The much-loved Idle Speculation series will henceforth double as a vehicle for updates on preselection and other election-related action. Developments of note from the past week:
Queensland Senate (Liberal): Next Saturday, about 250 Queensland Liberal preselectors will determine who will fill the vacancy created by Santo Santoro’s departure. The person chosen will serve out the remainder of Santoro’s term, which ends in July next year. What happens then is yet to be determined. Before Santoro’s departure, the party had decided upon a ticket with Ian Macdonald at number one, Santo Santoro at number two, Young Liberals president Mark Powell at number three, and businesswoman and disabled advocate Sue Boyce at number four. The party administration is yet to determine whether the second position will be filled by promoting Powell up the order, or by holding a new preselection. Many an eyebrow was raised last weekend when Powell withdrew from the race to fill the short-term vacancy, instead throwing his support behind former state party leader Bob Quinn (who reportedly has the support of the Prime Minister). This was despite Powell’s links to the Santoro faction and its traditionally strained relations with Quinn. The Gold Coast Bulletin reports speculation that "the Santoro mob have withdrawn their candidate and opposition to Mr Quinn so they can regroup before the federal election to push Mr Powell into the No. 2 spot, hoping Mr Quinn’s popularity, if he is a Senator then, would be enough to launch all three into the Senate from the third position". A further motivation might have been a desire to thwart Sue Boyce, the favoured candidate of state party leader Bruce Flegg. Flegg’s "western suburbs" grouping played a similar spoiling role against Powell last year when it blocked his preselection bid for Quinn’s old state seat of Robina, by shifting support from its own candidate to the unaligned Ray Stevens. Other candidates for the Senate vacancy include Ted O’Brien, chairman of the Australian Republican Movement; David Moore, staffer to Longman MP Mal Brough; and Doug Young, a lawyer "specialising in the resources sector".
Queensland Senate (Greens): Fairfax’s Brisbane Times website reports that environmental lawyer Larissa Waters is believed to have had a "landslide" win over Juanita Wheeler in last Thursday’s Greens preselection vote. Andrew Landeryou’s sources have told him of a 300-100 margin in Waters’ favour, although Greens supporters might be inclined to take issue with aspects of Landeryou’s account. The party is "expected to make an announcement" of the result next week.
NSW Senate (Labor): The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Labor’s state general secretary Mark Arbib is contemplating a run for the Senate, contrary to earlier reports he hoped to unseat the notoriously unproductive Michael Hatton in the safe lower seat of Blaxland. It is reported that two of Labor’s winnable seats will go to incumbent Ursula Stephens of the Right and Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national secretary Doug Cameron, who has the numbers to unseat incumbent George Campbell for the position reserved for the Left. It is not clear which of the three hopefuls would take the safe first and second positions, and which would have to settle for the dubious third. Anne Davies of the Sydney Morning Herald reports speculation that Arbib’s jockeying for union support played a role in state Blacktown MP Paul Gibson’s ill-fated appointment to cabinet.
Page (NSW, Nationals 5.5%): Clarence Valley councillor Chris Gulaptis has won the Nationals preselection for this north coast seat, which has been left vacant by the retirement of sitting member Ian Causley. The Northern Star reports Gulaptis won "comfortably" with over half the first preference vote, from a field that included local doctor Sue Page, Kyogle mayor Ernie Bennett, Ballina councillor Sharon Cadwallader and radio presenter Neil Marks. The paper also reports that Labor is "at least two months" away from selecting its own candidate. Those said to be "considering" a run are Clarence mayor Ian Tiley and former state MP Janelle Saffin. Saffin was a Lismore-based upper house member from 1995 until 2003, when she withdrew from preselection after it became clear she would not retain a winnable position on the party ticket.
Dobell (NSW, Liberal 4.8%). Amid little fanfare, Health Services Union official Craig Thompson has been endorsed as Labor’s candidate to recover the central coast seat it lost to current Liberal member Ken Ticehurst in 2001.
401 Comments
If there is a Quinn-Powell deal, that’s great news. At some point, the party has to settle down and remember that you can only have real power by winning the election. The only drawback, other than Flegg’s discomfort, would be that electing 3 Liberals would probably mean the end of Ron Boswell, and the Nats would carry a grievance that could poison the state Coalition.
It might be good news for the Liberals if they can get their act together, but I’m not sure which would be worse; the elderly redneck (Boswell) or the deranged Young Liberal (Powell).
Question for everyone, do you think there is an advantage in having lots of candidates (six) in a senate group so that you dominate the ballot paper by being taller than the other groups ? even if there is no realistic chance of anyone but the first candidate being elected ?
Yes there is Speaker. I was 5th on a Vic 06 ticket. The reason was that even though I cant win, people who trust me know who I would like them to vote for. I had to withdraw for health reasons, but I was told they voted differently because of my replacement.
But this probably only works if there are people who know you dont know who you support. For instance, I doubt people who know Adam dont know he supports the ALP.
Mr O’Brien obviously isn’t too optimistic about his original assignment.
Beating Bevis in Brisbane is a Tall order.
Has anyone in South Australia heard if the Dems or FF have elected their candidates for Wakefield Makin or Kingston?
Dave C said
But this probably only works if there are people who know you dont know who you support. For instance, I doubt people who know Adam dont know he supports the ALP.
Does Adam support the ALP????? I thought he supported the CPA or at the very least the SA
Bill, you’re being a knob. A silly, Green knob.
Oh Fulvio you say the nicest things! The ALP and Greens a marriage made in heaven. mmmm Not !
Call it a marriage of convenience then, Bill. The ALP will give you a little of what you want, without pandering to your excesses,and while it won’t be great sex, it will be tolerable. The Libs will abuse you , give you nothing, screw you senseless and eventually destroy your soul.
Take your pick, there is no other suitor.
well said Fulvio!
William, is the Mark Reynolds who is the Labor candidate in Tangney the same Mark Reynolds who was the Democrat candidate in Swan in 2004?
The SA Dems has alot of Reynolds’.
Even their website is created by Reynolds Technology.
Adam: No.
Photos here and here.
Landeryou has no sources. He makes crap up and defames anyone he can. You might want to choose better sources, like anything else on the internet really.
David: thanks
What a load of rot Daniel! Landeryou runs one of the best and most insightful political sites you will find. Landeryou over the years has proven himself to be streets ahead of every other gasbag on the net that think’s he/she has the inside word. His reports on the machinations of the Victorian ALP and Liberal Party for instance often lead to the mainstream media picking up the issues. Landeryou’s combative style might not suit everyone – just remember he is someone who is simply someone that gives no quarter but asks for none in return. Keep up the great work Andrew!
I agree Daniel.
Landeryou also says that the Greens will probably have the BoP after the election. Much as I wish this to be true, its impossible.
The other thing I don’t understand is how a Victorian ALP muckraker could possibly know anything about QLD Greens internal matters when a lot of them dont yet know the result.
As for his allegations about “supplementing” ballots, he is the expert there, having done it numourous times at Uni.
Wouldn’t exactly call Wheeler a heaveyweight, although Drew Huttun is, yet isn’t mentioned. Anyone care to guess why the apparent go to guy in QLD has not even run?
I dont know if William can or would even want to but maybe there could be a area for contributors pics so we know who we are all talking to. Just an idea.
It probably has something to do with this:
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/joint/commttee/J8527.pdf
(open the pdf and search for “Hutton”)
I sat through this committee hearing, where Senator Brandis thoroughly exposed Hutton for the shonk and hypocrite he is. It was most entertaining for those of us who remember Hutton’s double-dealing role in the 1995 Qld election.
bill, one of the many reasons I left Wikipedia is that its policy of allowing anonymous editing makes it far too easy for people to be slandered by irresponsible anonymous editors. I am now involved with a new encyclopeadia project, Citizendium, which requires contributors to edit under their real names. This greatly reduces the level of anonymous abuse and slander. Given the behaviour of “Isabella” and one or two others, I think William should introduce a similar policy here. I take full responsibility for everything I say here, and so should everyone else.
Thats a good idea Adam
Adam, all it says is that Drew hid where funds where coming from. You seem to miss the point that this is more then a bit hypocritical since the ALP, Libs and Nats have been doing the very same thing nationwide for at least 20 years.
Brandis alleges firstly that Hutton was willing to take money from property developers while pretending not to, and alleges secondly that he conspired to evade the disclosure requirements of the Electoral Act. It’s hard to construe the minutes he produced at the hearing any other way.
Who is this Hutton? Is he some sort of green hero??? all i hear are negatives about him
He was the lead Green Senate candidate in Qld in 2004, and also ran in 1993 and 1998. In 1995 as leader of the Qld state Greens he did a preference deal with the Coalition that helped that well-known friend of the environment Rob Borbidge to win the state election. In exchange he got Liberal preferences in Mt Coot-tha but still couldn’t win it.
Kalgoorlie’s Labor Party pre-selection is basically a two-horse race between Paul Robson (unaligned) and Sharon Thiel (Left). The Kalgoorlie branch is firmly behind Robson who has a high profile. A decision is expected by April 24.
Robson would pose a bigger a threat to Liberal Barry Haase.
The outcome will largely be decided on whether Labor can sell its alternative policy on IR. WA has the highest rate of AWAs in the country and many of these are in the Kalgoorlie electorate.
Another interesting contest to watch in WA is the Senate. The Nationals have selected a high-profile candidate in Tony Crook, who used to be state chairman of the Royal Flying Doctor Service. He is well known in the Goldfields.
He has been in close contact with Barnaby Joyce, who Kalgoorlie Liberal MP Barry Haase famously labelled “Barnaby Joke”.
Adam a right winger then? Hutton
Like Adam, everyone I write is under my own name.
Drew Hutton has been involved in Green politics for a long-time. I first became aware of him when he ran for the Lord Mayoralty of the Brisbane City Council in 1991 when Jim Soorley was unexpectedly elected. In that election Hutton received about 10% of the vote. Since then, he’s run in a number of elections and came closest to being elected to a position in the last Senate election.
In the 1995 Qld state election, Hutton received about 25% of the vote in the seat of Mt Coot-tha, coming third behind the ALP and Liberal candidates – this is (to my knowledge) the best result for any Greens candidate in any seat in any Qld state election. (My impression is that Mt Coot-tha would be one of the few seats that the Greens would ever have a realistic chance of winning.)
I know nothing about any deals Hutton did on behalf of the Greens with the Coalition before the 1995 election. I just want to mention that many Qld’s at that time were very unimpressed with the Goss govt and were hoping that the opposition would be reasonable – there was a big swing in Brisbane to the Coalition, delivering a few seats and bringing a few otherwise Labor seats to the edge of being won by the Liberals (eg Ferny Grove and Everton). Many Greens voters were mightily unimpressed with the Goss government and were wondering if the opposition could be worse.
Of course, how the coalition performed in govt is another matter – but I thought I’d just describe the mood in Queensland before the 2005 election.
A right-wing Green? Is there such a thing? I don’t know what his views are – I only know about his behaviour. If you read the committee Hansard I posted you will see what an embarrassment he was to Bob Brown. Brandis, who is a very smart lawyer, chopped Brown up.
The last high-profile Senate candidate the Nats ran in WA was Hendy Cowan, a former Deputy Premier, who polled 2.3%. The Nats just don’t seem to have a base in WA any more.
It’s make or break for the Nats in WA at state level with one-vote one value. Brendon Grylls has taken them down the independent path which was successful for Peter Ryan in Victoria.
The demographics are different though and I think he has a tougher task.
Crook’s performance in the Senate will be a good indicator. I think he’ll do better than 2.3%.
Sasha, I don’t dispute that the Goss govt was on the nose and would probably have lost anyway, or that the southeastern freeway was a very bad idea politically. The fact is however that Hutton did do a preference deal, in the full knowledge that this would help the Qld Nats, with their well-known utter disinterest in environmental issues (not to mention all their other crimes), back into government.
Has there been a WA state redistribution yet under the new Act? How many seats are the Nats (or the Libs for that matter) likely to lose?
The state redistribution is yet to be announced. William would know more, but it will be a tough contest between the Nats and Libs in several areas, including Paul Omodei’s seat.
In my area Nats leader Grylls (Merredin) will probably have to face up against popular Liberal MP Graeme Jacobs (Roe).
The WA state redistribution is presently at the suggestion (i.e. first) stage.
link
Adam, I wasn’t wanting to discuss the preference deal (which wasn’t all one-way and helped Labor retain the extremely marginal seat of Whitsunday) – it is true that they did do some sort of preference deal. I wouldn’t be surprised if another such deal would be anaethema for at least 10 years unless the Qld Labor govt goes very bad indeed, due to people’s memories of the preference arrangement in the 1995 election.
I think that Labor would have won the 1995 election if the koala tollroad hadn’t been proposed, as the tollroad acted, politically, as a symbol for what people thought was wrong with the govt. If the tollroad hadn’t been proposed, the swing against the govt would have been less, and it’s possible that not all of the four seats in the tollroad’s area (Springwood, Mansfield, Redlands and Albert) would have been lost. These seats had only been won by Labor in ‘89 and were, to my memory, marginal (Mansfield and Albert certainly were) – but it’s quite possible that Springwood (held by then-Environment Minister Molly Robson) and/or Redlands would have been held by Labor if the tollroad hadn’t been proposed.
Adam said
A right-wing Green? Is there such a thing?
The Greens would be the most multi dimensional of all the parties
Re Anonymity:
One of the many pleasures of this site is hearing the inside goss and an insistance on identification will cause the loss of this as people will be unwilling to identify themselves as a source.
I do not think identification will prevent slander and slagging. We have the recent example in the NSW topics where a poster who identified himself was guilty of fairly gross examples of both.
The Greens would be the most multi dimensional of all the parties
The Greens are hard left and not multi-dimensional at all.
Andrew Landeryou’s blog is a fantastic read. I’d recommend it to anyone.
Who can forget his excellent victorian election coverage ? Better by far than the media, and his count updates were spot-on and ahead of the VEC and MSM by hours.
He actually wrote an article about me/my site once where he implied I have mental problems and am an idiot savant, however all the insults were backhanded compliments and it was good for my traffic.
What if Santo pulls a Denver Beanland and refuses to take his medicine?
http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/
Maybe he is doing a Harry Quick and waiting to see who his successor will be before actually departing.
Maybe he is thumbing his nose at the voters just to be different.
Landeryou’s blog is a good read only if you feel like a bit of fantasy reading.
To clarify your comments on Dobell: Craig Thompson has announced he will be a candidate for ALP preselection at an odd little press conference. He has not been preselected.
