Seat of the week: La Trobe
This week’s better-late-than-never installment of Seat of the Week brings us to La Trobe, one of two crucial gains for Labor in Victoria at the 2010 election which helped redressed losses in New South Wales and especially Queensland. The defeated Liberal member, Jason Wood, will attempt to recover the seat from Labor’s Laura Smyth at the next election after winning a preselection ballot earlier this week.
La Trobe has covered Melbourne’s eastern fringe since its creation with the enlargement of parliament in 1949, drifting south-eastwards over time from its starting point of Dandenong and Croydon. It now consists of two rapidly growing outer Melbourne areas separated by the Dandenong Ranges – Boronia and Ferntree Gully in the north, and the Berwick area in the south – and extends eastwards through Belgrave to Emerald, Cockatoo and Gembrook. Labor’s strength around Belgrave is countered by Liberal dominance around Berwick. The redistribution that will take effect at the next election has effected a swap of about 16,000 voters around Bayswater, who have been transferred to Aston, for a similar number in Narre Warren, who were previously in Holt. Another 3000 voters around Pakenham have been transferred to McMillan. Antony Green calculates that the changes have boosted Labor’s margin from 0.9% to 1.7%.
Along with other seats in Melbourne’s outer suburban “sandbelt”, La Trobe played a decisive role in the election of the Whitlam government in 1972, falling to Labor for the first time with a 10.2% swing. It swung almost as heavily the other way when the Liberals recovered it in 1975, but returned to the Labor fold in 1980 when Peter Milton defeated Liberal member Marshall Baillieu (part of the clan that includes the current Premier). An unfavourable redistribution in 1990 combined with the statewide anti-Labor tsunami at that year’s election to deliver a 1.4% victory to Liberal candidate Bob Charles. The seat had a remarkably stable time of it on Charles’s watch, staying with the Liberals by 2.4% in 1993, 1.4% in 1996, 1.0% in 1998 and 3.7% in 2001.
With Charles’s retirement at the 2004 election, La Trobe emerged as a contest between Liberal candidate Jason Wood, a police officer who had worked in counter-terrorism and organised crime units, and Labor’s Susan Davies, who held the since-abolished state seat of Gippsland West as an independent from 1997 to 2002. The result was an easy win for Wood, who overcame the loss of Charles’s personal vote to pick up a 2.1% swing that was concentrated in the heavily mortgaged suburbs nearer the city. Wood had won preselection with the backing of the Kennett faction after cutting his teeth as candidate for Holt in 2001. It was noted at the time he had “been a member of Greenpeace for longer than he has been a member of the Liberal Party”, and he went on to embarrass his party ahead of the 2007 election by issuing a brochure that failed to sing from its song sheet on nuclear power.
Wood went into the 2007 election with a 5.8% margin, of which only 0.5% was left after a swing that was most conspicuous in the areas that had moved to the Liberals in 2004. He was promoted to parliamentary secretary for justice and public security when Malcolm Turnbull assumed the Liberal leadership in September 2008, despite the embarrassment he had recently suffered after stammering his way through a parliamentary speech on genetically modified organisms (which repeatedly came out as “orgasms”). The 1.4% swing that unseated him at the 2010 election was fairly typical for Victoria, which collectively swung to Labor by 1.0%. The successful Labor candidate was Laura Smyth, a lawyer for Holding Redlich whom VexNews linked to the “Andrew Giles/Alan Griffin sub-faction of the Socialist Left”.
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Categories: Federal Election 2013, Federal Politics 2010-
I think newspapers have a smaller and smaller effect on election outcomes every year.
When most people read newspapers they simply read stories that reinforce their pre-existing opinions. Most people go out of their way to avoid reading, watching, or listening to things that challenge or out right contradict their pre-existing view.
by ShowsOn on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:43 pm
Well since you seem to be such a polling expert, how would you phrase the question differently, and how would this improve the results?
