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”.
Centre @ 150
I want to believe your assessment. But I struggle.
GG
Arbitrage is a wonderful thing. 😀
It’s always great if you can’t lose, no matter what the outcome.
Paralympics
Australia has 19 medals.
7 gold
4 silver
8 bronze
http://www.london2012.com/paralympics/medals/
The team has banned athletes having mobile phones for social media. They want to be a team, not a busload of individuals on a jaunt. (my words).
Bemused
Are you iin Victoria?
Well I’ll tell you something else, your State government will be coughing up $1.2 billion pretty soon to Tatts Group and Tabcorp in compensation for removing their gaming license.
Only about 25% of that at best is factored into their (TTS &TAH) share price.
Oh, the Victorian State government will be paying.
Beautiful 😛
Diogenes,
Just caught a pic of the wave you are riding
http://jackman.stanford.edu/oz/Aggregate2010/bettingMarkets/analysis/history.pdf
🙂
BSA Bob @ 101
[ I sort of hope Howard’s a stalking horse re Abbott. They certainly deserve each other. Howard’s undermining Abbott would be an entertaining counter to Abbott’s preparedness to abandon him the instant it’s expedient. So long as they bring each other down. ]
The crap the Government has had to endure form the MSM and the unchallenged LNP lies faithfully repeated and bootstrapped guarantees that if the Government wins the next election it will be without doubt the sweetest victory of all.
Howard’s intervention, particularly his most recent effort from the USA lauding Abbott to the heavens , IMO now makes him a participant in the next election. Accordingly, in addition to the factors above, beating Howard and his policies a second time would be beyond sweet.
[Centre
How are the Fairfax shares doing and what do you predict for the future?]
If I may butt in…
When a company tells its customers that it’s tanking, the customers begin to drift away. There has to be a total reinvention of the company, or else the customers will stay away.
Either the company will tell its customers it not travelling well, or its competition will. Fairfax, being a news company has to do the honours (although The Australia is giving them a good belting too), but they’re also telling their customers they don’t much for their readership in more indirect, and perhaps more stupid ways as well.
Extreme examples of this are Harvey-Norman Discounts and David Jones, who told their customers that non-existent taxes and non-existent interest rate rises (plus, in the case of HN) a definitely existent alternative via the internet bested their own Jurassic business model.
The failure of the business models is something that makes the customers suspect they are being ripped off under the old one. Solution: new business model, but as far as I can tell, Gerry Harvey is still shitting in the nest of the economy in which he desires to prosper, and David Jones maintains skeletal staffing levels. Viva innovation!
To come to Fairfax we see a company that admits its business is tanking. In a rational world, this might not matter to its customers, who should still require news and opinion, plus some other technical information like stock prices, weather, form guides and the like.
As to the opinion pages, Fairfax have kept many of their columnists who have, from day one of this government, told their readers (increasingly sparse on the ground) that anyone who voted Labor was a mug. This is all the more irritating for the fact that the alternative, a government led by the crackpot liar and House Of Horrors carnival barker, Tony Abbott, is a viable alternative. How is this supposed to energize the punters to spend the $2 (or whatever) for one of their newspapers.
If a readership discards its faith in a newspaper’s ability to analyse its own problems and to talk up its own market, only the newspaper ultimately loses. The readers retreat to their bunkers. Rumours that Fairfax is dying inevitably lead to Fairfax dying.
Not only that, but Fairfax has drilled a hole in the egg and sucked out the good stuff inside, keeping only the pathetic remnants of the shell from the long gone “Good Times”. Carney and Marr took the package, but precious few others (who should have) did. We still have Hartcher, Coorey, Henderson, Grattan, Maley, Katharine Murphy, Tony Wright and the egregious Paul Sheehan (although… has anyone seen Paul lately?).
They have kept, not the old business plan, but a cheap imitation of it, which can only further cheapen their business’s worth.
That, and (as Ross Gittins constantly points out) their predilection to trash talk anything that moves, especially if it’s related to the Gillard government, telling us that the economy is ruined, shares are tanking, China’s gone bust, Europe’s in the shit, manufacturing’s tanking and that we are poorly governed in every aspect on top of all this, can’t do much for confidence.
As a top predator, newspapers (unless they are of the subsidized News Ltd variety, kept alive sentimentally by a heart-lung machine provided from HQ in New York) rely on people being happy and confident enough to advertise in their newspapers. The slightest hiccup in an economy and the media sharks start getting hungry. Ultimately the jelly fish take over.
