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.
BW
Stephen Koukoulas addressing Gerard Henderson on his Blog Oct 13:
[Next, Mr Henderson, rather humiliatingly for someone of his importance, asked me to recall a meeting I had with him, “when in 2007 you were writing with The Age”. Well, I have never met Mr Henderson and have never worked at The Age. I do know that Jason Koutsoukis did write for The Age around that time and may have met Mr Henderson. In 2007, I was living in London, heading global economic research for TD Securities. I can’t be sure, but suspect Mr Henderson is confusing a couple of woggy Greek names – Koukoulas, Koutsoukis – what’s a few letters here and there. Yasou!]
http://www.marketeconomics.com.au/blog
[When is nielsen?]
A few weeks. Last one was only like a week and a half ago…
https://twitter.com/chrismurphys/status/264952601978736641
chris murphy @chrismurphys
StJohns Uni boyos:Abbott KO’d Hockey after he dropped on him during a game.”I couldn’t see for a few days” #auspol http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/hockeys-time-may-come-too-soon/story-e6frg6nf-1225804750844 …
There is only one poll that matters in the next few days! 😀
Anyway, who isn’t smart enough here to add one month to the last Nielsen Poll and get an answer?
Cooking Tips to MP’s from Possum:
Possum Comitatus @Pollytics
This is what happens when you don’t defrost your freezer RT @Peterdowling_MP: Looks very cold…. http://bit.ly/VoCufC
Gecko
That is very, very funny.
Can’t help but think that Windsor is opening a door here.
[Mr Windsor told the Labor leadership pair during a weekly meeting it was time to wean Australians off middle-class welfare if the government was ”serious about the surplus’]
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/mps-urge-labor-to-increase-gst-20121103-28r51.html#ixzz2BE9sNW58
Obviously DDs as they are defined at the moment only apply to deadlocks between the houses and don’t reflect a deadlock in, eg, the HoRs to pass important planks of a government’s program.
Anyway, it’s apparently ok to not have fixed terms in “extreme cases”, so what’s the problem with not having fixed terms at all? Your only point so far has been that it “isn’t fair”, but there’s no evidence that that unfairness is a problem or that it has prevented changes of government.
We’ve seen ample evidence that the public is more than willing to punish governments that abuse their right to choose when to go to an election, and ultimately I’m happy that that is in the hands of the voting public.
In my opinion, one of the strengths of our current system is it’s flexibility and responsiveness compared to many systems around the world.
I think making the system less flexible, less responsive and less able to resolve important policy deadlocks is quite a negative development, and doing so because of some abstract, and unevidenced argument about fairness is a mistake.
In these debates “waste” in terms of having elections more often than strictly necessary is also unconvincing in my opinion because the amounts we are talking about are small in comparison to the day to day running of government, and the amount of “waste” is fairly small anyway – I’m guessing that the average term is only a few months short of the maximum term so additional election cost is probably on the order of 10% or so.
We will obviously disagree on this.
@JulianBurnside: Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers; how I found true love, etc. Letter to Jenny: http://t.co/1b8MMQaX
Re fixed terms (for what its worth)
I like the idea of 4 year fixed terms and improved rules governing elections with fixed election time frames … specifically Treasury analysis of costings with the Electoral Commission having authority to exclude the candidates of non-compliant parties.
[JulianBurnside]
A celebrity barrister.
Nick Greiner’s lets raise the GST rate is simplistic twaddle.
The fact that the revenue it brings in is not increasing as fast as Costello suggested it would is no surprise. It was always twaddle to expect a 6% pa increase and this was designed to hide the fact the GST was Costello’s way of cutting State funding.
How about a radical idea – axe the GST all together. Replace it with a services tax and variable rate sales taxes.
A one size fits all rate for goods and services is crazy.
Gecko@910
I prefer the idea of a robust, free press calling those parties to account and the voting public punishing them. But then again, I’m a bit of a fantasist.
[The fact that the revenue it brings in is not increasing as fast as Costello suggested it would is no surprise. It was always twaddle to expect a 6% pa increase]
The very large and sustained increase in the savings rate (i.e. relatively less consumption) over the last few years during/post GFC was probably not expected by the state governments…
803
BK
[Posted Sunday, November 4, 2012 at 11:57 am | PERMALINK
[Imagine if the St Johns story was about a public school. The media m]
BK FOR STARTERS ITS NOT A SCHOOL ITS A BOARDING HOUSE.