He moved from Melbourne to the Central Coast with the sole aim of becoming the Member for Dobell. He couldn’t stomach living with the plebs in Dobell, however, and moved to a more swanky area in nearby Robertson. He then set about creating a dodgy group “Coastal Voice” to supposedly represent the community and sent out glossy brochures and staged media events for some time to lift his local credentials. Many local preselectors aren’t so impressed with his style however, and he has upset a local branch by trying to join and heavy the executive despite being ineligible (ie not living in the electorate).
Methinks Terrigal Lad is an embittered ALP branch member. Surely Craig Thompson couldn’t be worse than any of the other candidates Labor has been putting up Federally on the coast (Belinda Neal, Trish Moran, and whoever ran for Dobell last time). I mean who else are you going to nominate…. Daniel Cook?? Jamie Clements??
LOL big time.
Not embittered Jack! Just a parochial (like most Coasties) connected ALP supporter local reporting back the goss. I don’t know that he’d be better or worse than the people you’ve mentioned, but I don’t think locals would stomach another unionist, and a carbet-bagging unionist at that. It was David Mehan that ran last time in Dobell – a union official.
Terrigal lad, I think you are mistaken. The NSW preselections are being done at head office this time, not by local preselectors. Nominations for Dobell closed on 4 April and it appears that Thompson was the only nominee and was thus duly selected.
Adam, you are right (according to The Australian website). Apologies for that, obviously not as connected as I thought… must be the holidays
Interesting that they call him a “community leader.”
Most journalists are lazy and will repeat whatever they are told in press releases.
The speaker said
The Greens are hard left and not multi-dimensional at all.
I find it strange that all the Green Party experts are not actual members. Here in South Australia we have ex Democrats, ex left ALP ex CPA/DSP/SA/SP. environmental activists some union activists and a large ex small l Liberal grouping. In fact i would say the Greens are just left of center. The now disintegrating Socialist Alliance ( The ISO formally left the SA on the weekend) is hard left. The SA is now under 500 members and will fold soon leaving all the micro Socialist parties to die quick death
The funny thing is if the Socialist Alliance and its (former) constituent elements think that that they have any impact on politics whatsoever. Their ideas could be moreso described as “disconnected from reality” rather than hard-left.
I think the news of SA’s demise will prove to be false at the end of the day. Resistance, the DSP, DSEL, SA and whatever else that particular brand of 4th Internationalists want to call themselves (although I do remember the DSP formally leaving the 4th Int some years ago, but you know what I mean…) have managed to survive one way or another for almost 40 years, so I don’t think the far-left has died out yet. The same goes for the CPA, SPA, ISO and all the other brands of socialist/communist/trotsyist parties. They will continue on with their own form of ultra-leftism for many years.
As to the Greens being ‘hard-left’, well that rather depends on where you place the center. In any normal context they are a left party, but with many of the values and policies that would seem at home in a Fraserite Liberal Party (ie; small business). And yes they have policies that are much further to the ‘left’ of the ALP than most other parties would consider. But in general, the structure and organisation of the party places them more and more in the mainstream of Australian (and global) politics.
While it might sometimes be fun to bait Greens (just as it is to do to any party!), being as dismissive as some have been on this list does not advance political discussion or the understanding of future political trends. For my part, I think the Greens will be around for a number of years yet, but whether they evolve fully into a mainstream party like the ALP, taking on the mantle of ‘reasonableness’ and commiting to the maintenance of the political and economic status quo is something will only be shown in the fullness of time.
On WA: thankyou David for the update on the info on the state of play in the WA redistribution – I am still wondering if any here were considering making any comments or submissions regarding the redistribution?
As to The OC & Mr Landeryou – I would be interested if any Qld Greens would like to comment on his story so far…
All you have to do is take a look at where the Greens poll well to see that they are multi-dimensional. In Victoria (at State level), we poll over 20% in the inner-city, (former) Labor heartland areas (Melbourne, Richmond, Northcote, Brunswick), but we also poll between 15-20% in Liberal strongholds such as Hawthorn and Kew. Furthermore, we poll around 20% in Albert Park and Prahran, where the ALP and Liberals poll 40% each, and even out in regional Victoria, though we are weaker than in the metro areas, we still poll 10% in Ballarat, and have two Councillors in the Greater Bendigo Council, including the current (and former) Mayor.
So Andrew Landeryou and all those self-proclaimed Greens experts really don’t know what they’re talking about. I occasionally read Landeryou’s blog for its amusement value – a man in his mid/late 30s who still rants like a ill-informed student and ends his posts with “Game on” can hardly be taken seriously. He also undermines his arguments (particularly those against the Greens) with his vitriol. One example which had me chuckling was when he said:
“The battle is shaping up between new kid on the block luscious Larissa Waters and heavyweight National Convenor Juanita Wheeler, sloth club member Anja Light and two others who can’t win whose names our stoned Greens sources were unable to recall.”
So, his sources were “stoned” and apparently suffering from amnesia yet he believed every word they said? Oh dear. Sounds like a bit of desperation to me.
I would think (this could be easily tested using census data) that the Green vote corresponds very closely to the % of people with tertiary education in any given seat. This explains why safe Liberal seats like Kooyong and safe Labor seats like Melbourne both produce high Green votes: the Greens are now the party of choice of the urban intelligentsia. Victorian regional centres like Ballarat and Bendigo are being colonised by wealthy Melbourne exurbanites and they are taking their Green sympathies with them. Since Queensland has the lowest % of tertiary educated, it also has the lowest Green vote. (Tasmania doesn’t fit this theory, but there are obviously local factors at work there.) If this is so, it also suggests where the natural “ceiling” of the Green vote is.
“Andrew Landeryou’s blog is a fantastic read. ” Yep. Much in the way “Der Stürmer” was.
The Green vote is only partly education influenced.
Having proportional representation means that smaller parties get more of a public voice, especially between elections (party leader MPs get a higher profile than party spokespeople).
This is part of the reason that the highest green vote is in Tasmania and to a lesser extent the ACT (lower house PR), medium level votes in Vic, NSW, WA and SA (upper house PR) and lowest votes in Qld and NT (No PR).
Another good poll for WA Labor in yesterday’s West Australian. From a sample of 401: Labor up 2 per cent to 44 per cent, Coalition down 1 per cent to 40 per cent, Greens up 3 per cent to 11 per cent. On 2PP, Labor up from 51.2 per cent to 54.5 per cent. The previous poll was conducted in the immediate aftermath of the resignations of Tony McRae and John Bowler.
Speaking of polls, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Newspoll’s quarterly geographic breakdown.
So the consolidated Newspoll gives us pro-Labor swings of:
* 8-9% in “marginal” seats
* 12-13% in “non-marginal” Coalition seats (for a 2pp of 50-50!)
* 7% in “non-marginal” Labor seats
A “non-marginal” Coalition seat is defined as one with a margin of more than 6%. On these figures, that’s a problematic defintion.
ALP 61-39 in South Australia.
I never did manage to get ahold of those lucrative odds for Makin.
On that definition, how many marginal Coalition seats are there David?
Adam, you seem to be saying that educated people vote Green. If this were true, we can assume that people who know what is going on in the world are voting Green saying that the The Greens know how to run things properly, not like the current bunch of incompetents.
Taking the last 2 Newspoll Quarterly polls by State and marginality, and combining them with recent nationwide Newspoll, Morgan, Nieslsen polls, plus the spot polls done in a very few seats, one can make an average swing for each seat, based on the numbers as they were about mid-Feb. The results are as below, which shows that these numbers were then pointing at the ALP picking up 38 seats and having a 48-seat majority, which is about the same as Howard’s 1996 majority. By the time of the next quarterly consolidated figures, all the trend lines behind this will be straightening up and making a bee-line for election day. The numbers are final ALP TPP in %
BASS 54.8%
BENNELONG 53.6%
BLAIR 51.8%
BONNER 57.8%
BOOTHBY 53.1%
BOWMAN 51.0%
BRADDON 56.3%
CORANGAMITE 52.0%
COWPER 52.5%
DEAKIN 52.4%
DICKSON 50.9%
DOBELL 52.8%
EDEN-MONARO 55.5%
FLYNN 52.4%
GIPPSLAND 51.1%
HASLUCK 54.8%
HERBERT 53.7%
HINKLER 51.5%
KALGOORLIE 51.8%
KENNEDY 51.0%
KINGSTON 58.4%
LATROBE 51.5%
LINDSAY 54.7%
LONGMAN 53.4%
MAKIN 57.5%
MCEWEN 52.4%
MCMILLAN 52.4%
MORETON 55.6%
PAGE 52.1%
PARRAMATTA 56.7%
PATERSON 52.7%
PETRIE 52.5%
ROBERTSON 52.1%
SOLOMON 54.6%
STIRLING 54.6%
STURT 53.2%
WAKEFIELD 57.8%
WENTWORTH 52.2%
The NSWEC has published a complete primary count for the NSW Upper House. Eliminations and Preference distributions commence today.
I doubt that well see a repeat of 1996. I think people have forgotten how much hatred there was for keating, and Howard hasnt alienated regular suburbia the way Keating did.
A lot of the figures presented by Geoff Lambert, except i will contest Kennedy, and say Bob Katter will survive, and Malcolm Turnbull will also survive. And also a guy called Howard will win Bennelong, and when he is gone the Liberals will win it again, because the only reason the seat is marginal is becuase of the size of the field of candidates, and nearly all of them preference against John Howard
Re Drew Hutton, he was very clear in 2004 that it was his last run, due to various personal reasons, his age and the number of times he’s run. Nothing can or should be read into him not standing this time, other than that he was telling the truth in 2004.
Re who votes Green, Adam is right. The best correlators are tertiary education, age and, interestingly, indicating ‘no religion’ on the Census. The other obvious point to make is that generally we do better in safe seats of either colour because voters feel safer to vote for a minor party, and because the majors are not campaigning. In blue ribbon Liberal seats often the Labor campaign is so poor that the Greens are the more visible alternative party.
Is that 98 seats for Labor then?
I’ve got to give it to Dennis Shanahan. Even in these days of woeful poll figures for the coalition he can find something positive for his conservative mates. That is real skill and masterful spin. Hell if the polls show Labor on 53 percent TPP by the election Dennis will tip a coalition win I reckon.
Poor Greens voters, one minute they are hardcore ferals, the next they are tertiary educated urban intelligentsia.
Re Drew Hutton, I understand that he has been a relatively polarizing figure within the Qld Greens for some years now. The real problem with 95 was not the preference deal as such because, as pointed out it was hardly one-way and, despite the odour of the government, I don’t think people really did expect the election to go that badly. The real problem was afterwards not admitting that it was a perfectly defensible tactic that misfired (FF anyone?). Instead DH came out saying that it was a good decision, the Goss government had been terrible etc. *That* really annoyed people.
RE Andy Landeryou, although his commentary is questionable, on the matter of the Qld Greens vote it appears that his data is reliable.
Gary: Labor was 53% going into the last election from memory.
I agree with Martin B – the Greens tactic in ‘95 was perfectly defensible from the Greens point of view – the general feeling before the election was that the Goss govt was going to be returned – and so hitting it in a few seats (eg Springwood) was a way of sending it a message. In that election, it’s interesting to note that the ALP held quite a few very marginal seats (eg Hervey Bay, Maryborough, Whitsunday) while losing some less marginal ones (Springwood, Gladstone, Greenslopes).
I think what people found annoying was not so much that the Greens did a preference deal with the Nats – all parties do preference deals – but that they were are still are so pious about their own purity and everyone else’s wickedness. As Disraeli who said of Gladstone: “I don’t mind that he always has an ace up his sleeve, but I do wish he would stop pretending that God put it there.”
has the NSW ALP Branch preselected for wentworth, lindsay, page and eden-monaro yet? They are the obvious ones from the pendulum.
Sorry Speaker but that’s not right. The best Labor did in Newspoll at the beginning of the election campaign in 2004 was 50 – 50 TPP and slipped from there. By the way we’re dealing with a totally different set of issues and circumstances – no comparison really. Give me 53 – 47 any day at the start of this campaign – I’m sure the Libs would gratefully accept that right now and be happy about avoiding a complete rout.
Actually having re checked the figures you could be right Speaker but my point about Shanahan still stands as does the fact that we’re dealing with a totally different set of issues and circumstances. Let’s face it Labor’s Primary vote hasn’t been this high in years and Rudd is preferred PM by a larger margin than Latham for a lot longer. For that reason I say again give me 53 – 47 going into this election anyday.
Re Geoff Lambert’s list, only Bennelong, Cowper, Corangamite, Gippsland, Sturt and Wentworth have not been held by Labor at some stage in the last 20 years. In each case boundary and demographic changes have moved them within range. Labor hasn’t held a couple of the others under their current names but they cover territory which was previously Labor-held under different names eg Longman (was Dickson/Fisher) and Wakefield (mostly former Bonython).
So it’s far from implausable.
And I should add his Bennelong margin is bang in line with my estimate of the 2PP in Bennelong booths in the NSW State election. Coincidence?
About Geoffs list:
Take the seat of Kalgoorlie of the list, that wont happen.
Hasluck might.. The current member is a dolt and the former member is having a tilt.
As for polls remember there is Australia, then there is WA.
Gary:
Let’s face it Labor’s Primary vote hasn’t been this high in years and Rudd is preferred PM by a larger margin than Latham for a lot longer.
If Howard gets it back to 53:47 then those polls will no longer be relevant.
I’ve always held the view that undecideds typically shift to the incumbent government as their minds become more focused. The incumbent is safe and won’t change their lives. It gives governments a (very rough) 2% extra boost. (In my opinion)
This means at 53:47 Howard will be within striking distance. A good scare campaign and he’ll win.
This election is going to be emotional and dramatic.
I’m very excited and can’t wait.
I agree – Labor will need to at 55% or so at the *start* of the campaign to withstand Howard’s “shock and awe” blitz of negative advertising against Rudd. And as we all know, negative advertising works – ask Peter Debnam.
Agree there’s usually a drift to incumbents over the course of campaigns but you wouldn’t want to count on it – both sides can play the negative game. In 1996 the Libs had great fun with PJ Keating and and JW Howard has provided quite a bit of material for a return serve this time around.
A lot of Labor people believe Latham’s biggest mistake was not taking on the Libs on interest rates. They won’t do that again. And unlike Debnam, they will have the cash. We’ve already seen what the unions can do and there’s a fair bit of petrol left in their tank.
As for business, at worst for Labor they’ll be hedging their bets and some sections seem to be warming to Rudd on issues like climate change and productivity.
