Seat of the week: Lilley

Wayne Swan’s electorate of Lilley covers the Brisbane bayside north-east of the city centre, between the Brisbane and Pine rivers – an area accounting for industrial Eagle Farm in the south and residential Brighton in the north – along with suburbs nearer the city from McDowall, Stafford Heights and Everton Park eastwards through Kedron, Chermside and Zillmere to Nundah, Nudgee and Taigum. The redistribution before the 2010 election had a substantial impact on the electorate, adding 26,000 in Chermside West and Stafford Heights at the northern end (from Petrie) and removing a similar number of voters in an area from Clayfield and Hendra south to Hamilton on the river (to Brisbane), but the margin was little affected.

Lilley was created in 1913, originally extending from its current base of Nudgee, Aspley, Kedron, Eagle Farm and Brisbane Airport all the way north to Gympie. It did not become entirely urban until the enlargement of parliament in 1949, when Petrie was created to accommodate what were then Brisbane’s semi-rural outskirts. Labor won Lilley in 1943, 1946, 1961 and 1972 (by a margin of 35 votes on the latter occasion), but otherwise it was usually safe for the prevailing conservative forces of the day. A decisive shift came with the elections of 1980 and 1983, when Labor’s Elaine Darling won and then consolidated the seat with respective swings of 5.2% and 8.4%.

Wayne Swan succeeded Darling as the Labor member in 1993, but like all but two of his Queensland Labor colleagues he lost his seat in 1996. Swan stood again in 1998 and accounted for the 0.4% post-redistribution margin with a swing of 3.5%. He added further fat to his margin at the each of the next three elections, although in keeping with the inner urban trend his swing in 2007 was well below the statewide average (3.2% compared with 7.5%). The 2010 election delivered the LNP a swing of 4.8% that compared with a statewide result of 5.5%, bringing the seat well into the marginal zone at 3.2%.

Swan’s path into politics began as an adviser to Bill Hayden during his tenure as Opposition Leader and later to Hawke government ministers Mick Young and Kim Beazley, before he took on the position of Queensland party secretary in 1991. He was elevated to the shadow ministry after recovering his seat in 1998, taking on the family and community services portfolio, and remained close to former boss Beazley. Mark Latham famously described Swan and his associates as “roosters” when Beazley conspired to recover the leadership in 2003, but nonetheless retained him in his existing position during his own tenure in the leadership. Swan was further promoted to the Treasury portfolio after the 2004 election defeat, which he retained in government despite suggestions Rudd had been promised the position to Lindsay Tanner in return for his support when he toppled Kim Beazley as leader in December 2006.

Although he went to high school with him in Nambour and shared a party background during the Wayne Goss years, Swan has long been a bitter rival of Kevin Rudd, the former emerging as part of the AWU grouping of the Right and the latter with the Right’s “old guard”. He was in the camp opposing Rudd at successive leadership challenges, including Rudd’s successful challenge against Beazley, his toppling by Julia Gillard in June 2010, and most recently when he sought to recover the leadership in February 2012, when Swan accused Rudd of “sabotaging policy announcements and undermining our substantial economic successes”. Swan succeeded Gillard as deputy upon her ascension to the prime ministership.

Swan’s LNP opponent for the second consecutive election will be Rod McGarvie, a former soldier and United Nations peacekeeper. McGarvie won a July preselection vote from a field which included John Cotter, GasFields commissioner and former head of agriculture lobby group AgForce, and Bill Gollan, owner of a Deagon car dealership.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

2,173 comments on “Seat of the week: Lilley”

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  1. bemused

    [That all makes perfect sense to me. Far more than the crap I cited from Gillard.]

    Um, the system you describe as making perfect sense is exactly what Gillard’s talking about – individualised programs within a more generalised structure – and exactly what I’ve been talking about, too.

  5. A) Deepest Condolences to Ms Gillard over the death of her Father.
    B) The sooner that the COALition dump RAbbott, the better off our Country will be

  8. This is a personal bereavement for the PM, not a state event. I don’t think Abbott should have anything to do with it. He’ll either make a snarky comment, as he has before (Margaret Whitlam’s death), or mouth hypocritical statements, which would be even worse.

  9. There was an amusing – and instructive – account of an IT expo a few months ago.

    Of course, the venue was filled with computers, some connected by wireless, a few to fixed lines, and everyone in the crowd had mobile phones of varied intelligence.

    Both the wireless and mobile phone systems basically shut down, unable to cope with the user load. Those on fixed internet, on the other hand, were fine.

