Before I proceed, a plug for the Westpoll WA state poll post, which this post is bumping from the top of the page.
Moreton extends from the southern Brisbane riverside suburbs of Oxley, Sherwood and Yeronga out to Runcorn and Acacia Ridge in the south, the latter area being the more favourable for Labor. It was one of nine Queensland seats gained by Labor at the 2007 election, of which it and two others stayed with the party in 2010. The seat has existed in name since federation, but was based on the Gold Coast and Brisbane’s southern outskirts until the creation of McPherson in 1949. It then began a long drift north into the inner suburbs, making marginal a seat that had once been safely conservative. The first near-miss came with Jim Killen’s famous 130-vote win in 1961, achieved with help from Communist Party preference leakage, which allowed the Menzies government to survive with a one-seat majority. Labor would not get over the line until 1990, when Liberal veteran Don Cameron was unseated by Garrie Gibson.
Gibson suffered a small adverse swing in 1993 before succumbing to a further 4.9% swing amid the Queensland tidal wave of 1996. The new Liberal member was Gary Hardgrave, a former children’s television host and media adviser to Senator David MacGibbon. Hardgrave held junior ministry positions from 2001 to 2005 while maintaining a tenuous grip on his seat, surviving a 4.2% swing in 1998 and an unfavourable redistribution in 2004. Redistribution further chipped away at his margin before the 2007 election, and he was unseated by a 7.5% swing to Labor in 2007. He has since kept in the public eye as the drive presenter on Fairfax Radio’s Brisbane station 4BC.
The seat has since been held for Labor by Graham Perrett, previously an adviser to the Queensland Resources Council and earlier a state ministerial staffer and official with the Queensland Independent Education Union. Perrett enjoyed what proved to be a decisive 1.4% boost at the redistribution before the 2010 election, at which a 4.9% swing cut his margin to 1.1%. He made the news in his first term with the publication of his “erotic novel”, The Twelfth Fish, and in his second when he threatened to quit parliament if Labor changed leaders again, a position he backed away from when Kevin Rudd was marshalling his unsuccessful leadership challenge in February 2012.
The Liberal National Party has gain preselected its candidate from 2010, Malcolm Cole, a former Courier-Mail journalist and late Howard-era staffer to Alexander Downer and Santo Santoro. For the 2010 election the LNP initially preselected Michael Palmer, the 20-year-old son of Clive, which was seen as a measure of the Coalition’s bleak electoral prospects at the time. This together with the preselection of Wyatt Roy in Longman drew considerable derision, and some skepticism was expressed when Palmer withdrew on health grounds.
Good to see News Ltd continuing its meme. Front page of Herald Sun today re Greens policy to introduce nationwide deposit scheme for plastic bottles etc. this measure will cost families $300.00 per year. They are suggesting the Fed govt support it. It was also reported on radio news.
Checking out Burke’s twitterfeed
[Not wanting to get in the way of the Daily Tele but Joe Hilderbrand just may have failed to mention we oppose the greens bill. #auspol]
Boewer @69,
I’m still puzzled about this centre left party you keep talking about.
If you compare the actions of the ALP (Alternative Liberal Party) with other OECD countries it is pretty clear that the ALP are a party of the right.
The Liberals have moved further to the right under Abbott, and the ALP is now not too different from the Howard years.
[But Alec Leopold, SC, for Lewis, said the document may reveal the identity of another confidential source. In that case, Mr Lewis is protected under the Evidence Amendment (Journalists’ Privilege) Act 2011.]
Ah, there it is. I knew I had seen a reference to Lewis’ Counsel using the word “may”.
It is interesting that every other article I have read since had made his statement less equivocal. First report was him saying it “may” have been someone else Lewis was referring to; later ones have him saying it “was” someone else Lewis was referring to.
None of them are direct quotes, either, which is interesting.
I suppose we won’t know until we get an unbiased report from the courtroom or the transcript itself, but it did occur to me that, if that initial report was correct, that media reporting since appears to have *deliberately* downplayed that aspect of Lewis’ defense.