You are at a blog dedicated to election polling, it is somewhat strange of you to suddenly propose that all polls are meaningless.
by ShowsOn on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:44 pm
And one who do you lean to
by my say on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:44 pm
The impact of public holidays on opinion poll results is an interesting subject in its own right, which I’ll look into shortly. However, you only need look at postal and absent voting results to see that Bob Ellis’s oft-repeated theory about the mad/stupid/ugly skewing the results to the Coalition is the most gigantic load of tosh.
by William Bowe on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:45 pm
ShowsOn
As evidenced so many times on PB.
by lizzie on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Rather than “selling”, the Government should start EXPLAINING. They should EXPLAIN why a carbon tax is a better way of reducing carbon pollution than the opposition’s alternative scheme of subsidies for polluters. Combet is doing a good job explaining all the ways Tony Abbott’s has exaggerated the effects of the carbon price, but he doesn’t actually explain why the Carbon Tax is a far better solution to the Opposition’s alternative.
Well the polls are hardly irrelevant because no government has won an election from a polling position that is this bad this far out from an election.
by ShowsOn on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Showsy,
Oh, so your perversions are sans alchohol? Bully for you!
Didn’t take long for your inner bigot to arrive, did it?
BTW I posted this tribute to you and Bemused yesterday.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jun/09/thank-you-hater-trolls
by Greensborough Growler on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:47 pm
I would say and its not hard i would think
WHO HAVE U DECIDED TO VOTE FOR IN 18 months time
THE BIGGEST PERCENTAGE woul be
DONT KNOW
And thanks for the compliment
I may
Get
hansard
by my say on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:47 pm
It disturbs me greatly that Bob Ellis is now being taken seriously on here
by spur212 on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:48 pm
William
I think the mad, stupid and ugly people are just as likely to go away on long weekends. In fact in light of the increased dangers on the roads they are probably the ones driving about
by lizzie on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:48 pm
Why would you pose such an idiotic question? Your desire is to measure political sentiment, it makes no sense to ask people to speculate on something they may or may not do 18 months in the future.
by ShowsOn on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Loving watching Greg Combet on Sky News National. No interruptions or gotcha’s being tried with him
by poroti on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Wiliam
No one knows it tosh
Unless u where to be in all the homes phonec d NOT
Phoned
Sorry but mobiles in the end wil do you out of a job
I have youhave forward plans
by my say on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:49 pm
I think TV news is the most powerful. It reaches people not really paying much attention. I think its true papers have less direct effect and people do chose what they read, but given how poor on resources TV & Radio are, they still let papers set the agenda, spark talk back topics, guide breakfast TV chat topics, and so on.
Every TV & Radio station, if it covers news, still has “what the papers” say segments. Much smaller station radio news is “rip & read”. Less people are reading real papers than ever, but it seems as many or more are hearing what they said from someone else every day. That’s why the front pages & weight of coverage matter, few ever hear about, let alone read, the great article on page 16. Sometimes it seems the front pages matter more than they ever did.
by Leroy on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:50 pm
I hope. Uhave
by my say on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:50 pm
Polls aren’t meaningless. They tell you what is happening NOW. They just don’t tell you what is going to happen 12 months or more down the track.
by Gary on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Explaining is part of selling I would have thought.
Bilbo—No, with an election if you are away you still have to vote, unlike a poll.
by political animal on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:51 pm
There you go again trying to tell people how to live their lives, and if someone is different to you you imply they are perverted!
I’m not bigoted towards religions because I hate all religions equally.
[BTW I posted this tribute to you and Bemused yesterday.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jun/09/thank-you-hater-trolls
I don’t care.
And it is hilarious that you don’t realise that you spend a lot of time on this forum simply trolling people.
by ShowsOn on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Shorter spur212: The Government needs more support than it now has to win the next election. Who would have thought?
by Smokey on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:52 pm
Yes this is true. But it is also true that governments very rarely win when there polling is so poor for so long leading up to an election year.
It is just a truism to say that things may radically change between now and the election.
