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.
Something to note about the six day gap in the reporting of the Newspoll result is that the Document Title of the official document is:
It is quite clear that the people at Newspoll thought that this one had been thrown in the vault.
OMG, Tony Blair is such a bore. why oh why we have to listen the idiot on our ABC.
[The MSM want a new election.]
“Mainstream Media Party of Australia” has a good ring to it, no?
[Gary Grey being from WA will boost our ministerial Coomponent to 2 after Stephen Smith]
3 including Chris Evans (also Leader of the Government in the Senate). I’d imagine Chris Evans will want to move on from Immigration.
[yesterday that he has only guaranteed supply, etc. to the coalition if they were to get into power.]
In addition, Crook DEFEATED the Coalition sitting member, Wilson “Iron Bar” Tuckey; so how could Tony claim his seat as a Coalition one?
ruawake@48
Close but no cigar 🙂
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/is-julia-gillard-a-leader/story-e6freon6-1225883460828
ruawake. She was Chief of staff to Brumby from memory. I think she was gone by 1999 though
ltep@54
Whoops, forgot about Chris Evans 🙂
It is only a theory. Still trying to make sense of Katter.
I have been mulling over the Katter decision yesterday. Apparently Laurie Oakes said that Abbott went to bed Monday night thinking he had all three indies. What made him think that? Did the other two say to Katter they would go with coalition expecting him to tell Abbott beforehand. Then of course, after Katter makes his announcement, the other two can make theirs. Katter seemed surprised which way they went.
Reason why I say this is maybe they did not want Katter in the tent. He is a loose canon and would be hard to control. They would rather not count on him and risk him destabiling the govt. with his outbursts.
Stephen Smith also volunteered to step out of Foreign Affairs half way through the campaign, according to 7:30. I hadn’t heard this.
As reported by others according to 7:30 report Rudd will get Foreign Affairs
Yep wrong as usual. 🙂
Finns
If Conroy, who is widely considered by people in the Communications industry as the worst Minister ever, can say he’ll do it with $43B I’m sure I could as well.
I’d give you a call to help out.
[Dee, have you been back for a holiday? Cyprus has come a long way economically.]
George
I was born here. My father was going to take me over the year the invasion happened. He went anyway & had everything confiscated. I was going to take dad back several years ago when the borders opened but I was unable to. My brother took him instead. He was not impressed when he was asked to pay to show my brother inside St. Barnabas.
My aunty comes from around Morphu.
The place is full of land grabbers.
This is a basic summary of the Coalition reaction today
It had to come
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX99gwUQ1rs
Was not going to watch it,
but was the tipping point when you take action against Iran’ nuclear weapons?
What about a nearby country which has them, what about them Kerry?
Frank, shame they couldn’t get one of their current senators to step down and appoint Allanah MacTiernan.
I also wonder whether Melissa Parke might get a promotion to parliamentary secretary.
I wrote a very brief little submission on the effect of the redistribution of McEwen etc on my own little neck of the woods, which you can find on the AEC site at http://www.aec.gov.au/Electorates/Redistributions/2010/vic/objections.htm . My primary concern was simply simplicity of representation for the people of the area (we get split between three different electorates, with the school in McEwen, the police station in JagaJaga and many of the lkids who attend the school in Scullin) , but I would have liked to have the time to have thought about it on a more general level. Certainly Tim Colebatch’s comments impressed me. I was surprised how many of the other cobjections were basically simply mass production photocopies!
Comments on the objections can be provided by email etc up until 6PM this Friday (Sept 10, 2010).
Conroy has even got the certificate to prove it.
Proud of my little girl………first election……..voted Labor….and when the news came through that Julia got the nod from the Indies sent me a text “Suck on that Tone” 😛
Ghostwhovotes,
You are a mysterious figure, aren’t you?
Perhaps you are the Dr Jeckyll to Shanahan’s Mr Hyde.
That’s the only explanation I can come up with about how you get the inside gossip.
anony my wife has said i should get involved because of my heated passion (must be the medertaranian (spelling) blood.
What – Stephen Conroy obviously deserves a medal too?? There is no end to the baubles being handed out to the warrior architects of this debacle. 😆 😆
One thing is for sure with this Labor cabinet, the right will have the numbers with centre left members having the controlling numbers and the left will have fewer cabinet members.
