Familiar tune for Singh

LABOR Senator Lisa Singh faces the possibility of a repeat of 2016 when she was allocated a virtually unwinnable position on Labor’s Senate ticket.

Labor will announce the Senate ticket on September 8 at the state conference in Hobart.

Nominations for House of Representatives seats and the Senate ticket were advertised to Labor’s 2000 members on July 30.

Nominations will close on August 17.

State secretary Stuart Benson said members would vote in the run-up to the state conference.

“Those votes will be sealed in a ballot box and then on the Saturday morning of the state conference 211 delegates will vote,” Mr Benson said.

Senator Singh is not a member of the Left faction and in the double dissolution election of 2016 was dropped to sixth on the Senate ticket behind Anne Urquhart, Helen Polley, Carol Brown, Catryna Bilyk and John Short after negotiations between the Right and Left factions.

She attracted an extraordinary 20,741 personal votes to be one of five Labor senators elected. But in the 2019 half Senate election, due by May, three Labor Senators (Carol Brown, Catryna Bilyk and Lisa Singh) are up for re-election when Tasmanians will elect a total of six Senators.

Mr Benson said Labor was confident it could win three Senate seats at the election.

Polling analyst Kevin Bonham said that with six seats available he believed Labor would get two seats, the Liberals two seats and the Greens Nick McKim one seat.

“I think it will be Jacqui Lambie versus Labor for the last seat because I think it will be hard for [Nationals] Steve Martin to build up a profile in time,” he said.

“The issue will be whether Senator Singh’s below-the-line vote will be as high again or whether the novelty has worn off. In the last election 2016 while there was a backlash in some ways it benefited Labor by increasing its below-theline vote.”

Labor’s four sitting House of Representatives members Julie Collins (Franklin), Brian Mitchell (Lyons), Ross Hart (Bass) and the recently re-elected Justine Keay (Braddon) are almost certain to be renominated unopposed.