Greens v PUP for last Senate seat
WA's Senate re-run election is set to boil down to a battle between the Greens' Scott Ludlam and the Palmer United Party's Dio Wang, according to an analysis of the preference flows.
ABC election expert Antony Green told The West Australian his computer analysis of the preference allocations showed the Liberal Party would win three of the six Senate spots on offer - the first, third and fifth.
Based on the primary votes made at the Federal election in September, the Labor Party would win the second and fourth spots, leaving the sixth to be decided in a dogfight between Senator Ludlam and Mr Wang.
Labor, which on last year's Senate re-count was reduced to just one senator, would benefit from a deal with the Australian Sex Party.
At the September election the Sex Party, which gained 1.5 per cent of the vote, preferenced the Sports Party and the Greens ahead of the ALP.
This time, the Sex Party has preferenced the ALP ahead of the Greens, directing them to Labor's number two candidate Louise Pratt.
Senator Pratt will also benefit by being directly preferenced ahead of Labor's number one candidate, Joe Bullock, by some micro-parties.
Mr Green said that Senator Ludlam's survival depended on achieving a higher primary vote and greater support for the ALP.
A candidate needs 14.3 per cent of the vote to secure a Senate position. That can be accumulated in a primary vote or through cascading preferences from other excluded candidates.
Mr Green said closer analysis of the micro-parties showed the Sustainable Population Party and the HEMP party were the best placed to sneak in with the sixth spot.
He said the Sports Party's Wayne Dropulich, who won a spot in the bungled re-count, had little chance this time.
"The last spot will come down to Ludlam, Palmer United or one of the micro-parties," he said.
In Federal Parliament, the WA Senate election dominated proceedings from all major parties.
Labor signalled it would use the next 2½ weeks to demand Prime Minister Tony Abbott release the Commission of Audit.
The ALP's pollster UMR conducted "robo-polling" at the weekend showing two-thirds of the 2300 respondents wanted to know which programs would be axed under the commission's proposals before they voted on April 5.
"Why is the Prime Minister hiding his 900-page plan of nasty cuts to West Australians," Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said.
Mr Abbott said the report would be released once the Government had finished its deliberations.
He accused Mr Shorten of hiding his true intentions on the carbon and mining taxes from WA voters, asserting Mr Shorten had "situational and temporal principles".
"This is a Leader of the Opposition who supports one thing in Perth and a different thing in Canberra," Mr Abbott said.