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.
Phil Vee@172
what do you expect, Shanna is your typical white, middleclass male
Confessions: yep.
There’s an awful lot of anecdotal evidence out there that ordinary people – young people in particular – loved it. Given this demographic has been rather problematic for Labor recently, this could end up being significant.
Recycle –
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/world/the-man-who-knew-too-much-stirs-ghosts-of-gillards-past-20121012-27i27.html
fess,
With Gillard as the chief educator we may end up with a comparable situation about economics. Keating’s line about every galah in a pet shop was now talking about economics because of him is what comes to mind.
Perhaps sexism , misogyny and disrespect will become more top of mind for Australians because of our assertive PM this week.
It’s the attack on social media that I’ve enjoyed the most. I’m reminded of a Gandhi quote:
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
They’ve stopped ignoring it. They’re no longer laughing at it. They’re starting to fight it.
You can’t fight progress. It’s not a person, a group, an entity; it just happens. Social media is a result of progress. You’ve got as much chance of stopping it as you have of stopping people talking to each other. This is how they do it now.
Gillard’s speech is a representation of an idea, an idea that has been suppressed up until now, and which has crystallised the entire Coalition approach to politics. You can scare people about something until that thing happens. Then you can’t scare them any more. They tried it with “carbon tax!”, which is now dead in the water because it exists and is nothing like they were saying.
And they’ve been trying it on for two years now with “women are wrecking the joint”. It has become apparent this week where all the wrecking is coming from. That cat is out of the bag now.
“Handbag Hit Squad!” is the latest admission from the Coalition that the gender issue is no longer a dirty secret. They had to come out of their bunkers and attack it directly – it used to be insinuations and belittling of Gillard, but now it’s a real battle.
And the Coalition have no idea how to fight it. They’re attempting to walk both sides of the line, refusing to acknowledge it on their own side, chasing after shock-horror examples of sexism on the other. But you can’t place “Handbag Hit Squad” next to #sensitivetony and expect to get away with it.
All the ALP have done this week is draw a line in the sand. It’s all they have to do. The rest will take care of itself.
For those who have not listened to the audio link provided by BH. It is worth listening to. Mega is one journo who gets it. For that I am grateful.
Also, let us not forget that all the women who burnt their bras in the early 1970s – the women who read “The Female Eunuch” and decided enough was enough and marched in the streets for equality (or cheered on those who did) – these women would all be over 55 now.
The men in that demographic would probably be less than impressed (it probably brought back bad memories!)but there would be more than one woman – even Liberal voters – who would be quietly saying, “you go, girl!”
Danny L
Year 9 boys said it was awesome and Abbott had it coming!! Too bad they are too young to vote
Aguirre
For eg have a look at what is happening with commercial tv. Channel 9 is about to go belly up. Advertisers are not spending big anymore. People have the technology at their finger tips to by pass advertisements. We download programs, and automatically delete the ads. Content such as movies, tv shows, news articles, music etc, is being shared around at very little cost. The old business model is broken.
Hehehehehe. Yes, Year 9 is a little young, but don’t forget they will be voting in only 4 or 5 years – not this next election but the one after.
Good time to sow the seeds is right now …;-)
C@tmomma@93
Sorry, can’t agree with this, Michelle was once a great journalist, she was a leading example of the fight that women had to have to get to the top of their chosen profession. The only problem I see with the Michelle of today is she has hung around too long, no longer has the contacts she nurtured over the years and is now fighting desperately to hang on to her job and influence.
We shouldn’t forget that Michelle was a great example to the women of the sixties, seventies, eighties, etc. Age catches up with us all, she just hasn’t realised that her time has past and she longer has any relevance.
The Shanahans of this world!…….Why on earth is anyone interviewing Dennis? What we see in the MSM is journalists drooling over each other, blathering about how other urgers, boosters and big-mouths are interpreting each others’ rubbish. Really, these people are just being paid to offer something that is not in short supply – guesswork, prejudice, verbal farts and pseudo intellectual belching.
Once upon a time, Anxious Rulers employed soothsayers, seers, prophets and various other Fraudulent Divines in order to tell them what they wanted to hear. We have not come far at all.
