairness to you, I see you have commented on the reverse situation at South Australian state election, 1989, so I can't accuse you of Labor supporter whinging :) So my main concern is that "biggest discrepancy" is not properly defined, though a source would still be nice. Peter Ballard (talk) 04:07, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

It is referenced here! The information is on two party preferred too, there are five elections where the majority of Australians didn't get the government they voted for, with 1998 the biggest on 49.02, with the smallest being 1990 on 49.90, the only time it was the "reverse situation". Timeshift (talk) 06:56, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I think Peter's point was with the confusing use of the word "discrepancy", not with the fact being cited. Orderinchaos 07:02, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Timeshift (talk) 07:37, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Trivia/Hacking

This section is rife with errors and should be removed. The website was not "hacked". The Liberal site had a web-form for candidates to submit their own details. This was highlighted in an email sent by an ALP researcher. The site was subsequently altered by university students. Only one of the four students involved was affiliated with a political party. The hosting of the site (assuming that claim is correct) is irrelevant to what actually happened. DermottBanana (talk) 04:46, 2 December 2008 (UTC)DermottBanana

I agree it is unsatisfactory as it stands. It should be referenced or deleted. Peter Ballard (talk) 05:10, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Peter, Given my close connection the incident, in the interests of Wikipedia and impartiality, I do not think it appropriate if I were to remove the section. You have (from earlier comments) more history editing this article, so I'll leave the actual removal or referencing/citing to others such as yourself. DermottBanana (talk) 00:05, 3 December 2008 (UTC)DermottBanana

During the 1998 Federal Election campaign, a Labor Party employee was linked to the hacking of the Liberal’s website where many links led to pornographic content. The hacker also wrote derogatory comments about several Liberal frontbenchers on the site. At the time, the attack was described as Australia’s first “electoral cyber warfare” incident.[1]

Can we get some clarity on what actually happened? Did hacking occur or was it used as a buzzword, and does it warrant inclusion in the article? Timeshift (talk) 06:18, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I'll look at Factiva later when my computer's in a more complete state. Orderinchaos 06:57, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Got in on the laptop. Right - seems a young intern at Beazley's office, who was named in all the coverage, got sacked for advising people how to get in (while saying he knew who did it he denied doing it himself) and another person also got sacked in the days following (who may or may not have been a volunteer - the news coverage is contradictory), Beazley and then deputy leader Evans made statements on it. It does seem a noteworthy event which was a bit of a false start to the first week of Labor's campaign. Orderinchaos 07:07, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Those who have asked what actually happened should read my first comment in this section. It was a webform designed for Liberal candidates to update their own details. There was no security in the way we'd now use the term "security" on the web - the URL of the 'edit and submit' page was found by looking at the "page source" of the Liberal front page at the time. A staffer in Beazley's office sent an email around highlighting this weakness. As these things do, the email went viral, and there were four people who subsequently edited the site. Amongst the changes were changes to candidate profiles (most notably the PM and senior ministers) such as Peter Reith (Min for Ind Relations) linked to the Maritime Union website, and some female ministers had links inserted that led to Asian pornographic websites.
The staff member in Beazley's office was dismissed when his email appeared in the media (Herald Sun printed the whole email, Canberra Times quoted from it). Later, a worker in a backbencher's campaign office was dismissed when he was revealed to be one of the four people involved in editing the site.
The websites being hosted by the same ISP (if true) is irrelevant to the "hacking" incident. To answer Timeshift above, was it 'hacking'? No. Does it warrant inclusion? That's for others to decide. DermottBanana (talk) 08:23, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

We rely on WP:RS, not WP:OR. If you have further RS that expands on what has been quoted from RS, by all means please provide it. Thanks. Timeshift (talk) 08:35, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, it wasn't so much hacking as unauthorised editing - hacking implies a level of subversion which the apparent lack of security around the site didn't require. I was an IT person in those days and I could entirely believe that a major political party's website may well have had no security whatsoever, people just put up web servers and dumped whatever they wanted on them, and attacks of this nature were very rare if in fact they occurred at all. Often holes were left quite deliberately for convenience purposes, so a web editor could log in from remote to update or post content. When I was writing commercial websites, the admin would often just send me the location to upload to and give me an open account with read/write access (often "guest/guest"). In those days, I could post outbound mail through any Internet server in the world, and often did as my ISP's mail server at the time sucked. Now such things are called "open relays" and generally do not exist except if the sysadmin is *really* incompetent. This incident also seems to have made publications like ZDNet and Computerworld which were read by sysadmins and quite likely acted upon. Orderinchaos 09:38, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I doubt this incident warrants inclusion. However, my 2c is I agree with OrderInChaos that there was a lot less IT security back in 1998. That said, if I leave the front door of my house open, that doesn't mean strangers have permission to come in and graffiti the walls. Pedantry over the term 'hacking' is silly... the point is that the electronic equivalent of break+enter plus vandalism occurred. Hacking is as good a term as any. If we decide to include. (Some old hobby programmers even object to the term 'hacking' being used to indicate illegal activity). --Surturz (talk) 23:13, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that there is almost zero chance that Beazley and the ALP hierarchy were involved. So in that sense, it is unrelated to the election and undue weight to include it in this article. But, if it was the first ever hacking of a political party's web site (as has been claimed), then I think it's quite an interesting story in its own right (for historical reasons) and deserves its own article. This article could then link to it. Peter Ballard (talk) 01:13, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I actually think it does belong in the article, but that it's an indication the article itself should be expanded. If we had a Week 1, Week 2 etc type campaign section the way our more modern election articles have, it wouldn't be hard to include a sentence or two on it. Political Chronicle 45(2) for example contains the following: "On the negative side for Labor was the dismissal during the campaign of a junior staffer accused of involvement in hacking into the Liberal Party’s website. Further negatives were gaffes by Gareth Evans who stumbled over deficit figures and Laurie Ferguson who managed to offend RSL members during an address to them." Given the sources we have we could say more than they have (theirs is a just-over-one-A4-page summary of the election campaign) but I think that indicates both the level of coverage and where it would fit. Orderinchaos 01:25, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