If you don’t believe me about confidence, take a look at one of the few remaining positives for Fairfax: their real estate market. It’s a bad day in Black Rock when they can’t find something positive to say about the Real Estate market. It’s in their interests to get the punters reading about real estate, so they talk it up.
[Spring tipped to mark rebirth of seller market
THE long-awaited recovery in the Sydney property market is on the way, according to experts, just as vendors and buyers prepare for the start of the main selling season today.
http://smh.domain.com.au/real-estate-news/spring-tipped-to-mark-rebirth-of-seller-market-20120831-255pr.html ]
I guess Julia Gillard has not quite enough to do with Real estate for them to bother trash talking that particular revenue stream they depend on.
You can hear them saying, “Let’s keep the politics out of Real Estate. We make money from it.”
What they refuse to countenance is that they make money from all economic activity, not just Real Estate. So why not talk up the whole thing?
Answer: “We’re paid to be cynics”… words that should be tattooed across Phil Correy’s forehead in shame.
No Phil, you’re not paid to be cynics. You’re paid to sell newspapers, which in turn inform their readers and employ their staff.
You’re NOT paid to write self-indulgent gossip columns, claiming they are news from the Inside to which only the high priesthood of journalism (that would be Phil and misery-guts cronies) has access.
Nice, isn’t it? You get to use your broadsheet and tabloid outlets to trash not only the economy, but your own businesses, and then you get to double up by blaming the government, while letting the Trash Talker In Chief, Tony Abbott, get away with it because he’s a good bloke (or should I say, a good blokey bloke?).
The High Priesthood (please put aside, if possible, the image of Michelle Grattan as a Vestal Virgin) opines away, on a whim, saying what they want to say, telling us that we’re (half of us anyway) mugs, publishing unsourced stories from anonymous informants, freely using adjectives like “embattled” and “desperate” like salt and pepper on their pages (with “shambolic”a useful verbal condiment for those who like something tart).
The Fairfax company has laid off the good ones – the editors, the behind-the-scenes workers who make the paper a reality day by day – and effectively re-employed the lazy opinion writers who sound off at the mouth daily, about how badly we’re done by.
And they wonder why the share price is tanking?
http://the-billablog.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/remember-when.html
[31 August, 2012
Remember when…?
At the beginning of the year, I pondered which of their stated values the Republican party would throw away, or at least try to rationalise their way out of. With Romney as the nominee, we are now hearing all those who would have opposed him in the primaries saying, “I had deep concerns about ____’s position on _____ and his history of ____ but now that I know more about him and heard that he believes _____, I know that he’s the right candidate.”
The script was already written, you just have to fill in the blanks and get the right people from central casting to say it.
Here’s my only question: ]
Diog –
Legislating a dental program was part of the commitment made by JG to the Greens as part of the deal to form government.
That would be why Richard di Natale was standing by Tanya Plibersek to do the announcement.
It’s just tidying up a loose end from the 2010 election, not about preparing for an early next election…
Centre @ 154
Yes, I am in Victoria.
I don’t think that is a certainty at all and I certainly hope not.
re businesses who advertise on 2GB
There are no banks, and only 7 out of 36 are in a “financial” category. They are:
TomWaterhouse: gambling
State Custodians Mortgage Company
Nova Employment
Knowledge Bank IQ: superannuation advice
Burton Financial Services
Australian Property Choice
Aliom Investment Broker
There are 5 in the health category, 5 selling cars or forklifts and 19 out of 36 in a vague Home Stuff category. They sell aircons, homes, taps, bathrooms, or are removalists, butchers, chemists and restaurants.
This is of course for all of 2GB. There is a page on the website for Commercial Agreements of each announcer but Jones only lists Ch 9 and Ch 7 . So I presume he has no other financial agreements to advertise for anyone else. It all sounds rather pathetic doesn’t it?
[and the egregious Paul Sheehan (although… has anyone seen Paul lately?).]
One journalist who hasn’t been seen in ages is Matthew Franklin. Anyone know what happened to him?
BB @ 157
No need to ask, it’s an open forum.
Your comments are also most interesting as usual.
[One journalist who hasn’t been seen in ages is Matthew Franklin. Anyone know what happened to him?]
He took the package two weeks ago. Got a nice send-off from Gillard in parliament too.