    Similarly, when I work at schools with wireless connections, it’s really obvious when all the kids log on – the speeds slow considerably. Whereas at lunchtime, there’s never a problem.

  10. 305

    Abbott, if he gets to the election as leader, will cause the Coalition vote to be lower than it would have been otherwise. This is a good thing unless it is still not low enough for the Coalition to loose but the Coalition is looking decreasingly likely to win.

  13. zoomster @ 192

    bemused

    yet again, the elitist approach.

    To be countered by the bs approach.

    Education is not and should not be simply about academic achievement.

    It should also prepare people for life; it should expose them to a wide range of viewpoints and teach them to respect others.

    Who said it was? You are just setting up a straw man to argue against and demolish.

    I remember one mixed ability group of four I had working on writing a story together. Three of them were high academic achievers, one wasn’t. But he came up with the best ideas for stories, and in exchange (it was a group project, after all) they helped him out with his spelling.

    The benefits of that continued long after the particular project was finished.

    What a sweet anecdote. Your point is?

    In real life, most of the work we do relies on a team effort. It means understanding the strengths and weaknesses of our team members and finding a place for them.

    Who ever said otherwise? The straw man is winning!

    If you’ve only ever mixed with the ‘good kids’ you’re going to struggle to do that, just as people who’ve gone to single sex schools often struggle in their dealings with the opposite sex.

    Hahahahaha… I went to 3 High Schools one of which was like the ‘blackboard jungle and one of which was co-ed. A rich experience.

    An elitist approach to education might have worked forty years ago, but it’s no longer relevant or useful.

    So go and argue that against the elitists. I oppose elitism as much as I oppose ignoring differences and pretending they don’t exist.

    And that wasn’t a veiw Kirner arrived at by herself, btw. It was – and is – the view of education experts, backed up by countless studies on how children learn and how that equips them for later life.

    Yes it is the ‘educational progressivist’ viewpoint. What a mis-nomer.

    As one educational text I read said, education is one of the areas where we do the most research and least apply the results, mainly because of the roadblocks to reform created by people whose see education through the prism of their own individual experiences, rather than on an understanding of how learning happens and the kind of learners we need in a modern society.

    Yes, the Victorian experience proves it.

  14. Terrible news for the PM. Sounds like it might have been sudden.

    If Abbott so much as mentions politics in relation to this, as in,

    “While we are of different political persuasions, the death of a parent is an occasion for…” etc.,

    HE IS TOAST.

    That we are reflecting on the possibility this might happen, is the measure of him, and the measure of what he has done to decent political life In Australia.

  15. How is this for farquing bullshit.

    [Andrew ‏@Boatie86

    “@smh: National News: Gillard misses APEC because father dead http://bit.ly/TyRUeC #australia” change your headline to something respectful. ]

    The SMH need there arses kicked.

  19. SK

    VLADIVOSTOCK, Russia – Prime Minister Julia Gillard has failed to appear at the opening session of the APEC summit, because her father has died.

    has failed to appear!!!! WTF!!!!!!!!

  20. lynagh monica @ 212

    William, if you’re about, from the previous thread, TLBD wanted you to forward me his email addy. Alternatively, you could forward mine to him. Thanks.

    Won’t he need your physical or postal address to send you certain body parts?

  21. BB,

    [That we are reflecting on the possibility this might happen, is the measure of him, and the measure of what he has done to decent political life In Australia.]

    In spades.

  22. Abbott, if he gets to the election as leader, will cause the Coalition vote to be lower than it would have been otherwise. This is a good thing unless it is still not low enough for the Coalition to loose but the Coalition is looking decreasingly likely to win.

    I agree that the COALition is increasingly unlikely to win under RAbbott, but in the meantime, general political discourse in this place is greatly suffering due to his trashing of everything

  23. bemused

    All the supposed strawmen are examples of how mixed ability classrooms benefit all students within them, regardless of ability.

    A system which segregates students according to ability is inherently elitist. It is making judgements on one criteria, rather than looking at the student as a whole person.

    You would, I’m sure, object violently to a system which segregated students by skin colour, but there’s not much difference; it is a judgement made one one attribute, rather than considering the person as a whole.

    [Yes, the Victorian experience proves it.]

    By any measure, the Victorian education system is either the best or second best in the country, and – to my knowledge – has been so since Kirner was Education Minister.

    Indeed, when the ALP lost the state election to Kennett, I remember an editorial stating that we had the best education system in Australia, by any measure, but which queried whether or not we could afford it.

  26. [That we are reflecting on the possibility this might happen, is the measure of him, and the measure of what he has done to decent political life In Australia.]

