Comments on: EMRS: Liberals lead 42-33 in Tasmania

By: Kevin Bonham

Kevin Bonham — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:59:04 +0000

Ross Butler elected to Franklin with a majority on first count, as Antony predicted above. Actually slightly closer than I thought it would be; Butler got 54.5% on the recount, Hulme 36.7%, Goodwin (Lib) 3.1% and the other six candidates the remaining slops. 72 votes exhausted; I am guessing most of these voted for all five sitting members across party lines.

By: steve

steve — Fri, 30 May 2008 21:44:04 +0000

Glen I am sure you will be disappointed by the behaviour of Gunns in not being able to create a state of the art mill too. Some companies just cut corners as a matter of course, are not visionary and progressive and end up putting forward proposals that damage everybody associated with them. The damage does seem to be spreading. Keep your head down and hard hat on in case we learn that your mob was associated with Gunns.

By: Glen

Glen — Fri, 30 May 2008 20:34:28 +0000

steve i said ‘may’ that’s not declaring that we’re going to win which would be hubris.

By: Patrick Bateman

Patrick Bateman — Fri, 30 May 2008 04:02:49 +0000

The mill is gone. They can spin it all they like but this is a big setback, and by the early noises coming out of the new leadership in Tas the total free ride from the government there may be coming to an end. It will be surprising if they can drum up that sort of cash from “international banks” in the current financial crisis, and the ANZ experience suggests that consumer backlash is a real concern for any bank getting involved in the project.

Tasmania should do something intelligent like taking advantage of its remaining pristine wilderness to position itself as one of the few places on earth which is in a first world democracy but also contains beautiful old growth forests and wide open spaces (and isn’t a desert). Rather than, say, cutting it all down and replacing it with pollution and a large factory.

By: Molesworth

Molesworth — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:34:02 +0000

Thanks Kevin.

On the mill, has there been any talk that ANZ might have been worried about sovereign risk (meaning a hung parliament)?

By: steve

steve — Thu, 29 May 2008 23:05:32 +0000

80 Hubris

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hubris

By: Glen

Glen — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:55:23 +0000

Wow bring on the next election the Libs may just win one for once!

By: Blackbird

Blackbird — Thu, 29 May 2008 13:06:00 +0000

I am not debating the merits of the mill. Simply saying regardless – it will go ahead. The mill will be funded by international financiers, apparently Gunns has been in talks with foreign banks for some time and are very confident of reaching a deal.

By: Socrates

Socrates — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:44:26 +0000

Blackbird

ANZ’s funding decision does sink the project (hurray!). Gunns, despite their sincerity in claiming the project is a winner, are not putting up all their own cash (curious…). The only other option is govenment funding; Tasmania doesn’t have that sort of $ spare and no mainland government would dare put federal cash in – electoral suicide.

Don’t cry for the pulp mill. As I said before, Dr Peter Brain is a very reputable economist on employment impacts (he did the last employment forcasts for major transport studies in Brisbane). If someone of his calibre says the impacts may be negative, he’s probably right. Gunns might have made some money, but the losses to other industries would have exceeded it. Jobs wise, its a no-brainer not to do it; timber is not a very labor intensive industry as it has become increasingly mechanised. By constrast the threatened industries in the valley (wine and fishing) are labor intensive. I know more reasons about this that I can’t discuss but, suffice to say, the mill was a turkey.

By: Kevin Bonham

Kevin Bonham — Thu, 29 May 2008 10:52:20 +0000

Re the effect of 25 seats vs 35 seats on the 1998 result I discussed this in moderate depth in an old piece at http://www.tasmaniantimes.com/jurassic/bonhamlester.html and reached the conclusion that Labor would very probably not have won a majority on the same vote levels in a 35 seat house. The most likely result would have been 16 or 17 Labor, 14 Liberal, 4 or 5 Green. Labor won a majority in the 25-seat house in 1998 because they got a majority of seats (3-2) in four electorates (Denison the exception), but under the 35-seat system at least two of those and probably three (as well as Denison) would have split 3-3-1.

Another example where it may have made a difference was 1989; it’s possible under the 25-seat system that Gray’s Liberals would have just stayed in majority had the House been 25 seats at the time (as it was, they missed majority government by a seat).

When the Green vote is low, then the 25-seat system generally increases the chance of majority government compared to the 35-seat system. When it is high it is likely to make no difference but could work either way depending on how the votes are split up.