The electorate of Melbourne produced a watershed result at the 2010 election, with Labor suffering defeat at the hands of the Greens in a seat it had held without interruption since 1904. It thus became the first federal lower house seat to be won by the Greens at a general election, and the second overall after a by-election victory in the New South Wales seat of Cunningham in 2002. Currently the electorate extends from the central business district westwards to the Maribyrnong River, northwards to Carlton North and eastwards to Richmond. The redistribution has transferred around 6000 voters in Clifton Hill and Alphington to Batman, and another 6000 at Fitzroy North to Wills.
Contributing to the Greens’ strength are the second youngest age profile of any electorate (the first being the strongly indigenous Northern Territory seat of Lingiari), substantial student populations associated with the University of Melbourne and RMIT University campuses, and the nation’s highest “no religion” response in the 2011 census. Other demographic features include substantial Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean populations. The Greens are strongest in the inner-city bohemia of Carlton, Fitzroy, Collingwood and Richmond, excluding some local-level concentrations of migrant populations which remain strong for Labor. They are weakest in and around the central business district itself and at Ascot Vale in the seat’s outer north-east, which are respectively strong for Liberal and Labor.
Melbourne was held for Labor from 1993 to 2010 by Lindsay Tanner, who in turn succeeded Hawke-Keating government Immigration Minister Gerry Hand. Their highest profile antecedent in the seat was Arthur Calwell, member from 1940 until 1972. A leading light of the Left faction, Tanner became Finance Minister when the Rudd government was elected, and emerged as part of a four-member “kitchen cabinet” which dominated the government’s decision-making. On the day that Kevin Rudd was deposed as Labor leader, Tanner dropped a second bombshell in parliament when he announced he would not contest the election, which he insisted was unrelated to events earlier in the day. He has since emerged as a public critic of the leadership change and the political process more broadly.
Tanner’s exit at the subsequent election brought into play a seat where the Greens had rapidly grown as a threat since the 2001 election, when their vote lifted 9.6% to 15.8% on the back of concern over asylum seeker policy. It rose again to 19.0% at the 2004 election, when the party harvested much of a collapsing Democrats vote. A further breakthrough was achieved in 2007 when their candidate, Adam Bandt, overtook the Liberal candidate to reach the final preference count. On that occasion the primary vote for Labor’s Lindsay Tanner was 49.5%, enough to ensure him a 4.7% margin after preferences. With Tanner’s retirement at the 2010 election, the Labor vote fell 11.4% while the Greens were up 13.4%, which panned out to a comfortable 6.0% win for the Greens after preferences.
Adam Bandt came to parliament with an instant national profile by virtue of his position on the cross-bench of a hung parliament, which events since have only enhanced. However, he has twice received portents from the sphere of state politics that he will face a tougher environment at the next election than the last. The first was in the state election campaign of November 2010, when the Greens’ high hopes for breakthroughs in the electorate’s corresponding state seats were dashed by a Liberal Party decision to put Labor ahead of the Greens on its how-to-vote cards. This decision was seen by some as a catalyst for the Coalition’s election victory, and there seems a high probability it will be repeated federally. The effect at the state election was to cut flows of Liberal preferences to the Greens from around three-quarters to around a third, which would have cut Bandt’s two-party vote by over 9%. The second was the Greens’ failure to win the by-election for the state seat of Melbourne, despite an expectation that they would profit from annoyance at the mid-term departure of the outgoing Labor member Bronwyn Pike.
Labor has again preselected its unsuccessful candidate from 2010, Cath Bowtell, a former ACTU industrial officer, current state party president and member of the Socialist Left. Bowtell won the preselection against what proved to be token opposition from Harvey Stern, the state president of Labor for Refugees.