And yes, I agree; he seems to be suggesting that either he hasn’t seen the document in question (or Lewis has refused to show it even to him) or he is quite deliberately muddying the waters by inferring it “might” be someone else to get his client out of his responsibility to cough up, fake the Commonwealth and/or Slipper into thinking they got it wrong or stalling for time.
Then again, it’s distinctly possible it’s all three 😉
grey @ 45
Are you a member of the Labor Party?
If you are, did you join a political party or a personality cult?
I support the ALP as does MTBW. Leaders come and go, the party remains.
C@tmomma – I hate being accused of having interest in the Greens. I’m seriously considering scrolling on Boer after that!
👿
Zoomster
Yes we do change our principles as we move through life
There is the old Bernard Shaw quote
“if you are not a socialist at 20 you have no heart, if you are still a socialist at 40 you have no head” and while simplistic and old fashioned does reflect how we change as we get older.
But principles are still principles – change them by all means but understand WHY and be aware of your thought processes. Check and cross check your influences. Most dangerous to political people is the charismatic leader who turns us without thinking to a new approach. Also dangerous is pragmatism which while essential can also lead to gradual shifts in principles or to corrupt practices. Also dangerous perhaps most of all in Australia today is group think and follow the leader. Sacrificing or self justifying a principle shift because led by a friend (or party).
So yes change principles by all means but do it because you are absolutely sure yourself NOT because of a friend or party. However when you DO change your own principles do not despise or distance yourself form those who formerly held those views. Understand them too.
c@tmomma
Interesting that Crikey was hacked. With all our talk on the Slipper matter, you cant help but wonder…….
[The Liberals have moved further to the right under Abbott, and the ALP is now not too different from the Howard years.]
You would have to have missed the Howard years and not really be paying any attention now, or terribly dishonest to express such a patently stupid claim.
@WeWantPaul – I look forward to a list of ALP actions which prove that they are to the left of what most OECD countries are doing.
I could write a long list of areas where the Alternative Liberal Party have continued business as usual. But you all know what I would write, so no need.
Come to think of it I don’t even agree the Libs have moved to the right under Abbott, Abbott just says whatever he is thinking, some things sound quite left, some quite right, some just dumb. I think people expect what he actually does to be very right, but he isn’t consistently saying ‘right’ things.
I will say this though. Having just sat through the report by James Carlton for 7.30NSW on the condition the ALP is in here, it sure does seem as though there is a lot wrong that no one in a position of power wishes to address.
There was footage of John Faulkner and Geoff Gallop(who I like and respect), decrying the fact that there are those in the party who whine about The Greens ‘stealing our votes’, when, as they correctly point out, it is the fact that The Greens have ‘won’ the votes of those disaffected with the Labor Party.
Also, Sam Dastyari will not reduce the power of Unions within the party and refuses the suggestion of Faulkner/Bracks & Carr to remove their ‘Double Vote’ power.
I would have thought, with membership in the community of ~20%, Unions could see the writing on the wall if they want the party they are a core part of(and that is only right and proper, considering the foundation stone role they played in establishing the party), to survive and prosper going forward. They need to release their death grip hold on power. And soon. Goodness knows how they will be vilified with a federal Coalition government rampant. Let alone legislatively starved of oxygen.
Also, sad to see one ethnically diverse branch with 7 members, and another, how shall I say, ‘ethnically-pure’ branch, down the road with 120 members. So, as they were both in the same suburb it cannot be said that the 2nd branch was simply a reflection of the ethnic composition of that particular suburb.
Oh well, I suppose the ALP needs all the members it can get at the moment.
The cleaners need to be put through it as well.
Don’t ask me how that can be achieved with the voting blocs as they are.
One thing I do know for certain. The Greens are not the answer. They are just as riven by division and competing power groupings as the ALP is. They don’t have (m)any realistic or pragmatic answers to public policy issues either.
Lets for a moment forget some of the OECD countries, I’d glazed over that as a silly generalisation not worth considering, it was your comparing Gillard to Howard that struck me as either incredibly uninformed or dishonest, I don’t really care which.
