Blair has covered a highly variable area around Ipswich since its creation in 1998, having been substantially redrawn at three redistributions since. Originally covering areas inland of Ipswich and the Sunshine Coast, the redistributions of 2004 and 2007 saw it progressively take over central Ipswich from Oxley. Prior to the 2010 election it lost 28,000 voters in territory south of Ipswich to the new seat of Wright, in exchange for 13,200 voters in rural areas around Lake Wivenhoe to the north (previously in Dickson and Fisher) and 5500 in the eastern Ipswich suburbs of Collingwood Park and Springfield Central (from Oxley). As the areas lost were rural and conservative, Labor’s margin was boosted from 4.5% to 7.0%. The seat further recorded what by Queensland standards was a mild swing of 2.7%, the resulting Labor margin of 4.2% making it their fourth safest seat in the state.
Ipswich had been an area of strength for Labor since the early days of the party’s history owing to its now defunct coal mining industry, but it has more recently been prone to rebellion against the party’s efforts to appeal to new middle-class constituencies. The most famous such occasion occurred when Pauline Hanson won Oxley in 1996, scoring 48.6% of the primary vote as an independent after the Liberals disendorsed her for advocating the abolition of government assistance for Aborigines. The creation of Blair in the next redistribution did Hanson a poor turn, dividing her home turf between two electorates. Rather than recontest Oxley or (more sensibly) run for the Senate, Hanson chanced her arm at the new seat, but the major parties’ decision to direct preferences to each other may have sealed her doom. Hanson led the primary vote count with 36.0% against 25.3% for Labor and 21.7% for Liberal, but Liberal candidate Cameron Thompson pulled ahead of Labor on minor party preferences and defeated Hanson by 3.3% on Labor preferences.
Thompson went on to absorb most of the disappearing One Nation vote in 2001, more than doubling his primary vote without improving his two-party margin over Labor. A redistribution ahead of the 2004 election clipped this by 1.8%, but he went on to handsomely consolidate his position with a 4.5% swing. In 2007 the Liberals targeted Blair as part of its “firewall” strategy, a key element of which was a risky decision to fund a $2.3 billion Ipswich Motorway bypass at Goodna in the neighbouring electorate of Ryan. This proved of little use, with Labor picking up a decisive swing of 10.2% which typified the shift of blue-collar voters back to Labor on the back of WorkChoices.
Labor’s winning candidate was Shayne Neumann, a family lawyer and partner in the Brisbane firm Neumann & Turnour and member of the state party’s Labor Unity/Old Guard faction. His LNP opponent at the coming election will be Teresa Harding, who is “director of the F-111 Disposal and Aerial Targets Office” at the RAAF Base Amberley.
[Malcolm Turnbull has also badly contradicted himself.]
Some people think he is the great HOPE for the coalition, his remarks about the NBN
shows he is a dope, remember Ute Gate!.
gough1
No morality lectures from Labor. You do not have the grounds to do so.
Labor and Liberal policy activly feeds into creating refugees. You then ignore and wash hands of deaths until people are on boats. The only reason Labor posters mention the deaths here is because they are being used as a tool to denigrate those supporting our current laws and treaties.
Greens are less responsible for those deaths at sea than Labor and the Liberals are.
Without the wars less refugees would come and thus less deaths.
[Steve Gibbons @SteveGibbonsMP
Congratulations to Lisa Chesters for winning Labor pre-selection (unopposed) to contest Bendigo at the next Federal Election.
11:35 AM – 11 Aug 12]
Centre:
I don’t know how you can watch Chris Kenny. He’s just a younger more rabid version of Piers!
Paul Keating did Labor Proud. With his Canberra Commission he was on track to realistically reduce chances of war. John Howard dismantling that was in my view criminal and a sign of things to come.
Good Grief
[The only reason Labor posters mention the deaths here is because they are being used as a tool to denigrate those supporting our current laws and treaties.
Greens are less responsible for those deaths at sea than Labor and the Liberals are.
Without the wars less refugees would come and thus less deaths.]
You need to come down to EARTH, get you heads out of the clouds!.
The Houston report will be presented to Cabinet on Monday. Will be interesting to see what comes out of it
Victoria,
It isn’t a bad piece. A bit long getting to the point. Deliberately I’d say as the point was to say he (Wright) had been a vacuous turd who had completely misread the way Swan’s speech would be received in the real world away from the echo chamber of know-it-alls that Wright inhabits.