Still $2.25 if you bet on Labor getting a surplus.. Given its at least 50/50 and probably better considering they will tweak it, that’s another case of making money from the irrationally opinionated and stupid 🙂
[Diogenes
Posted Saturday, November 3, 2012 at 11:02 pm | PERMALINK
Kezza
If you think abortion isn’t an issue in Australia, just wait and see what happens if Roe v Wade gets overturned should Romney win the presidency.
1. Romney isn’t going to win
2. He can’t overturn Roe v Wade even if he wanted to
3. He would only appoint one Supreme Court judge
4. Even if it was overturned that would have no effect on Australia.]
BS to all 4. I hope Romney doesn’t win, but it’s not a foregone conclusion; the rest follows.
And if you think a Romney presidency wouldn’t affect Australian women, then you don’t know Australian women as much as you think you do.
As an aside, why do you think Abortion is such an issue in Australia at the moment? Something to do with Abortion being a major topic in the USA. You betcha.
kezza2,
[ You get offended quite easily, don’t you. ]
Only when I get accused of something that is totally untrue. I’m a thoroughly modern man with good ethics as is my son. (which is why I said he wouldn’t have a clue what you were inferring)
I don’t have a problem with you analysing community attitudes to abortion here and in the US or elsewhere.
I do though have a problem with being thrown into some basket full of maladjusted bogans or whatever they are you are describing. They aren’t the males here on PB. In all the years I have spent here, I have never seen anything to change my opinion of them.
[As an aside, why do you think Abortion is such an issue in Australia at the moment? Something to do with Abortion being a major topic in the USA. You betcha.]
I don’t think abortion is much of an issue in Australia. It hardly ever gets mentioned and the current system had bipartisan approval.
Molly Ball of The Atlantic with a straightforward account on early voting data for the presidential election, which conservatives are invoking to talk up Romney. The number of votes cast by party registration is provided from five states, and here’s what you get in those states if you assume the same proportions of cross-party voting as last time:
Florida. A 7% swing in a state Obama carried by 3% in 2008. This suggests a 4% margin which is worse for Obama than the polling, which has Romney only narrowly ahead.
North Carolina. A 5% swing in a state Obama won by 0.5% in 2008. State polling says Romney’s more like 2% ahead.
Iowa. A 7% swing against Obama, who has a margin of 10% – a 3% lead to Obama being exactly what the state polls are saying.
Colorado. The article says the Republicans are winning, because that’s how the news media rolls. It’s true in raw terms, but the numbers only suggest a 7% swing, and the margin is 9%. Exactly what the state polls are saying.
Nevada. The numbers given here aren’t as clear, but there’s an implied raw lead for Obama of six points in a state where two-thirds vote early, which doesn’t suggest anything radical enough to overturn his 12% margin.
The data provided for Michigan, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin is less specific, but appears to support the polling in Ohio showing Obama a few points ahead. Nothing in Michigan or Wisconsin to cause Obama alarm, and the best guess is that he’s competitive in Virginia.
GW Bush was way further to the right than Romney and he did absolutely noting about abortion and had absolutely no effect on the issue in Australia.
scorpio
Well bully for you. Don’t step outside your tight little circle, will you?
You don’t have to go far to see the underlying sexism that’s rampant in our society.
Both you and bemused seem to think that because both of you have accepted a pregnancy and a birth and being grandparents exempts you from being aware about unwanted pregnancies and what to do about them.
They don’t occur in a vacuum, they don’t just occur in families that will accept them.
And stop with the accusation that I’m suggesting that all males (and all PB males) are in the same basket.
If you’d bothered to take the slightest bit of notice about what I have to say, I’m actually attacking the policies of DLP Tony Abbott.
Is it subliminal guilt that makes you think you’re under attack?
bemused,
[ G’day scorps.
How are things going in your neck of the woods? ]
Hi Bemused, Things are going great. Young Eli has been released from hospital four weeks earlier than we thought he might be.