That means a lot of fundraising pressure on dysfunctional state and territory Lib/Nat branches. Normally about now we’d start to see the taxpayer funded “An Australian Government initiative” campaigns cranking up but they seem to be having trouble getting a fix on where to start. Any thoughts on why that might be, anyone?
Negative campaigning only works when there is something to be negative about. Latham was a goldmine for attack. Debnam, meanwhile, didn’t exude the aura of leadership and made himself vulnerable to attack by appearing in speedo’s and constantly sounding shrill and hysterical.
Negative attacks will only be effective when they exploit pre-existing, latent fears about the candidate, not when they try to create new fears. I can’t see the negative campaign blitz wearing Rudd down quite the same way that it was successful against Latham and Debnam.
I would also hasten to add that Wentworth is winnable. Turnbull doesn’t have a lot of fat on his margin thanks to a punishing redistribution and on the flak of an anti-Liberal swing in 2004 (which I think existed despite, not because of, the Peter King factor).
Preselections are not being done at head office Adam – they are being announced, circulated to branch members etc, as normal. Preselection timetables are scheduled ‘if required’. None have been required, but that is usual. Point is, challengers could challenge if they wanted.
It would be a cold day in hell before Labor won Cowper. Having been involved in campaigns in Cowper and Lyne for the past 12 years, I can say that Labor never tries, or spends money, in either of them. Years ago Labor used to talk up Cowper but that was only to get the Nats to divert resources there. The Nats know this and Labor now knows that the Nats know.
Labor hasn’t won Boothby since 1946.
Congratulations to Trevor Khan are in order. Elected in 21st spot.
Blacklight is probably right to say Kalgoorlie not in the mix, but there’s always a smokey come election time. Today’s figures look really good for Labor in WA, despite the Shanahan spin. Worth remembering that Labor in WA is coming off low base – 34.7% primary, whilst the Libs coming from an unsustainably high – 48.8% primary. These numbers won’t be repeated in 2007 – that will deliver Stirling, Hasluck and maybe Kalgoorlie and will certainly protect Swan and Cowan. A seat to watch on election night is the volatile seat of Canning.
Don’t buy the spin from the national media about local Labor being on the nose. Carpenter is, according to the most recent Newspoll numbers, Australia’s most popular premier!
Anonymousie, what is your source for that? My understanding, from down here in Mexico, was that because of the state election there was no time for regular preselections and there were being done under N40 or whatever it’s called. The first batch – Bennelong, Dobell, Macquarie, Parramatta – were announced last week. But maybe I am wrong and the rest are being done as normal. I would have thought however that Labor needs candidates in the field in Eden-Monaro, Lindsay, Robertson, Page and Wentworth asap. Then there is the thorny question of whether to dump Irwin, Hatton and Hoare, and if so in favour of whom. Does someone have the full dirt on what the process is?
The Speaker I think you underestimate Labor’s own scare campaign. You aint seen nothin yet. As for an incumbants advantage this applies if the incumbant is somewhat popular in the first place. If they are on the nose you can forget the 2 percent. It didn’t help Keating in ‘96. Let’s face it, if the swing is on it’s on. I think there is too much residual thinking here that Howard is Houdini. This reputation is built on spurious information on past performances. Rudd is clever enough to blunt the Libs scare campaign. You can actually see where he is heading with this now. I’d be interested in your thoughts as to what you see as the whizz bang scare campaign the Libs will run.
Meanwhile it is ‘reported’ at Crikey that it is ‘almost official’ that Senator Vanstone is headed off to Rome…
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20070410-ufficiale-Vanstone-headed-for-Rome.html
This, if true, (to use one of the Prime Minister’s more favoured short phrases) is unlikely to have a hugh political affect, but what there is, is hardly likely to be favourable for the coalition.
On the subject of senators taking their leave, can anyone say where we are actually at with respect to the previously foreshadowed resignation of Senator Santoro?
Just reading all the comments above it seems we got a green talk going with even Adam showing some positive attitudes
Boothby is a very different seat now to what it was in the days when the McLeays held it as a hereditary fiefdom. It now has a lot of rather *vulgar* suburbs in it, where the people are *not like us*. Also Dr Southcott seems a rather dull dog even by SA standards. After reading today’s polls in the Australian he might well be perusing the Jobs section of the MJA.
Adam your description of Southcott is spot on and when the GST was introduced he had no idea on how to reply to local small businesses on that subject. In the end i think he started to hide
Does anyone know who the Labor pre-selects are for Boothby and Sturt.
If the polls hold up, ALP will expect to re-gain Wakefield and Kingston and win Makin. The next target will be Boothby and Sturt, which will paint the whole of Adelaide and environs Red. Even Alexander should get nervous.
Sacha said
Their ideas could be moreso described as “disconnected from reality†rather than hard-left.
Funny that most of the old SWP (DSP/SA) from the seventies are now in the ALP
The Libs are a bit unlucky with the boundaries in Adelaide. The upper-crust belt of suburbs in the south-east could make one ultra-safe Lib seat, but instead they are divided between Boothby and Sturt, which are both fairly safe in good years but which will both be lost in a bad year.
Alexander has his scare in 98 when the Dems found a top-notch candidate. I don’t think the Greens can pull off the same trick. Perhaps a strong independent could. Where are you Natasha?
Adam, no dirt. If you are a paid up member of NSW ALP and have given head office your email you get a monthly email digest that announces such things. So it’s no secret – contrary to popular belief. The N40 rule has not been deployed so far, and won’t be until such time as it’s needed. I would expect that there will be monthly or even fortnightly announcements of preselections, working through the held and winnable seats to get the right candidates in place and then, at the last minute, the unwinnables and any controversial preselections.
Contrary to popular belief, the N40 rule IS only used in exceptional circumstances or for a clearly announced agenda, such as getting women into parliament.
Adam & Bill are once again pulling their respective puddings.
Dr Andrew Southcott is one of the brightest men in the Parliament. A medical doctor, a casualty specialist, the holder of qualifications in Economics and an MBA.
His back passage would know more about the GST than Adam, Bill and all their nerd hack friends put together.
Yep, Dr Southcott is from the ‘real world’, a world alien and foreign to the assorted trade union hacks and Labor backbench electorate officer ‘A’ level dimwits (sound like someone you know Adam?) that love to talk the talk but know deep down they will never have the skill or ability to stand for anything greater than alternate delegate to the Grievance Committee of Melbourne Ports FEC.
Southcott will run whatever Labor candidate puts their head up out on a rail. Have a look at the Unley figures from the last State election. Labor bleated that the seat was in the bag but even then they couldn’t knock over a dud Liberal candidate with their own candidate who was both capable and marketable.
Southcott will hold Boothby double digit.
Terrigal Lad, Craig Thompson the endorsed candidate for Dobell does live in the electorate of Dobell. He is a far superior candidate to the inarticulate and habitually late David Mehan.
My understanding is that Sue Mueller will take on Belinda Neal in the neighbouring seat of Robertson. Sue has been a community activist for years on the Central Coast and has been the backbone of the Rights @ Work campaign on the Central Coast. She is well regarded by many ALP members because of the hard work she puts in for the community.
By the way the NSW Liberal Party opened up nominations for this year’s Federal election on April Fool’s Day. They are open for about a fortnight. For the first time ever the Party is apparently calling for nominations for all NSW seats at the same time, such is the unacceptable late time frame. Just hopeless.
Anyway, friends down in Sydney state that THIS TIME Alan Cadman is a political carcass in Mitchell. He wants to run again. This time he is getting the support of noone bar himself. Question is therefore who will fill this blue ribbon seat? State VP and corporate affairs heavyweight Nick Campbell is the choice of the right and its difficult to see anyone stopping him. Other names include the usual serial candidates such as Nick Berman, Adrienne Ryan, etc. The right hold the numbers easily in Mitchell so it’s simply a matter of who.
According to this webpage: http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/senators/homepages/senators.asp?id=BOT,
Santo Santoro is still a senator.
If Southcott will hold Boothby double digit after the next poll, why isn’t he holding it double digit now?
Question: What rare happening do Andrew Southcott and ACE got in common?
Why double digit in Boothby?
Because ‘traditional’ Liberal and National Party voters (who have shemfully flirted with independents/Greens/’Country’ Labor etc will return to their usual voting patterns this year. Why?
Because the $28.5 million ACTU campaign against the Government might frighten some swinging voters in the marginals, but it will go down like rats poision in traditionally ‘conservative’ voting areas. There was just a small taste of it in the recent NSW election where we witnessed huge swings to the Liberal and National Parties in their traditional seats as voters in these areas recoiled in disgust at the filthy, mendacious, class warfare inspired campaigns of the ALP and the unions.
Seats like Boothby and Sturt will stay Liberal. It’s seats like Makin that will be much more problematic.
have in common
Since Isabella is herself a lowlife grub, she is well informed on the doings of other lowlife grubs. If Nick Campbell is indeed running for Mitchell, we will be hearing LOTS more about this http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2006/s1688866.htm and http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/branch-stacking-rorting-rife-among-nsw-libs/2006/07/17/1152988472833.html and this http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Liberal-factions-erupt-over-seats/2005/04/22/1114152325950.html
Yawn.
So the worldly Dr Carr thinks he can take the moral high ground because of a few incidents of enthusiastic branch development.
It would probably help if you weren’t an employee of one of the greatest branch stackers the Federal Parliament has seen.
Tell me, do you guys harass and intimidate young women in Melbourne Ports all the time, or is that just on election day?
As for your attempt to denigrate someone for holding mainstream values……….please. Do you honestly think Kevin Rudd would even dare to take the sort of twisted policies and perverted beliefs you have to the electorate? Nope, Kevin will simply attempt to portray himself as a slighty younger, slightly less boring version of John Howard.
So the battle of ideas has already been won and you and your mates didn’t even make it onto the paddock.
Ah, now I know who you are. Ta.
So, Isabella – how do you match up your claim that the ACTU campaign will scare “‘traditional’ Liberal and National Party voters” in an electorate with Boothby with the article below, which actually indicates polls showing that exactly that type of voter is just as unhappy -or even more so- with WorkChoices as the poorer section of the community?: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21522801-5007146,00.html
I found the poll mentioned in the above article: http://www.newspoll.com.au/image_uploads/0309%20IR%20final.pdf
$5 says Isabella is a bloke.
hmm with Arthur Chesterfield-Evans gone I’ll need to update the milestones in my Democrats Death Countdown..
Isabella said
Dr Andrew Southcott is one of the brightest men in the Parliament. A medical doctor, a casualty specialist, the holder of qualifications in Economics and an MBA.
Which is all true, but he is a deeply unimpressive politician. The few times I’ve talked to Southcott or heard him speak it was exactly like talking to your local GP, he is easy to trust, but not someone who you would believe in to mold the future of your community. He’s not very good in front of an audience, and he certainly doesn’t have the political gravitas that can swing thousands of people to vote for him.
If someone like Amanda Vanstone, that is someone who is not a ‘normal person’ but a true politician, left the senate and ran for Boothby she would hold it with double digits.
Anyone think Richard Frankland will run again?
Isabella,
Andrew Southcott, oops, sorry, Dr Andrew Southcott, is not from the “real world” (which is a very woolly term at the best of times). Lets just take a look at the facts:
1. educated at St Peters College (not in itself a crime, but not a good start either if you aspire to hold an increasingly marginal seat where you need to get out and meet the great unwashed);
2. 6 years at University of Adelaide, far too much of it spent as a student politician;
3. 12 months as a P-plate doctor at hospital;
4. straight into the House of Representatives where, until now, he has never really had to fear for his future.
As a coalition sympathiser, I am often critical of people in the ALP and the minor parties who go straight into parliament (state and federal) without any of the “real world” experience you refer to. Kate Ellis comes to mind. Christian Zahra is another. Natasha. Well sorry to tell you this Isabella, but Dr Southcott and Chris Pyne are no better.
Instead of criticising the ALP for finally lifting their game and luring people like McKew, Gray, Shorten, Garrett and others into parliament or as candidates in winnable seats, perhaps the SA Liberals need to look a little bit beyond the ‘machine’. Incidentally, the Liberals’ SA branch suffers from this as much as any of the state branches.
Bob Day is a great choice for Makin and will maximise the possibility of this seat being held for the Liberals. If he gets over the line, he will be an excellent local member. Chris Gallus was an excellent local member, as were Trish Worth and Michael Pratt. Gallus and Worth managed to defy gravity on several occasions and Pratt nearly managed to retain Adelaide when it was still a very safe ALP seat after a shock by-election win. Even Alexander is well liked amongst his constituents – the general comment you get from people in Mayo who have met Downer and are not ALP members is that he is nowhere near as pompous and pontificating as what he appears to be on the television. All of these people had plenty of life experience before getting into parliament. Southcott and Pyne, on the other hand, have about 15 minutes between them and that could be decisive in Sturt and Boothby.
Incidentally, its often forgotten that the Democrats got uncomfortably close to Southcott on a couple of occasions, in the sense that they nearly overtook the ALP on primary votes with Southcott staying well under 50%. So forget about that double-digit 2PP Isabella
Over the course of a decade, Dr Southcott’s exceptional performance as a local member and Liberal Party candidate has been reflected in numerous notable results.
Dr Southcott has, without the hysterics we see all too often from our political candidates, despatched concerted and well-funded efforts by individuals such as Jo Pride and local mummy’s girl Chloe Fox.
No doubt we will see the same confident, statesman-like efficiency from Dr Southcott once again this year.
I recall that a Heather Southcott was a Democrat state MP at one time. Was she his mother?
I note Victorian Labor has written Dunkley off. If there was a big swing would it be at risk? Has its social composition drstically changed from when it was Labor?
Speaker i raise you to 10$ that “Isabella” is not only a bloke but a reincarnation of a certain troll we had here a few weeks ago. Maybe also goes by “Nostrodamus” on another blog.
The social composition hasn’t changed much, but the boundaries have. When Labor last won Dunkley in 1993 (with a 2PV of 50.3) it ran from Frankston to Chelsea. The 1996 redistribution shifted it south so it ran from Seaford to Mornington, a shift in the 2PV of (by my calculation) 3.3%.
What makes you say Labor has written it off?
Adam, do you really think that the ALP will put in a lot of resources to win a seat that requires a 9.4% swing when there is a lot of lower hanging fruit in Victoria – Corangamite, Deakin, McMillan and McEwan? and despite the ALP looking good they have a few of their own that are very marginal and will need to be defended – Bendigo, Holt and Isaacs.
