Update (3/9/12): Essential Research. The weekly Essential Research report has fallen into line with other pollsters in giving Labor its best result since March – up two on the primary vote to 34% and one on two-party preferred to 55-45. The Coalition is down a point to 48%, a result it last recorded in April. The poll has 52% thinking female politicians receive more criticism than men against only 4% less and 40% the same, and very similar results (51%, 6% and 38%) when the subject is narrowed to Julia Gillard specifically. A question on which groups would be better off under Labor or Liberal governments find traditional attitudes to the parties are as strong as ever, with wide gaps according to whether the group could be perceived as disadvantaged (pensioners, unemployed, disabled) or advantaged (high incomes, large corporations, families of private school children). Respondents continue to think it likely that a Coalition government would bring back laws similar to WorkChoices (51% likely against 25% unlikely).
Deakin is centred on the eastern Melbourne suburbs of Blackburn and Nunawading, extending eastwards along the Maroondah Highway to Ringwood and Croydon. At the time of its creation in 1937, it extended far beyond the city limits to Seymour and Mansfield, before gaining its wholly urban orientation in 1969 and assuming roughly its current dimensions when it lost Box Hill in 1977. A trend of increasing Liberal support as the electorate extends eastwards is better explained by diminishing ethnic diversity than by income: in its totality, the electorate is demographically unexceptional on all measures. The redistribution has cut the Labor margin from 2.4% to 0.6% by transferring 18,000 voters in the electorate’s south-western corner, at Blackburn South, Burwood East and Forest Hill, to Chisholm; adding 8000 voters immediately to the east of the aforementioned area, around Vermont South, from Aston; and adding another 10,000 voters around Croydon in the north-east, mostly from Casey but partly from Menzies.
For a seat that has been marginal for most of its history, Deakin has brought Labor remarkably little joy: prior to 2007 their only win was when the Hawke government came to power in 1983, and it was lost again when Hawke went to the polls early in December 1984. The seat presented a picture of electoral stability from 1984 to 2001, when Liberal margins ranged only from 0.7% to 2.5% (although the 1990 redistribution muffled the impact of a 4.3% Liberal swing). Julian Beale held the seat from 1984 until the 1990 election, when he successfully challenged controversial Bruce MP Ken Aldred for preselection after redistribution turned the 1.5% margin into a notional 1.9% margin for Labor. Aldred accepted the consolation prize of Deakin and was able to retain the seat on the back of a sweeping statewide swing to the Liberals. He was in turn unseated for preselection in 1996 by Phillip Barresi, who held the seat throughout the Howard years.
Barresi emerged from the 2004 election with a margin of 5.0%, the biggest the Liberals had known in the seat since 1977. The substantial swing required of Labor at the 2007 election was duly achieved with 1.4% to spare by Mike Symon, whose background as an official with the Left faction Electrical Trades Union had made him a target of Coalition barbs amid controversies surrounding union colleagues Dean Mighell and Kevin Harkins. Symon’s preselection had been achieved through a three-vote win over local general practitioner Peter Lynch, the candidate from 2004, who reportedly won the 50% local vote component before being rebuffed by the state party’s tightly factionalised Public Office Selection Committee. Andrew Crook of Crikey reported that Symon had backing from the Bill Shorten-Stephen Conroy Right as a quid pro quo for Left support for Peter McMullin’s unsuccessful bid for preselection in Corangamite. Symon was re-elected in 2010 with a 1.0% swing in the face of an attempt by Phillip Barresi to recover his old seat, which was perfectly in line with the statewide result. He was rated by one source as undecided as Kevin Rudd’s challenge to Julia Gillard’s leadership unfolded in February 2012, but soon fell in behind Gillard.
The Liberal candidate at the next election will be Michael Sukkar, a 30-year-old tax specialist with Ashurt, the law firm previously known as Blake Dawson. Sukkar emerged a surprise preselection winner over John Pesutto, a lawyer and Victorian government adviser said to be closely associated with Ted Baillieu. VexNews reported that also-ran candidates Phillip Fusco, Terry Barnes and Andrew Munroe were eliminated in that order, at which point Pesutto was in first place, state government staffer Michelle Frazer was second, and Sukkar and former Melbourne candidate Simon Olsen were tied for third. After winning a run-off against Olsen, Sukkar crucially managed to sneak ahead of Frazer, who unlike Sukkar would not have prevailed against Pesutto in the final round due to a view among Sukkar’s backers that she “wasn’t up to it”.
so rummel what if a soldier a lady who is charge of brigade cried,.
what say you about that.
well i have my say
over and out again.