I couldn’t give higher praise to the medical staff at the Gold Coast Hospital. They are marvelous. To think he was so sick when he was born and to look at him now………
Check your e-mail. There is a picture & a song that might fit my discussion with Kezza. 😉
Bemused
He who pays the piper calls the tune
Deblonay
Just a piece of trivia. Labor is not the only party to claim Henry Lawson. When the Australian National Socialist Party was active in the early 70s the SA (all 3 of them) was called the Henry Lawson Battalion. The connection between Lawson, Labor’s support for a White Australia and fascism is fairly strong.
Maloney as an educated man who supported progressiveism gave the WAP some form of scientific basis – he travelled to China and Japan in 1905 and wrote a small book on his travels, which was full of racial stereotypes, eugenics and social Darwinism. His less well educated comrades, while being concerned by the industrial effects of coloured immigration, tended to just have a visceral hatred of the Chinese.
Diog
[I don’t think abortion is much of an issue in Australia. It hardly ever gets mentioned and the current system had bipartisan approval.]
Then you have no idea about THAT speech and what it has raised in Australian women.
Abortion is a front and centre issue, here and now, AGAIN.
Heard of Tony Abbott? And feminism? And what would happen if Abbott became PM?
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4349682.html?WT.svl=theDrum
And a doco on Jo and Bertram Wainer on ABCTV tomorrow night.
That’s no coincidence.
And, I for one, am not going to stand back and see decades of work undone because some RW religious fks get their hands on power.
To dismiss this issue as if it is nothing, just goes to show how much it is not a man’s issue and something that over eons women have had to cope with.
Okay, so it’s not a priority for you, does not even register, but be assured we women who fought long and hard for reproductive rights are NOT going to take any dilution or our hard-fought-for rights sitting down.
Be warned.
kezza2,
You’re way out of order on this one. Stop digging while you still have some dignity.
I am sure you are better than what you are presenting with this line.
The world can be a rotten place, but not everyone in it is rotten. Maybe you should pick something else to vent on.
Re Lawson Oakshot Country
________________
In it’s heyday after the 1930ies the Communist Party also adopted Lawson…and published several small booklets of his more radical poetry….some of them, were translated I seem to recall and published in Russian anthologies in the USSR
@BreakingNews: German pharmaceuticals firm Merck says it has stopped supplying a cancer drug to Greek hospitals – @Reuters http://t.co/496AmtsK
“@justinbarbour: . @Politico reports that @GovChristie was @MittRomney’s first VP choice, before he picked @PaulRyanVP. http://t.co/HhIUvi0X”
Michelle Grattan thinks she’s Abbott’s school teacher
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/memo-to-abbott-your-grades-do-count-come-the-final-exam-20121103-28rbq.html
@justinbarbour: . @Politico reports that @GovChristie was @MittRomney’s first VP choice, before he picked @PaulRyanVP. http://t.co/HhIUvi0X
Sorry. reposted so link works
[scorpio
Posted Saturday, November 3, 2012 at 11:28 pm | PERMALINK
kezza2,
You’re way out of order on this one.]
Actually, you’re way out of order on this one.
You refuse to accept that there’s such as thing as an unwanted pregnancy and that there needs to be a solution to that problem.
Women who have unwanted pregnancies with no recourse to proper medical treatment DID DIE trying to rid themselves of same.
And just because you think the problem is solved doesn’t mean unwanted pregnancies are going to go away.
They’re not. And they aren’t.
That’s why women have fought for fkn 40 years for safe abortions. Why the hell else do you think we have done so. For fun?
Wake up.
Abortion (as far as I can tell from my state, where it has been completely decriminalized) is nowhere near the hot-button issue in Australia as it is in the US. Aside from a very tiny CDP/DLP fringe, no one here decides their vote on the issue.
Sure some members of the Coalition would probably like to see it banned but the vast majority take a genuine Bill Clintonesque view on the matter. As for the Australian population as a whole, from memory I believe the vast majority are in favour of access to legal termination services.