AND I HAVE A GUESS, THERE ARE NOT MANY CATHOLIC
STUDENTS.THERE LIKE ALL CATHOLIC INSITUTIONS, ITS ALL COMERS THESE DAYS
Those asylum seekers on Nauru are really dying to get to Australia, aren’t they? 🙂
Actually, the absurdity of their stunt can be seen by the fact that if they were really serious about getting a place in Australia as a refugee, they wouldn’t be willing to starve to death.
Also, if Mr Rintoul was serious about asylum seekers, he wouldn’t be conducting his operation to champion their cause from his comfortable middle class home in Perth. He’d be volunteering in the camps themselves.
Instead, all we get from him and his cronies is emotional blackmail tactics to feed the MSM maw, in order to advantage one asylum seeker group over another. Which the majority of Australians have learnt to see through now.
And, as the government says, if the asylum seekers don’t want to languish on Nauru, then don’t pay a People Trafficker to get on a boat in the first place. Take your chances in the necessary lottery along with every other asylum seeker. Because it is simply ridiculous to think that Australia can take them all, or that Australia should take, preferentially, those that circumvent the system by getting a plane to Malaysia or Indonesia and then paying a People Trafficker for a spot on a boat & a dangerous sea journey.
Nor should Australia be conned into taking those who get to Indonesia or Malaysia, before they get on the boats, over asylum seekers elsewhere. Because it’s obvious to Blind Freddy that they’ll just stream into there instead of staying put in a refugee camp and taking their chances along with everyone else.
So, Mr Rintoul can bleat to the media all he wants, and the asylum seekers on Nauru can employ as much emotional blackmail as their tiny minds can dream up, but it’s not going to work to get what they want because we can see straight through them and their actions now, and we have to get the message through to them and the others who wish to abuse our refugee system, that the game is up. It was good for them while it lasted but the country is not going to keep being used by their cohort in this way any more. There are too many other deserving asylum seekers out there who aren’t willing to play these games to get a spot in our refugee intake, and they should be given the chance to settle here that these people are preventing them from getting.
[I prefer the idea of a robust, free press calling those parties to account and the voting public punishing them. But then again, I’m a bit of a fantasist.]
I think the past few years have put paid to this notion and for it to happen effectively the press need facts to work from, not spin. In reality the sleight of hand ethos of putting one over the competition and fooling the electorate should be stamped out forever. I have never understood giving the incumbent a leg up as to when it suits them to have an election. An election is for the people by the people with all cards on the table and ample time to make an informed choice.
I agree with all of this, but what does it have to do with fixed or non-fixed terms?
907
Gecko
[Can’t help but think that Windsor is opening a door here.]
Quite possibly with Labor’s full foreknowledge, and indeed quiet agreement to proceed.
ruawake:
[How about a radical idea – axe the GST all together. Replace it with a services tax and variable rate sales taxes.]
That’s not that radical and it’s hard to see how that would be an improvement.
Personally, I’d broaden the base so that it included medical services and education. The rate could be adjusted up — perhaps 12.5%-15%. I’d then hypothecate the extra money to fund means-test adjusted services (like public housing, health services including dental, before and after school care and education programs, Gonski, NDIS and so forth). Yes, the poor pay more but they get more services. The not so poor get less concessional access and the relatively privileged pay their way.
I accept that politically, neither party would try this because it would be mercilessly pilloried but as far as I can see, in principle, there’s nothing wrong with a uniform value-added tax. One needs to take care to make sure it doesn’t become a regressive transfer payment, has a minimimum of anomalies, is easy and low cost to administer and comply with and is not so high that it drives contraband or excessively staunches demand, but subject to these things, it’s a reasonable measure as part of the suite of measures available to the state to underpin state services.
Can’t wait for Ms Parker-Bowles to…
actually, I could wait for ever.
What a pathetic country we have that she is going to be our queen.
[I agree with all of this, but what does it have to do with fixed or non-fixed terms?]
A great deal in my view. As I said I have never understood giving the incumbent a leg up as to when it suits them politically to call an election. Fixed terms reaffirms the privilege of the contract given and re-enforces that it is the people who are in charge not the politicians… ergo the contract must be honoured.
We’re nearly at the end of the Presidential camapign but it’s not clear if the real Mitt Romney has yet stood up …
Romney v Romney
Truly astonishing … or it ought to be.