This is the data I got about the hack:
Zoomster
I think we each should always examine what we thought of an issue when we were 20, 30, 40, 50 etc and think WHY we changed our mind. Be able to express it in several sentences. If you cannot then rethink the issue – starting from when you were 20. (or 10 if you were political and passionate as a kid).
Also whenever we take ANY passionate position be it on freedom of speech, green issues, foreign affairs treatment of minorities, IR etc substitute a positive for the one we attack. If we are still OK then we are on the right path.
So on Foreign affairs issues switch US with Russia and China, Muslim with Jew or Christian, Israel with Syria, Iran with India, Pakistan with India, Saudi Arabia with Iran etc.
On Asylum seekers switch Sri Lankan with White South Africans, Somalians with Balkans, Afghans with Albanians, Burmese with post war Jews.
On freedom of speech substitute Lib for labor or our favourite journo for an unfavorable one,
On individuals think about past heroes and villains and think which matches them best. Curtin was jailed over conscription. What would you do TODAY if he took the same view on a big issue.
Chiefly sent in the army to the miners strike – would you support it if Shorten did something similar in a hospital dispute? Was Ned Kelly a hero or simply a thieving bikie. Was the French resistance a terrorist insurgency?
These are never easy. Principle must guide pragmatism and WHEN pragmatism wins we MUST understand WHY lest it become the norm rather than the exception.
[victoria
Posted Saturday, July 14, 2012 at 12:29 pm | Permalink
Good to see News Ltd continuing its meme. Front page of Herald Sun today re Greens policy to introduce nationwide deposit scheme for plastic bottles etc. this measure will cost families $300.00 per year. They are suggesting the Fed govt support it. It was also reported on radio news.
Checking out Burke’s twitterfeed
Not wanting to get in the way of the Daily Tele but Joe Hilderbrand just may have failed to mention we oppose the greens bill. #auspol ]
Pal Joey is no better than the rest of the toxic tribe at the Tele, despite getting an armchair run from the ABC in talk/celebrity type appearances. Maybe because of it, if you think about the run IPA get there.
In SA where they have such a scheme (Dunstan having stared down the massive media misinformation campaign from the beverage and containers industries) it would not cost anything like those figures. According to a Background Briefing program, it functions as a net economic benefit.
That type of rubbish has no more credibility than Abbott’s daily stunts.
One post, got all three.
WWP
I think the way to approach the task is to look at the parties of ALL the OECD countries and compare our parties with those.
The German, French, Scandinavians Green and Social democratic parties will be well to the left of the ALP, the US Democrats well to the right.
Look it is a fairly objective fact that the Liberal Party of Fraser and Menzies would be slightly to the left of the current ALP on many if not all issues. Crikey Katter is well to the left on many issues. The current LNP is far to the right of the old Liberal Party. The original Country Party led by McEwen types would be to the LEFT even of the left of Labor. I exclude social issues here because on these there is a community/ age shift which distorts things a bit
MWH
[Boewer @69,
I’m still puzzled about this centre left party you keep talking about.
If you compare the actions of the ALP (Alternative Liberal Party) with other OECD countries it is pretty clear that the ALP are a party of the right.
The Liberals have moved further to the right under Abbott, and the ALP is now not too different from the Howard years.]
I did address this in response to your raising this point earlier. The short answer is that you are choosing a false relativitiy. Citizens from other OECD countries do not vote in Australia. As I have bemoaned before, the Australian electorate is very conservative.
By extension of what I wrote earlier, for the Labor Party to adopt the mantle of the centre left, it has to undertake basic reform. Part of that means adopting a triple bottom line sustainability policy. That, in turn, means dropping unsustainable polices which include: the clean coal chimera, diesel subsidies, MDB cave-in and subsidies for a car industry which keeps manufacturing environmental monsters.
I assume you are not putting forward the view that, in the Australian context, the Greens Party is a centre left party?
[Good to see News Ltd continuing its meme. Front page of Herald Sun today re Greens policy to introduce nationwide deposit scheme for plastic bottles etc.]
