In the event that we do face an election sooner rather than later, one difficulty Labor will have to factor in is what looks like an unfavourable redistribution in Victoria, draft boundaries of which were released during the election campaign. Despite the fact that the number of electorates in the state has not changed, the redistribution commissioners propose a radical overhaul that will abolish the rural electorate of Murray and create the new electorate of Burke in Melbourne’s northern outskirts. While this involves the abolition of a safe Liberal seat and the creation of a new one with a notional Labor margin of 10.8 per cent (as calculated by Antony Green on the basis of the 2007 results), knock-on effects make Corangamite and Deakin notionally Liberal, and McEwen (newly acquired by Labor at the recent election) very safely so.
According to the redistribution commissioners, the sweeping changes have been deemed necessary because relative population decline has made it unfeasible to preserve the existing northern regional trio of Murray, Mallee and Indi. However, this has been disputed in a highly critical submission from Tim Colebatch, a senior journalist for The Age, who calculates that one-in-six Victorian voters will be transferred to different electorates. Colebatch complains there has been a failure to account for future growth in outer suburbs and the inner city, which in partisan terms will mean bloated enrolments in nine Labor seats by 2018 and deficient ones in four middle suburban Liberal seats. It is tempting to speculate the commissioners have been influenced by the fact that redistributions of New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia turned Labor’s 83 seats from the 2007 election into a notional total of 88.
However, another submission from Jenni Newton-Farrelly of the South Australian Parliamentary Library reaches a very different conclusion. Newton-Farrelly has brought to the process her jurisdiction’s enthusiasm for electoral fairness, with reference to margins she has calculated from both the 2007 election and preliminary results from 2010. When these are adjusted to a 50-50 two-party outcome, Labor is found to receive more than its fair share: 20 seats to 17, with no margin in any seat lower than 1.4 per cent. On the results from the recent election, Newton-Farrelly finds the Liberals would have won Corangamite by 0.8 per cent and McEwen by 6.6 per cent, while Labor would have gained Aston by 1.5 per cent.
Elsewhere:
• Antony Green crunches the numbers from seven electorates where there were only Labor, Liberal and Greens candidates and finds “little difference between the 2010 preference flows and the flows in the same seats at the 2007 election”. This comes as a profound shock, as we were repeatedly warned not to trust two-party opinion poll results based on exactly this assumption. Dennis Shanahan of The Australian, for example, wrote on August 2 that Labor’s primary vote had fallen into “the fatal zone below 40 per cent, where the party has only a slight hope of winning, and then based only on heroic assumptions about the results and the delivery of Greens preferences”. I like to think that the moral of this story is that even in this jaded and cynical age, heroism can sometimes still win the day.
• Amusingly, Labor has pulled ahead at the time of writing on the AEC’s meaningless national two-party vote figure, which excludes results from eight electorates. In the past few days I have heard Andrew Bolt, Barnaby Joyce, Kerry Chikarovski and Kenneth Wiltshire (no doubt there were many others) use the progress score on this count to assert that the Coalition had won, which is very clearly untrue. As Peter Brent of Mumble points out, it is almost certain that the complete figures which will be available in a few weeks’ time will show Labor the winner, by however narrow a margin. Smarter Coalition operatives have been limiting their pitch to the perfectly reasonable observation that the Liberal and National parties won “more votes and seats” than Labor.
• In the comments thread from the Mumble post linked to above, Peter Brent tells a reader that “Newspolls will take a breather for a little while”. Speaking of Newspoll, here’s an exchange from Sunday’s edition of Insiders:
Barrie Cassidy: (The Australian) ran the results of a poll on Saturday, not talking about individual seast but country-wide, that more people were in favour of a minority Labor government than a minority Coalition government. Now Glenn, you’ve had some experience with this, they actually polled a week ago and published six days later. That’s unusual, isn’t it?
Glenn Milne: Well, it’s clear they didn’t like the poll results.
3,234 Comments
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I paid $50 to see Nana Mouskouri. Great concert.
Paid $100 to see Led Zeppelin & was deaf for two days.
ITEP – Nice compliment to his wife
Any ideas on who the Libs will put forward as Dept. Speaker, given that he/she will not sit in the Party Room?
Ru, mad uncle?
On the ministry, the papers seem to be saying
Rudd-FA
Smith-Defence
Wong-AG
Combet-CC
Bowen-Finance
Diog, Wong should do Immigration
Please. Not Bronnie or Prissy!
Where’s Wilson when he’s needed?
Don’t worry about the early TPP counting results in O’Connor and Lyne.
The AEC are not actually reporting any new counting as yet.