Contrast it with last week’s effort:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/swan-songs-and-the-quest-for-boomer-cred-in-the-heart-of-the-boss-fan-belt-20120801-23fkp.html
Reality came and bit Wright on the arse. Swan’s speech was well received. His use of Springsteen’s songs as a warning for what Australia could end up like if the reactionaries got their way struck a chord. Swan found a way to be heard during the olympics and to get Labor on the front foot, which by design or accident built on Gillard’s win on NDIS and then fed momentum into her Electricity prices intervention.
By contrast Abbott and the Libs in the same period have been scoring own goals galore. Lecturing the chinese, dissing Swan’s speech, disunity over electricity prices, the Lib states grovelling back down on the NDIS trials, and Campbell giving the nation a preview of what’s to come.
Wright could have just ignored what he’d previously said about Swan’s Springsteen speech. Hack’s try the ‘move along, nothing to see here’ thing all the time. To come out with an actual apology “On reflection, Swan did himself a favour, undeserving of derision.” is almost unheard of from the infallible ones. It is significant in and of itself. They only do so to set up a change in their coverage. That Wright then goes on with “His diverting address reminded us that we could do with less drone and more melody in our public discourse; more cadence and less discord; more swing and less tumult.” is a clear message to a certain someone and his single note dirge.
[ Last night I attended a joint fundraiser by a Greens local group and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.
No one present doubted that the Greens will continue to be villified for their position on the treatment of asylum seekers which includes onshore processing and real regional cooperation.
We are resolute 🙂 ]
That’s nice. I hope you lot enjoy PM Abbott with an overwhelming majority & possible control of the Senate into the bargain after June 2014.
Just goes to show you mob are slow learners. You haven’t learned a single thing from your intransigence in 2009 with the ETS!
1934
Ah yes the same comment made against Bob Brown numerous times when battling for the environment and for equality for gays when it was illegal to be gay in Tasmania.
Its there on record in archives of media.
bemused
With reference to Psephos’ statements on Howard/Lib policy, it contains:
[Liberal climate denialism comes directly from the US, and is in sharp contrast with Cameron’s science-based response.]
We have all commented on the tactics and attitudes of the Coalition being so similar to the Repubs on may subjects. On the AGW denial, we have evidence for this via Cory Bernardi, who went over to USA and returned with all their strategies in hand to create the Menzies House, web, which is a vehicle for anyone who want to contribute to a coalition of climate denial and general bastardry, a la Tea Party.
FANTASTIC
The Labor Party does all the work, from the seperation of Telstra to completing the NBN.
So what will the Liberals do?
Sell it to Phone Hacker for a price at cost!
Wow, Murdoch the greatest recipient of taxpayer dollars of all time 😡
guytaur
what? so now you’re blaming Labor for a war it consistently opposed, and withdrew from at the first opportunity?
Scorpio
Taking advice from the NSW right and using their attack lines will win Labor no votes. Currently a few former Labor NSW Right members are going through the courts on allegations of corruption. That and their record on destabilising for their own gain.
Senator Bob Carr escapes that because it all happened in public eyes after he left.
Connie
He makes me drift. I envisage lining up his head on a tee and aiming it for the green.
Guytaur
I am not a labor voter (well not for a couple of decades anyway) . I historically vote green or independent. I am a member of no party.
The greens (and you) need to justify why they are willing to consider Nauru which is ineffective and was previously barbaric.
My problem with the green position on refugees is that it is smarmy and disengenuous.
Further it is callous and basically stupid. Malaysia is demonised as hell on earth for refugees yet the greens refuse a deal in which 5 more times the number of refugees returned will get resettled in OZ.
Greens do care for the refugees that make it without drowning.
They do not care about the refugees that drown.
They do not care about the refugees in Malaysia or the possibility of their conditions improving.
They do not care about the refugees in limbo in Africa.
Maybe you should speak to some african refugees trying to get reunited with families still in camps and getting nowhere because the humanitarian intake is being swallowed up by ‘irregular arrivals’.
My post is not about party partisanship. Its about some common sense and decency.
For anyone who has not yet picked up this link, it is compulsory reading.
http://andrewelder.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/the-price-of-power.html
After a thorough castigation of Abbott’s attitudes and ability, it ends:
[Abbott hasn’t paid the price for power, the consideration about what it means to govern this country well and what you might offer toward that end. The humility of the great responsibility of office is being diminished by conceited prats like Chris Pyne who take victory at the next election as given. Oh, yes, Battlelines; more honoured in the breach than the observance in terms of actual Liberal policy directions today. Isn’t electricity pricing (and associated issues such as generation and distribution) such a signal issue for Australian families today? Isn’t it as important to Abbott as “the greatest moral challenge of our time” was to Rudd (and if not, what is)?]