[I accept my foolishness and I am very sorry.]
In case case David you are forgiven. Your honesty is refreshing.
MG 1650 not sure why you are mentioning me in that context?
I’m sure you have a good reason but it escapes me.
[C@tmomma
Posted Monday, September 3, 2012 at 5:42 pm | Permalink
rummel,
Canberra Blugers are invited to attend Queanbeyan RFS station 1930h this Friday on behalf of all bludgers to partake in the nights events and BBQ.
You know they’ll point at you and laugh about your 60-40 Newspoll predictions?]
60-40 for tonight as well 🙂
poroti
We were in the strange dairy industry on the far west coast of SA, I think it is like no other area. Dry, lots of limestone and not many trees. It was tough farming country.
Interestingly, my parents are true conservatives – living lightly with rain water tanks, home grown food, recycling everything, highly sceptical of most things etc. But their views are diverging from the current coalition party now – my parents are more interested in the views of Tony Windsor than the traditional rabble. They have solar panels on the roof and Dad watches the meter all day to make sure they are using less power than they are generating, Mum thinks the climate is obviously changing etc etc.
rummell never answers my questions i notice.
good on you david suppose your thinking out loud
but when i think of courage under fire and stress i think of mothers
and woman who are great leaders.
mothers give their daughters courage, and its giving birth that is a great educator to courage id say.
Labor wont be doing that well till next year. 😆
I did post my footnote in brackets so am running a test to see if that’s why it didn’t show up. If it does then I have no idea why it got lost.
rummel
[60-40 for tonight as well 🙂 ]
So ACTian PBers dress code for Friday will include “I’m With Stupid” t-shirts then ? 😉
Aha so if you put text in between
It gets lost in cyber-space.
I must dawn on some of the sane LNP members soon that they will not win the 2013 election if it is a referendum on the Carbon Tax.
The policy agenda being lined up by Labor means the Libs have to offer something. I note Abbott has said they cannot afford to do anything – well get out of they way.
[Labor wont be doing that well till next year]
Boom tish!
[my say
Posted Monday, September 3, 2012 at 5:50 pm | Permalink
so rummel what if a soldier a lady who is charge of brigade cried,.
what say you about that.
well i have my say
over and out again.]
Fully understandable if one of her soldiers is turned into pink mist infront of her eyes by a IED.
Anyway my say, i was not disturb by the PM not crying at the floods. I was just pointing out she shed a tear while talking about man walking on the moon. Further, the PM would have access to disturbing information that we are not privileged to that would make most people cry.
rummel sorry mate but you are crazy or wishful thinking.
my say it was meant as a tongue-in-cheek comment and I am truely sorry if it has caused you any distress. I have to say it does look much worse when taken in isolation.
So Rudd is still posting about his trip to a school today on facebook. He has no shame. He is clearly trying to take some of the limelight away from the PM.
I’m just amazed that within the context of the whole Intersex debate today that no one has thought to mention the most famous recent cause celebre of the genre, Caster Semenya. She of the world-wide furore of the Beijing Olympics 800M race.
My son did an assignment on her for Sports Studies last year, and it was a fascinating story of how the Olympics movement responded to her case so that she may fairly race against her competitors in London2012.
Apparently, every athlete who makes it to the Olympics has a full genetic profile done these days and they can identify any of ‘questionable’ gender. Appropriate steps are then taken to hormonally modify them back to a level that is believed to equate them with their fellow competitors, and so as not to allow the male hormones to unfairly advantage their performance.
Of course it is mainly those female competitors that are Intersex male that are the ones this policy is focused on because the Intersex competitors the other way just wouldn’t make the qualifying times I suppose.
Historically, of course, this area became of interest to the Olympics movement due to those countries, such as the Eastern Bloc, putting forward athletes for Olympic competition in the Women’s competitions who needed to shave in the mornings. 🙂
I think being in Afghanistan is based on a false premise anyway. We are increasing our chance of being the target of Islamic terrorists by being there.