John Howard sacked Andrew Peacock in 1987 because both Kennett and Peacock (during a private conversation) called Howard a C – nowhere was the use of this word to describe Howard framed as misogynist or sexist by Howard himself, commentators opinionistas nor ‘contextualisers’ at the time.
Howard was offended. Full stop. He could have ignored it as colourful language between blokes but he took it as a political opportunity to get rid of Peacock from the shadow front bench.
Slipper called Brough, a bloke who is not even a sitting MP, a C. In the ensuing private discussion of Cs, Slipper made the fateful description of shell-less mussels.
And it is this description that is defined as misogynistic by the Libs, not the fact that a precedent for a sackable offence is actually the use of the word C.
So, Abbott brought misogyny to the fore, to the parliament, hoping to wedge the PM, and suffers massive blowback.
Now, we’re told to take everything in “context” – well, that was the real bloody context, and now we’re told to move on, no votes in this, in effect once again being told to STFU.
The Coalition partyroom let the genie out of the bottle. And they can damn well live with consequences.
And if the msm want to dwell on context, then as victoria says, “what about the context the conversation actually took place in?” “what about the fact that Slipper was still a member of the Liberal party at the time, and Ashby was yet to be employed by the Commonwealth?” Huh?
As I’ve said before, Slipper’s elevation to the Speakership was a political coup that would have been admired as brilliant strategy if the PM had been male, and if it all turned to shite, 12 months later, then so what! It served its political purpose.
Where is the context in all the political commentating that nothing had changed since April regarding the numbers on the floor of the house?
And where is the context that PMJG was actually upholding due process? And that she did condemn Slipper’s texts?
btw, PMJG’s speech now 1,111,782 views on the ABC’s video upload to youtube alone.
Suffer.
Kenny must have missed the memo from Lib HQ. Lyndal Curtis was surprised that there were no questions on it from the opposition. I wasn’t. They want that joke to go away.
Rosemour:
Speaking as someone who has never pretended to be an ALP sympathiser, I always just assumed you were a Liberal concern troll. Your posts have a strcuture exactly fitting the concern troll specification. Assert you’re a loyal supporter of the group whose concern moves speaking inconvenient truths, which just happen to coincide with the exact claims of the group’s main rivals.
Loyal members of the group don’t gratuitously repeat the opposition memes. They first attempt to deconstruct it — to examine its provenance and structural integrity so as to allow the group to which they are loyal to respond with advantage.
Your responses amount to little more than uncritical copy and paste, with all the petitio principii attendant.
Centre – time to read this re Goldman Sachs getting back into the market
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/MARKETS-SPECTATOR-Goldman-says-buy-buy-buy-pd20121012-
Has anyone got a link to the Tingle article today please or is it behind the paywall?
Kezza2
Hear hear
Danny
and, equally importantly, they go home and tell their parents – and argue with them, if their parents put forward a different point of view.
Environmentalists have long understood the power of children – I’ve heard four year olds taking their parents to task for dropping litter.
And on that…how many of us were too young to vote for Gough but voted for Labor later because of him?
Context is vital to the value of journalism. Without context everything becomes points of outrage over a single phrase or action without any understanding of why it may or may not have been appropriate for the circumstances.
So, the journos are right that context matters, and it is one of the qualities that journalists should bring to our polity via their reporting.
The problem is that they don’t frickin’ provide context anymore.
As Fran Barlow said very eloquently, the decision about what context to include in an article is necessarily a subjective exercise because there is discrimination required – you can’t include the entire human history in every article you write.
However, I think there are some tests that are reasonably objective that journos and others can apply to their work. If, to the mind of the mythical reasonable person, a quote or description of an action as reported would mean something quite distinct if a germane additional fact was included, then that fact must be included. Omission of such a fact should be a journalistic sin.
In the “botch” example, reporting of the “botch” text from Slipper, it seems to me, requires that Ashby’s preceding text, to which Slipper was replying, be provided in full. Failing to do so is a clear sign that the journalist in question is failing to provide their (now) beloved context.