BB:
Thanks. I wondered why he hadn’t been mentioned for a while.
Jesuz, them #MSMhacks sure are touchy
[I don’t think that is a certainty at all and I certainly hope not.]
Do governments win anything in court against private enterprise?
Well, they won’t be winning that one I will give you the tip. 😉
*gotta go*
Finns:
I’ve noticed Mega George is a bit touchy today about his colleagues departing.
Fess, yep.
[George Megalogenis @GMegalogenis
@Thefinnigans @supercededman1 Telling someone just made redundant they won’t be missed is not exactly a nice thing to say.]
[@GMegalogenis Some of you will be NOT missed by your readers.]
in reply to his:
[George Megalogenis @GMegalogenis
Good luck to those at my old paper, the Herald Sun, and at Fairfax who have left their buildings. All of you will be missed by your readers.]
Finns:
Yeah, saw that. Can’t help but recall the cheering on of Reith’s waterfront wars by the msm (esp the News ltd publications) when those dockside workers were put out of a job.
And we’re supposed to feel sorry for a few washed up hacks taking retrenchment? Talk about out of touch!
Milksop Hartchner had a fairly good article, until he got to what followa;
[The truth is that the complaints about Rudd’s temper and egosim, guilty though he was, were trivial in the scheme of things. They were an ex post facto rationalisation for an ill-considered coup. They were not a serious disqualification for a prime minister, especially a Labor one.
The public, after all, heard all the stories yet still rate Rudd as preferred Labor leader by a factor of two to one. Only the caucus is having grave difficulty in getting over its own confected outrage. In the months ahead, the caucus will allow the polls to dictate whether it’s time.]
Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/politics/prima-donnas-and-the-pms-20120831-2567l.html#ixzz25BLIjia1
Poor George, still unhappy:
George Megalogenis @GMegalogenis
@Thefinnigans @supercededman1 Have another look at what you tweeted. You made a charmless point and I called it out. Time to move on.
@MalcolmFraser12: Former Murdoch legal chief arrested it is getting nearer to the top. http://t.co/3TZaAqTl
The Waterhouses’ support for the parrot is not surprising. Bill and Robbie were the last of the purveyors of the ultimate anti-free speech device – criminal defamation against ABC Four Corners’ journos investigating Fine Cotton.
[ One-fifth of the “spineless creatures that rule the world” may be at risk of extinction, according to a new study http://bit.ly/TDZi5D%5D
You would think that, given a 20% risk to their lives the average Liberal party politician would be for climate taxes and other efforts to mitigate global warming.
[The truth is that the complaints about Rudd’s temper and egosim, guilty though he was, were trivial in the scheme of things. They were an ex post facto rationalisation for an ill-considered coup. They were not a serious disqualification for a prime minister, especially a Labor one.]
This is Hartcher’s roundabout way of saying that next Tuesday’s handover in the caucus room ain’t gonna happen.
Notice how “by the end of this month” (May) from Richo has turned into “in the months ahead” from Hartcher?
One could say I’m comparing apples with oranges, taking the deadines of two writers from two stables, and in a way they’d be right.
But taking the body of work of opinion writers as a collective whole, they’ve been all wrong, all the time about Rudd’s chances of a comeback.
Even Coorey’s “And I was right!!!” about February’s challenge, was substantially wrong, in that the challenge was so weak as to hardly be a challenge at all, in name only, really, for form’s sake.
I wonder whether Rudd now rues the day that he starting believing his own publicity and began to auto-write his own If There Were No Benny Cemoli story?
It was also the day that he allowed himself to be out-manouevred by Gillard and her allies into challenging from New York. Can you get any further from Australia than New York? Turns out the crowds and the adulation for him weren’t enough, eh? Politics Rule Nos 1 and 2.
1. Have the numbers.
2. Be on time for the vote.
Rudd seems to have forgotten both.
Fairfax have one foot in the grave, yet they keep digging.
When will they learn that providing an alternative might help them? Yet they continue to indulge their “senior writers” in their fantastical whims of miracle comebacks (but only if they involve Rudd, not Gillard who’s gonna LOOOOOZE!), incompetent government and their ignoring of the connection between a healthy, confident economy and a successful newspaper business model.
The public have told them in the only way available to them that THEY are the ones not being listened to, yet they refuse to countenance a change of tack.