Victoria, Hilderbrand did say….
[Environment Minister Tony Burke said Labor would not force a scheme upon the states.]
This is, of course, near the end of the article, after whipping up a load of bullshit based on dodgy figures arrived at by ACIL Tasman- a dubious organisation in itself- who were employed, to come up with them, from the self interested Australian Food and Grocery Council who have no wish to take responsibility for the unnecessary packaging that is clogging up landfill sites that they help create.
Hilderbrand is a disgrace.
http://www.news.com.au/business/worklife/proposed-recycling-levy-to-add-300-to-shopping-bills/story-e6frfm9r-1226425813918
daretotread
[if you are not a socialist at 20 you have no heart, if you are still a socialist at 40 you have no head” and while simplistic and old fashioned does reflect how we change as we get older.]
Um, you did look at where I started and where I finished, didn’t you?
How moving from being anti abortion, anti euthanasia (and incidentally, anti gay marriage) to my present position sort of suggests I’ve got more socialist as I’ve got older, not less.
[ Most dangerous to political people is the charismatic leader who turns us without thinking to a new approach.]
Oh, the irony.
C@tmomma thanks for the correction. CTar1 thanks for the excellent link. Most instructive.
[Hilderbrand is a disgrace.]
Joe2
I keep telling you he’s a third rate Sydney boofhead.
As Gorgeous Dunny points out, SA has had an excellent deposit scheme for decades, keeping the environment clear of cans, bottles and other packaging.
Not so easy to clean up is the ALP, which seems to have a cargo cult mentality. One day the precious cargo of votes will appear out of the sky and all will be well.
joe2
On SEN radio this morning, it was straight out reported as a $300 impost on families which can even reach up to $475 per family, and that the federal Govt fully support the scheme.
lizzie
I was not very impressed with the Greenpeace video you linked to. Clearly the priority response to what is happening in the Arctic is not to turn it into some sort of international nature park.
It is to stop AGW.
grey
They are so predictable. 🙂
TT
It is going to be amusing to watch the small government libertarians fight tooth and claw with the Nationals Cargo Cult Party over government transfers to the bush.
Has anyone been told that they are immoral scum lacking in integrity today? Or are the Greens having a rest on the seventh day?
daretotread
my basic principle is to question everything. I try not to rush to judgement. Often my ‘gut’ reaction to an issue ends up not being my final position.
However, my point was that your original post suggested that principles were fixed things, and should be a constant and unchanging guide. You obviously don’t actually believe that; you recognise that principles should be questioned, and should change if circumstances (such as new information) changes.
That’s fine. And that’s why parties change, too.
One of the reasons I persist in my support of the Labor party is that – even if I don’t always agree 100% with particular positions it takes – I can always understand the underlying thinking that got them there, and in general it’s sound.
Of course, sitting down in isolation with a piece of paper and a vision of an ideal world, it’s easy to criticise any decision and to come up with alternatives!
Boerwar – Australia has a tax rate below the OECD average, and the ALP are proud that under them the tax rate (as a percentage of GDP) will soon be the lowest in 20 years.
This makes the ALP a party of the right.
If everyone in Australia agrees with lowering taxes then this just makes Australia a very conservative country. But it doesn’t make the ALP centre left – they are still a party of the right.
Catch you bludgers later
vic
I’m outta here too. Off to see the locals play footy (including future son-in-law).
MWH
[Boerwar – Australia has a tax rate below the OECD average, and the ALP are proud that under them the tax rate (as a percentage of GDP) will soon be the lowest in 20 years.
This makes the ALP a party of the right.
If everyone in Australia agrees with lowering taxes then this just makes Australia a very conservative country. But it doesn’t make the ALP centre left – they are still a party of the right.]
You did not answer my question, so, still your turn, IMHO.
Clives paper would give media diversity.
But could he used the ABC Rage origram as a paper name.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8499208
Boerwar @ 126
It was a message for Rummel rather than for you. Just a promotion for Greenpeace, really. I ain’t signin’. 🙂
DTT I think I largely agree with your summary – although in some senses left / right has shifted or lost meaning as between Fraser and now.
