Seat of the week: Rankin

Recent polling may have steadied his nerves a little, but senior minister Craig Emerson remains no certainty for re-election in a seat that has stayed with Labor since its creation in 1984.

Craig Emerson’s seat of Rankin has been held by Labor without interruption since its creation, but like all the party’s Queensland seats has looked precarious during the worst of its polling during the current term. The seat came into being with the enlargement of parliament in 1984, at which time it extended far beyond the bounds of the metropolitan area to the south-west, encompassing Warwick and a stretch of the New South Wales border. It is now located wholly in the outer south of suburban Brisbane, covering the northern part of Logan City from Woodridge and Kingston north to Priestdale and west to Hillcrest. The redistribution before the 2010 election drew it further into the metropolitan area, adding Algester, Calamvale and Drewvale north of the Logan-Brisbane municipal boundary. This territory accounts for much of Brisbane’s mortgage belt, and furnishes the seat with the equal lowest median age of any electorate in Australia. The Logan area is the source of Labor’s strength, but it is balanced by naturally marginal territory around Calamvale to the west and Springwood to the east.

Prior to the 1996 election, the seat was a highly marginal combination of Labor-voting outer suburbia and conservative rural areas, which Labor held by margins of between 0.6% and 5.5%. It was then transformed with the transfer of the rural areas to Forde and the compensating gain of low-income Brisbane suburbs, which boosted the margin by 9.8%. In the event Labor needed every bit of it to survive the Queensland backlash of 1996, which in Rankin manifested in an 11.1% swing. An unfavourable redistribution ahead of the 2004 election cut the margin by 5.3%, but there followed a 0.8% swing against the statewide trend at that election, followed by a 8.8% swing when the Rudd government came to power. The backlash of 2010 produced a swing to the LNP of 6.3%, cutting the margin to 5.4%.

Rankin has had only two members since its creation: Craig Emerson since 1998, and David Beddall beforehand. Emerson emerged through the Labor Forum/Australian Workers Union sub-faction of the Queensland Right, working over the years as an adviser to Hawke government ministers and then to Hawke himself, before taking on senior state public service positions in Queensland under the Goss government. After one term in parliament he rose to the shadow ministry, serving in the workplace relations portfolio in the lead-up to the 2004 election. He was then contentiously dropped after losing the support of his faction, a legacy of his defiance of powerbroker Bill Ludwig in supporting Mark Latham’s successful leadership bid in December 2003 (which by no stretch of the imagination spared him the lash of The Latham Diaries).

Emerson’s career returned to the ascendant after Labor came to power in 2007. spent the first term in the junior small business portfolio and further acquired competition policy and consumer affairs in June 2009, before winning promotion to cabinet as Trade Minister after the 2010 election. On the morning of the July 2010 leadership coup he announced he would support Kevin Rudd if it came to a ballot, but he took a very different tack during Rudd’s February 2012 challenge, accusing him of having undermined the government ever since the election campaign. Emerson achieved, for better or worse, considerable penetration of the soft media in July 2012, with his semi-musical critique of the Coalition’s campaign against the carbon tax.

An LNP preselection in July 2012 attracted six candidates and was won by David Lin, a 39-year-old Taiwanese-born solicitor who founded the Sushi Station restaurant chain at the age of 22.

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.

1,969 comments on “Seat of the week: Rankin”

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  1. Zoomster 90

    I would agree and think the same of racists too. They are usually losers. Those who have a job they find fulfilling rarely complain about immigrants stealing “their” careers.

    Upon reflection I withdraw my support of Psephos20. The characterisation of Abbott was correct, but it is misogyny. If that means that many religious conservatives are misogynists, then so be it.

  3. C@tmomma

    I blush. I simply googled “misogyny feminist theory”. Having read Psephos this morning, I agree that he hates Gillard and probably not Bishop, who acts within “approved” parameters for his own definitions of femaleness.