BTW – who does have ALP preselection in Corangamite?
re sa
Boothby and Sturt are usually reliable liberal seats.
I would be suprised if either were won by the ALP
(although SA state election figures show what is possible.)
Makin, Kingston and Wakefield will be the seats that come into play at the
next federal election.
I think the other seats will not change sides
Um, I didn’t say they would – I asked Geoff for the source of his statement that Labor has written off Dunkley. Maybe they have, and maybe they should, but I’d like to know where it has been said publicly
Corangamite: Darren Cheeseman, a former Ballarat councillor. I know nothing about him but at least he’s not Peter McMullin.
Martin Hamilton-Smith as the new SA Liberal leader will be worth about 5% to the Federal Liberal vote in South Australia come the Federal election.
Whether its a plus or negative 5% will be the big question.
I must join with Mick Quinlivan when he states he would be surprised if the Liberals lost Boothby. Contrary to what Chris from Edgecliff says, a quick glance on the AEC website shows that Southcott’s primary has barely dropped below 50%, and certainly wasn’t when he went up against Chloe Fox at the last round.
I’ve been a resident of Boothby for years and, much to my continued disgust, the ALP have done nothing more than scramble and talk in the final months leading up to an election. My opinion is that a well organised opposition will keep the incumbent fresh and on their toes, it’s particularly annoying then that I haven’t seen any presence from Labor since 2004, and that their ‘favourite’ candidate is best known as a failed Mayoral candidate. Hardly a star-prospect!
Southcott’s been here for 10 years, and has a record of getting a solid primary vote come election day. Snow might think he’s unimpressive, but I have to admit he’s a local and seems to have plenty of results to print on paper and stick in my letterbox.
Hell, just look in today’s paper. Kirk turned down Rudd’s offer of standing for Boothby – so she must still consider Boothby fairly Liberal. It’s a pity they don’t have a more committed challenger frankly.
I’ve seriously lost track of all the state liberals leaders now – esp. since there’s been so many churned through. Who is the longest Lib state leader now?
MH-S is about number 25 (give or take) of State Liberal leaders to take office since the Party last won a State election.
Longest serving State/Territory leader I think would be Carney up in the Northern Territory.
Watch this space though – Colin Barnett will return and take the leadership of the WA Liberals soon, and will most probably be the one to break the political drought. You heard it here first.
I reckon Chris from Edgecliff needs to get his facts straight. In 2001, the Democrats vote peaked at 19% in Boothby – hardly close enough to have Southcott feel “uncomfortable” considering his vote was up around 50%.
Further still, he did not just work as a p-plate doctor for 12 months. He worked for four years in Adelaide’s major teaching hospitals and then worked for a year in locum jobs.
He also completed basic surgical training and was working as a surgical registrar when he was pre-selected for Boothby. I think its impressive that he gave up a lucrative career to represent the people of Boothby.
He could have lived a private life, but instead decidied to work for the community in the public eye.
Plus, if people think Labor will take Boothby and Sturt – where are the candidate’s?? I heard Bruce Hull could be the Labor candidate for Boothby, someone who failed to win anything in the Marion Council elections!!
I don’t think Labor care to much for Boothby or Sturt.
OK, as no one knows or cares, both ACE and Southcott stopped senior surgical training to become politicians. I think both jobs are crap but a surgeon gets paid a lot more.
You won’t think it’s crap the day you get acute appendictis (speaking from experience)
I agree with Geoff R about Dunkley. It doesn’t have to be said in public. Ask your ALP insiders, Adam.
a p p e n d i c i t i s
Geoff said: “I note Victorian Labor has written Dunkley off.” I asked him what was his source for that statement, and for this I get attacked by all and sundry. What is it with people here?
Adam,
I hope I am not included in “all and sundry”. I wasn’t attacking you. I was just agreeing with Geoff and suggesting that ALP insiders might say to you what they won’t say in public.
The comments on this blog have been disgraceful in the disrepectful attack on the great Dr Andrew Southcott MP.
Dr Southcott has been one of the true and staunch defenders of freedom in our federal Parliament:
- He stood firmly in support of the freedom of students in the successful fight against enforced student unionism on our campuses;
- He has been one of the few recent advocates of freedom to address the General Assembly of the United Nations; and
- He continues to chair with distinction the Joint Standing Commitee on Treaties (where he was highly instrumental in the achievement of the US-AUS-FTA).
In 2001, the Democrats threw all they had to try and unseat the great Dr Southcott. This was during the high water mark of the popularity of the Democrats in South Australia, polling 20% in Boothby. Yet, Dr Southcott prevailed.
In 2004, young Chloe Fox threw all her resources trying to unseat our great champion. Again, Dr Southcott prevailed. (Ms Fox was forced tail between her legs to settle for a seat in the state parliament)
In 2007, whatever is said on this blog, there is no doubt that — with all the hard work he puts into representing Boothby including the local people of Marion, Mitcham, Oaklands Park and Brighton — the great Dr Southcott will prevail. And our nation is all the better for it.
According to this webpage: http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/senators/homepages/index.asp?sort=state,
Santo Santoro is no longer a Senator.
Hallilujah, Sasha. Are the gang of three implicated in the print scam still in the house of Reps?
Nostradamus is never so rude as Isabella has been
Barnett WA Liberal leader again? After the way he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory 2 years ago? By golly, those poor WA Libs don’t have much talent in their ranks, do they :S
Sorry to preempt you William and Antony, but today I am launching my Guide to the 2007 Australian Federal Election
at http://psephos.adam-carr.net/
Comments, news and corrections from Poll Bludger regulars are welcome
Adam,
Wow. I am impressed
Apologies to the following for the delay in moderating their comments: Sam, Falvio Sammut, Julian B, Jack, G Robertson and Marc Aussie-Stone. If anyone’s interested, I’ve been busy hauling my arse to Melbourne, where I will be spending the next 10 weeks or so.
Adam
Great work on the election guide!! I am sure it will be referred to many times over the coming months!!
one point does come to mind – in several of the safer liberal seats you talk about them trending to labor on issues such as immigration. etc. and very true that is. It is also worth noting that in many of these seats the liberals are polling distinctly better at the state level (the state seats in Kooyong, Bradfield and Warringah come immediately to mind). Therefore, under John Howard the liberal vote is softening in these seats but the ALP is unlikely to get any long term traction.
Blackburn, that’s certainly true. There is a broad class re-alignment going on, and Labor is losing out as a result, particularly in a system of single-member seats. Labor’s support is increasing in upper-income urban areas, but not enough actually to win a seat like Kooyong, while Labor’s support is softening in outer suburban seats like Holt and Isaacs (mortgage belt seats), which Labor could actually lose. This is on top of the loss of regional seats as a result of demographic change and the increasing size of these seats – thus Broken Hill, Bundaberg, Whyalla, Kalgoorlie, the LaTrobe Valley, can no longer deliver enough votes to win a federal seat.
Impressive guide Adam – and in the Senate one you say the truth that Nettle will not be re-elected – one has a limit to how much Greens wishfull thinking they can take.
A great guide Adam – but out of curiosity, is Family First ignored because of their ideological bent (the “Faliban”) or because of perceived irrelevance?
He isn’t saying Nettle won’t be re-elected. He’s saying that if the votes all stay the same she won’t be re-elected.
Here’s another revelation: if all votes stay the same the Howard Government will be re-elected!
Fantastic work Adam. Have you ever thought of starting a blog ? I always find your comments quite entertaining.
Peter Stephens: Nettle -might- be re-elected, but she probably won’t be. The certain rise in the Labor vote makes it very tough for her and unlike the Dems the Greens will rarely win the third right-wing seat.
I haven’t deliberately ignored FF. I mention them on the Victorian Senate page, although I don’t think they will elect another Senator. I will list their candidates as they become known. I should have included them on the Links page… and have now done so.
Bill Weller and I have had this discussion several times. It’s a simple matter of arithmetic. If the ALP primary vote reaches or approaches three quotas (42.9%), and if the Coalition vote doesn’t fall too far below three quotas, then minor parties won’t get a look-in, even if their primary vote rises substantially. The Greens could poll 10 or even 12% and still miss out, simply because there won’t be any surplus flowing to them to get them up to a quota. The Greens will need to poll a full quota or very close to it to get elected, and in view only Bob Brown has any chance of doing that. Remember that Garrett polled 10% in 1984 and didn’t get up.
For those interested, I’ve put Newspoll’s state-by-state 2PP results into my pendulum tool to see what would come out:
http://flag.eaglesflyinghigh.com/election/index.php?snap=4
(Data from: http://www.newspoll.com.au/image_uploads/0309%20state%20&%20dem%20final.pdf)
With no data for Tas, or the NT, I’ve used the WA minimal swing since you’d expect that as a minimum, and that swing would result in Labor taking all the seats in Tas and the NT anyway.
I don’t think it was necessary for Labour to wait eleven (or fourteen as the case may be) years to regain power.
You wondered if Labor could really truly be as dumb as they seemed, changing leaders repeatedly while in opposition, and then going to a staid repeat candidate who represented the last of a long dead ministry which didn’t appeal to a modern electorate. Alas yes — but it shouldn’t have taken four whippings for them to figure it out.
The Liberals changed leaders five times while they were in opposition, and after two “new” leaders (Hewson and Downer) failed, they went back to a former leader who had been a senior minister in the former government (Howard). Labor has changed leaders four times. What was the simple solution which Labor was too dumb to see?
Re: Richmond and Page.
In his 1983 policy speech, Malcolm Fraser announced a viability study into diverting the Northern Rivers inland. I remember this more for the put down by one of the commentariat rather than the policy itself. I can’t remember who said it but the quote was “Where did that come from – the fourth class social studies book?”
Now John Howard has proposed diverting the Northern Rivers to SE Queensland. As a result, the population of the North Coast of NSW has (at last) become significantly engaged in the political process. Despite the result in Tweed in the state election, I predict that Richmond will be easily held by Labor and (provided a good candidate is picked and given Causley’s retirement) Labor will pick up Page.
Are there any SEQ seats where this policy of enviromental vandilism will have a significant impact to counterbalance this loss of a seat?”
I have nominated for the position of assistant convener of the SA Greens. Watermelon for the job?
Pardon my ignorance but i never knew Adam was THE Adam Carr. Great site Adam. mmm more reading i love it
You could have included me in the Kingston seat
Do you know anything about this Gulaptis guy? Is there a Nat candidate in Richmond yet? Is there a credible ALP candidate in the offing for Page?
Bill the SA Greens website gives no Reps candidates yet. When they are announced I will put them all in.
Thanks Adam. The Greens office has been slack with that
Adam off the Federal topic for a minute. What was your opinion of Kris Hannah defecting to the Greens then dumping us to be an independent.
“Comments, news and corrections from Poll Bludger regulars are welcome”
The burghers of Devonport will be glad to hear that you consider them more urban than Healesville
Maxine hasn’t officially been preselected yet has she?
You mean, apart from the obvious fact that all Labor Rats will burn in hell for all eternity?
“The burghers of Devonport will be glad to hear that you consider them more urban than Healesville”
You’ll have to tell me what you mean by that
And, yes, she has.
Interesting to note again the glowing reports of Richardson and his work in Kingston. After the last few MPs we had here who did very little, Richardson seems like a shining light to many. Some green voters ( not members ) have told me that he will get their second preferences. I think Kingston will be tighter than most are expecting and Greens / FF preferences will be important. What might make it more interesting is the possible running of at least 3 independents. Rishworth is trying hard but seems out of her depth at this time. I think not living and breathing the electorate has caused her problems but i am sure she will learn about the area in good time.
“The burghers of Devonport will be glad to hear that you consider them more urban than Healesvilleâ€
“You’ll have to tell me what you mean by that”
The answer I fashioned to your trivia question.
You claim that Fran Bailey’s claim to be the first woman to represent a rural seat in the HoR is correct. Ergo Braddon, held by Enid Lyons in its previous incarnation as Darwin must be an urban seat by your reckoning.
“And, yes, she has.”
So I see, last week. Missed that…
I contacted the ALP when Hannah was the ALP member and Nick Bolkus sent him to me to join me up. Between the time that i was thinking of membership and when he came i decided to join the Greens and told Hannah that and with his left views he should to. Months later he did to my amazement. I do not claim to have influenced Hannah but it was a good story until he ratted on us too.
Bill, in a suburban seat such factors rarely matter much. If the swing is on, with a margin of 0.1, it won’t matter if Rishworth has never set foot in Kingston, or indeed if she has two heads and a tail, she will win in a canter. Look at the SA state election: the local reputation of members like Joe Scalzi didn’t help them a bit. In a big swing suburban seats go down like ninepins.
I am 3 hours south of Grafton, so I hear a little but not much. I haven’t heard of Gulaptis. I have met Kevin Bell who was the Labor candidate last time. He is a nice guy but my wife tells me that nice guys come last. I doubt if he will stand again.
OK I understand now. I suppose it’s debateable whether Darwin in 1943 was an urban seat or a rural seat. Of course it had some farmers in it, but I would think (without checking) that most of its votes were cast in Devonport, Burnie and the west coast mining towns. I would probably class it as a provincial seat.
Kingston is really two seats Urban and rural/seaside/township. What worries me is that the people that like Richardson are in the High Green booth areas.
Trevors Bio
http://nsw.nationals.org.au/html/nsw-upper-house.cfm
sorry wrong list
At a quick count, about two-thirds of Kingston’s votes are cast in the suburban belt between Hallett Cove and Port Noarlunga. The rest are cast in the seaside towns further south or the inland towns. If the suburban voters behave like suburban voters in most places they won’t care much who the local candidates are, they will vote for or against Howard and Rudd, based on broad economic issues such as fear of interest rate rises versus fear of Work Choices.
Adam said
If the suburban voters behave like suburban voters in most places they won’t care much who the local candidates are,
That is really sad. True but sad. You might as well put a two clowns as candidates. Thats why i admire independents. The have to work to win not sit back on their leaders back
Adam you show how negative the whole election process is. I can see why the Anarchists dont have time for it
Au contraire, I think voters are quite right to concentrate on the big picture and not be distracted by the populist antics of local candidates. It really doesn’t make a lot of difference whether Richardson or Rishworth (or Weller) is the member for Kingston, except inasmuch as they are a vote in Parliament for a Howard or a Rudd government.
Is the Mika Kabacznik-Weller who stood for Mawson at the state election a connection of yours?
“ratted” in politics is an awful word and it should be cast aside.
It has a long and distinguished pedigree. Churchill, who went from the Tories to the Liberals and then back again, said “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”
There’s also the Henry Lawson poem “Too old to rat.”