misleading

I think this text is a bit misleading:

The swing was sufficient in all states to deliver government to the ALP, but the uneven nature of the swing denied Kim Beazley the extra few seats necessary to command a majority in the House.

I think what the original editor was trying to say is that the 2PP vote in every state was more than 50% towards the ALP. The swing was clearly not "sufficient", otherwise Beazley would have won. I think we should note (here, not in the article) that the ALP swing over 50% was only on a two party preferred basis ie. the ALP did not get over 50% in their own right (which would strongly indicate electoral unfairness). I'd prefer text such as The ALP received more than 50% of the two party preferred vote in all states but I don't have the refs to assert this. In actual fact the electoral unfairness of the representational system is much more marked for the One Nation party than the ALP at this election - they got 8.43% of the primary vote but 0.0% of the seats. But them's the breaks. The 1990 election saw Labor retained despite getting less than 50% of the 2PP --Surturz (talk) 07:54, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I largely agree. I would reduce the emphasis on the "swing". To talk about a "sufficient swing" usually means the point at which the Mackerras pendulum produces a majority, assuming the swing is uniform. That point could be above or below 50%. But the detail of the Mackerras pendulum is rather esoteric.

The fact that Labor achieved more than 50% of the tpp vote is much more interesting. And this is what needs to be emphasised. I disagree with you that it matters how much of this was primary and how much was preferences. It doesn't. Single member consituencies are designed to discriminate against minor parties like One Nation. That's why we have preferences; so these voters still get a say.

And Labor certainly didn't get above 50% in all states. They would have certainly fallen short in South Australia and Queensland to name a couple. Digestible (talk) 10:15, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

No opinion whatsoever on the text although I think Surturz has a point. Just here to dump random facts in case it helps. Source is v1_6.xls on the 1993-1998 results CD.

• NAT 50.98 +4.61 | 67/148, needed 7 (11 close, see below)
• NSW 51.54 +4.11 | 22/50, needed 3 (2 close, see below)
• VIC 53.53 +3.22 | 19/37, over 0.5 (2 close, see below)
• QLD 46.95 +7.17 | 8/27, needed 5.5 (5 close, see below)
• WA 49.46 +5.46 | 7/14, on target
• SA 46.89 +4.15 | 3/12, needed 3 (2 close, see below)
• TAS 57.32 +5.74 | 5/5, over 2.5 (all won)
• ACT 62.44 +6.98 | 2/2, over 1 (all won)
• NT 50.57 +0.94 | 1/1, over 0.5 (all won)

Eden-Monaro, Richmond, La Trobe, McEwen, 5 Queensland seats (Herbert, Hinkler, Longman, Moreton, Petrie), Adelaide and Makin were all within 1% (i.e. 2% 2pp margin or less). Eden-Monaro (49.84%) and Herbert (49.90%) were the tightest margins on Coalition-won seats (although Herbert took in the entire Labor vote in the area, nearby booths were solid Coalition). If other statistics are needed to resolve what needs to be on the article, let me know - happy to email the relevant spreadsheet as well. Orderinchaos 12:44, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Percentage points

The number alone is OK in the infobox, as long as it doesn't have a percentage sign next to it. The wrongly used instances of "percent" that I changed within the article, fortunately have not been reverted back to percentage. It is not a case of "um, prove it", as I saw in an edit summary. Percentage point is very very different from percentage. A 0.25% rise in the interest rate is from 5.0% to 5.0125%. A 0.25-point rise is from 5.0% to 5.25%. Tony (talk) 00:59, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm fine with no % in there as it is clearly wrong. However, I'd definitely oppose "percentage points" as swings are never anything else, and it's unwieldy and unnecessary. Frickeg (talk) 01:02, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Per Frickeg. Timeshift (talk) 01:07, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Why are you talking in circles? Did you read what I wrote above? Here it is in caps, in case you missed it: THE NUMBER ALONE IS OK IN THE INFOBOX. It is a waste of time continuing to bang on about it when we all seem to agree. Or perhaps you want to foment conflict. Tony (talk) 01:14, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Um, just clarifying. Don't take offence. Frickeg (talk) 01:46, 23 July 2010 (UTC)