    That we can immediately conjure up examples of past transgressions on his part is further evidence of this.

  29. Another loud-mouth HTV hander-outer story.

    No 1 son has been on handing-out duty today. He just dropped in and asked if I’d like to have a go at shutting up some idiot woman who is handing out Labor HTV cards. Apparently this f-wit is racing up to all the female voters and telling them to ‘vote for all the women because we need women on council’. It seems to have escaped her notice that a good many of the female candidates are not Labor friendly. She’s supposed to be supporting her party, not touting votes for the opposition.

    I declined his invitation, I voted days ago and I’m not going back.

  32. zoomster and bemused,

    I wasn’t going to enter your discussion about education, but now that it has arisen again I shall say the following.

    I went to school in Canberra, which followed the NSW education system. Thus, throughout senior school, I was in streamed classes, which at the time I thought was a good thing.

    My daughter attended school in Melbourne, and to my – initial – horror the only streaming in the senior years was in maths. She was a exceptionally able student, and would often be asked to assist a less able student to understand particular concepts, especially in science classes. This actually proved to be of great benefit: her own understanding of the conceptual bases of many domains was enhanced – something that in fact I should have realised from my own professional life. As a solicitor, and now as a lecturer, it is difficult (if not impossible) to impart information, whether to a client, a student, or a colleague, unless you understand the topic.

    It has certainly helped my daughter: from her second year of engineering she was employed by her university as a tutor in first year subjects, and as she progressed through her degree her range of tutoring subjects expanded. Indeed, for one subject she was selected as the best person (better than the lecturer) to write exemplar proofs. She often said to me that while tutoring had the downside of taking up a bit too much time, the amount she learned as a result of teaching far outweighed that.

    Incidentally, Vygotsky’s emphasis on obuchenie in his writings is particularly interesting, given that the word has two connotations: it means both “to teach” and “to learn” – and speaking for myself (and I suspect many other teachers), as a teacher I learn so much from my students.

  33. Gorilla,
    I squirm every time I see references to Turnbull that suggest that he is somehow a man of integrity and/or compassion. His past has shown him to be an opportunistic bender of truth, and nothing he says or does can change that.

  35. [VLADIVOSTOCK, Russia – Prime Minister Julia Gillard has failed to appear at the opening session of the APEC summit, because her father has died.]

    They also spelled Vladivostok wrong. What we’re seeing today is the newspapers’ cost-cutting on subediting in action.

  38. IMOHO
    I agree. Turnbull, a former journo and barrister, has the gift of the gab, that’s all. Coming up with the appropriate words is something he finds easy. Whether or not he means what he says is a different matter.

  39. fiona,

    Nice piece. I’ve also found with my children that putting them in to leadership/tutoring positions in school, church and their various activities that they thrive, learn more and become more rounded and interesting individuals.

    The confidence we give to our children by investing them with responsiblity is life determining imho.

  46. Leone,

    I’ve not been persuaded by the other Malcom’s platitudes either, although I will acknowledge that he has achieved a level of debate on issues that might not otherwise have occurred.

    For a while there I waited in anticipation of his reassessment of the Dismissal, but listening to him on radio recently, I realised that he wasn’t just attempting to justify what he did – he has confirmed his belief that what happened was both legitimate and necessary.

  47. Turnbull positions himself as a Liberal rather than a Conservative. No one else seems to want to occupy that ideological space atm.

  48. Jessica van Vonderen ‏@jessvanvonderen
    Qld Treasurer says 6000 fewer jobs will go because he’s found other savings like photocopying on both sides of the paper @abcnews Qld 7 pm

  50. zoomster @ 323

    bemused

    All the supposed strawmen are examples of how mixed ability classrooms benefit all students within them, regardless of ability.

    Within a narrow range it won’t matter much. But if there is a great range, at which level dose the teacher pitch the lessons?

    A system which segregates students according to ability is inherently elitist. It is making judgements on one criteria, rather than looking at the student as a whole person.

    Not according to my understanding of elitism.

    You would, I’m sure, object violently to a system which segregated students by skin colour, but there’s not much difference; it is a judgement made one one attribute, rather than considering the person as a whole.

    Stop beating that straw man. Skin pigmentation has no relevance to educational ability.

    Yes, the Victorian experience proves it.

    By any measure, the Victorian education system is either the best or second best in the country, and – to my knowledge – has been so since Kirner was Education Minister.

    That is sheer delusion.

    Indeed, when the ALP lost the state election to Kennett, I remember an editorial stating that we had the best education system in Australia, by any measure, but which queried whether or not we could afford it.

    I don’t read the Herald-Sun.

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