I don’t care if the cause be wrong
Or if the cause be right —
I’ve had my day and sung my song
And fought in the bitter fight.
In truth at times I can’t tell what
The men are driving at.
But I’ve been union thirty years
And I’m too old to rat.
And here http://www.hyperhistory.org/index.php?option=displaypage&Itemid=712&op=page we find
In 1827, the great English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay used the term ‘rat’ to describe someone who deserted the cause of the people in the struggle for liberty – meaning the struggle for a parliamentary system with real power, not just a rubber stamp for the monarch. And this usage is probably adapted from naval history, from the belief that rats desert a sinking ship. Writing in a journal called the Edinburgh Review, Macaulay described Thomas Wentworth (Lord Strafford), an adviser to King Charles I, as a ‘Rat’ with a capital ‘R’. Indeed he called him the ‘first of the Rats’ – suggesting that the term ‘Rat’ might have been used during the English Civil War (1640-42) – two hundred years before Macaulay was writing. He depicted Wentworth as a turncoat who had deserted the popular cause, who had sided with the king in defiance of the Parliament. Macaulay thought Wentworth had no excuse for changing sides. He wrote: ‘He knew the whole beauty and value of the system which he attempted to deface. He was the first of the Rats …’. This is, so far as we know, the earliest usage of the term ‘Rats’ to convey the meaning of a political traitor to the popular or people’s cause.
Adam, I think that you may be wrong about Kingston, and Scalzi for that matter.
Hartley was soft up to and into the state election campaign and it was Portolesi’s amazing campaign, which included exploiting her strong links to the community, that got her over the line.
But I also think that Bill is serioulsy underestimating Rishworth.
What I’m getting at is that both Kingston and Makin are softer for Labor then the margins would seem to suggest, the only one to thats really looking good for SA Labor is Wakefield and that’s offset by the short margins in Hindmarsh and Adelaide.
When it comes to federal elections SA Labor has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory for the last few elections, they would have to do something quite different this time to walk away with 3 extra seats, regardless of the polls
I don’t claim any great knowledge of SA state politics, but I remember being told that Scalzi was a very popular local member, and my point was that that didn’t help against the big swing – the swing in Hartley was 6.8, which was bigger than the swings in Mawson and Light, though less than those in Bright and Morialta.
Federal seats are bigger and so one would expect local candidate factors to matter less, particularly since federal elections are much less about local matters than state elections are. In a suburban federal seat, I stick to my view that candidate factors don’t matter much, although in a really close result they can of course make a difference. Trish Draper’s scandals weren’t enough to put her out of Makin, because the voters rightly decided that not making Mark Latham PM was more important.
If Labor wins three (or four, or five) seats in SA it won’t have much to do with the competence or otherwise of the SA Labor Party. It will be because the Adelaide suburbs have had enough of Howard and have decided to go with the Ruddslide. Unless Mike Rann is caught in bed with the Vienna Boys Choir, voters won’t be thinking about local matters at all.
Adam says:
” Do you know anything about this Gulaptis guy? ”
Chris Gulaptis is a Councillor on Clarence Valley Council. He was Mayor of Maclean Shire prior to the merger of Grafton City, Maclean, Copmanhurst and Printine Waters Shires to form Clarence Valley Council in 2004.
Gulaptis led the campaign opposing the merger which made him extremely popular in Maclean Shire and unpopular in Grafton. The bad feeling in Grafton may have worn off now that the new council is functioning well.
His main support base, the former Maclean Shire, is only partially in Page electorate. He lives in Yamba which has been moved into Page at the latest redistribution. The town of Maclean and other areas in former Maclean shire that are south of the southern river bank remain in Cowper. There is a Page booth in Maclean but it is my understanding that this is only used by people who come into town from the various islands or north of the river.
Gulaptis’s occupation is Surveyer/Property Developer. More information about him can be found on the Clarence Valley Councillors page http://www.clarence.nsw.gov.au/cmst/cvc009/lp.asp?cat=51
He only became a member of the National Party since the last federal election.
Adam
Mika Kabacznik-Weller is my wife
I also concur with the complimentary remarks towards Adam’s guide. I’ve read through a fair a bit of it now.
Just a couple of errors I’ve noticed:
* Jann McFarlane was not the only Sandgroper in caucus to come down on Latham’s side. The late Peter Cook did so too.
* The 1988 Port Adelaide by-election was triggered by Mick Young’s resignation, not death. (Speaking of deceased Labor MPs…) Young died some years afterward.
Adam
I do agree with you Rand is one of 2 competant political leader in Australia and Labor will do better in Adelaide this federal election
To all labor/union supporter out there I have this question I would like to pose to you
I do not see how Workchoices can decrease the wages of Australian, yeah you might lose penalty rates in the short term but wage rise will more than make up for these small loses.
We are >1 year in and all evidence so far is that employers are more likely to hire people under workchoice, since we have 40 year low unemployment rate. Since employer under 100 staff (small business) can easier lay off staff, they are more likely to hire and not be left with staff who is unsuited for the job.
What does this mean? Supply of labour has remained constant, Demand for labour has risen? So wages in the long term has to rise, it is simple supply and demand, anyone in year 10 doing business/economics can tell you the same thing!
My view is that the unions are doing everything they could to keep wages down by reducing the demand for labour …….. So people feels insecure and want to join a union ……. is that what is really happening?
Great election guide Adam. Though in the seat of Bonner (Qld), Ross Vasta MP is up against Cr Kerry Rea (not “Ray”).
Yeah Awesome guide Adam … Can I add that Brendan Nelson was made Education Minister, not Health Minister, after the 2001 election … ?
Thanks for those corrections.
dovif, my problem isn’t so much with wages as in employment. The current disabled to work strategy is for agencies/gov to pay a company to do on the spot traing for a month and then employ the person. Unfortunatly, in 95% of cases, the disabled person is kicked out after the month is up.
Before workchoices this was down to 25% of cases.
Figures from Disabled Workers Advocacy in Melbourne.
dovif – it is easy to construct correlations between different things, it is much harder to show causations.
The deamons of Workchoices are all in peoples minds. Opening up wages and conditions in this form is good for the unemployed adn low skilled workers in that they have more opportunities, and more opportunities lead to increased wages in the medium term.
courier mail today shows that the industry that was supposed to harass its workers the most using workchoices, hospitality, has increased number of employees by something like 12.5% over one calender year.
Make no mistake workchoices is about one thing-limiting unions power- and since unions can often be held accountable for high wage low productivity sectors, it is about time someone took the unions on, they have no place in modern world.
(high wage low productivity example, the wharves and the MSU, before Reith broke them – it is right to give thanks and praise)
Andrew, do any associations of employees have any place in the modern world?
Adam, Congratulations on your excellent election guide.
One small query.
“Werriwa is thus one of only four seats which have been held by more than one party leader (the others being Higgins, Hunter and Kooyong).”
Does Richmond meet the critieria for this list (J.D. Anthony & C. Blunt)?
Some social clubs can be fun
So you don’t like the idea of associations being able to negotiate wages and conditions on behalf of their members, even if the members of that association want it to?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQdVJL2CO9o
Brought to you by People Who Miss Paul
Barry, yes you are quite right
Dovif
You are right that as the supply of labour is constant and demand for labour rises wages will go up, but that was true before workchoices.
What workchoices will make worse is when the current economic trend finishes and a new downward trend starts, which is why Rudd makes such a big deal about the mining boom that will inevitably fail.
When the demand for Labour drops due to a decrease in growth, or negative growth, workers will have no protection. Then when the negative trend reverses to a growth trend business will have no external factor, unions, to force wages up in line with economic growth.
Its only in the current economic cycle that workchoices is good, in the long term its bad for workers. Thus the extent that workchoices will affect the federal election is dependant on the extent that workers take a long term view of employment security.
Snow,
If you set a mandatory minimum on wages, when the downturn comes people will not only have reduced wages, they will have no wages, because employers would not be able to afford them.
the people left with jobs will have better conditions. but also an increased tax burden due to the welfare payments increase due to joblessness
Sacha
So you agree with me that the Union’s act is a lie, it can easily be showed that conditions were decreasing before Workchoice, for example Qantas has been scheduling staff for the last 3 years at 7am rather than 6am, so they do not have to pay the shift penalties, union would like to blame it on Workchoice, at least Workchoice allows you to trade it off, so both side get what they want 6am start, slightly higher pay, not as much as the allowance.
Snow, I think you forgot the last recession. What happened at the last recession was actually one of the main reason for Workchoice, a lot of small business went bankrupt because they were not able to lay off staff (without unfair dismissal) Therefore instead of 5 people being laid off, the employer went bankrupt and 100 people lost their jobs. This has a flow on effect on the rest of the economy. (causing more job losses and deeper recession) Also people were afraid of putting on staff after the economy stabilize, so it took Australia longer to get out of the recession compared with Japan, America, Europe etc.
Demand for labour was lower prior to work choice, people were hiring staff as casual/part time employee, since they can terminate these people’s contracts, after work choice, people are able to employ full time staff and has the same right (see http://www.smh.com.au and Courier Mail today, hospitality industry last year Full time staff up by 40,000, part time down by 20,000).
Workchoices has help at least 40,000 people in lower income bracket get full time work, they now have full time job and more certainty in their pay.
Using Rudd’s example, if the mining boom stopped and BHP had an excess of miners, what is BHP going to do with or without Workchoice? I think they will do the same thing. The difference would be under Workchoice, the miner would have full time employment contract, while before Workchoice, they were hire as part time workers/contractors.
“Werriwa is thus one of only four seats which have been held by more than one party leader (the others being Higgins, Hunter and Kooyong).â€
Was Don Chipp technically leader of the Australian Democrats while still representing Hotham?
Another interesting thought – none of those seats have been represented by leaders of different parties, have they? Higgins and Kooyong were both Liberal, and I assume Hunter was ALP.
Hunter was Matthew Charlton and Doc Evatt, both Labor leaders, but also Edmund Barton, so that is indeed two different parties.
*sigh* I suppose Chipp was briefly Democrats leader while still MP for Hotham in 1977, but he was elected as a Liberal so I’m not sure that counts.
I concede it is a pretty tenuous exception
And another similarly tenuous exception is that Robert Joshua, elected leader of the 7 defectors from the ALP who formed the ALP (Anti-Communist) in 1955 (later the DLP) represented Ballarat, formerly held by Alfred Deakin.
What a nest of pedants
If abolished seats are included, the former Yarra (abolished in 1968) was held by both Frank Tudor and Jimmy Scullin.
Hmm, who was Joshua’s deputy for those few months in 1955? Any chance it was Stan Keon? If so, that would make Yarra held by four people of whom two were leaders and two deputy leaders…
And West Sydney was held both by Billy Hughes and by Stabber Jack Beasley when he was leader of the Lang Labor group – but I am not including abolished seats.
Adam could you clarify this from the Parkes entry – “The new Parkes has 80% of Gwydir’s voters, and 73% of the new Parkes’s voters come from Gwydir.” – how can it have 80% of Gwydir’s voters if only 73% from Gwydir?
Because the electorates are bigger than they were prior to the redistribution.
“I am not including abolished seats”
I think you’re sorry you brought it up in the first place
Adam what are you a Doctor of?
Mika Kabacznik-Weller
Candidate for Mawson SA. Bachelor of social science degree and EN pathway comm. services cert IV graduate, Employee of the Year 2000 (Holdfast Bay) nominated for Australian of the year, Golden Key Honour Society member with chancellors letters of commendation, Employee Recognition award 2000, and is currently doing masters degree in palliative and primary health care. Would make a good ALP member/ candidate in the future as she is only 29. Currently not a Green member
* Peter: Gwydir had 81,268 voters when it was abolished. Of these, 64,617 (79.5%) are now in the new Parkes. The new Parkes, however, has 88,993 voters, so the 64,617 transferred from Gwydir account for 72.6% of the voters in the new seat.
* Bill: I have a PhD in Australian history and a diploma in art and design.
William and Adam can i have your permission to print portions of each of your sites for my own personal reading and history.
bill
Im starting to feel very nervous about the coming election. What started as a Howard out feeling in the electorates i live and work in is actually starting to swing back a bit more than i would like at this stage. ( i want to see the ALP win a one seat majority with Kingston the Marginal ALP seat )
“Workchoices has help at least 40,000 people in lower income bracket get full time work, they now have full time job and more certainty in their pay”
Has not helped the Mitsubishi workers who lost their jobs years ago when the Lonsdale plant closed down. Many are working casual, part time and the lucky ones get to work 2-3 different jobs to make their mortgage etc payments. Talk to people that work for agencies. The amount of hours they are getting is dropping. My workplace has gone from having 20 casuals to 4 in 5 years and we have not grown in full time workers either. I work for the only stationer manufacturer left in Australia. We have suffered from imports and the only way we can compete with Asia is to drop our wages and conditions. That will mean i will loose my house or i will need to take on another job. Sounds like the silver set of Howard and his cronies have it right. Screw the worker while the CEOs and bosses get richer. What a fair and just society we have and while the rank and file are down Global warming is said to affect the poor not only in the third world but in the ‘ richer countries ‘ as well. Cant wait !!
bill, provided you don’t publish it elsewhere, sure
This is Gavin Priestley, who will be running as an independent in Calare with Andren’s support as his successor.
http://www.icanonline.net.au/profile_gavinp.php
Although only 54% of Calare’s voters come from the old Calare you’d have to give Priestley some chance against Cobb, who seems to be a fairly dim bulb (Isabella will no doubt tell us he is really a great statesman).
Hi Adam,
Great guide, will be invaluable! The only glaring and obvious omission that jumped out at me was on the main page at http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/guide1.shtml – where is the picture of Senator Fielding as leader of Family First?? it’s the only party which is not represented by a photo.
Considering their vote is currently many times greater than the Democrats vote it would seem that this ommission is rather odd??
A pertinent point I haven’t heard many people making…
It looks like ALP have a decent chance of winning the HoR while the Coalition has a better chance of maintaining its control of the Senate.
Has the left side of politics ever won 4 out of 6 seats in a state? Dems have often got the 4th seat when they were a centre party, but not lately.
What are the chances of non-Lib-Nat winning 4/6 in a few states?
Eric said
It looks like ALP have a decent chance of winning the HoR while the Coalition has a better chance of maintaining its control of the Senate.
What are the chances of Rudd being able to live up to his promises re IR if theres a hostile senate ?