In the Slipper vote example (which was the basis for “the speech”), failing to cover the context for the coalition motion that brought the vote on – that there was a political motivation for the coalition to do this, that there was no precedent for the motion to get up, and that sacking a speaker is a dangerous precedent to set – is failing to provide context. And by and large the OM failed, and continue to fail, to provide this context.
For the OM to bleat about how social media isn’t presenting the context that only journos can do is rich given that the journos are simply not doing it themselves in any objective sense.
And
http://www.mamamia.com.au/news/why-julia-gillards-smackdown-speech-was-brilliant/
I’ve just watched her speech again, and still feel the same way as when I first saw it: R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
The conservative hacks have been furiously trying to downplay and marginalise the PM’s slap down of Abbott.
Paul Murray in the West is at it this morning.
He is all “hypocrisy” talk. You know the stuff: ‘How could she criticise Abbott when Slipper etc, etc. etc?’, as if one set of behaviours is dependent on the other.
His view is, let’s ignore Abbott’s behaviour because Slipper’s was reprehensible. Some kind of weird balance from his perspective.
The problem for the hacks is that the public is not interested enough in the whys and wherefores to tease them out.
What they saw was Abbott, leading with his chin, and his mouth – for ages – being belted. Nobody can erase the view of him sinking lower into his shirt as the PM poured it on. This set of views are there for ever. And, his check of the watch towards the end – picked up and scorned by the PM, about hung him.
The odds are it won’t shift one vote, but there will be a lot of people out there, men and women, who feel pleased that Abbott got a little dose of his own medicine.
The rant, for rant is what is was, will be long remembered while the ‘context’ will not.
I agree, Abbott does not “hate” women, I mean how can you actually hate half the population on the basis of gender?
However, that he is a sexist bully, without any policies is the bit which Labor should concentrate on.
He does not have to be attacked for being a sexist and nasty person. These are side issues. What he really is, is a poor leader, a divider and man without policies with a naked lust for power. The other stuff is peripheral.
However, I think the PM was really smart. She outed all the sexist stuff and Abbott, despite his “I won’t let up” (and he won’t) will now realise that every time he ventures down the “Make an honest woman of yourself” theme, will get belted. A really clever stroke and at the right time of the political cycle. Most of the legislative stuff is done for 2012 and Labor can play with Abbott’s head a bit.
The laugh from Murray this morning was to describe the PM as being like an armadillo. This is rich coming from someone who consistently attacks Labor in the pages of the West and on his 6PR gig every morning.
That he does not see Abbott totally ignoring his own previous assertions as if he has not made them, and having the hide of any one of a crocodile, shark or elephant is amazing and speaks more of Murray’s bias than anything else.
In passing, some men have difficulty sorting out their attitudes to women. They are happiest when they can fit them neatly into the box of either/or in terms of madonna or whore.
Not sure if upbringing or religious affiliation has anything to do with this.
mari – at least the women up there are talking about the speech so the media, Graeme, Mumbles and others have missed the point.
Who is Della Bosca to say that the PM shouldn’t have given the speech. What kind of glory sent him packing from Parliament. He added to the shambles that NSW Labor became. Now he’s a Sky & ABC commentator because he can be relied on to criticise Labor at any given moment. He’s not as bad as Richo but he needs to take a few lessons from the Geoff Gallop and Steve Bracks.
Guytaur – what was Meredith Burgmann’s take on the PM’s speech please and how did she see the fallout?
What Gillard’s speech should have been, according to Shanahan, and the rest of the OM:
I’ve often said that politics was becoming like Reality TV. The attempt to sack Slipper the other day was nothing more than, literally, voting him out of the House.
Worse, there is a case underway that will first determine whether the entire matter between Ashby and Slipper is a case of abuse of process.
If that fails, the main case may still be heard (if Ashby’s backers stump up with the funds, now that they’ve got their man).
So, lots of reasons not to follow the tabloid, Reality TV line.
The rest is distraction.
I think the msm is missing the mark.
Whatever they call it, be it misogyny, sexism, disrespect, hatred, verbal violence or a combination of them all, one thing is for certain, we don’t damn well like it.
rosemour,
I’m merely monitoring a stroy/angle the Australian seems obsessed with.