The real question is, is that likely given what has happened in the polls over the last year and a half?
by ShowsOn on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:53 pm
And living it is the best sell job of all I would have thought.
by Gary on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Becauce it makes sence to me SHOWS
Your not thinking
Why ask a question about so ething that is not actually happeni g
There is no election this week or to morrow.
People just be polite most of the time if i ever get called
Ill say HOW would i know
End of story
by my say on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Its like saing if the grandfinal was held to morrow
Who do u tip to winlol
by my say on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Sure, but some Ministers have this idea that repeating the same things over and over and dumbing things down as much as possible is the same as selling them.
Explaining something, including going into some detail, is important. People listening or watching may not understand everything you are saying, but if you go into detail it at least gives them the impression that what you are doing is serious and complicated and that you are the person to do it rather than the opposition that is trying to sell simplistic nonsense.
by ShowsOn on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Yes, PA, by postal or absent vote. So if the type who get missed by polling skewed Labor, postal and absent vote results would skew Labor. In fact, they skew Coalition, for the fairly obviously reason that an association exists between income and tendency to be away from home.
by William Bowe on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:56 pm
Smokey
Lots more support in Queensland and WA where people seem to have brought out the fiery sticks and pitch forks against the PM
by spur212 on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:56 pm
Given that so much has gone on and is going on in and outside Australia (these are unusual times) who knows and that is the point.
by Gary on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:56 pm
are away you still have to vote, unlike a poll.
EXACTLY
Gee wish i had thought of that
by my say on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:57 pm
There you go again! If you really think that mobile phones will be the death of polling / market research you have gone troppo. It will just change the way polls are weighted. This has been done in the U.S. where the issue of young people not owning a landline is an even bigger issue than it is here.
by ShowsOn on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:57 pm
political animal
In terms of selling, I suggest you hear what people are saying about the PM. You need to overcome massive obstacle before people will start to listen
by spur212 on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Sorry will
Think u lost this one
by my say on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:58 pm
What? And there weren’t a lot of things going on in the lead up to the 2007 election when the Coalition’s polling was better than what Labor’s is now, yet they still lost?
You can’t just ignore history and say the last 18 months of horrendous polling for Labor doesn’t matter because it is all going to turn around in time for the election. That’s just wishful thinking.
by ShowsOn on Jun 10, 2012 at 12:59 pm
gus
Better late than never. You’re still the only one who has so far, so take some comfort from that.
by Dan Gulberry on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:00 pm
So the GFC had hit by then had it?
by Gary on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:00 pm
Sorry, but that Bob Ellis article is whole load of horse droppings. The first mistake he makes is in assuming political parties base everything on Newspoll’s figures. We all know they do internal polling and focus group testing, and lots of it. If the Newspoll figures are out of kilter with what they’re hearing, they’ll just take it in their stride.
Then he goes on about the research he’s done on polling over the Christmas break, and just benignly extrapolates it to every long weekend. He doesn’t even invite you to do the research on Easter, Queen’s Birthday, Labour Day. He just says it must be so.
And the article of full of the kind of apocalyptic language you would expect from a Herald-Sun opinion piece. He’s just Bolt for the lunatic fringe of the left.
by Aguirre on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:04 pm
You would – have a look at Abott!
by scoutdog on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:04 pm
Showsy,
Your perversions are your business. I think you are very brave to live your life to your standards and ignore all the taunts, writs and judicial restrictions that have been imposed.
However, most sensible posters would say that hating a particular group in society because they have a particular view contrary to your own is bigotry. So perhaps you may want to consider why your hateful anit religious posts spew out like vomit whenever you get stuck for anything intelligent to say that might advance the conversation.
Clogging up PB with your mindless dogma is hardly conducive to a reasonable discussion here.
by Greensborough Growler on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:05 pm
Dan G
You mean dangle berries?
by lizzie on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:05 pm
You can ignore it to this extent. These are unchartered waters. It’s not everyday the world economy goes to hell in a hand basket. It’s not everyday a government strives to introduce major reforms and some of those being very unpopular. It’s not everyday you see poll results so bad for one party.
