From my experience of our Children’s Hospital, it’s much better to have the Childrens Hospital with the adult hospital, as you seem to be planning. Childrens hospitals tend to be very small and sacred cows which are way behind the times. Co-locating with an adult hospital is the way to go.

Here in WA, the Barnett Government have just announced plans to build a new Children’s hospital, to replace the current Princess Margaret Hospital on the Sir Charles Gardiner Hospital Site, which btw was first mooted by Labor and was to be built in stages, but the Libs are now going to build it in one hit.

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,27574,24998293-2761,00.html

You should back your judgement.

I mean you were right about the September election…

Oh, wait.

At the 2006 election the Greens contested 75 seats and received 175,798 votes, or 7.99% of the total formal primary vote. Their total final vote, after the distribution of preferences from other candidates, and immediately before their own preferences were distributed was 182,615. Of those, 77,518 or 42.45% exhausted and 105,597 or 57.55% were distributed. Of those distributed, 64,256 went to ALP candidates and 34,809 went to coalition candidates. (The remainder went to others). That equates to a net 17% of the Green primary vote being added to the primary ALP vote, or 1.34% of all formal votes.

The figures are however also very variable, so, for example, the % of Green Primary votes Net to ALP was as high as 42% in Barron river, but down only 2% in Hinchinbrook and Pumicestone. Coalition candidates actually got more Green preferences than the ALP candidates in Kallangur, Burdekin and Gympie.

What is more important however, when considering preference flows, is the results in only those seats in which the Greens had candidates, and in those 75 seats the Greens primary vote was 9.26% of formal votes.

For the purposes of analysis I have further excluded those seats where either of the final two candidates was other than an ALP or coalition candidate, thus taking out another 5 seats. The Greens primary vote was 9.42% of formal votes in the remaining 70 seats. There was still a net 17% of the Green primary vote in those seats added to the primary ALP vote, equivalent to 1.64% of all formal votes in those seats, or 1.74% of the non-exhausted votes.

In the 22 ALP seats won by a margin of less than 10% The Greens primary vote was 8.72% of formal votes and the net addition to the ALP was 1.67% of all formal votes, or 1.77% of the non-exhausted votes. Those figures are skewed however by the results in Ashgrove, Indooroopilly and Barron River and, excluding those three results from the 22 seats with an ALP margin of less than 10% gives a average net addition to the ALP was 1.11% of all formal votes, or 1.18% of the non-exhausted votes in the other 19 seats.

In the 13 ALP seats won by a margin of less than 6% The Greens primary vote was 8.67% of formal votes and the net addition to the ALP was 1.68% of all formal votes, or 1.78% of the non-exhausted votes. However when the results in Indooroopilly and Barron River are excluded the average figures for the other 11 seats are a net addition to the ALP was 0.95% of all formal votes, or 1.01% of the non-exhausted votes.

In summary, the net value Greens preferences to the ALP in 19 0f their 22 most marginal seats was just under 1.2% of the remaining votes at final count, and this figure was just over 1% in 11 of their 13 most marginal seats.

When considering possible results therefore, it is important to ignore silly media reports about where the LNP vote is in relation to the combined ALP – Greens vote, as in most cases the net value of Greens preferences to the ALP was only about 1% of remaining votes in 2006, and is unlikely to be any higher in 2009.

There’s quite a few bludgers on here waiting to pick it apart.

Twelve seats to watch

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/twelve-seats-to-watch/2009/02/23/1235237524513.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2