I’m not saying that access to abortion shouldn’t be constantly argued for and defended but no need to jump at shadows either.
kezza, I venture into this dialogue with great hesitation, but do so in order to support scorpio. I do not know a single person of any age that harbours the thoughts and sentiments that you have been ascribing to your stereotypical male. Most of us have daughters as well as sons, sisters as well as brothers, nieces as well as nephews and would recoil in horror from the baleful hypocrisy you have been putting into our mouths. We are not the hateful bunch you depict.
scorpio@608
The little guy looks real good without all the tubes and stuff.
And yes, the song was a great fit. 😀
Regarding abortion. I have a slogan right to lifers cannot cope with.
Prevent abortion. Use a condom.
The vast majority of anti-abortion people are essentially anti-fun/anti-sex. See the average anti-abortion activist’s response to the morning-after pill or contraception in general.
guytaur@621
I have always liked Philip Adams term for them, ‘foetophilliacs’.
Christ you blokes are a bunch of hypocrites.
Where were you a couple of years ago when Abbott’s refusal to legalise RU486 was up for debate?
Huh?
It took the women from across party-lines to come together to stop his BS. Not one of the men stuck up for it.
Why? Because pregnancy does not affect men.
But you’re all so sanctimonious now, and you’re all such terrific snags, and you’re all trying to patronisingly pat me on the head but if I don’t lay down and die you’re gunna stick the boots in.
And you reckon the topic is done and dusted.
Well done guys.
kezza2,
[ Actually, you’re way out of order on this one.
You refuse to accept that there’s such as thing as an unwanted pregnancy and that there needs to be a solution to that problem.
Women who have unwanted pregnancies with no recourse to proper medical treatment DID DIE trying to rid themselves of same.
And just because you think the problem is solved doesn’t mean unwanted pregnancies are going to go away.
They’re not. And they aren’t.
That’s why women have fought for fkn 40 years for safe abortions. Why the hell else do you think we have done so. For fun?
Wake up.]
I will be 63 years old Monday. I was born long before TV, men on the moon, computers, internet.
I have lived in towns from a few hundred to cities of 2 million, but mostly small country towns.
I have always been involved intimately in all the societies that I have lived in. If you think that I didn’t pick up a thing or two in all that time and all those experiences from starting work at 15 and leaving home at 16 and everything that I have crammed into these years (and I assure you, I have crammed a hell of a lot) them you haven’t a clue.
Leave it alone. Put “your” opinions forward by any means, but don’t take the liberty to speak on behalf of me and most everyone else here. Just don’t. OK
hmmm
[adelaide tweet @adelaidetweet
Our Lord Mayor arrested? 😉 -> RT @_amanda_jane Arrest happening right now in Leigh st #adelaide @stephenyarwood http://instagr.am/p/RkVu7Whnb_/ ]
kezza
nothing hypocritical about my post at 621.
Remember a condom is about the only birth control where the responsibility lies with the man.
Goodnight all.
I’m a supporter of RU-486 and was very glad when Abbott was made to stand out of the way (by other members of the Coalition, mind) and even gladder when access to it was widened under this government.
When I was younger I had a personal stake in the RU-486 issue (as did my girlfriend at the time), so pretending all men don’t care about access to it is hugely insulting. I would also note even BEFORE that experience I was aware of the drug and disappointed it wasn’t available in Australia.
night bemused
Goodnight Bemused.
Goodnight all
Kezza Best way I can put it is I think anti abortion laws are evil dressed up as good. Not accurate but a good pointer to how I feel. I put them in the same category as anti gay laws. People with no right trying to tell others what to do with their bodies.
I hope that helps to clear things up a little.
scorpio
I will be 63 years old in five years. I was born long before TV, men on the moon, computers, internet.
I have lived in towns from a few hundred to cities of 2 million, but mostly small country towns.