Bill Weller
In your words “they lost their jobs years ago” and “we have suffered from import” Unlike what the union try to tell you, people had been losing their jobs way before Workchoices. Workchoices does not change whether people will lose their job, if your industry is not competitive, you will lose your job
The fact is if you work in an industry that does not reward efficiency, you are likely to lose you job to Malaysia (in this case) Potectionist regimes ends up costing job again?
If someone can import stationary into Australia at a lower price than Australia can make them, Australian will want to buy the cheaper products. So unless the Australian company can complete on price/innovation/ quality, they are going to struggle to complete. I do not know how you can link this to be Howard’s fault.
Paul Keating was the one who reduced tariffs, and apart from the manufacturing industry, most occupation in Australia had benefited extensively from the efficiency gain from the reduction in tariff.
Ok dovif We make the best quality stationery in Australia yet we are loosing to the imports. We work little to none OT so how do you suggest we become more competitive and still keep the same wage and conditions. Asia– no Health and Safety two dollars a day longer shifts little holidays lack of sick pay etc.
Indulge me on how you will fix it as i dont want to loose my house
If Rudd wins, the chances of a hostile senate are very high.
More likely than not.
I was looking at Queensland senate again today.. Pauline Hansen is running a stronger campaign than last time – giving the public plenty of advance notice of her candidacy unlike the last couple of attempts. I think she’ll beat her 4% .. maybe 5-7%..
This will throw a massive wildcard into the Queensland race and anything could happen.
No it won’t. Unless she gets a quota in her own right, she can’t get elected because noone will preference her. She will be eliminated and 90% of her votes will go back to the Coalition as preferences, as happened last time.
I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but all this overheated speculation about the Senate is completely unfounded. If there is a substantial swing to Labor, then Labor will get three quotas (42.9%) in each state, as will the Coalition, and no minors will get elected (except Brown in Tasmania), even if they get 10% of the vote, let alone 5%.
Queensland is the Greens’ weakest state, and they have no chance there. Last time the Coalition won four seats but that seems unlikely at present. Unless there is a Greens-Coalition preference deal, the most likely outcome is three Labor – three Coalition.
It is unlikely that Labor can get four quotas (57.1%) after preferences anywhere, but not impossible. At the moment South Australia looks the best shot. But it’s more likely that the Green vote will fall as the Labor vote rises so they won’t get four quotas between them.
Adam,
Oh for another Brian Harradine! Correct me if I’m wrong, but then we’d have a chance of a 2 Labor, 2 Liberal, I Green and 1 independent from Tasmania and be on the way to depriving the coalition of control of the Senate. We’d still be short of the numbers needed to rip up, tear up, dump and repeal WorkChoices for Employers, but it would still be nice. I cannot see how a Labor win this year cannot lead to a double dissolution.
bill weller asks: “What are the chances of Rudd being able to live up to his promises re IR if theres a hostile senate ?”
Basically no chance – but it will make it easy to acquire a double dissolution trigger if the Coalition block his legislative agenda, and make it easy to blame things on an obstructive Coalition dominated Senate when it comes to the resulting 2008 DD election.
I am starting to wonder if Kevin Rudd’s colossal ego, ambition and conceit as displayed in the last few days could start to be his undoing. The Anzac Day dawn service affair is guaranteed to offend and is very poor judgment, the hybrid car gaffe (Good on Lynn Allison for keeping the bastards honest on that one!), the seeming endorsement of Alan Jones, and the very curious naming of Sir Robert Menzies as his political hero! The last 2 may raise eyebrows in the party.
My feelin about Kevvy is that the’smarty pants know all image’ may be fine for now when there is a feeling for change – at least from John Howard – if not necessarily from the Coalition – but if the public tires of it, they will do so very quickly and with a vengeance.
Is there much off roading to be done in Griffith? Won’t a Camry do?
The real problem with the Senate from Labor’s point of view is the demise of the Democrats. Since there is no longer a “soft option” for voters in the form of a centre party, they have a much starker choice of left versus right, with the Greens being merely “further-left”. This makes it more difficult to persuade wavering Coalition voters to jump ship, since they have further to jump, as it were. That’s why my view is that the Coalition won’t lose any Senate seats this time, and that if Labor wins it will be faced with a hostile Senate, a situation we haven’t faced since Chris’s mates Vince and Mack and Jack were around.
My guess is that Labor is hoping that if enough centrist Coalition voters move to Labor, the Coalition will only win 2 senators in one (or two) of the states, Labor will win 3 senators and the Greens will win one senator in each of those states.
If the election is the fairly usual close affair, the coalition will probably win 3 seats in each state as there is no centrist party to siphon votes off it, and we’ll have the usual 3/3 split in each state leading to the coalition holding the senate.
Adam, perhaps if the Ruddslide is on, you should persuade other Laborites to engage in a tactical Democrat vote
(for the benefit of the humourless, I am being flip.)
I think hoping to regain control of the Senate at the 2008 election is wishful thinking, especially in light of the destruction of the Democrats. There is no real opportunity to take a seat off the Coalition, but I suspect that if Rudd does win we’ll be headed back to the polls in a double dissolution fairly quickly – a situation in which I’d expect the Liberals to lose badly.
That said, I think Adam’s speculation of a worst-case result for the Greens is nonsense. The Greens have long been strong in Western Australia, and all they would have to do is repeat their 2004 result to win the Democrat seat there – something all the more likely considering Labor’s difficulties in that state. That would at least retain the status quo, assuming the loss of Nettle’s seat in NSW.
I also don’t think the results are clear in several other states. The Greens would have won in Victoria in a landslide if it were not for the Fielding fiasco, and I think Labor hopes of a third seat – while certainly a possibility – are a bit optimistic. I wouldn’t necessarily write Kerry Nettle off, although I do think she is in trouble, and I think some particularly intelligent candidate selection on the part of the SA Greens has put them very much into the race for Stott-Despoja’s seat. While I’m not optimistic about Queensland, It’s also worth noting, considering that they were in the running in 2004, that Bartlett’s seat could be in play if Larissa Waters (a considerably better candidate than Drew Hutton) lifts the Green vote in that state.
Adam,
The DLP senators did not play he role they ought to have in the Whitlam years, which is what led to their being perceived as just part of the Liberal opposition rather than a party with a separate identity and thus led to their demise. I knew this at the time, but I did not say so, because experienced senators weren’t likely to take advice from a 21-year old. In fact, when I explained why there would be no joint LCP/DLP Senate ticket, Frank McManus preferred to believe Billy Snedden, apparently thinking he knew more about the Liberal Party than I did. In any case, were there any DLP senators left, they would unhesitatingly vote down WorkChoices for Employers, which I believe will remain a significant election issue and work without a shadow of a doubt in Labor’s favour.
Rebecca the Greens are a quite left-wing party in comparison with the centrist Democrats – as Adam said that is one of their main problems. Former Democrat-leaning Lib-Nat voters are just not going to flock to a solidly left wing party like the Greens in substantial numbers any time soon.
Garret in ‘84 is a good example – the way the NDP was colonised by the Trots not long after wasn’t very pleasant to watch either.
Peter Stephens: I’m not necessarily saying that they will.
The Greens took the Democrat seat in WA in 2004 with comparative ease, as they had been widely predicted to do for months beforehand. I have seen nothing different about the 2007 campaign to suggest a different campaign. Equally, all that would be required to deliver the Democrat seat in Victoria would be a repeat of 2004 without the Fielding fiasco. It could certainly go Labor, but that isn’t the slightest of a given. It should also be noted that the Greens are running a better candidate in Victoria than in 2004; I suspect DiNatale, if elected, will eventually end up succeeding Brown as Greens leader.
The only state where I think the Greens could benefit significantly from the collapse of the Democrats vote in South Australia. This is largely because of the Stott Despoja factor, and the fact that the Greens are running a candidate who is pretty much her mirror image. Stott Despoja and Hanson-Young are such similar candidates that I wouldn’t be surprised if a fair few of the former’s supporters transferred to the latter upon her retirement.
I tend to think Queensland and New South Wales are long shots, but I’m not convinced that Nettle is finished yet, and the result in Queensland was close enough in 2004 that if Waters improves the Green vote she could be in with a serious chance, with or without the Democrat vote.
I think if Rudd wins, then the possibility of a looming double dissolution is possible on the back of, perhaps, a hostile senate rejecting reforms to WorkChoices? A double dissolution will certainly wipe out the Coalition’s majority and probably invite the Greens in to the balance of power given the substantially less quota requirements to win seats. Not an ideal situation for Rudd but I suspect he would perfer to cast himself as a centrist with the Greens backing him on some issues and the Coalition on others. I can’t imagine too many situations where the Greens would cosy up with the Coalition to reject legislation outright.
Anyway, this is all very speculative and conditional on Rudd winning the next election.
On that note, does anyone know when the next AC Nielsen poll is out? It’s been a while, and I’m itching to know the impact, if any, of Rudd’s Vietnam gaffe? I guess I Newspoll should be out Tuesday anyway?
Sue Boyce chosen to replace Santo Santoro by Qld Liberal Party…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1897297.htm
Rebecca
Your views on SA and the Greens are interesting considering that many YR@W members will be voting Green in the Senate. I believe that the chances of Sarah winning a senate seat here highly probable
This so called “Rudd’s Vietnam gaffe” I’m sure will have little impact, if any. It hasn’t made widespread headlines like the Burke Affair and Rudd and 7 quickly denied any such plans. There doesn’t seem to be any smoking gun. It doesn’t hurt having Hockey backing 7 and Rudd on this either. Remember Bronwyn Bishop was in on this too, something Dennis Shanahan (The Australian) and the Daily Telegraph conveniently side step.
Re Garrett
The Trots also had the numbers in many of the Green branches at that same time.
I dare say they still do.
Quiz: which Greens candidate in the last SA state election was a former Communist Party candidate?
Anne mcmenimen or how ever you spell it
Very good – bill, you must be nearly as old as me to remember that
Yep old man young wife.
I was a member of the dems til GST and a member of SA as a independent
Bill, out of interest what do you think of Chavez’s economic policies ?
If a double dissolution is held next year, with the same Senate size, then then the Greens are most likely to win 6-7seats in the Senate (1 each mainland states and 1-2 in Tasmania).
Chavez at the moment is a champion of the people. I havent studied too much about his policies.
Double dissolution quotas: 1 seat 7.7%, 2 seats 15.4%, 3 seats 23.1%, 4 seats 30.8%, 5 seats 38.5%, 6 seats 46.2%, 7 seats 53.8%, 8 seats 61.5%.
You would expect the Greens to get a quota in every state except maybe Queensland, and possibly two in Tasmania. But remember that DD elections tend to be polarising – the DLP lost all their seats in the 1974 DD. On the other hand the Dems increased their vote in 1987, but that was a “phony” DD in the sense that there was no sense of crisis about that election.
I would *love* a DD election. I was too young to appreciate it last time.
Yes 6 Greens is quite possible and you’d probably get a couple of FFs and a Fred Nile as well.
I reckon we would easily get a Senator elected in Queensland in a DD election. It would probably be harder in South Australia, but I still reckon we would get 7 senators from the whole country.
I don’t think the television stations Chaves has closed down will be thinking he is much of a champion of the people, to them he must look just like another Castro wannabee.
I was a Dems member in the early 90’s and I often heard it said that the 87 election saved the party because they would have been hard placed to get anyone elected (in a half senate election) on the votes they received.
Can anyone explain to me that if there was a DD then the minor parties would increase their seat amount???
Does anyone think its possible for the Greens to have the balance of power at this election.
It has been reported recently that the Greens policies ( available now ) have moved to a more center position. any comments?
Lots of bark, not much brain. Hugo Chavez is a sort of Latin American Mark Latham. Enough said!
Bill
Do you mean if the Greens would have the balance of power at a post 2007 DD?
What we think off Chavez is off-topic and will just start an unproductive fight.
Stephen Hill Says:
I don’t think the television stations Chaves has closed down will be thinking he is much of a champion of the people, to them he must look just like another Castro wannabee.
1. Are the TV stations that have been shut down owned by Capitalists like they are here?
2. When i read Castros speeches they make sense to me and he always shows where Capitalism , Globalisation and consumerism affects the third world in a negative way
No i mean at this Senate election. What i am getting on the ground here in Kingston and at my workplace is that people will not be voting major party in the upper house. The ALP cannot win control of the Senate and their only hope is that the Greens get BOP. This is where i suppose the question of preference deals come in. The ALP and Greens might wed yet!
The coalition would have to do incredibly badly for the Greems to get the balance of power. FF is more likely (gawd what a thought!!!)
Im halfway through the book THE VICTORY by Pamela Williams, Interesting to note the deal that Green groups made with the Libs over Keatings broken promise about old growth forrests
Bill, is state control of the media Greens policy? I hope you are going to reveal this policy to the electors of Kingston.
blackburnpseph Says:
FF is more likely (gawd what a thought!!!)
That would be the end of everything
Adam, I dont think i suggested it was Greens policy?
1. Are the TV stations that have been shut down owned by Capitalists like they are here?
mmm No
blackburnpseph Says:
The coalition would have to do incredibly badly for the Greens to get the balance of power.
Thats the word. In the senate they will do bad
The implication of that statement is clear – it’s OK for Chavez to close down TV stations if they are owned by “capitalists” – ie, in private ownership as they are in all free market economies. So if it’s OK for Chavez to expropriate privately owned media because they criticise him, presumably it would be OK for Prime Minister Brown and Public Enlightenment Minister Weller to do the same thing.
Next AC Nielsen will be Monday
Adam
Have you ever heard of a mob in Australia called the ABC?
They are a non-capitalist [in theory anyway] federal government organisation that run a mass media TV network and a mass media radio network.
They enjoy a pretty good reputation I’m told.
Unfortunately they have been suffering from cutbacks and political interference from a right wing source recently.
It is not absolutely necessary for mass media outlets to be capitalist owned you know.
There are alternatives.
Public Enlightenment Minister Weller to do the same thing.
That has a good ring to it
What im saying is that i can understand if a President etc wanted to change the way the country was run it would need to shut down media that is owned by capitalist that want to keep enslaving the people. Strange dont you think that the same type of media owners bag, discredit and lie about the Greens as we are a threat to some of their profits if we got to implement some of our environment policies. If i can understand chavez reasoning it doesnt mean i agree with it entirely. Democracy to me means equality and we attack people like Chavez, Castro yet minor parties are not even treated the percentage they get in elections. Richardson, Rishworth Thompson etc can write to local papers and have their candidatures written under their name but mine always seems to fall of the page. If the media treated every candidate either equal or gave them the percentage equal to air time/ print space then that would be democratic but we are a long way from that
Christine Milne after “Tasmanians for a better future” campaigned against the Greens during the Tasmanian Election:
Yesterday she called for the public relations industry to be regulated from outside so that no more election campaigns could be influenced.
ie the government should intervene to shut down organisations that criticise the Greens.