On the way through, Elder takes a dig at Marn Ferson as Energy Minister, which IMV is completely justified.
zoomster
Nice Try. You fail.
Go back read the post again.
Labor has no moral grounds on which to lecture the Greens on death.
guytaur @ 60
[ Ah yes the same comment made against Bob Brown numerous times when battling for the environment ]
If the Greens don’t adopt a more pragmatic approach we all run the risk of a massive Abbott win. This in turn will in all probability lead to a roll back of many hard fought reforms including environmental and forestry protections.
ratsak
It is significant that both Wright and Grattan’s latest offerings are positive towards the govt. They have been unable to ignore the changing wind. The spring session of Parliament is going to be very interesting indeed
guytaur
well, as that was the only possible reason I could think of for blaming Labor for actively creating refugees, then your argument is obviously even flimsier than I thought.
guytaur,
[ Scorpio
Taking advice from the NSW right and using their attack lines will win Labor no votes. Currently a few former Labor NSW Right members are going through the courts on allegations of corruption. That and their record on destabilising for their own gain.
Senator Bob Carr escapes that because it all happened in public eyes after he left. ]
What the bloody hell has that got to do with the Greens Party giving the Coalition more than a leg up with their most potent electoral weapon. In fact, your mob are virtually handing Abbott the election on a silver platter with this policy.
Talk about a “look over there”” comment!.
I’m sure the rabble pinch themselves every day to make sure they aren’t dreaming. They can’t believe their luck that the stupid Greens could give them another “out-greening the Greens issue”!.
gough1
Points very well made.
[If has reached the point that if Tony Abbott didn’t exist, the media would have to invent him. In fact, that’s exactly what they have done. And their version of him is cruising happily to the next election]
confessions. I took it that Dunlop was saying they have done so. They’ve certainly encouraged him to lie freely and it’s good that Denis Atkins isn’t afraid to say it in the MSM.
The Green’s rejection of the CPRS ultimately spawned Abbott as LOTO.
The Green’s rejection of Migration Act amendments could well inflict Abbott as PM , on this poor unsuspecting nation.
Rejecting the CPRS kept AGW alive as an issue so that Minchin could thrust Abbott onto us.
Now they’re ensuring that ASs remain a live issue, again promoting Abbott.
Gough1
I do not believe in your so called lack of partisinship.
This because you are trying to lecture on moral grounds. Ignoring public statements made by Green Parliamentarians because they address the issue you cite.
Pegasus outlined a position that makes your claims about Nauru and Malaysia laughable.
Claims up there with Abbott’s carbon tax ones. Of course we have had some public statements from Green Parliamentarians that they will seriously consider the conclusions formed by the expert Huston panel. Unlike you Offshore allies who are just Nauru. No matter if that is just. Fantasy solution in Morrison and Abbotts mind.
scorps
yes, I think guytaur is running the “Greens are pure and good and right. Therefore their policies are pure and good and right. Thus anyone who questions their policies are teh evil” line of logic.
[Mike Kelly MP @MikeKellyMP 2h
Joe Hockey says Coalition wants 2 privatize the Snowy Hydro. Have a feeling there will b a little bit of interest in that around these parts]
Scorpio
Reality of voting. NSW Right putting Greens last means voting Liberals before that.
That is truly giving Abbott a leg up.
Gough1
Spot on.
BH
I think the media’s ‘creation’ of Abbott has been fairly obvious.
To start with, the media would run an anti government line and it would take a couple of days for Abbott and his team to cotton on.
It also took them a little while to cotton on to the fact that TA could do or say anything and the media would excuse him for it.
His increasing shrillness over the last year has resulted from that realisation.
psyclaw
No. That was a failure of Mr Rudd. Not the Greens.
MegaGeorge on the addition of a Queensland side to our national character. Too long to quote.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/queensland-adds-another-chink-in-our-split-national-character/story-e6frgd0x-1226447847412
[THERE is a Queensland method that is subtly changing the Australian character. It is charming, socially awkward and prone to tantrum.
Kevin Rudd, Campbell Newman, Barnaby Joyce and Bob Katter are the prime examples. They present as everyman, the voices of the suburbs and the bush, yet their approach is more elitist than egalitarian.
Each sought to capitalise on the weakness of the main parties to assert power in their own name.
Newman is repeating in Queensland what Rudd did nationally by running a government of one. Joyce eyes the National Party leadership while Katter strives to build a new independent protest party. There are no comparable voices south of the Tweed, or even from Western Australia, that have been able to grab the national attention in quite the same way]
zoomster
You are not good and pure. Neither are the Greens. Stop trying to denigrate by pretending Greens are not practical. They are. It is just the Greens prioritise in different ways to Labor.
guytaur
ONE person in the NSW Right put forward the argument that the Greens should be placed last. It was such a silly proposal it didn’t even make it to Conference.