Also there is the baby boomers, they kind of bloomed anarchist, moved to left and have been moving rapidly to the right ever since. So it isn’t surpising over time that western society has moved with the boomers. Labor is a party of Labor, of middle class workers. Always has been still is. Still would take a moron to say something silly like Labor is a party of the right.
keyboard is a siily as abbott.
Re: #London2012 — The Olympics
For some time, perhaps 30 years though I’m not sure, I’ve been against the idea of the Olympics — or at any rate having the Olympics as a government program. I recall during the 2000 Olympics in Sydney seeing an interview with some female swimmer talking with Roy & HG who explained that in order to protect the integrity of drug testing, she had to strip naked, squat and urinate into a vial while an official watched at very close proximity. I could see the logic, but it seemed scandalous all the same.
I’m no prude, but it struck me then and there that the Olympics had gone way past anything that could be called a public good. I began imagining how one would explain one’s day’s work to one’s children or friends and the contribution one was making to a better world. Not easily, as far as I can tell.
Today in London, the place is in lockdown. There’s a story in The Law Report covering it.
Missiles are being installed on social housing blocks. If fired they release a casing that will drop 15 stories possibly onto a children’s playground. Apparently they are even installing one such battery on the roof of the site that in 1888 was the place of the famous Matchgirls Strike. This event was a watershed in the struggle against child labour and the development of organised labour in Britain more generally. I feel visceral disgust that this site should now be housing high tech weapons designed and deployed so as to be ready to shoot passenger planes out of the sky and more generally to celebrate the values of the elite.
Apparently HMS Ocean is to sit in the Thames as a platform for helicopters. David Renton remarks of it:
[ it’s an amphibious attack ship. So what it does is it’s really designed that you pilot it to a country just before you invade it, and then it’s…essentially it’s a big, big carrier, and then what you’ve got on there is your jets, your helicopters…they then effectively disembark to enable you to occupy hostile territory, and the idea that someone’s planning to occupy London … ]
What he missed was that it was the military of the UK that would be occupying London rather than the public.
Apparently, there are to be 25,000 pirvate security guards, 13,500 troops, and 10,000 police. Some of them will be equipped with sonic cannons. David Renton again:
[ One thing which a lot of people are really worried about are these long range acoustic devices, also known as sonic cannon, which were tried in the occupied territories and have been used against big anti-capitalist demonstrations, but clearly are extraordinarily loud and extremely upsetting for anyone caught in their range. {…}
Imagine a standard megaphone like you might have for any sort of purposes, but that it’s different in two respects: firstly, it can project a noise at perhaps the loudest volume that anyone, any of us are ever going to hear in our lifetimes. If you look on the internet there’s examples of this, so someone sitting in this case on a boat in the middle of the Thames can send a magnified, loud blaster noise just saying, ‘You’re on demonstration, this is an unlawful demonstration, leave and go home’, and that can be projected many, many miles away at an incredibly high volume. That’s part of it. The other part of it is that the frequency, it has a setting where it’s capable of playing a discontinuous noise, an alternately low and high pitch, but so high that it’s physically painful, and when this has been used against demonstrations in the past it’s always resulted in legal action by people who were just caught up in the blast, describe themselves as being deafened and in some cases permanently deafened by the noise.]
Even the people in the buildings occupied by the military where missiles have been placed don’t qualify for relocation because according to the government, there’s simply no risk. Nice to know.
So again, one has to wonder — what possible public benefit could warrant such actions? It’s hard to imagine. If this is what is needed to “ensure public safety during the games” then maybe the games aren’t worth the candle, (or should that be a torch?).
Exactly how would a deposit scheme cost familes $300?
If $300 is an accurate figure, and too much of an impost, what if anything wold be reasonable?
Is it the scheme or the proponents that are so objectionable?
The SA government recently doubled the container deposit on drink packaging to 10c. This applies not just to bottles but flavoured milk cartons, those little bottles of Yacult?? that youghurty drink, juice, bottles of beer etc.
