Think about the nature of the compensation payments being proposed regarding the ETS, think about the nature of the payments that composed the Global Financial Crisis Security Package. Hell, you can choose just about anything the ALP has done on the government transfer payment front this year.
Then think about this chart – the proportion of each electorate that receives Family Tax Benefit Part A vs. the ALP two party preferred swing at the 2007 Election (the red line is a simple regression line)
Enlightened yet? 
Since this is the festive season and all, let’s have a buy one get one free day on the chart front. If we scatter the number of people receiving the Age Pension against the number of people receiving FTB Part A by electorate, the results explain an awful lot about the nature of seats and particularly the nature of the Coalition.
Notice how the seats in the bottom left of the chart are where the Liberal Party get’s its leadership and party financing from, Also note the National Party cluster out on the far right of the chart.
UPDATE:
George Megalogenis weighs in on the CPRS compensation and its FTB and Low Income Tax Offset basis – putting some $$ meat on the bones to the first chart.
15 Comments
Shhhhhhh – it’s supposed to be a secret
So a motion in the ALP party room to cancel FTBA would not get up? LOL Was it FTBA that kept Howard in power? Seems like you can buy votes … just not allowed to sell them on EBay.
Poss, does the Libs V Nats spread on the 2nd chart translate into a broader opportunity for the ALP to wedge and split the ‘coatition’ with policy carefully drafted to fall ‘in between’ them? Or am I misreading / not quite getting the implications of these charts?
Pica – it certainly does, and that’s one of the many weird little pieces of info in that second chart.The more you look, the more you see.. especially if the first chart is kept in your thought orbit.
oops – ‘coatition’ = coalition
So presumably the smart young things in the back rooms of the ALP are plotting against electorates other politically sensitive x and y axes looking for the issues that split the coalition the most, oh what fun.
If Barnaby hasn’t already taken the silly season award, we may not have to wait too long into 09 to see him disobeying Truffles again.
Hi Possum, any chance you could colour the points on the chart by party holding that seat? Might make the clustering a little more obvious.
I second Steve’s request.
Obviously I don’t know who holds where as well as some.
Hi Possum – I love the graphs, but can you explain in more detail how there is anything new in this information, other than presentational? Its hardly a shock that a government will direct its largesse to those parts of the electorate that maximise its chances of winning the next election. And coalition electorates have long been split along socio-economic lines. In government, the coalition has often been sustained by shared goals on social policy….and the coalition leadership buying off support in the bush with all sorts of rural largesse….In opposition, where it is harder to set the agenda, and you have no opportunity to dole out money, that coalition is harder to sustain….This government may end up being more successful than most in identifying ways to wedge the coalition, but it is hardly a new political strategy….
Possum Ive justy been looking at Morgan’s leadership survey and I’m finding it a bit …..’confusing’ will do.
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2008/4347/
With 561 sample is it statistically credible to say how many Greens prefer person A to B for example, ditto for FF and others?
Do I understand that they asked people to imagine they were an ALP voter and poll for second string ALP leader, and then asked the same people to imagine they were a Coalition voter and poll for second string Coal leader?
Wear different hats?
Care to comment on the survey?
I think it is summed up in two words “working families”.
Steve and Fredex, over the Christmas period we’ll break these charts down a bit further and do it by party, so the charts will become much more user friendly. Those two new Morgan polls are a bit fluffy, we’ll have a look at them later on the weekend sometime.
LO, it’s the way the government is using FTB A that seems to be the big thing here. George Meg has a good article that’s been linked into in the post that goes through most of it., but there’s a bit more as well which we’ll get into when we break those charts down further.
Hi Possum, just something I noticed on the second graph. Pardon me if I’m mistaken, but it looks like you have the two axes vicky-verker. In the first graph, the three seats with the highest %age of FTB A recipients are Holt, Chifley and La Trobe. But on the second graph, these three seats are shown has having the highest number of Age Pension recipients, while the retiree havens of Gilmore, Lyne and Hinkler are shown as having the most FTB A beneficiaries.
Apart from that, excellent graphs. The split between the inner cities (including safe ALP and safe LIB seats) and the rest of the country is what I find the most striking.
Catatonia.
Ooops! Thanks for that (shuffles away feeling a bit silly)
All fixed.
Don’t feel silly. It’s something that can happen to the best of us
By the way, are the data you used publicly available? I’d love to conjure up a similar graph, using other Centrelink payments such as Newstart (the dole), Parenting Payment (single mothers) and the Disability Support Pension. Recipients of the last two benefits were shafted by the Howard government in its last term – in the 2005 budget (IIRC), Howard and Costello tightened eligibility for both payments, by forcing single mothers to start looking for work when their youngest child turned 6 years of age (instead of 16) and restricting the DSP to those who are unable to work 15 hours a week (instead of 30).
I’m wondering if this is one reason why seats with an above-average proportion of solo parents such as Macarthur, Forde, etc. saw 10%+ swings to Labor last year?
Catatonia, most of the data you’re after is available over at the Dept of Human Services:
http://www.humanservices.gov.au/dhs/publications/electorate-data/az.html
George Megalogenis thinks the issues surrounding single parent payments had a good bit to do with those swings – he’s probably right.