Yet the Greens carry on about it as if every single member of the ALP signed an oath in blood to put them last.
The over the top reaction by Greens supporters to a (quite legitimate) debate within the Labor party suggests that they have little understanding of the way a mature political party operates.
It also has worrying connotations, suggesting that such debates are foreign to the Greens.
Are you really all so in lock step that no one in the party ever raises a controversial question? That you never have an argument?
Question for Guytaur or Pegasus.
What is the logic in not trying the malasyian solution with a 12 month sunset period as the interim step towards an inreased intake and regonal solution.
Greens should be levergaing their agreement for supporting something like Malaysia for greater commitments in the mid and long term.
That way genuine refugess win in the mid to long term, Australia gets a more enlightened view of the world and Abbott and Morrison’s ugliness gets punctured.
But no, apparently the continuation of this toxic debate is apparently welcomed by the greens.
Dumb cruel and self defeating
guytaur
[You are not good and pure. Neither are the Greens. Stop trying to denigrate by pretending Greens are not practical. They are.]
Talk about strawmen.
Please show where I’ve said even one of those things.
[ It is just the Greens prioritise in different ways to Labor.]
Yep. We have this funny way of putting saving lives ahead of purity.
gough1
Quite so. A 12 month trial would certainly be instructive. Problem is, it might work!
Now where would that leave Abbott and the Greens?
Guytaur
Is Nauru acceptable to the greens and why?
NEWS for Labor posters. Offshore processing IS NOT a more practical approach. Regional processing is. Remember Offshore processing is LNP policy since JWH was Prime Minister.
I suspect a Labor Green compromise on AS will be Regional.
Eg. I see the Greens agreeing to Malaysia or Indonesia as examples with no people Swap. Australian personnel sent to help the UNHCR process refugees in existing camps.
I think this as I can see both those countries agreeing to this.
Labor will agree to this as such a solution is cheaper than Detention Centres here. Yes there will still be some problems. However this imperfect solution is the best I can see.
If Labor wants to do a people swap as in the current Malaysia solution they can go and see how far working with Abbott will get them.
Psyclaw
Yep and that’s exactly what the Oakeshott bill would have provided.
gough1
You know that currently Nauru is unacceptable to the Greens. It was voted down, by the Greens no matter what rumours were swirling.
I have heard nothing to think that is going to change.
However, I have heard Greens Parliamentarians say this may, (note may, not will, not never) change according to evidence presented to Huston’s Committee.
http://imgur.com/PFPFs
Cool, Earth, Jupiter and Venus from Mars
Guytaur
[I see the Greens agreeing to Malaysia or Indonesia as examples with no people Swap]
You just give people ammunition about heads in the clouds with this nonsense. Clearly the people swap is attractive to Malaysia. Why you wouldn’t want to take more refugees from Malaysia is a mystery to me anyway.
Your other point has some merit (Australia doing the processing in Malaysia) but again dificult and pehaps impssible to negotiate and implement in a short time frame.
The malaysian deal is ready to go. It could be made subject to review. Greens can get mid term and long term undertakings on regional processing and refugee numbers and further safeguards.
They just need to grow up and get this done. (so I can keep voting for them with some sense of optimism !)
Scoot has really outdone himself this time, saying that the best recommendation Houston could come up with would be “a new election.”
gough
I do not know the Green’s Official reason for objecting to a trial. I disagree with the Greens about a trial. As long as provisions are put in place for it to be a trial and not a permanent solution. That means setting something up that has to be undone and not redone until it can be put to the electorate in an election campaign.
[Stop trying to denigrate by pretending Greens are not practical]
😆
The Greens are totally impractical.
50% Yellow + 50% Blue = The Full Moon 😯
tlbd
They can’t think past that election stuff. It’s a great big shiny ball glittering ahead of them. Actually, they have no other solutions for anything.
Guytaur
[I do not know the Green’s Official reason for objecting to a trial. I disagree with the Greens about a trial. As long as provisions are put in place for it to be a trial and not a permanent solution. That means setting something up that has to be undone and not redone until it can be put to the electorate in an election campaign.]
Bravo. That’s exactly what the Oakeshott bill proposes. Yoi should apply for that position on SHY’s staff and we might get some meaningful legislative action.
Re: refugee discussion merry-go-round
Houston’s report will be out next week. I’m sure that will present more than enough opportunity for all the posturing and point-scoring we know and love on this topic.
Do we really need to start it up right now with no actual political movement to talk about?