Anyway there are people, especially the homeless who collect these cans and take them to the depots (that is the only place to redeem them) for some extra cash. With the rise, their incomes were doubled overnight.
I had a bin-full saved up in my backyard. Someone bright spark who had come up with a business idea from it collected them from me for 1c less than their redeemable value.
The scheme costs consumers nothing in net terms, unless they are too lazy to recycle their containers. This is user pays. You throw your container away so someone else can collect it and redeem the deposit, you lose out.
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/australia-approaches-the-abbott-abyss/
A critique of both Labor and Liberal, but ‘scariest’ when talking of Abbott.
[Fifthly and finally, into this seething mess, introduce Abbott and his band of humourless, talentless, right wing zealots. Effectively purged of any remnants of small ‘l’ liberalism, the Coalition is overtly taking its cues from the rabid Republican right over the Pacific, whose blitzkrieg pillage and rape tactics have brought politics in the US to its lowest ebb. The mass media is slavishly spreading the word. The big end of town is pouring in the dollars — which is another problem that the ALP has — not enough cash from a failing Union movement. The people have become an angry lynch mob, lapping it all up.
Abbott has already profoundly altered the Australian political landscape, probably forever, certainly for the worse. He has perfected the Howard art of dog-whistled approval for our most reprehensible national characteristics — think asylum seekers. He has conducted an unprincipled and mendacious blitzkrieg against a well-meaning and worthy – but, in truth, hapless – government of a level of violence that is new to this country and appears to have left the government, still a year out from election, more or less dead in the water — defenceless, dispirited and without direction. Aided and abetted by the mass media, Abbott has perfected the art of governing by continually fanning the flames of our selfish sense of entitlement and our innate fear of the other….]
[Of course, given a united Labor Party, a government with a coherent vision of a future Australia, a suite of policies to match and a popular leader in charge, Abbott would crash and burn. Of course, given a diverse and objective mainstream media and a politically aware electorate, Abbott would never have risen. We don’t have any of the above. We are not likely to get them in the foreseeable future and the mad monk is no figure of fun. He is simultaneously the inevitable product of our collective civic and political apathy and odds on to become the key figure in delivering its destructive consequences on us.
Faced with annihilation at the hands of the barbarian hordes of the right, how does the Labor party respond? Like a small, trapped animal with no possibility of flight. Lashing out mindlessly, all tooth, claw and noise, the contemptible moral and intellectual pygmies who have brought the party to this parlous state have decided that a campaign of disinformation in respect of The Greens is a good idea.]
Boerwar, isn’t it time for you to complain about the Brittish again, if only as some comic relief from your anti greens agenda?
How goes the republic?
PTMD:
[The scheme costs consumers nothing in net terms, unless they are too lazy to recycle their containers. This is user pays. You throw your container away so someone else can collect it and redeem the deposit, you lose out.]
I’d favour a scheme like this for mobile phones/batteries, laptops, PCs and similar. We really need to do better on stewardship of disposable consumer goods.
Thanks Puff.
It sound as if similar schemes could have both envirromental beneits and social benefits (for the very low income / homeless).
Dafid@davidlen2
Labor picking up ground on LNP in WA and Mark McGowan lifts his personal popularity. Steady as she goes team looks good http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/14230512/labor-reins-in-barnett/
[It sound as if similar schemes could have both envirromental beneits and social benefits (for the very low income / homeless).]
Fargo61, lots of recyclable stuff ends up in landfill. Some councils are about to start paying a carbon price because they have, so far, not done much to curb their emissions. This measure would help decrease their future volume.
Crikey made into the AGE.
http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/security-it/crikey-weve-been-hacked-20120714-222et.html
Lizzie’s Independentaustralia.net link is well worth a read.
I believe the ALP should do whatever they need to do leadership wise to give itself the best chance of saving the country from Abbott.
It’s that stark.
As Gillard says ‘it’s not about me, it’s about the nations future’
Clearly she’s prepared to go if she remains the problem. If the numbers don’t improve by Christmas she’s gotta go. For all of our sake.