Nay, it is you who are obsessed with monitoring every negative angle you can find wrt the Labor Party and then telegraphing it here, followed by your, oh so maudlin, pronouncements of doom and gloom concerning federal Labor’s impending catastrophic failure at the ballot box.
And then you have the bare-faced hide to call me an ‘idiot’, and attempt to smear me with a comparison to that perfectly-likable, if somewhat overzealous, supporter of the Labor Party, Frank.
At least he is not a fair-weather friend of the Labor Party.
There’s nothing worse in my book. Well, maybe those who criticise those of us who ARE faithful defenders of the ALP, maybe. The worst of all, though, are those who are both, ie flaky critics.
‘You are the weakest link. Goodbye!’ 🙂
You know, rosemour, I gave you enough time to walk back your attacks on me, personally, but instead you stepped them up and chose to completely misrepresent my analysis of the smear piece in The Australian as an attack on you & your bona fides. Why? I don’t know. So now I don’t want to know.
I’ve suffered enough already from attacks by anonymous posters in the blogosphere, generally for simply calling people out for their hypocrisy and double standards, as the PM did with the Opposition, Tony Abbott and the media this week. Also for simply generously supporting and defending the Labor Party on the Internet.
Well, now we have a tool that enables us to fulfill Peter O’Toole’s call to arms that ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!’ And I’m going to use it. Life’s too short to waste it on wastes of internet space.
Criticise me to the world if you want for taking this action. I won’t be hearing it. Instead I’ll be engaging with rational and thoughtful people. As Bushfire Bill has said, we are in a war against the Reactionary Conservatives and it’s time for all shoulders to be put to the wheel for the cause. There is thus no time to waste on quibbling pantywaists trying to put spokes in that wheel.
Fran,
As Gomez Addams once said, “I love it when you speak French”!
Jackol
that was my immediate response the very first time I heard the word this week (why hasn’t context been so important before?) used by Laura Tingle.
The speed in which the word ‘context’ was used every time the contrast between the PM’s speech going viral and the msm trashing it was quite extraordinary.
Suggests strongly that the journos realised they had misread the mood and discussed how they could justify this.
It’s beyond the realms of fantasy that the vast majority of journalists could individually and spontaneously come up with exactly the same justification.
Prior to the 2007 election, I said that it was if there was really only one journalist in Australia, who sat down in the morning, looked over the day’s events, and then wrote THE lines of the day, which every other ‘journalist’ then parrotted.
I haven’t seen much reason to change my mind.
kezza @ 212……completely correct
Well, I’m as far from a conservative hack as you’d find. But if I weren’t aware that this site were primarily a social club for Labor card-holders, friends and staffers, I’d be dazed.
Gillard’s strong set speech was a hatchet job on her political opponent. Not a feminist policy or analysis.
The one resilient constant in Oz politics for close to two years has been that neither leader is respected. We can cheer Jules v Tony round 11 all we like, but in a political context it just reinforces that constant.
Well may have Peter O’Toole said “I’m as mad as hell etc.”, but it was Peter Finch who made it famous, in Network.
I am surprised at the comments of some posters arguing that Abbott is not a misogynist. My simple dictionary defines misogynist as follows.
mi•sog•y•nist
noun
a person who hates, dislikes, mistrusts, or mistreats women.
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/misogynist?s=t)
I am sure that there are more extensive and complete definitions of misogynist out there but this to my mind captures Abbott very easily.
Thos that argue otherwise are akin to those who say after “abusing some other group of us …
“but some of my best friends are … just fill in the group that is being abused or discriminated against like Asians or aboriginals or homosexuals etc..
I think that this comment from twitter also hits the spot when we have those saying that Abbott is not misogynist but Slipper is and that therefore Gillard is holding a double standard in condemning Abbott but supposedly supporting Slipper.
Destroying the Joint @SpaceKidette
MSM Disconnect: Public comments by Abbott not sexist but Slippers private comments are. #Nodisconnecthere #lookovertheretits!
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I have this terrible feeling that Gillard’s speech is challenging all males (and some females) and the attitude that we hold and that some of us are not liking what we see and are therefore trying to justify our own misogynist views and behavior.