  4. victoria – I’m more than happy with mine and the lower $ cost. Only thing is I can read PB, etc. but can’t work out how to log in – eventually I’ll get there.

    confessions – Chris Kenny was shot down by Penny Wong this morning on Agenda. Didn’t make any difference because he went back to his mantra in the next segment. He put a lot of emphasis on the joke at the Union dinner but I reckon people will now know what it was and will be asking themselves ‘where there’s smoke is there fire’. Would have been better to shut up about it.

    Cassandra Wilkinson gave me the irrits. Said wtte that the PM belittled herself by supporting Slipper so it cancels out her speech. Her comments were disappointing. Samantha Maiden was more fair than a supposedly Labor person. Maiden can see why the speech has gone over well outside the Press Gallery.

  5. Mike Carlton is in fine form this morning:

    [The response to my column last week was astounding, far and away the biggest I have had. There were nearly 1000 emails, more than 1250 tweets and 10,000-plus Facebook recommends, all but a handful expressing revulsion at Alan Jones’s bullying presence on radio. A lot also went for Ray Hadley, Jones’s 2GB partner in grime and a former taxi-driver newly famous as a teenage party host. Thank you, but I simply cannot reply to you all.

    The Parrot’s chief concern seemed to be the loss of the Benz, a mortal insult. “You big hero … you absolutely gutless wonder!” he snarled at the Mercedes executive who had revealed the decision. That done, he ranted about the “cyber-terrorism” which has seen his advertisers heading for the exits. You cannot parody this idiocy.]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/oh-for-a-glimpse-of-the-mum-i-knew-20121012-27i0m.html#ixzz297zLpsKa

  6. catmomma

    Regarding using law to crush competition. US Patent Law is stuffed. Too much can be patented. So companies patent all they can. Once they have patent they have to aggressively defend it or lose the patent. This is why you see lawsuits in tech related patents so much.
    Apple just happens to have the most money for lawyers to defend patents.

    The walled garden vs opn systems is another story and up to consumer choice

  7. Just musing about the whole msm thing.

    I now only buy ‘The Age’ on weekends for the puzzles.

    I used to buy it for a whole range of reasons.

    It’s not just politics, I realised.

    Once upon a time, for example, I looked forward every Tuesday to ‘Epicure’. My recipe books are filled with recipes I’ve cut out from that section of the paper.

    But, strangely enough, there wouldn’t be one from the last five or six years.

    I still look at “Epicure’, but it no longer carries the kind of recipe that appeals to me.

    I have recipes for golden syrup dumplings, for carrot cake & banana bread, about a dozen for chocolate cakes, and numerous ones on which vegetables are in season and the best ways to use them.

    They all use everday ingredients.

    Nowadays you’d have to be a sous chef with access to an international food market to be able to whip up an Epicure recipe.

    I could say the same about the Good Weekend recipe section as well – again, multiple pages torn out of it in years gone by, have hardly bothered to read one for the past year

    Don’t know which demographic ‘The Age’ is targetting, but I’m obviously not in it.

  8. I’ve been flicking though the back posts and found a couple of comments about the awful ads for Rake. I agree they are bad, but Rake itself is the best thing on TV right now. It is superb, not to be missed.

    The comments about those ads reminded me of the truly appalling ads for another ABC hit – Brides of Christ. The advance advertising made the show seem to be salacious rubbish about sex and convents, it gave no indication at all of the excellence of the series. Maybe Their ABC employed the same advertising people for Rake. The lesson here is – don’t judge anything by an advertisement, try it yourself.

  9. BH:

    Thanks for the feedback. I’ve often found myself disappointed with Wilkinson. Like most Labor media commentators, she rarely defends the party, and always has to be so critical.

    Personally I’d prefer to hear more from Geoff Gallop who is at least publicly supportive of the govt and its achievements.

  10. “@Scribble_Dragon: Absolutely correct >> RT @sortius: If you feel intimidated or incensed by the PM’s speech, there’s a good chance you’re a misogynist #auspol”

  11. “@Scribble_Dragon: Absolutely correct >> RT @sortius: If you feel intimidated or incensed by the PM’s speech, there’s a good chance you’re a misogynist #auspol”

  12. zoomster @ 107

    All is revealed if you have watched MasterChef, as I have. The contestants quickly move from being “cooks” in the early episodes to “Heston technicians”, using ingredients and mechanical devices never found in the average kitchen.