I have always been involved intimately in all the societies that I have lived in. If you think that I didn’t pick up a thing or two in all that time and all those experiences from starting work at 18 and leaving home at 19 and everything that I have crammed into these years (and I assure you, I have crammed a hell of a lot) them you haven’t a clue.
[Leave it alone. Put “your” opinions forward by any means, but don’t take the liberty to speak on behalf of me and most everyone else here. Just don’t. OK]
Jesus H Christ you’ve got an opinion of yourself, haven’t you. We’ve had practically the same life. I’ve not been trying to speak on your behalf, I’m speaking on behalf of me and my fight for women’s rights.
and,
absolutetwaddle & guytaur
stop being so bluddy precious.
condom only? puhleese, there is a male pill.
good grief,
That not one of you cares to understand my argument is testament to the solidarity of the brotherhood closing ranks, and further that you believe pregnancy is a female thingy.
We’ve soldiered on without you before, and we’ll do so again.
kezza, you are attacking people who agree with you on the merits of the issue. For the little difference it will make, I do not know anyone at all who wants to restrict access to abortion; nor do I know anyone who would deride any woman who became pregnant and chose to have an abortion. As for declaring that pregnancy and abortion are issues that only affect women, well, what is there to say? Women have the indisputable right to make their own choices; but men are affected at the very least because the health and welfare of the women they love are also affected.
This is not an issue that is best discussed in an atmosphere of hatred and condemnation. It is an issue that calls for mutual respect, support, restraint and sympathetic understanding. To say that men are incapable of these things is just wrong. Men are not indifferent to the situation that women necessarily have to deal with. We are not hostile. We are not opposed. We are with women, no matter the low opinion you may have of us and no matter your seeming-wish to divide us from women.
kezza – there’s a male pill? Where? Do tell.
If this was true – and it isn’t – I would be on it like white on rice.
[A COUPLE who bought a legal synthetic drug was allegedly told by an adult shop it would give them a gentle herbal high.
Days later it had ”cooked one of them from the inside”, Rachael Hickel, 42, said, speaking about the country’s first ”bath salts” death that claimed the life of her boyfriend, Glenn Punch, 44.
The Central Coast couple injected the white powder while in the back of Mr Punch’s truck and suffered severe psychosis; Mr Punch then went into cardiac arrest after a confrontation with security guards.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/herbal-high-cooked-us–victim-20121103-28quj.html#ixzz2BAJxufFj ]
Er, injected???
Nothing in the drug line that you have to inject gives you a “gentle high”.
briefly
next you know you’ll be calling me aggressive because I won’t fall into line.
I’m so hurt. */sarc*
absolutetwaddle
good to see you so keen try out male contracptives. Here you go then.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2012/s3569898.htm
kezza – you know as well as I do the male pill isn’t yet commercially available – which is what your link also says. It’s in advanced stages of testing, but that’s it. Hence that other poster’s condom comment.
I, along with many, many other males would gladly go on the pill if it were available. But it isn’t yet.
kezza2,
[ Jesus H Christ you’ve got an opinion of yourself, haven’t you.]
I’ve probably had as hard a life as anyone around, yourself included. As I get older my health is going to absolute shit, my self esteem the same way. I suffer from depression and fight every day just to keep going and not throw a rope over a branch on the mango tree in the back.
The last thing I need is some piece of shit doing their best to make me into something I’m not and make me feel worse than I do now.
I think you have a mental issue that you should see someone about but would appreciate it if you would not keep trying to pass it on to others who would rather not have anything more to deal with than what we have now.
Take your issues and your problems somewhere else. I can do without them affecting me. I got enough of my own to deal with without you adding to them.
absolutetwaddle@622
Probably 2 main reasons.
1. That God gives life stuff, and maybe that Catholic thing about innocence.
2. Some twisted idea that outlawing abortion/contraceptives/morning after might stop women having sex outside of marriage, turning pregnancy into punishment.
That is why the RTL’ers usually support capital punishment, at least in the USA.