I would argue that if only one male holds misogynist view and we do not condemn those views that we are all just as guilty as the likes of Abbott and Slipper.
briefly:
Agree. It’s especially galling when the ABC use SHanahan to discuss polling when the broadcaster has Antony Green on the payroll.
I’m sick of these Murdoch hacks littering the airwaves with their partisan, agenda-driven crap!
Interesting article by Gittins on claims by employer groups about the lack of labour-market flexibility by :
Doing a good job in a state of flex
Puff – you haven’t gone OM on us have you? Fashion reviews of question time in the SMH!
And I rather think, reading literally the first line of this article in the fashion section, that the international media’s reaction to Gillard has become the embedded paradigm here, no matter what the Australian might write of it:
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/blogs/my-jennaration/fifty-shades-of-parliament-20121012-27h6q.html#ixzz298Y0braB
Tricot@221
Ah, see , there they go. It was in fact the exact opposite. How could Abbott criticise Slipper when Abbott etc etc etc.
Which was the precise point Gillard made with her speech.
They’re playing with the timeline. Abbott started it with his shock-horror motion against Slipper. Gillard pointed out the hypocrisy in that.
Let’s face it, if Julia Gillard single-handedly discovered a cure for all forms of cancer Michelle and the rest of her pack would say Julia failed because she could not bring the dead back to life.
HaveaChat – I agree with that. For years I lapped up her articles first but it’s sad to see what has happened to her now.
She paved the way for a lot of women journos because she was able to write such serious stuff. I wish she would retire. Her spots on RN Breakfast are also becoming embarrassing.
The thing is, the OM’s “context” is WRONG!
The context was…
1. You don’t sack senior constitutional officers based on newspaper reports.
2. Abbott, the wall banger, is the last person who should be citing “visgusting, vile” remarks about females.
3. Abbott deliberately read Alan Jones’ hateful words, “Died of shame”, into the parliamentary record in order to cruelly needle Gillard.
4. After years of putting up with this, she’d finally had enough and tore Abbott to pieces, justifiably.
I am sick to death of journalists and Liberal politicians baiting Gillard (Latham was another example) and then crying “Extraordinary outburst!” when she finally responds, and so effectively.
Graeme
and if you were actually able to counter some of the criticisms of your posts, you’d do that.
That should read “(the baiting of Latham was another example)”
GG:
I was always a Gomez Addams fan …
Then again, I rather liked Wednesday too.
Well, well, well, well, well. What do we have here?
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/private-sydney/karl-caught-in-jones-washup-20121012-27i7o.html#ixzz298YRCiXP
That’s what I call “to place events in context, supply background and nuance, and to make predictions about whether political actions will deliver votes.” (thanks to Ms Maley, FXJ)
Fran,
I could just imagine you with a Marie Antoinette doll.
HaveAChat@210,
Sorry, can’t agree with this, Michelle was once a great journalist, she was a leading example of the fight that women had to have to get to the top of their chosen profession. The only problem I see with the Michelle of today is she has hung around too long, no longer has the contacts she nurtured over the years and is now fighting desperately to hang on to her job and influence.
And that is the ‘context’ within which she should be ‘put out to pasture’ now. She no longer serves a useful purpose to political commentary in this country.
I must say, and this goes to an interesting conversation I had with my son in the car yesterday, I don’t think Paul Kelly, on the other hand, is quite there yet. We both listened, rapt, to him describe the background behind Kerr’s dismissal of the Whitlam government. He spoke lucidly, informatively and without partisan perspective.
We both agreed, however, that it was a pity that, day to day, he has to sing for his supper and be a partisan commentator as well.
As far as Michelle Grattan goes, I see none of this light and shade any more.
Laocoon@235
Pollbludger will always set the standard for the MSM to follow. 😀
briefly@154,
Your words are always so sane and rational. 🙂
Laocoon,
To be fair, Stepanovich actually revealed that himself around the time of the Oakes interview.
Yes, as a blogger (rather than an OM journo) noted, Abbott was actually reading from a piece of paper when he said those words. Those words had been written, even after all the furore of the Jones speech. It was’t just another ‘shit happens’ lazy lapse of judgement by Abbott, it was deliberate.
Yet our incompetent OM miss that piece of context.