Comments on: Newspoll: 51-49 to Labor in Victoria

By: mexicanbeemer

mexicanbeemer — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:41:31 +0000

Follow the Preferences! I never said the ALP will suffer a 10% swing in Northern Victoria. but the Government is not popular!! they will suffer a swing (bookmark it)

By: follow the preferences

follow the preferences — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:22:37 +0000

Mexicanbeemer (41), So you are suggesting that there is going to be a 10% swing against the ALP in the Victorian Upper House for Northern Victoria. Don’t give up your day job.

By: Tom the first and best

Tom the first and best — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:03:54 +0000

Sorry about the bad formatting of the table but the comment formatter deleted the spaces I had used to better format it.

By: Tom the first and best

Tom the first and best — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:01:42 +0000

If the state seat boundaries were used for the Commonwealth Parliament then there would be massive malapportionment because all the states have different numbers of voter per seat as exampled by the number of state seats and the number of federal seats each state has (lower house).

state federal
NSW 93 49
Vic 88 37
Qld 89 29
SA 49 11
WA 59 15
Tas 35* 5**
ACT 17* 2
NT 25 2**

*multi-member electorates (Tas 5 ACT 3)
**number inflated by minimum seat number requirements

Not to mention the rule in Qld and WA where large land area state seats get to have smaller populations based on their land area.

The ACT has more people that the NT so for it to have less senators is ludicrous.

If the states were scraped then it is highly likely that the senate would no longer be based on state areas.

By: mexicanbeemer

mexicanbeemer — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:40:11 +0000

I was referring to the region of Northern Victoria.

Follow the Preferences!! Both, the ALP historically have done very poorly in northern Victoria and as this currant Governemnt ages and is weighted down with unpopular issues mostly surrounding Water policy then I would expect the ALP to struggle, they may do okay in Bendigo but this will be helped by the high profile lower house MPs.

That in itself could also be counter productive.

Tom the first and best!! in my ideal world that mind you will never happen we would have a two levels of Governments, the House of Reps would use the State lower house seats has the boundaries meaning the House of Reps would have about 416 seats and we would have a 100 member senate which could happen if all States plus the NT had 13 sentators and the ACT had 9, with all Sentators up at every election.

By: Bird of paradox

Bird of paradox — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:14:34 +0000

They could, but why would they want to do that? It’s in the Greens’ interest for Labor to get almost half the seats (which they currently do – 19 out of 40, Lib/Nat/DLP 18, Greens balance with 3). If the right wing parties get a majority, the Greens become a lot less relevant.

By: Tom the first and best

Tom the first and best — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:52:16 +0000

The Greens could damage Labor in the Legislative Council by having bellow the line 1-5 only how to vote card (like advising to exhaust in Qld or NSW).

By: Tom the first and best

Tom the first and best — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:43:37 +0000

I presume that by Northern you mean Northern Victoria not Northern Metropolitan because if the ALP does not win a second seat in Northern Metropolitan then jaws will hit floors.

By: follow the preferences

follow the preferences — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:03:04 +0000

Mexican Beemer (29) Is that a considered opinion or just a quess. My looking at the last results would suggest that for that to happen the conservatives would either need ALP preferences before the Greens or about a 10% swing. The point I was making was around preference negotiations between the Greens and the ALP. The point is again the Greens here have a huge stick, if the ALP do not enter into genuine negotiations with the Greens around other upperhouse seats in Metro and other Regions any chance of a second ALP in Northern could be gone. The Greens could simply give thier preferences to exactly the same people as the ALP and just scuttle the whole upper house for Brumby in the next election.

By: Oz

Oz — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 04:03:21 +0000

I’m referring to is while the three levels of Government have enjoyed over the past 20 years a massive increase in revenue yet now this currant boom is coming to an end what excelty have our three levels of Government done in that time apart from buck past.

The blame with that lies squarely at the feet of the people who continued to vote in government’s based on “economic rationalism” (taxcuts) at the expense of infrastructure investment. You don’t get to sit there, watch the coffers get frittered away and then blame “the system”. The options were there, people never took them.

I’m not a big fan of the current three tier system but I’m going to blame the problems at State level on “the system”, I’m going to blame them on the government. Likewise, I’m not going to blame “the system” for inadequate services and investment at Federal level, I’m going to blame the Howard government.