I just dont understand why the teachers i had in High school ( Full on ALP members etc) ( 1974-80) preached what i believe yet now the ALP seems to have lost/ forgotten this past and is now part of what it once detested
“What im saying is that i can understand if a President etc wanted to change the way the country was run it would need to shut down media that is owned by capitalist that want to keep enslaving the people.”
*Hitler and Lenin nod in agreement*
Bill:
need to shut down media that is owned by capitalist that want to keep enslaving the people
So capitalists enslave the people ?
No phone calls from Bob, Kerry, Rachael or Christine so i must be doing ok Adam
Capitalism is and always will be profits before people, profits before the environment. Why is it that the same companies that cause cancer with their products also sell the treatment of cancer? Why are these same slime balls on the anti cancer foundation board in the USA ( dont know about here but would love to know) Cancer is on the increase at an alarming pace and it matches the growth of profits by multinationals
This is way of the topic now. Who started the Chavez thing????
cmon own up
The topic is no longer Chavez, it is this: why are the Greens running marxists who regard the free market system as evil and want to expropriate the media as candidates, while pretending to be a moderate environmentalist party? Who really runs the Greens? Have they been taken over by trots as the NDP was?
# The Speaker Says:
April 14th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Bill, out of interest what do you think of Chavez’s economic policies ?
thats who
Speaker i agree – the Greens can dish it out but can’t seem to take it. The Wilderness Society also wants “law reform” so no one can touch green groups legally.
Bill: If Capitalism is bad, what is your proposed alternate system ?
Adam who is a Marxist and why are their many Marxists in the ALP? Bob Gould just to mention one
I dont have a magic solution but until theres equality worldwide then capitalism will always cause starvation for the majority in the world and obscene profits for the few
Is Bob Gould still alive? If he is he isn’t causing any trouble to anyone. He certainly isn’t a parliamentary candidate. Yes there are a few Marxists lurking in dark corners in the ALP, but they are certainly not in control, as well be shown very clearly at the Nat Conf this month when the Left will be squashed like bugs if they get in the way of the all-conquering Kevinists. The far left has been trying to infiltrate the ALP since the 1920s and we are very awake to their tactics and toss them out when necessary. I very much doubt the Greens have anything like the same awareness. If they did they wouldn’t run someone with your views as a candidate. (You are entitled to your views, bill. But they are not the views which the Greens are putting before the electorate, and to that extent the Greens are misleading the voters.)
According to ‘The Age’ this morning, NSW Labor has called preselection dates (I don’t know what they are) for all remaining NSW seats except for Charlton (Kelly Hoare), Blaxland (Michael Hatton), Fowler (Julia Irwin) and Chifley (Roger Price). The reason, according to the article, was to avoid ‘negative publicity’ prior to the ALP National Conference.
Translation: they’re all in the gun.
Peter Stephens:
Did you ever hear Peg Putt’s Tasmanian Election night speech ? Here’s the MP3.
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200603/r78714_225488.mp3
It’s a rant about being criticised during the election.
Amusing actually.
I do not see my views any different to many ALPers i know or Greens members. I have never hid my opinions and wont start now.
I don’t think Price is “in the gun”. He is Chief Whip and highly respected, and was a key figure in the Rudd coup against Beazley. I can only guess that he is intending to retire, and the preselection is being held over so the right has time to find a candidate. I agree the other three are for the chop, and so they should be.
I await your campaign literature, bill, in which you tell the winegrowers of McLaren Vale about how evil capitalism is. Will you be advocating collective farms?
That’s probably a more reasonable explanation, Adam – I did think that Price was probably an odd name to have in that list.
Is Arbib headed for the Senate, or Blaxland/Fowler?
Are the winegrowers of Mclaren vale multinationals? Oh and i support local business before multinationals. Pity more dont
2 things Adam
1. did you get my email and
2. why do i get this message when i try to access some of your website e.g 1972? Fed election.
Not found
Error code 404
The server cannot permit access the file you requested :
/countries/a/australia/1972reps1.txt
email webmaster@adam-carr.net
i will check my email
if you look at the note at the top of my australian section, you will see that i have been slowly reformatting all my federal election stats since before xmas. 1972 is one of those not yet done. sorry. i will try to get back to it soon. if you tell me what exactly you want i can either post it here or send it to you.
Thanks Adam I dont need anything yet i was just wanting to look at the results
If Price is retiring – who will be the longest serving ALP MHR in the next parliament?
Harry Jenkins?
This debate has become very similar to the end of “photo finishes”. If Bill is representative of the Greens, we see a dysfunctional party confused by major issues, which has warm and fuzzy policies. It attracts 1. people who don’t read policies but like to be warm and fuzzy (?doctor’s wives), unreconstructed trots and xenophobes. Thank God they will only ever have marginal power in Australia.
Bob Gould is still alive and his bookshop is the best in Sydney.
Adam – Who’s Bob Gould?
You can access earlier versions of Adam’s site, with the Australian election archive fully intact, at Pandora and Internet Archive. Hope you don’t mind me pointing this out Adam – I’ve been going to these sites a lot while you’ve been doing your maintenance.
Bill Weller, the Greens candidate for Kingston, wrote: “Capitalism is and always will be profits before people, profits before the environment.”
“I dont have a magic solution but until theres equality worldwide then capitalism will always cause starvation for the majority in the world and obscene profits for the few”
The Green Left Weekly couldn’t have said it better. BTW Chavez can rule by decree for the next 17-odd months without needing to go to the parliament. Isn’t it great to not have to deal with other people’s opinions?
Bill, no magic solution exists.
bill says: “until theres equality worldwide then capitalism will always cause starvation for the majority in the world.”
I don’t want to be unpleasant to bill, who is obviously a very sincere person (and thanks for the email bill), but this really is the most arrant nonsense. Over the last 30 years capitalism, whether in China, India, South Korea, the other Asian countries, even Indonesia, has delivered a greater rise in the standard of living of more people than anywhere else in history in such a short time. It is doing the same, more slowly, in Latin America (more slowly because it is being less effectively implemented). The only places where people are starving are where capitalism cannot operate because of local political reasons, such as North Korea and Zimbabwe. Of course unrestricted capitalism brings with it many evils, and it must be regulated to redress those: that’s why I’m a social democrat and not a Thatcherite. But to argue that capitalism is *intrinsically* evil is nonsense, and to argue that capitalism leads to starvation etc etc is 19th century Marxism – even sophisticated Marxists don’t argue that any more, bill. People in Africa and Latin America can’t buy computers and running shoes if they’re starving – capitalism wants them to be prosperous. It’s people like Mugabe and Chavez who are keeping them poor in the name of a spurious “equality.”
Sacha Says:
The Green Left Weekly couldn’t have said it better.
glw sees me as a reactionary
What no comment on the engrossing contests for the Tasmanian Legislative Council? – so engrossing in one of them the sitting member was re-elected unopposed
Patience, Stephen.
And let’s have none of this “not engrossing” talk. Pembroke should be a cracker – last time, Allison Ritchie won a two-horse race 53.8-46.2. Now she has the stench surrounding the Lennon government to contend with.
I’ll answer the question about Bob Gould, because once upon a time I lived in Sydney. Bob is a famous left-wing Labor activist, who was at the height of his powers during the moratoriums, and has run the Gould’s Bookshop in Newtown For Ever. He is always at left events in Sydney, and always asks a long-winded question. Then another. And another. He blogs at Leftwrites. A flavour of the man may be obtained there.
In other words, to come back to bill’s point, he is an old 70s relic and of no significance whatever in the ALP, if indeed he is even a member. To use him as a defence to the charge that the Greens have been taken over by the extreme left and are perpetrating a fraud on the electorate is pretty threadbare.
And i just saw his loathsome defence of the Vietnamese communists through Google – nasty
I think he may still be ALP but he is definitely not at the centre of much these days. Far left fringe more like.
This is great i am classed as a trot/commie/extreme left/ on here and on GLW im classed as a member of a capitalist party with many right wing policies.
Lets get back to the subject.
# Stephen L Says:
April 15th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
What no comment on the engrossing contests for the Tasmanian Legislative Council? – so engrossing in one of them the sitting member was re-elected unopposed.
I don’t know anything about this. Can someone fill me in.
The GLW are irrelevant. No doubt, anyone who thinks that there is anything positive about capitalism whatsoever is a “reactionary” to them.
Lynton Vonow Green candidate for Mayo is and will be working the electorate hard. I expect high double figures here (20+ %) being the biggest Greens branch in SA there is a good amount of people on the ground linking community groups electorate wide. ( i belong to the smallest suburban branch) The Greens will do good in Mayo and could come second.
Had a talk with some voters in Kingston who are doing it hard ( single mothers/fathers unemployed couples with children) The interesting thing is their strong ( through their children’s pushing ) need to help with reduction in the causes of global warming. These people who should be worried how they will survive week by week are more worried about the environment. It makes people in the affluent areas look selfish and ignorant as they light up their whole house with the blinds and curtains open so we can look in awe at what they have. I hope the ALP when it gains Government makes sure that the REAL destroyers of the environment ( the multinationals and its consumerism push) are brought to justice. Is it fair that the poor try hard to do the right thing while the rich dont give a care? The environment cannot be used as a token vote winner when time is running out. Richardson has from day one tackled environmental issues in Kingston after many years of non interested from MPs of both sides. What are Rishworths ideas on this subject? Environmental groups here will be waiting to see what she does.
Bill, do you really think that “multinationals and its consumerism push” are the REAL destroyers of the environment?
Yes Sacha it has been proven many times that multinationals destroy the environment and peoples health
Bill: Interesting thoughts.
Out of interest, who do you think may be responsible for the 9/11 attacks ?
fanatical Muslim terrorists. Not to be mixed up with Koran devoted Muslims as it is against the killing of inocents
Re: Bob Gould – he often has a bookstall at the NSW state conference, so I assume he is still a member. A few years ago I saw him have a quiet discussion, in the foyer, with that other relic – “Johno” Johnson. It made the whole boring weekend somehow worthwhile.
Bill: Thanks. Just checking.
Another lefty ALPer is i think Marcus Stromm
How are multinational companies any worse than companies operating only within one country?
Bill, a serious question – have you read any serious economics?
Mr Speaker, do you generally enjoy poking defenceless animals with sticks?
Just checking.
If Bill is representative of the Greens, we see a dysfunctional party
That description can be of the ALP just as well over the last how many years??? No policies No direction No leader. Its funny that the ALP biggest chance of winning is to become a clone of the Libs.Howards government is worn out and will be replaced by a similar one. Its like finding a good pair of shoes and buying two of them. When one pair is worm out you replace it with the other. Looks and feels the same just a bit fresher. will still end up the same. I must go to bed I need to get up at 3 for a 4 oclock start. Ive got to make money for a multinational and struggle to survive. As the years go on its harder to survive so the prosperity has not hit any of the multitude i know
Bill, on the first Saturday of each May, elections are held for either two or three of the 15 seats that make up the Tasmanian Legislative Council. The house never “dissolves” – it just has (potentially) one or two changes of personnel each year. Only two people on the mainland care about these elections: me and Stephen L.
This year is the turn of the electorates of Montgomery, Nelson and Pembroke. In Montgomery, nobody has nominated against the sitting independent, Sue Smith (same happened in one of the seats last year – I forget which one). The independent member for Nelson, Jim Wilkinson, faces only a Greens candidate (Bill, I have to say that your Tasmanian party colleagues have rocks in their heads causing unnecessary elections like this; there was another independent-incumbent-versus-Greens-challenger election last year, and the incumbent won 80-20).
Like I say, the humdinger is Pembroke, one of five seats held by Labor (or has Terry Martin has quit the party? If so, it’s four). The other 10 seats are held by independents, as the Liberals do not formally contest upper house elections. However, a number of the independents are from Liberal backgrounds.
“As the years go on its harder to survive so the prosperity has not hit any of the multitude i know”
I wonder if any of the house valuations of any of these multitudes increased over the last 15 years?
i wonder if the housing trust (GOV) gets that increase?
Adelaide house prices haven’t risen nearly as much as those in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, and I would think even less so in unfashionable areas like Kingston
does anyone relise the hypocrisy in the Australian today?
One article Howard says abolishing workchoices will cause wages to rise, which will cause interest rates to rise.
Next IR article. Local Council wants to give employees AWA that increase wages 25%
the Glenn Milne attacks Hockey for not initially attacking Rudd
Maybe its just me…
Aldinga beach had the highest percentage rise in Australia
Kingston. Fastest growing area. Least amount of housing available
Bill
Do you use lights at night? Do you cook? Do you drive a car? And Do you breath? It has been proven that human (especially overpopulation) causes pollution.
Multinational in a lot of instances reduces the amount of pollution, for example, what do you think uses more energy. Every home in Australia making their own bread? Or having a company bake bread for 100,000 household. If 100,000 people want bread, then pollution will happen, it is good to blame a company for all that is wrong in the world, but it is people who actually cause pollution. As long as there are people, there will be pollution.
Bruce Baird has announced his retirement.
My website is offline, if anyone is wondering, because my ISP has had a server melydown. They promise it will be up by lunchtime.
Adam, are you ever not at a computer?
I take a break occasionally
This time next week I will be in Berlin so you will be hearing less from me
Just checked out Rebecca’s site that she linked to in this thread – seems to be far left fringe – remarkably denalist about the collapse of communism – http://www.deadroo.com/index.php/the-collapse-of-marxism-a-fundamental-misunderstanding/
I’m going to raise something that hasn’t previously been discussed here. What are people’s thoughts on the (so-called) Anzac Day fiasco? Personally, I don’t see the big deal. I think News Ltd publications are going feral because they are terrified Rudd might actually beat Howard. They’ll savage him to no-end in a desperate big to ensure Howard keeps the top job. Thoughts?
I think it’s a storm in a teacup – while it does seem to cut to the question of Rudd’s honesty/dishonesty and his media relationships, I think that the affection many feel for Sunrise will counteract that.
After all, this is a voting population who has returned a lying PM and government for more than a decade.
Rudd has backed off Sunrise now, along with Hockey (who has been incredibly good natured about it). By the time the election rolls around no one will give a rats.
True true. Am curious though to see the short-term impact. Newspoll is out tonight! Any guesses for what the 2PP will be?