To look at history and find an equivalent set of circumstances is a difficult task indeed. Maybe the first depression?
by Gary on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:06 pm
What are you on about?
by scoutdog on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:07 pm
Oh come off it, this hit in 2008, it was a background issue for the last election, most Australians have already totally forgotten about it because we didn’t go into recession and we are now back to growing way above trend.
In 2007 there were other big issues, like a very bad drought that was only just starting to break and WorkChoices.
All elections have big issues, 2013 won’t be unusual in that regard.
by ShowsOn on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:08 pm
scout dog, ignore TLM the bloke is just after a bite.
by Gary on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:09 pm
DG:
I twigged after reading Gusface’s post. Not sure if that counts. V amusing!
by Aguirre on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:09 pm
TLM is having comprehension issues.
by Aguirre on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Smokey
Lots more support in Queensland and WA where people seem to have brought out the fiery sticks and pitch forks against the PM
I suspect the fundamental difference in the PB views about Gillard is that some find her style really horrible and can’t imagine people voting for her, whereas some don’t feel that way and figure that eventually people will see through the MSM bias and vote for a good government. I have been solidly with the latter group (what is it that people dislike about her so much?), but given the excellent state of the economy, I need to see the polls get considerably better by late August, or I’ll switch camps. That said, I regard the recent Newspoll 54:46 as rogue. I’d be happy with a consistent 53:47 by late August.
by Smokey on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Spur 212
Have heard all the crap people aren’t listening to Gillard. People who have had contact with Gillard in small groups or a more impromptu setting LOVE her. So Gillard has to go out and do more of these until the election—then share the video using twitter, facebook, YouTube and the like.
Once the polls improve a lot of the metrics re best to handle economy etc will improve too. I agree with Andrew Elder that someone so disliked as Abbott cannot win an election so todays polls are putting a wrong rosy glow on the polls for the Libs.
Labor has one policy making people fearful (tho that is already changing) the carbon price. They also have popular policies like the MRRT and the NBN so there is plenty of material for Labor to work with.
Ruddstoration is for children, the fearful—and the Liberals. Just look at what Rummel, ModLib, BlueGreen, TLM and TP are trying to do: make the ALP look stupid by going back to Rudd. My philosophy in life is: you can’t go back.
by political animal on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:12 pm
Listening to the extracts of sexworker’s interviews on Insiders, she said that she wasn’t aware that her evidence would “bring down the government”. Didn’t actually admit that that made her think again, but it was sorta implied.
When the journos are chewing over this stuff, they rarely repeat that she was actually in NZ at the ‘crucial’ time. Don’t think Piers would believe it, anyway.
by lizzie on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:12 pm
ShowsOn
Reading your posts overnight I offer my congratulations to you. A sterling effort in words of more than one syllable as well!
by MTBW on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:12 pm
I think you’ll be switching camps, August isn’t long enough.
by Gary on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:13 pm
WTF? Your taunts are nothing, but I have never been served with a writ or judicial restriction. I know you’d like to turn the place into a police state so we all have to copy your social conservative agenda, but that’s not how the country works at the moment and never will, because people think YOUR dogma is stupid.
I don’t hate a particular group in society at all. I hate religions. That is very different from saying that I hate religious people, but I am not surprised you have chosen to go out of your way to conflate these two different things.
Well now you seem to be the bigot because you are attacking me for expressing my hatred of religions! You are doing exactly what you are criticising me for doing, but all I am doing is expressing my hatred for religion.
Thanks for the lecture, but upon further consideration I have decided I will continue to hate religions, ALL of them in equal measure.
Well fancy that, this is a perfect criticism of yourself. You can’t see that you are a chief offender of what you accuse others of doing!
by ShowsOn on Jun 10, 2012 at 1:13 pm