    Apparently a “blast freezer” and a blowtorch are compulsory, the top ingredients are oxcheek and pork belly, and when someone cooked an honest sponge everyone fell about laughing and preferred “macarons”.

    French techniques are out, and Asian fine knife skills are in.

    Must be fashionable, my deah!

  14. This “context” word is getting a bit of a run. It seems to me in this context to be an artificial device used by defenders of the the current system to rationalise their interpretation of events on their own terms.

    Therefore, the PMs words can be discounted or ignored because they don’t conform with the stable interpretation of society as stipulated by the power elites the MSM consider themselves to be.

    “They own this society and they like things just the way they are”, is the only interpretation you can put on their words. Now this may make them comfortable in their little bubble of a life experience. However, ‘The Times they are a changing”.

    The MSM can either either lend a hand or get out of the way.

    To me, the PM’s words are actually the clarion call of change. It may be a slow burning fuse. However, the old ways are about to be swept away by a new paradigm. Sometimes, words cut through and no amount of context will hide the fact that

  15. ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much Stirs PMs Past’
    ‘PM vouched for union body caught in corruption scandal’

    OZ Online national stories.
    Bubbling away ….they ain’t gonna let it go…

  16. The danger in expanding the meaning of a word like misogyny to support a specific circumstance is that you run the risk of devaluing the original meaning.

  17. [joe2
    Posted Saturday, October 13, 2012 at 9:30 am | Permalink

    Abbott IS a misogynist if your view of language development is not prescriptivist, like Psephos.
    http://www.theglobalmail.org/blog/word-of-the-day/421/
    ]

    Thanks for the link. The right wing nutters can’t accept the changing role of women in society, the right wing press; and the left, but now hard right Psephos, can’t keep up with the english language.

    [When I looked up the word she chose in the Oxford English Dictionary online, however, I noted that the meaning of misogynist had changed, slightly but significantly. In 1989, the definition was “hatred of women”; in the 2002 revision, the definition was broadened to “hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against women.”]

  22. [davidwh
    Posted Saturday, October 13, 2012 at 10:08 am | Permalink

    The danger in expanding the meaning of a word like misogyny to support a specific circumstance is that you run the risk of devaluing the original meaning.]

    Go and talk to the people that write the oxford english dictionary.

    The soltution to Abbotts problem would have been to not stand under the “ditch the witch sign”, not stand under the “brown’s bitch” sign, not punch the wall on either side of a women’s head after losing an election, not claim that women are unsuited for high office and not try and not try and have the state control women’s reproductive organs.

  24. I don’t like the way the story is being wrenched out of shape. Discussion as to whether Abbott is a ‘misogynist’ misses the point. On Tuesday he attempted to portray Slipper as a misogynist, and the response from Gillard/ALP has been “how can you level that accusation at Slipper when your attitude to women is far worse?”

    I think the word we’re looking for, in relation to Abbott and by extension the entire Coaltion front bench, is ‘hypocrite’. They won’t accept a label for Abbott that they’re happy to fling at Slipper for much less reason.

  25. [Greensborough Growler
    Posted Saturday, October 13, 2012 at 10:05 am | Permalink

    This “context” word is getting a bit of a run. ]

    The day the narrative died.

  26. c@tmomma – here’s Mike Seccombe’s take on misogny and its 21st century usage
    http://www.theglobalmail.org/blog/word-of-the-day/421/

    I think Psephos is right about Abbott when using the term in the oldfashioned sense. Cassandra Wilkinson said this morning that she thinks Abbott is just oldfashioned in his views about women and therefore his policies for women may not be in our best interests. She defended him pretty strongly.

    I think Mark Latham got him right the other day.

  27. victoria

    ah! Might explain why one of my son’s friends – including one whose mother is a professional chef – keep telling me (and friends on facebook) that my pancakes etc are the ‘world’s best’.