There aren’t enough lifeboats for them all. At least Shaun Carney and David Marr (and, my sister reminds me, Ian Verrender) realized that.
When the Titanic finally sinks, who’ll pay for the salvage? Who will buy the plant and equipment of a dinosaur industry? Who will save the souls still in the water?
P.S. to #176…
I might include Fairfax Radio, which is light years worse than their newspapers.
This is being very loose with the truth on Hartcher’s part (surprise surprise!). I do not want to kick off Ruddstoration, so I only state this as a reminder of what others said at the time and since – Hartcher is entirely omitting the most crucial charge made against Kevin Rudd as leader, which was that decision making within the government became paralyzed and dysfunctional due to (allegedly) a refusal of Kevin Rudd to delegate combined with a profound unwillingness of Kevin Rudd to make timely decisions.
Whether these accusations are true or not, for Hartcher to airbrush this most significant of accusations from the record is disingenuous.
Entertainingly, Hartcher himself made the point:
So wouldn’t that tend to indicate that what was the same about these three figures is not of any great interest – what is of interest is what was different, which Hartcher singularly fails to analyze.
Good form shown this morning from SK and Boerwar.
Jones is simply wrong, as I wrote yesterday, overall Christine Nixon has Police Commissioner did a good job.
Deakin is an interesting seat, looking at the new boundaries I would image the Liberals will gain it but this is the sort of seat that may see State Issues play a big part.
A bit of fun for a Saturday afternoon(and, yes, I know it’s pertaining to the US, but our values are universal 🙂 ) :
http://www.people-press.org/political-party-quiz/
C@tmomma,
For some strange reason I am at the furtherst possible left position … if only I could upload a screen shot!
Well said, BB … Despite our sharply different perspectives on much of public policy, I wouldn’t disagree with what you’ve offered above.
To clarify BB, I was referring in the above to your letter to Carney.
WTF?? I come out on the extreme left as well?? Now me, i am left of center to be sure, but ………..
Suspect this reflects how the political “spectrum” in the US is very much “right shifted” overall.
How would you have had to answer to get to Tea Party Republican?? Scary.
When are we going to see articles about Messers Abbott, Newman, Baillieu, Bartlett and O’Farrell doing damage to ‘Brand Liberal’?
Goose/gander, after all.
Well, here we go again. No. 4 son and his girlfriend just announced their engagement.
C@tmomma, imacca
I answered those questions honestly and came out way over on the left. Then I had another go and answered the way I thought someone like, say, Fred Nile or Scott Morrison might answer. And guess what – right over on the very far right,way past the Tea Party spot, as far as you could get, labelled ‘Very Conservative’.
BK,
Is this the last of the offspring to be heading down the primrose path? If there are any as yet unattached, maybe you should be recommending a monastery/convent …
😉
leone (and imacca),
[Then I had another go and answered the way I thought someone like, say, Fred Nile or Scott Morrison might answer.]
That’s what I’ve just done, too, and with an identical result!
According to that quiz, I need to find a party so far left of the Democrats that I might as well stay in Australia.
http://www.people-press.org/political-party-quiz/
BK
“Why should other sibling get all the attention?”
Yup, much same same.
I suspect that there are a couple of the questions (probably the religion / abortion ones) that are heavily weighted. I tried answering in a way that i thought a very moderate repuglican would. Still came out to the right of the TeaBaggers??
Puff,
I wonder whether any PBer would be game to admit that they ended up close to even “Moderate Republican”?
That url for left/right didn’t work for me, but I can see no difference with the one I came up with.
And no surprises, I’m about as left as it is possible to be.
anyhow, if any one else has trouble, try:
http://www.people-press.org/political-party-quiz/
fiona and Puff.
Only one of the five offspring left single now.
And I am sure that you are happy in their happiness, BK!
I got the farthest right by answering at at the extreme end of most questions withTea Bagger answers. I think that I ended up at the same far Left end because I answered “Completely” agree/disagree to some questions. Maybe the weighting is in having no doubts or room for compromise on issues.
I answered the quiz on behalf of Mr Abbott.
The final score was that 12 times ‘No!’ does not compute.
BK
Last of five, eh?
He or she gets the wedding in the garden and the finger food reception with cask wine?
[Suspect this reflects how the political “spectrum” in the US is very much “right shifted” overall.]
Wow! Yep, according to this, I would be a Maoist Trotskyite!