[That’s not that radical and it’s hard to see how that would be an improvement. ]
Er we pay 10% GST to buy an Australian Car but also pay to subsidise the Car Companies, if we dropped the tax it could replace the subsidy.
We have deflation in consumer electronics we could increase GST on huge tellies.
Use the tax to help the economy instead of a blunt der lets whack on 10% cos its easy to calculate.
Boerwar,
If I were a national representative, I’d be asking, within cooee of a microphone, whether Prince Charles ever got his wish to be as one with Camilla’s sanitary menstrual products. 🙂
Frankly, how one could support, in the 21st century, governance of our country from afar by a bunch of heredetarily-chosen non-entities, who, in a fully-functioning meritocracy may be given the job of carrying the drinks for the true leaders, if they were lucky, is beyond me.
Fran,
4 More Years! Then bring on Juan Castro and Al Franken for 2016. 🙂
rua
Increasing the GST in any way is political poison and against Labor DNAas explained by Senator Wong and the PM yesterday. We will see the Greens option of increasing the MRRT to 40% before we see a GST increase.
Just Me @ 919
I would like to agree with this, I really would… but I can’t see Windsor being party to a political fix in this way. His strength is in his independence and he calls it as he sees it. Perhaps I am naive but I am loving this hung parliament and the agenda initiatives coming from independent thought.
ruawake @912,
I have been thinking about the GST, the calls from business and their mouthpieces about increasing it and the constant whinge from states re distribution.
I was wondering about the implications and consequences of making the GST a state and territory tax ie each state and territory is responsible for the collection and administration of the tax. They could determine the rate of tax, what goods and services it covers etc etc just as there are state sales taxes in the USA.
The federal government could then take a set percentage of the tax from the states/ territories annually or quarterly.
If the states waned to increase the rate they could, if they wanted to alter it in any way they could. The Federal government would still get the set percentage.
Each state could then look at trade offs in reducing or removing inefficient state taxes and charges to boost business in their states.
The more progressive states would encourage business and those less prepared to adapt would be left behind. Economic survival of the fittest.
It would turn the pressure back onto the states and make them more flexible in how they tax business in their states. Let big business bang on and on to Barnett and co about how hard things are and make the state and territory leaders get off their bums instead of pushing blame back onto the federal government.
The GST was intended to encourage the states to remove inefficient taxes and charges, perhaps this may give them the push they need.
I have not thought about this in any great detail and I am sure there are holes big enough to drive trucks through but it was just something I have been pondering.
guytaur
I was proposing getting rid of the GST.
BBC showing live coverage of new Pope for Coptic Christians
Doyley
I think that payroll tax is the template for a State GST. The States under pressure from lobby groups will cut the tax and demand more funding from The Feds.
rua
Oh sorry. I came in late and it looked like you were proposing an increase or extension of GST to me.
As for subsidies. There should be an automatic review so companies know use or lose. That is innovate, retool whatever needed to ensure survival and growth to have maximum job saving/creation
ruawake:
[Er we pay 10% GST to buy an Australian Car but also pay to subsidise the Car Companies, if we dropped the tax it could replace the subsidy.]
Last I heard, the GST was rasing about $50bn per annum. Unless I’ve missed the story, the value of per-annum industry assistance to Australian car companies is in the millions — orders of magnitude less.
At most, you could argue for reducing industry assistance to the extent of collections on cars, but of course that would be trivial. It would also help non-Australian cars.
If one thinks subsidies to Australian car companies are bad policy (I think so, unless it’s some new breakthrough industry wide vehicle improvement technology we’re supporting and have a patent on held by Australia), then one should simply abolish it rather than having it caught up in arguments over the GST.
BW,
I think you will find in are legislation that Charles will become King of Oz but his wife will not become our Queen. We will not have one.
Doyley
an you imagine the madness that would ensue as people move their spending or companies move their business between states?
ruawake @932,
Good point.
It would certainly make COAG a lot more interesting. Perhaps more funding agreements like the health reforms and the upcoming Gonski reforms. A set Federal percentage and a set state percentage per agreement.
If the states want more they will have to contribute more and so on.
Anyway, as i said a lot of big holes in my suggestion.
As i said I am sure there are plenty of holes in my suggestion.
Fran.
Stop being silly. I never said that the car industry raised all of the GST. 😛
It was an example of how a variable sales tax rate could be used in place of a blunt GST rate. We could tax mung bean sprouts at 300% and rump steak at 2% is maybe a better example.