  29. Great speech, understandable sentiments.

    But in what universe does this gender war stuff benefit Labor or its agenda?

    The history and culture wars didn’t. And since when, when this parliament has descended into rancour, has it helped Labor? As government, it cops the blame for the appearance of politicians bickering and gazing at each other’s navels. It’s been Abbott’s one big strategy all term – and it’s the oldest tactic of a street fighter: provoke disturbance then promise your side can give stability.

    All Gillard’s speech will do is have an internal or psychological effect within each party or frontbench. Outside that, whatever benefit accrues from wooing a few Greens back is balanced by those who think it’s unedifying or hold traditional gender views but don’t see that as a character slur. Ask Mumble how well playing to one’s base does electorally (let alone whether the concept of an ‘international’ base has existed since the 30s…)

    Labor succeeds only by policy innovation, offering hope or delivering tangible benefits to the bulk of folk.

  30. leone – so pleased you said that about Rake. OH and I sit watching it in absolute hysterics. Wonder what that says about us?!!

    Roxburgh is just gorgeous in the part. I just hate it when the closing titles come up.

  31. On the concept of “context”. I regard context as crucial for making sense of data about the world. Even restriciting ourselves to the very narrow example of the Slipper texts, when I first heard of (some) of their content, it was on the Ray Hadley show. He cited the “botch” remark from Slipper, decontextualised so as to imply that he had called Mirabella, a b|tch. As people have pointed out, this was a humourous response to Ashby’s “botch” — probably a typo of Ashby’s — and was punning on the effect of Mirabella’s ejection from the House on the Coalition’s tactics. Without that context, you would fundamentally misread the word as misogynist language by Slipper, rather than by Ashby.

    So context is important. Of course, it’s also, at least to some extent, subjective. People make choices about what is salient and thus what qualifies as “context”. Adding context is itself an intellectual and cultural process but journalists and commentators here are presenting them as if they were value-free professional activities, when clearly they are not. Hadley as either sloppy or concluded that the text that preceded Slipper’s “botch” remark was not salient context. If it was the latter, it’s clear why he did that. It reflects his agenda and his solidarity with Jones.

    Similarly, journalists who insistently attach “ruddstoration” to every news item about policy as “context” or “pink batts” to every new program are running an agenda.

    While it is impossible to add context without some subjectivity, it is IMO, incumbent for those doing so to be explicit — to show how it is salient — how it sheds useful light on the matter being discussed and thus give space to audiences to make a judgement of their own on that choice too.

  32. Aguirre

    Precisely. The PM was talking about double standards. And frankly that is what I am particularly concerned with. Abbott said Slipper was unfit to be Speaker because of his text messages with Ashby. Mind you before he was speaker and Ashby was his staffer., and they were private texts between two peoole. But i digress. Gillard reckons well if that disgusted Abbott, and believes Slipper should be sacked. What about him? She was disgusted by him talking to his supporters at the front of parliament in front of Signs saying Juliar Bob Browns Bitch and Ditch the Witch. Therefore as the PM said, based on this, Abbott should resign as Leader of his party.

  34. Graeme:

    I said as much the other day that this bickering over the definition of misogyny was a coalition tactic to spray the government with mud and try to take the high moral ground.

  35. All that needs to be realised about the OM reaction to the PM’s speech is that they are worried about the speech taking hold in peoples’ imaginations.

    Therefore, they criticise it, promote false viewership figures, parse it to within an inch of its life, and misrepresent its contents (particularly about Slipper and why the government did not support the Kangaroo Court approach).

    In the best of all possible worlds it would be lovely to see Ashby’s case dismissed as vexatious.

    A ribald, vulgar text-message habit had been built up between Ashby and Slipper well before Ashby commenced his employment. Ashby demonstrably knew what he was in for, and seems to have enthusiastically participated.

    The communications between Ashby and various LNP figures and his co-worker Doane, from very early in his employment, make it pretty clear that being worried about significant mental harm was not Ashby’s prime concern.