If Kate Ellis loses her portfolio – and I don’t know why, can we sit her behind Jules next to D’ath.
George and Dee pame sti taverna na ta spasoume. Psephos you can come too!
ALP lead now 1,125 from AEC Virtual Tally Room.
[If Conroy, who is widely considered by people in the Communications industry as the worst Minister ever,]
Diog, he might or he might not but NBN won the Govt for Labor.
It doesn’t matter. The election is over, so it has no more leverage power.
It only needs bringing up when some Liberal drone wants to claim that they won the popular vote.
JV, once a dickhead always a dickhead :kiss:
centaur
I think Amanda Rishworth was behind the PM this term and she got the biggest swing to her of any Labor pollie. That must be a coveted spot (although you probably can’t yawn much and have to pretend you are interested).
[If Kate Ellis loses her portfolio – and I don’t know why, can we sit her behind Jules next to D’ath.]
Can we have her sitting between Jules and Tone? 👿
[
if Gillard models govt on Bracks Govt, it will be a great success
]
victoria, yes I was thinking back to when Bracks first took office. As I remember it he was called the accidental premier for quite a long time. The Liberal party and their boosters just assumed the whole election had been a mistake and the people didn’t really want to get rid of Jeff. Of course, Bracks went on to win a famous victory at the next election.
Without the NBN there would be no Indy backing of any kind.
@redwombat, trust that wasn`t just after her `suck on that, fxxxxts` tweet to the Sprinboks was it?
Finns
The NBN was Rudd’s idea.
madcyril
I found Bracks to be a gentleman. It was certainly a big change to when Kennett was running the state.
centaur – remember you’re going to organise a night for all us tragics!
Redwombat
My daughter voted for the first time too. I got a “whoo hooo” texted to me after the Oakeshotte monologue.
[
I think Amanda Rishworth was behind the PM this term
]
Mike Symon was also right behind the PM. He won a famous victory in Deakin. Becoming the first ALP member to gain re-election in the seat.
[Proud of my little girl………first election……..voted Labor….and when the news came through that Julia got the nod from the Indies sent me a text “Suck on that Tone” ]
Made me grin. Say thanks. The world is better! Anyone thinks otherwise is the percentage I will never understand.
[and have to pretend you are interested]
Hence her nickname Noddy I suppose. 😀
Best part of watching Question Time was to watch Yvette D’Ath and Amanda Rishworth make faces at the Opposition (Juile Bishop).
Conroy could have just paid lipservice to the NBN if it was Rudd’s idea. The development of it to the point where it is attractive to Country members is a feather in Conroy’s cap as far as I am concerned.
steve
As I have said on earlier postings, I thought the NBN was going to help get Labor over the line.. I never envisaged that it would have been in such dramatic circumstances!!
bought today’s sydney telegraph … a museum piece of a low point of msm … front page defamation of JG – fascist technique of questioning legitimacy – plus valorised two page on TA. astounding by any standards. has there been worse in this country???
Diog, it dont matter. it was Labor’s idea and it saves the gOVt.
The NBN, a huge whole-of-government decision, helped Labor by the barest margin be able to form a minority government dependent on others.
That, after after serial idiot decisions on policy, including the Stephen Conroy personal crusade on a stupid and laughable internet filter which turned off young technology savvy voters en masse.
Conroy stood shoulder to shoulder with the Australian Christian Lobby as his idea was ridiculed and mocked all over the internet and the general media, as the votes dropped away, and the majority was lost. What a hero. Come on, let’s give him a medal.
my member out here will be prominent some time aswell
[Proud of my little girl………first election……..voted Labor….and when the news came through that Julia got the nod from the Indies sent me a text “Suck on that Tone”]
Congratulate her for her taste, from me, Redwombat.
My daughter’s text was “All’s right with the world” Does make you proud that your offspring have common sense as well as intelligence, doesn’t it!
[ It cannot and will not be fixed without a split. ]
JV, you’re just anti-Labor, a split would be catastrophic and condemn the progressive side of politics to then wilderness for a generation.
Victoria some Queensland Ministers have always treated Indy’s with respect because they might be needed in a tight scrap. The Tory way tends to be abuse and ignore them in equal measure and from what I have seen today nothing has changed as far as the Tories are concerned.