Keelty mentioned this inconvenient truth and was quickly slapped by John Howard.
thirdborn314
[poroti
We were in the strange dairy industry on the far west coast of SA, I think it is like no other area. Dry, lots of limestone and not many trees. It was tough farming country]
Well you definitely qualify to be one of the PB’s “Four Cow Cockies” because you really would be able to start off with “Well we had it tough. There were ……..” . Where I came from a drought meant it had not rained for three weeks 🙂
[rummel
Posted Monday, September 3, 2012 at 5:56 pm | Permalink
my say
Posted Monday, September 3, 2012 at 5:50 pm | Permalink
so rummel what if a soldier a lady who is charge of brigade cried,.
what say you about that.]
On reflection this is such a bad example. A soldier regardless of sex is exposed to sights and sounds that are beyond imagination for the general Australian Voter. If a Soldier wants to cry after a battle well so be it.
C@tmomma
[Apparently, every athlete who makes it to the Olympics has a full genetic profile done these days and they can identify any of ‘questionable’ gender.]
Quiz
Name a female athlete who didn’t have to have her gender tested.
[rummel
Posted Monday, September 3, 2012 at 5:56 pm | Permalink
my say
Posted Monday, September 3, 2012 at 5:50 pm | Permalink
so rummel what if a soldier a lady who is charge of brigade cried,.
what say you about that.]
🙂
Fanny Blankers keon
Diogenes
[Name a female athlete who didn’t have to have her gender tested.]
Ooo Ooo Ooo !!! Sir Sir. Princess Anne ?
I think Afghanistan probably wasn’t an initial mistake, arguable given what has happened subsequently, however it was made a mistake following the very dumb decision to attack Iraq in 2003. I honestly can’t see any long-term benefit that justifies all the deaths in Afghanistan but the US probably had no choice following 9/11.
thirdborn314
Don’t you worry about ‘them there’ ducks – I got some under control with a .410 and then later when my father would permit a 12G almost had the best of them.
Mostly natives I’ve got to say. I wonder if Black ones are more cunning?
😆
poroti
Damn you!!!!
Hi Thirdborn,
just catching up so apologies if this has already been addressed, but I agree Pollbludger on an Android tablet really sucks. After enormous trial and error I have found that if you download the Opera Beta app, then click on the ‘Switch to our Standard Site’ button at the top of the page you are back in business, with Avatars and page numbers at the bottom and all.
Predictable cliched response from the conservatives on anything proposed by the government = No.
Just so..consistent and predictable. Why do they bother?
Predicable cliched response from Coalition supporters here = all that money “wasted on school halls”.
Apart from the fact that less than 30% of the money was spent on “halls” as they glibly and are crudely in error on (deliberately of course) I have not noticed one school community in the whole of Oz saying ‘no’ or sending the money back.
What really pees the conservatives is that they didn’t think of the idea themselves.
Mind you, as JG reminded the media pack this morning, the money spent was to keep people in work.
Oh, but wait a minute! According to Julie Bishop – that intellectual giant of the Liberal party at the time, there was NO financial crisis and thus there was not need to spend the money at all.
Along with pink batts and Fuel Watch these were all supposedly “stupid and wasteful” ideas by the government of the day.
Funny thing with Fuel Watch.
It was opposed by the Libs in the Senate yet nearly every commercial TV station, currently, does its own “fuel watch” while we in WA know Barnett and the Libs kept their mouths firmly shut at the time as they knew we in WA are well and truly into “Fuel Watch” here.
I suspect, in a year or two, we will see some report that the batts will have saved squillions but, of course, the conservatives just can’t afford to admit they were wrong – again.
Why any intelligent person votes conservative is still a complete mystery to me.
And, quite often, they are nice and well-meaning people. An added puzzle.
Diogenes@1670,
Princess Anne?
That was re Iraq wasn’t it? He also mentioned Oil.
Fanny blankers koen was already a mother of 2 ,so wonder why she would be tested
The ACT justice system was heavily criticised by the High Court over the embarrassingly long litigation necessary to claim insurance for the destroyed Mt Stromlo facility.
Eastman has made a mockery of it as well from his wilful disruption of the criminal trial which saw him tossed out of court to his frequent appeals (two to the High Court) to his suit against the local housing authority for evicting their absentee tenant (he was in gaol for murder after all).