    But, as Shellbell tells us, the judge has to look at the best interpretation of Ashby’s case, as presented in the affidavits and some of the oral evidence, to decide the abuse of process matter.

    Miracles CAN happen, I suppose. The way the evidence has been leaked, shopped to the tabloids and written up by them, with “new revelations” appearing in the nick of time, and old revelations being conveniently dropped (once they had done their dirty work), can only put the judge in a bad mood. He has said he is “very, very” concerned about some of this abuse of Court process, laundering sensational allegations through the system of lodging (and unlodging) legal documentation.

    I can well understand the government’s point on the Opposition’s motion the other day. Parliament is not the Daily Telegraph, or one of their “on-line”, vox-pop polls where readers are invited to condemn or not condemn someone with a simple click. It’s not Big Brother, where constitutional officers of the House are just voted off the show.

    That the Canberra Press Gallerry has deliberately refused to acknowledge this salient fact shows either their complete absorption with their own journalistic droppings, or an egregious lack of understanding of how things work. It’s a pretty easy choice to make in deciding which one is which.

    Of COURSE they understand. They’re just being wilfully misleading.

    It’ll all come out in the wash. Slipper has nothing to lose now. The government can’t be expected to have scanned all his text messages prior to his election as Speaker. The text messages were written and history is history.

    The Carbon Tax bills passed, as did so much else while Slipper tied up the numbers for the government. We have more and better laws now because of their “grubby” resort to pragmatism. It won’t the the first or the last time the numbers have triumphed over the finer points of morality.

    Strangely, what might come out of all this is an improvement in parliamentary behaviour and an all-round easing of the sexism, vulgarity and naked aggressiveness that has ruled parliament for the past two years. Everyone will be on their best behaviour, on both sides of politics, or pay the price.

    That could be a GOOD thing.

  36. BB

    I am hoping the Judge has the good sense to decide that the claim was an abuse of process and vexatious, because it is as plain as day, that it was.

  37. davidwh

    [The danger in expanding the meaning of a word like misogyny to support a specific circumstance is that you run the risk of devaluing the original meaning.]

    Language is fluid; meanings change, and dictionary definitions tend to lag behind reality.

    The test of what a word means is whether someone understands what you’re saying when you use it.

    So if I said, “Tony Abbott is a misogynist” and the immediate reaction is wild laughter, a quizzical look or an outright ‘no’, chances are I’m using the wrong word.

    (Try substituting a benign but wrong word e.g. “Tony Abbott is a martini”. The person I was talking to simply wouldn’t understand me. If I had a reason to use the word ‘martini’ to describe Abbott, I’d have to explain myself).

    If I say “Tony Abbott is a misogynist” and everyone I’m talking to says “Yes!” then – regardless of what a dictionary might say – I’ve got it right.

    If words were static things which never changed their meaning, we wouldn’t need to print a dictionary ever again…and we’d be using ‘awesome’ and ‘awful’ to mean exactly the same thing.

  40. I was just sending Julie Baird’s link to a friend and noticed Grattan’s storyline to the right. It has 546 comments.

    It got me thinking. Is Grattan writing controversial stuff to stir up people so that she gets more comments. Her articles used to get so view comments when she wrote more reasonably.

  41. [deblonay
    Posted Friday, October 12, 2012 at 11:20 pm | Permalink

    Swamprat re Obama et al
    _________________
    I think Obama has been a failure in failing to tackle the real economic criminals..wall street and the bankers

    By contrast Roosevelt in 1933 moved against a whole set of econopmic criminals and carried his massive support with him in the fight for the New Deal

    Obama is timid and tentative
    However the Repugnants/Tea Party are awful beyound belief…. worse in all regards than the Democrats ]

    Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican taking on the powerful US Industry Trusts is what Obama should have done to the Bankers.

    I accept he just didn’t have the numbers to take action – the US Government are *owned* by Wall Street (and a range of other special interest groups) no matter who is in power.

    But if returned he has nothing to lose and needs to put the boot in big time.

    Interestingly – Wall Street have given him very little campaign money this time around in comparison to what they are contributing to Romney – so they must be expecting him to take a far harder line if reelected.