They have just entered the first-preference numbers for ALP and Nats
into the corresponding TPP columns. (Eg, a first preference ALP
vote is obviously going to preference the ALP above Nats).
Thus these few early results do not tell us anything about how
the preferences of Oakeshott voters (or Tuckey voters) split.
These early results in these two seats will also be skewed to the
LNP.
Diogs,
Gillard PM
Swan Treasurer
Tom Hawkins@3208
Unemployed – victim of Workchoices by the good voters of O’Connor
Finns
Actually Evans was one who was tipped to be in trouble so Immigration might be free. Crappy job though, although not as bad as CC.
Wong – AG. What about Dreyfus? I don’t think much of silk (most are grubs) but surely he must feel entitled?
Reminds me of the story of Garfield Barwick (when he was A-G) explaining a legal issue to Cabinet. Billy McMahon chimed in tried to assist. Barwick told him to be quiet.
Billy said that they were colleagues and he was trying to help a fellow lawyer.
Barwick replied: “Maybe, but there is a hierachy in the profession.”
Just saw Frydenberg on ABC 24 banging on about primaries.
Live in the now dude. Game over!
Said this last night, Amanda Rishworth to something she can prosper in, Nick Champion to get a minor portfolio, My tips. Obvious I’m from SA.
What’s the world coming to?
Is this the Rapture?
Just seen the end of Sky Contrarians.
Presenter Peter van Osterlen(?) actually put hard questions to Lib and IPA (Lib thought bubble) members of panel.
Lab member of panel temporarily looked like a stunned mullet (could not believe it).
If Gillard is smart politically, that what she should do. If Wong in Immigration, Bennelong is in the bag.
We paid 2quid to see Louis Armstrong and Johnny Ray, so there!
Rosa at 3189
He predicted Labor to just fall over the line.
Thoughts I’m about to raise may already have been addressed. I started at about 8.00 this am , am back now and boy there is some catching up to do. I’ve found some really helpful theories and explanations on what makes Murdoch tick and how NBN will affect his business. As I say this may already be covered in which case I’ll find out as I read on but my 2 main thoughts now are
1) is there a way of having 1 central site that I can get onto from which I can get easy access to the variety of like-minded sites. Eg I go to site A which then has links to Crikey,Daily Bludge etc. I don’t think all of these sites should be rolled into one because diversity is the key.
2)now that I am happy and talk to people with similar views, as a group how can we get those views out to the broader public in competition to MSM?
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/coalition-broadband-plan-not-properly-explained-and-not-understood-says-andrew-robb/story-fn59niix-1225917399939
What the headline SHOULD have said:
On the strength of that I’ll go back to buying the weekend SMH. Gotta help out the good guys somehow.
The fist Oz shipment (ex UK) & I think master discs for Oz pressings, were caught in the Suez Canal blockade & blockages during the Yom Kippur War (5 June 1967) as were my FinL’s & many others’ Christmas stock: fourteen cargo ships known as “The Yellow Fleet” remained trapped in the canal for over eight years. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal#Arab-Israeli_wars_of_1967_and_1973)
Most of the cargo caught in the blockage was scrapped / trashed – today, it’d be auctioned as memorabilia.
From memory, Sergeant Pepper wasn’t available until the following year (mine was prepaid so Palings gave me a refund when I was transferred north). We survived on radio DJ’s copies flown out from England, & copies friends either brought back with them or were sent for Xmas.
Apperently Abbott is going to make minimal changes to the shadowy cabinet. Howard still rules the Libs.
I saw AC/DC with just 7 or 8 other people many years ago.
I also saw the Zeps at Kooyong (row 6) and was reasonably impressed.
Didn’t pay to get in either.
grey
I’m from NSW.
Jason Clare should get a gig in the ministry. Looks like Bowen, Burke and Combet are already on track for promotions. But Garrett (my local member) should be out on his ear.
OzPol Tragic@3224
Not quite correct – it was the covers which were held up because EMI weren’t capable of printing the Gatefold covers and the various inserts properly.
The actual discs were mastered locally, as I assume the Master Tapes were flown in from the UK.
ruawake
What about Turnbull? Orange boy?
RNM1953
Have a look at http://www.politicalsword.com
It has lots of links to other sites.
The Garrett experiment never really ‘worked’ IMO
Curously, on ABC 24, the ALP guy (member for Thrisby) was saying Phoney was “custom made for oppositon, he’s great at it – but a bit of a no-show for government itself, see the costings debacle etc”
The funny thing about was that Frydenberg appeared to be nodding in agreement!!
New thread.
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