It is little wonder a Federal Court judge has risen up against the slowest court in Australia with a poor reputation among outsiders.
poroti
We were good at picking up rocks (I remember doing rock picking duties during school to make the footy oval a bit safer), and ripping mallee stumps. We also ran sheep, bailed our own hay and planted wheat. To this day I can not believe my father was also a full time teacher.
shellbell
I share your outrage.
Is the Schools Reform Plan achievable? c/- Steve Cannane on The Drum.
Wtf? I thought we had a ‘Trillion Dollar Economy’? Or so the Liberals kept boasting when Howard & Costello were ruining, er, running, the economy.
[but the US probably had no choice following 9/11]
Of course they had choice, as did Australia. 9/11 was a very convenient excuse for invading Iraq. WOMD indeed … what a joke. Even to this day Howard can’t bring himself to admit that WOMD didn’t exist.
I condemn the ACT Supreme Court. They should be put in a chaff bag and thrown over the side with all the other useless deadweights.
[Diogenes
Posted Monday, September 3, 2012 at 5:58 pm | Permalink
I think being in Afghanistan is based on a false premise anyway. We are increasing our chance of being the target of Islamic terrorists by being there.
Keelty mentioned this inconvenient truth and was quickly slapped by John Howard.]
No one would think that our “aggression” in Afghanistan would not cause us to be interesting subjects of retaliation if that is your “inconvenient”, if simplistic, truth.
The question is whether, by our actions, we have made it more likely that we will be targets of terrorism over the long term or whether, by our actions, we will have significantly reduced the risk of being targets of terrorism by (a) impeding the terrorists; and (b) attempting to assist in setting up a relatively stable civil society. I do not think your simplistic analysis decides the issue. It certainly panders to “the emotions” and not to intellectual rigour – even if it may be right.
wasnt meant to be offensive, just thought you might be a bit surprised that was all 🙂
thirdborn314,
My family historically has farmed Wheat and Sheep out of Esperance in WA. 🙂
davidwh
[but the US probably had no choice following 9/11.]
Oh yes they did. Osama was already in the bad books of the Taliban due to his attracting unwanted attention from the outside world. Mullah Omar had placed him under virtual house arrest well before 9/11. Omar descibed Osama as a bone stuck in his throat that he could neither swallow or dislodge.
A couple of years ago US documents confirmed Taliban claims that they offered to hand over Osama if the US showed them evidence of his involvement in 9/11. Under Pashtun code a guest must be protected but if a guest abuses the hospitality then all bets are off. His involvement would violate the code. As Osama was already isolated by the Taliban there was every reason to believe their offer. At the very least why not have put the offer to the test ?
poroti
During one drought we would go around all the cows that stayed down in the morning
We had a sort of cow lifter (fitted over the cow’s hips) fitted to the Grey Fergie. Once lifted upright, if they fell straight back down again, they were goners and they would be shot. If they kept upright for another day, they were good to go.
These days, I suppose, we would be in court for animal cruelty, big time. But I assume that my name would have been suppressed, since I was only about 12 at the time.
Can someone give me a rundown of what sucks about PB on Android tablets? And is Android about to go the way of Betamax and the eight-track cartridge in any case? Not really a tech-head, Kerry.
Now I know why my rates have gone through the roof: to pay for a slack-arse legal industry.
Grrrrr.
Diogenes
[poroti
Damn you!!!!]
And Google free !! Will there need to be information “performance enhancement” tests for online quizzes where the “athletes” search history is tested ? 🙂
William
Are you going to do an ACT elections thread? I know it is only a local government election, but still…
Of course it is, it is a question of priorities. Howard found $10 billion for the MDB on the back of an envelope.
Bit early for that I think, Boerwar.
William
No worries.
Yesterday there was some commentary on what made for ‘merit’ in a candidate for election. BW offered a range of skills and attributes that seemed to me fair enough (albeit I might add a couple more). I could also quibble that there merit is both subjective and hostage to tribal sentiment and so will always doubtful as things stand, but putting this to one side it seems to me that this really frames the question the wrong way.
What we really ought to want is not so much highly meritorious candidates, as desirable as this would be in principle, but a highly effective and functional parliament that really is a reflection of the sentiment of the population bearing upon the best endeavours of intelligent and public spirited people to solve the problems of governance. Before you can have these things you need a highly engaged and informed populace but as our system is currently configured for stability and continutity of existing privilege, however meritorious our candidates turn out to be, we will never approach having an engaged and informed populace. People by and large know that their opinion is irrelevant. The Afghanistan situation simply highlights the point.