Did anyone watch Rudd on 60 Minutes last night ?
The first half had some sickening/fake moments, second half was much better.
In general it’ll help him.
It looked a little like an ad for Rudd!
had to give up reading Milne’s opinion piece this morning as it was crap.
attacking Hockey for agreeing with Rudd and demanding the P.M. get stuck into Hockey because of it, with opinion pieces like this Milne is rapidily losing any credence with the public about his ability as a journalist
So Bruce Baird has announced his retirement? Wasn’t there some controversy over the allegations that the Liberal Right was trying to branch-stack Baird’s electorate so they could have a say in choosing his successor? I seem to recall reading about it in the Sydney Morning Herald. As I seem to remember Baird’s initial candidacy in Cook was due to the desire of the moderates in the Liberal Party to oust Stephen Mutch, who was aligned with the right of the party. I seem to remember that Howard made clear his preference for Mutch over Baird
It seems to me that the pre-selection for Baird’s successor in Cook could be interesting. Anyone have any info?
Baird is wasted talent. How he never became Minister, even a junior one, is beyond me especially when compared with the luddites that have made it up the ranks over the years. Howard has clearly overlooked him because of his alignment with Costello.
I would totally agree -Baird is indeed wasted talent and it’s sad to see that he has nothing to show for his nine years in federal Parliament. I think he would have been an asset to a federal Cabinet and I have always admired him for his decency and integrity.
It was the same with the late Peter Nugent of Aston -a man of decency and integrity who would have been an asset to a Liberal government but missed out on promotion while those less talented and less capable ot promoted ahead of him. Nugent and Baird were/are both very similar in terms of ideology and philosophy and I think the country is the lesser for not having them in some sort of cabinet role
Did anyone have an answer for Psephophile’s question about AC Nielsen? The last federal poll was on the 12th of March?
Oh .. and Psephophile .. I think News Ltd are actully trying really hard to appear impartial (besides a few of their right wing columnists) .. the word has come down from above that Murdoch “favours” Team Rudd. I think the majority the coverage out of Murdoch’s papers .. all the way through to the election .. will be, on balance, far more favorable than otherwise.
Oh really? Actually, I have noticed that the Oz appears rather onside. But the Tele in Sydney is woeful. Far worse than the other News Ltd tabloids. They had three columnists in yesterdays paper attacking Rudd, all over this Anzac Day gaffe. It was quite unprecented and extraordinary.
Psephophile Says: April 16th, 2007 at 11:32 am – spot on.
As with the Burke affair, the overkill will favour Rudd. It’s interesting though, the coverage is far greater in NSW than any other state. Here in Victoria you have to seek out the story, it’s not in your face. I think it will wash over most people and become a distant memory within days.
The Libs are treading very carefully with this – interesting.
They are aren’t they? I’ve noticed how silent they have been. It’s especially stark given the contrast with how they handled the “Burke affair”. What was I spot on about Gary Bruce?
Psephophile Says: I was referring to this comment – “I think News Ltd publications are going feral because they are terrified Rudd might actually beat Howard. They’ll savage him to no-end in a desperate big to ensure Howard keeps the top job. ” There is no doubt about that.
The attack on Rudd in regard to his childhood memories is laughable. A cousin, angry with Rudd over a dam, (surprise, surprise) has different childhood memories to that of Rudd while that same cousin’s daughter backs up Rudd’s story. What a joke.
Over the weekend I was with some friends, one of whom votes Liberal, and he said ‘this government is going down, and they’re going to go out dirty, trashing everything they can while they still can.’
Discuss.
Two of my friends, by no means Labor supporters, are convinced Howard will go this election. No maybe and these are very cautious people. There is no doubt in my mind that the initial shift in Labor’s vote after Rudd became leader was more than any honeymoon. This shift is massive and unprecedented. Rudd maybe good but he isn’t that good. This, I believe is an anti Howard government swing. All these people needed to back Labor was a leader remotely acceptable. That’s also why I think these smear campaigns against Rudd will not work.
They are in real trouble.
A state Liberal MP whose opinion I respect told me this week that he was sure Howard would lose. His view was this was just due to the turn of the electoral cycle and that the electorate was bored and wanted a change. I don’t agree with him about the latter point, but it is interesting that this view should be abroad among Liberals.
I agree. Another anecdote (for what they are worth, although I happen to think they are worth a lot). I struggle to find Liberal voters amongst my close acquaintainces. However my dad is a swinging voter, who has so far correctly picked the PM at every election since he was 21, which means since Holt. He thinks Kevin Rudd is great and is sick of Howard. So does my Liberal-voting (until now) Howard-loving, servo operator.
It seems to me lots of people are talking about the ‘when’ rather than the ‘if’ of a change of government. Ruddy just has to hang on and endure these slings and arrows of outrageous media activity.
And I reckon the cousin sounds like a bit of a bastard and that voters will think so too. After all, the remembering of past events is fuel for any number of Christmas table punch ups.
Neil Mitchell (conservative commentator), on 3AW, yesterday, was asked who he thought would win. He said Labor but then went on to say he had been speaking to two senior Liberals that said they thought they were gone. That thought is definitely out there.
Years ago as a kid, I lived two doors away from my first cousins, a very large family. Having, in the last couple of years made contact with many of them again, I’m realising how little I knew of what really was going on and how differently each of us views happenings at that time. It is a real eye opener.
Don’t you just love this from Wayne Swan and how true it is. “Peter Costello has been saying for 12 months that Work Choices will lead to higher wages, now he’s saying its abolition will lead to higher wages.
“That’s voodoo economics, it makes no sense.â€
Hi Adam, you were asking about NSW ALP preselections. I have cut and pasted the following from the April political briefing that all financial members recieved today
At the close of nominations at 4pm Wednesday 4th April the following nominations were
received:
Bennelong Maxine McKew
Dobell Craig Thomson
Lowe John Murphy
Macquarie Bob Debus
Parramatta Julie Owens
Richmond Justine Elliot
The above candidates have been endorsed.
b) Federal Preselections – Round Two
Nominations have been called for the following Federal Seats:
Barton Berowra Bradfield Cook
Farrer Grayndler Greenway Hume
Hunter Kingsford-Smith Lyne Mackellar
Mitchell Parkes Prospect Reid
Riverina Sydney Warringah Watson
Calare New England
The timetable is as follows:
Nominations Open: Friday 13th April 2007
Nominations Close: Wednesday 2nd May 2007 at 12 noon
Local Credentialing: Saturday 5th May 2007
Challenges Close: Thursday 10th May 2007 at 12 noon
Ballot (if necessary): Saturday 26th May 2007
Nomination Fee: $500 for held ALP seats and $250 for other seats
Thanks. It’s interesting that those are all either seats Labor already holds or unwinnable seats. I don’t see Eden-Monaro, Page, Robertson, Cowper, Paterson, Lindsay, Gilmore or Hughes – the seats Labor might actually win.
Re Gould’s book shop
When I last looked a few years ago it seemed disorganised
it was hard to walk round parts because books blocked the aisles
however it probably has books you would not find any where else
and would be a treasure trove if you found what you were looking for.
In terms of ALP politics Bob Gould has stayed where he was in the 60s
& 70s whilst the world has moved on. He represents a very very small
portion of the left of the ALP
Only ALP seats held by shadow ministers are in that list. The Age the other day had said that only Blaxland, Charlton, Chifley and Fowler were held back. Should any other backbenchers be concerned?
Before you guys get all excited about an ALP Victory, lets step back into the time machine:
http://www.redrag.net/2004/09/
whats the thing between Rudd and Hockey? Mates? seems a bit strange to me
No, the usual process is that the pre-selections are done in a series of rounds – allegedly because Sussex St can’t cope with the work load if all are done at the same time.
Of course I have no idea what is really going on but the usual practice is being followed.
Did you see the story on TT about the dumping of rubbish from navy ships? Obviously the Ministers responsible where not interested niether was the navy or the Dept of defense. But what got me was the non interest of the shadow ministers including Garrett
From ALP e-news
Howard’s Undemocratic Electoral Laws Start Today
Hundreds of thousands of Australians are likely to be disenfranchised by John Howard’s new unfair electoral laws.
These new laws will cause anger and confusion at polling booths on election day later this year.
It’s undemocratic – but that’s what john Howard is able to do while he has control of both houses of parliament…
anti-African Howard:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=261184
Adam my wife just finished a paper on Aids history and the Public health system. I read some of the literature that she used. Fascinating, especially Dr Niel Blewetts take on it. Spent the whole easter weekend reading. Btw she received a HD for it
The Speaker, I understand your apprehension but for argument sake take me through the parallels with 2004 and I will take you through the differences. Mention things like personnel (leaders etc), time in office, issues, policy and polls.
Calling Howard “anti-African” because he wants to check immigrants for certain diseases is just… nonsense. It’s fake, pretend, pulled-out-of-an ass racism. If that is racist, gosh, I guess we’re all just terrible racist people then.
Take the Greenie propaganda elsewhere Billy boy.
I was never one to support the Greens. People who talk about nature as “mother†make me nervous.
Sometimes, I wonder if their wonderfully, child-like naivety is just the result of having made up their minds as five year-olds, and being too bloody-mindedly stubborn to change them. I wonder if they’ve ever taken in the picture of rabbits happily romping in the sunshine, and dared to lift the curtain. To look into the eyes of the *real* Mother Nature.
Lions pulling down wounded zebra, and snakes waiting in the shadows to strike like a steel trap, and millions of people dying under attack from an enemy too small to even see.
I doubt it somehow.
I can understand the preselections being done in stages but it doesn’t seem to make much sense to do unwinnable seats like Bradfield first and leave seats like Eden-Monaro and Lindsay, which Labor must win, without candidates for another month or more. My suspicion is still that head office os going to impose candidates on those seats, pleading lack of time.
Thought we might have seen a bit more discussion of the detailed Newspoll breakdown (I’ve been away for a few days so haven’t had a chance to until now). Whilst I’d be surprised if the final result was anything like 57-43, I suspect the relativities between states (Queensland and SA a couple of points above the national average swing, WA a couple of points below it) will hold up fairly well barring a major new state-based scandal or local issue, whatever the national swing ends up being. Queensland and WA don’t surprise me, although a lot of the commentary here (and elsewhere) seems to be assuming that the WA-rest of nation differential is a lot greater than it is. SA was a bit more unexpected – only obvious thing I can think of is that the state government is travelling better than most at present and isn’t a potential negative on the federal ALP vote in the way that (say) NSW might be.
Also interesting was the difference between ’safe’ Coalition seats and the others (12% swing versus 7-8, which is a large enough difference to be statistically meaningful with the sample size). This could be a plus or a minus for Labor. If the national swing’s modest then it means a lot of it will be wasted (and it’s possible to construct a plausible scenario under which Labor gets 52-48 and loses), but if there’s a really big swing on and the end result is anything like 57-43, then seats on double-digit margins which usually aren’t on the radar might fall and greatly inflate the eventual majority.
I agree with the reported comments of Adam’s state liberal MP the electoral cycle is turning – witness the 3-4% swings against incumbent ALP governments in Victoria and NSW, unprecedented since 1995 (Goss).
But the economy is still pretty good for most of the key voters in the key seats, and if governments as wretched as Iemma and Beattie can still get back with solid majorities, even lacking a Debnam or a Flegg, the Federal Coalition is not finished yet. According to my knowledge (open to correction by people closer to the action) the Vic and NSW governments performed particularly well in the urban marginals. I reckon Rudd needs a 2PP > 52% to be confident.
Lateline just released the 2PP Newspoll: ALP 59% Coalition 41%
Better PM: Rudd 48% (steady), Howard 36% (down 2)
ALP 59: Coalition 41. Howard should be panicking if he isn’t already.
He’s not wearing the brown underpants for nothing….
So “Kevin Rudd had lunch with the devil†didn’t work, “WorkChoices (for Employers) is nirvana†didn’t work, “Kevin Rudd tells fibs about when he was an eleven-year-old boy†didn’t work, “The unions will come back and murder us in our beds†didn’t work, and “Kevin Rudd is the enemy of Anzac Day†didn’t work. What will the Liberals do next?
“PM Rudd would cancel Xmas” ?
Going by the trend, His approval rating would soar
Peter Stephens: Have you ever seen the documentary “Grizzly Man” ? I think you’d like it.
Yes Speaker. Treadwell was brave but a fool and he paid for that with his life.
I find it difficult to believe that the pollees since Labor’s revival have not found fault with Rudd, and the Govt believed this would be so too. What this does indicate, taken with Howard poor approval rating, is that it doesn’t matter who is there as long as they’re credible. Rod Cameron on Lateline spin six weeks ago found that the grudging respect the pollees had for Howard in the past had turned to grudges. For some reason, having little I suspect to do with any changes in policy, the tide turned and his ship sailed.
I think this is the final straw for the Coalition MPs and several big Howard supporters will advise him to go and let a more youthful leader take over. The question is when and then who. To give a successor less than six months would be downright inconsiderate. Is Costello’s image too tied to the Govt (could he do a Keating in 93)? Abbott’s a no-go which leaves Nelson the Thunderbird (likely if no Costello) or the unfailingly uncomfortable stare of Julie Bishop with the appropriate Gorton-like move to the HoR (and then they can blame it on a woman! Worked for State Labor in WA and Vic.).
I don’t think they’re out of it yet but they require a major Labor mistake in economic policy that the electorate can understand. And I have the feeling that the Shadow front bench won’t release anything without it being covered in fine tooth comb marks.
There’s always “Kevin Rudd killed Bob Woolmer”. Maybe that might work for the coalition?
Tyrone, Bishop’s already in the HoR – the member for Curtin.
Geoff ask about Dunkley a seat I lived in for 14 years, the local MP Bruce Billson is well regarded with Boundaries which will help him but this seat could do a Lindsay 96 for its a very diverse seat with a mixture of older areas like Frankston and younger more middle class areas like Mornington and Langwarrin, I tip Bruce will hold but with a swing against.
I am waiting for the leadership team of Abbott & Costello
which will make terrific political theatre for labor this will happen within the
next 12 months
oakeshott country Says April 16th, 2007 at 6:54 pm :-
……Nomination Fee: $500 for held ALP seats and $250 for other seats
Excuse me for being naive, but what is the rationale and purpose of a party imposing a nomination fee on potential candidates who it wants to win seats for it ?
I’ve always thought its to make them think about it twice, and the fees are needed to cover the costs of preselection ballots which, when they eventuate, are tedious and intensive procedures.