Controlling sexual pleasure is a strong way of controlling people, and controlling or eliminating women’s sexual pleasure features strongly in most repressive cultures.
To be fair, there are religious people in the USA who actively support abortion rights. Or who try to create support systems that make it easier to for a woman proceed with the pregnancy, rather than using confrontation or trying to change laws.
Not everything is straight forward or falls into a neat stereotype.
kezza, I don’t mind if you fall in or out of line. If there is a line, it’s not mine to look after.
But nor am I going to stand in a “line” of your making. You are – perversely – trying to stereotype men. Perhaps you just like to scrap. In any case, we are not your enemy, though it seems you prefer to think we are.
scorpio
I’m sorry you are suffering and I’m sorry if I’m contributing to that.
Do take care of yourself. You are much loved on here.
[But nor am I going to stand in a “line” of your making. You are – perversely – trying to stereotype men.]
She’s clearly met a few wrong’uns in her time. Not our sort of chap here at PB.
From The Australian…
[Gillard rules out GST rise
JULIA Gillard has ruled out any increase to the GST following a warning from a review that it is failing to deliver the revenue expected of it. ]
Imagine the size of the headline if she actually DID put the GST up!
Of course, the one thing that’s not mentioned anywhere in any of this is that businesses do not pay GST. They get a full refund, either every month, or every three months.
There’s nothing more frustrating than being told you’re not genuine in your opinions, then when you try to defend yourself be derided as “precious” by the same person.
kezza2,
[ scorpio
I’m sorry you are suffering and I’m sorry if I’m contributing to that.
Do take care of yourself. You are much loved on here. ]
Thank you for that. I think there are many of us here that use PB as a way to keep in touch with society and to give us a reason to keep going.
What that means is that maybe we all should just think a bit before we wade in boots and all on an issue as there can be unintended repercussions on people that aren’t mentally strong enough to deal with getting hit with something they aren’t prepared for. (Marn is a classic example)
I think Bushfire Bill said it well.
[ She’s clearly met a few wrong’uns in her time. Not our sort of chap here at PB. ]
We’re on your side in most things. Pick up on something that we aren’t and go for your life. Rip it right into us.
We can handle that. I hope. 😉
A woman’s right to choose. Full stop.
[Bushfire Bill
Posted Sunday, November 4, 2012 at 12:38 am | PERMALINK
But nor am I going to stand in a “line” of your making. You are – perversely – trying to stereotype men.
She’s clearly met a few wrong’uns in her time. Not our sort of chap here at PB.]
Why do you all assume SHE is accusing the men on PB of not caring about the reproductive rights of women.
SHE’s pointed out that SHE’s attacking RW religious fks like Abbott.
But you keep wanting to take it personally.
And then you’re trying to make out as if the problem has been solved because none of you feel like that.
What’s Tony Abbott? The only man in Christendom that thinks abortion is a crime?
absolutetwaddle
[There’s nothing more frustrating than being told you’re not genuine in your opinions, then when you try to defend yourself be derided as “precious” by the same person.]
You’re bluddy precious when you claim that I am “pretending all men don’t care about access to it (RU486)”
And you bet, it is hugely insulting to be misrepresented like that. That’s why you were called precious. Sorry I didn’t spell it out for you.
Interesting reading The Courier Mail’s “This Day 70 ‘years Ago” facsimile reproduction:
1. Stalingrad attack bogging down.
2. Kokoda taken.
3. Guadalcanal Japs retreat.
4. Promising developments west of el Alemain.
It was all happening in the last part of 1942 wasn’t it? All the great battles were turning our way.
scorpio, I’m very sorry to read of your situation. If it is any help to you, I know the distress you are experiencing and can identify with the impulses and the sorrows you mention. I’m sure many others do too, and that many readers here will understand and wish to support you. I know too much about illness, hardship and deprivation; and I know how much fortitude it takes to answer these things every day. If there is anything I can do to help, please feel free to contact me (with William’s help).