What we have at the moment is a highly adversarial system that lends itself to lawyerly exchanges and public theatre, played out in the mass media as a rather tawdry spectacle. Whoever wins the next election one suspects the opinion of most people of government and its primary participants will continue to be poor. This general sentiment really only serves one side of politics in the long run — the right — who cite this as proof that only the private sector can run things effectively and efficiently.
And yet, if we had a system that put the parties at arm’s length from governance, reducing them effectively to think tanks for ideas rather than vehicles for career advancement, then even if the composition of the parliament represented roughly what it did now in terms of cultural predisposition, one suspects we’d get a lot more light than heat out of Canberra than at present. Our media would be a lot less indolent. In every election, policy would be the winner.
I’d favour a hybrid system — blending elements of sortition, direct democracy and deliberative democracy.
Imagine that approximately half-way through the electoral cycle in each electorate 20 people at random from the electoral roll who had checked the box for “will serve as local member” and who had had a criminal record check and passed, were invited to serve as candidates (with a payment reflecting gtheir foregone wages or the average wage + 25%, (whichever was the higher). They could withdraw (but then alternatives would be added) and these people would be provided with a PR agent/trainer/minder with some web skills and knowledge of the parliamentary process and a skills consultant (who would identify knowledge gaps in the candidate and take him/her through a course in what he/she needed to know to be an effective MP. In addition, if they had a special area of interest — education, transport, law reform, health, environment, housing etc. they could be put in touch with the expertise they’d need to specify their policy ideas. 90 dqays after induction the candidates publish their blogs and go online to set out their key concerns and approaches. 120 days later a preliminary deliberative vote is held electronically in which registered voters indicate their level of confidence in the candidate, weighting on a scale of one to 10 the importance of the candidate’s key concerns and how much they agreed or disagreed with the candidate’s perspective. These scores would be used to rank the candidates in support. The candidates would all be re-evaluated in the same way 120 days later (some may have changed or tweaked their ideas) and then a final vote would be held about a month before the parliament ended. The weighted value of the three deliberative votes would be used to give them chances to be drawn out of a lotto-style barrel.
This way, it would be highly likely that the most supported candidate would win, but there’d be a rough chance too that a minority candidate with substantial support could win. This process, repeated across the country would produce a diverse parliament that did not exclude from consideration non-mainstream ideas. Moreover, it would mean that the process would be policy-driven, since the voting would be based on substantive matters rather than tribal affiliation. The principal way that parties could affect the outcome would be by winning over large numbers of people to policy ideas (rather than candidates that looked good in front of a camera).
Importantly, the 19 candidates who had missed out would retain some chance of serving since the one selected would be subject to a recall vote if the parliament voted for it. Equally, whether they served or not there would be a growing pool of people with enlarged expertise about the processes of government and the realities of policy making. Over time, we would get a more informed electorate.
When the parliament met it would devise (or approve, review and amend the national 1-year, 3-year, 5-year, 10 year and even 20-year plans). These would be put to a vote of the whole population and if there were differences people could express their preferences much as we do now in preferential votes. The task of the parliament would be to make the plans work and to report on progress at 6-monthly intervals. In the interim, MPs could lead community debate in areas of especial interest, bring petitions for consideration and do the other work MPs do. If there were an especially controversial matter — say one where 40% of the parliament dissented, then a plebiscite could be held to determine the matter. The result, whatever it was, would then be immune from challenge for the remainder of the life of the parliament. If the plebsicite concerned a feature of the national plan it could of course be raised when the national plan was again due for approval.
As the MPs themselves would know that their statistical chance of being selected for a second term was virtually zero and that at the end they go back to their lives and their communities, they should feel strongly disposed to act in good faith and to make their time count without getting it into their heads that they were better than the average citizen. Lacking a core of people to cover their metaphoric behinds and with recall a possibility, they would be inclined to avoid playing fast and loose with standards of behaviour in public.
The media would be largely reduced to commenting on issues of policy since it would surely be the case that there would be constant dealmaking between people of sharply different inclination within an overall rubric of national goal setting. Everyone of us could imagine something good coming out of the next parliament and would be obliged to bring an open mind to the possibilities — and that in the end might be the biggest benefit of all.