    I just hope so.

  42. “@mrbenjaminlaw: Note: Gripes with Gillard’s speech and its context have been well-expressed by female writers too. What’s with the cock phalanx at the Oz?”

  43. Graeme

    The point was made that women don’t speak out against sexism, because when they do, they always pay a price.

    So you’re agreeing with that – Julia Gillard shouldn’t have spoken out against sexism because it doesn’t fit the ‘context’, it doesn’t help Labor, it doesn’t win ‘votes’.

    At the risk of cries of “Godwins!” you are saying that it’s better to sit back and let injustices go unchallenged because to speak out carries a risk.

    Of course it does. That’s why Julia Gillard’s speech resonated.

    Not because it was safe. Not because it was a guaranteed vote winner. Because it was courageous and risky but right.

    As for how does it advance labor – well, it’s not a speech anyone on the Opposition benches could make, but it fits right in with Labor values and Labor’s message, which is about giving people opportunities, regardless of their race, sex, or income.

  44. I actually find the lack of “context” analysis of the Slipper ascension to Speaker as rather amusing.

    Slipper was made Speaker to ensure the Government survived any fall out from the Government being unable to deliver Wilkie’s Pokie Reform agenda. The Government got nearly twelve months of breathing space to introduce and pass it’s own Legislative programme whereas an election last year would not have allowed this to occur.

    In the mean time Wilke is now pursuing getting the Greens and other independents to support his changes and the anti Government AHA campaign has now abated.

    Sure, Slipper has proven unsuitable in the long run. However, much of what has been revealed regarding these text messages is of recent vintage and the Government can hardly be held responsible for Slippers personal conduct and values. As the PM rightly pointed out, Slipper had re endorsed a number of times and Abbott was a friend as well as a colleague.

    So, the PM wheeled and dealed to keep power. Well, gosh that is a major crime, not. They still call her PM and Labor still rules the roost. Gillard din’t make the Parliament. She certainly knows how to shape it to her and her Government’s interests.

  46. [Confessions
    Posted Saturday, October 13, 2012 at 9:48 am | Permalink

    Mike Carlton is in fine form this morning:]

    He sure is:

    New words:
    cant
    grot

    New Song:

    OH LORD, they have taken
    My Mercedes-Benz.
    My sponsors are fleeing,
    I’ve run out of friends.
    I tried to call Julia
    To make some amends;
    But still they done took back
    My Mercedes-Benz.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/oh-for-a-glimpse-of-the-mum-i-knew-20121012-27i0m.html#ixzz298Ai0awI

  47. [BB

    I am hoping the Judge has the good sense to decide that the claim was an abuse of process and vexatious, because it is as plain as day, that it was.]

    Plain as day to you and me, Victoria, but the rules say Ashby’s case has to be taken “seriously”, in its best light, in these interlocutory matters.

    The case’s weakness should really come to the fore if the substantial discrimination (often mistakenly referred to as “harassment”) matter is ever considered formally.

    Ashby’s got his result now: Slipper’s gone. ASHBY may want to continue to vindicate himself, but with Slipper out of the chair and out of parliament sooner or later, and with Ashby out of a job (and hence with no prospect of EVER paying them even a token amount), he may find that his new, best, pro bono friends don’t want to waste any more time or money on pursuing the matter, or helping out their little mate, James, against the evils of dirty old men anywhere and everywhere they are found.

    There are REAL cases to be run, not this (now unimportant) farce of one.

    We’ll see.

  48. Kezza @ 53 nails it.

    I also think that is part of the reason his Catholic mates are so quick to stand up for him, because they understand better than most that at the heart of his philosophy – and theirs – is some deeply rooted and indefensible misogyny.

    Scratch below the surface too much and they are all exposed.

  49. BH,
    Funny that there is an argument over the word misogny. The definition ‘hater of women’ does not say a misogynist hates all women and the more modern or revised definition adds the lesser degree of out and out hate.

    Abbott is a misogynist under the revised definition but worse than that, he is a misogynist bully.

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