Doyley
Lots of holes in mine as well, just kickin’ a few ideas around on a Sunday arvo with no footie or real cricket.
@TeaPartyCat: “Next up on Fox News: Are gays or climate change responsible for these horrible storms? We’ll ask 3 Bible experts what they think.
Doyley@929
This business about “Inefficient taxes” is largely self serving baloney by business. Its called inefficient because they have to pay it.
Giitens wrote a little while ago –
[ The states’ limited taxing ability is an old problem. As long ago as the early 1970s, Billy McMahon sought to fix it for good and all by giving them the federal payroll tax.
Clearly, it didn’t work. For a while the states raised the rates of their payroll taxes, but soon enough they began cutting rates to curry favour with business before election campaigns and eroding the base, thereby turning it from a reasonably neutral tax into one that distorts business choices.
Advocates of a federal system like the idea it allows a degree of competition between the states. But when the states compete to lower tax rates – or use offers of tax holidays to attract investment projects away from other states – they all lose.
Business plays them off a break.
The standard argument against payroll tax is that, by raising the cost of labour, it discourages employment. But this is ill-considered.
In the end, you can tax only three things: land, labour or capital. Income tax is largely a tax on labour; tax economists say company tax is largely a tax on labour, the GST is largely a tax on labour (most consumer spending is done from wages) and payroll tax is also a tax on labour.
Business people tend to approve of the GST – they’re always saying its rate should be increased – but invariably oppose payroll tax, even though, in principle, the two are quite similar.
Business people know the burden of GST is passed on to consumers, but many seem to imagine the burden of payroll tax remains with them. In both cases, who writes the cheque that goes to the tax man doesn’t tell you who ultimately bears the tax.
Business people lap up the fashionable idea that, in a globalising world of ever-greater mobility between economies, we should be relying more on taxing land and labour, and less on taxing capital.
But all the while they’re inveigling the premiers into reducing payroll tax.
Although payroll tax is an efficient, non-distorting tax in principle, its way-high threshold makes it distorting in practice. It’s a tax that favours small business and penalises big business.
The obvious reform, which would gradually reduce the distortion of business choices and aid the states’ revenue problem without involving too much political pain, is simply to leave the threshold where it is in nominal terms, allowing wage inflation to progressively lower it in real terms.
The insouciance which has allowed the premiers to fritter away their strongest and soundest source of ”own-revenue” makes you suspect they’re privately perfectly happy with the ”vertical fiscal imbalance” whereby the federal government gets most of the opprobrium for collecting taxes, while the states are perpetual beggars at the federal table, only ever prepared to co-operate with federal reforms if they receive a big enough bribe. ]
Full article –
http://www.smh.com.au/business/how-business-cons-states-out-of-tax-income-20121021-27zej.html#ixzz29yQy41Mi
ruawake:
[We could tax mung bean sprouts at 300% and rump steak at 2% is maybe a better example.]
Well that would be a fun department to work in … Can’t you imagine the task of setting rates?
Mung-bean sprouts George … what do you reckon? More or less than alfalfa sprouts? What if they are in a salad?
In Kenya the Obama Bull beat the Romney bull.
Puff @936,
Yes I know.
But don’t states now offer different taxing arrangements and other incentives to attract business ?
Re the GST rate. I would think over time that a ” floor price” level of GST would evolve.
The big difference could be in business charges and taxes.
Plenty of holes as I said.
[Mung-bean sprouts George … what do you reckon? More or less than alfalfa sprouts? What if they are in a salad?]
Or dried and stuffed in mattresses?
Return to sales tax – silly Sunday afternoon folly fun.
dave,
Thanks for that link
Perhaps by giving the states a new tax stream through a state GST the problems raised in that excellent article may be smoothed out to some degree.
Gecko, again I ask the same I did of Carey – give me an example of how non-fixed terms has led to bad outcomes for the Australian people.
When an election is called, there is a period of at least 3 weeks for all the arguments to be put so it’s not like “surprise” elections don’t allow consideration of all the issues.
The benefit of being able to choose when to go to the election is modest. We know full well that governments that abuse their privilege are punished.
And to my mind none of this answers the question of flexibility. The world doesn’t work in nice 3 year or 4 year or 5 year chunks. Things happen, circumstances change, and the ability of the government and the parliament to be flexible to changing circumstances is an important property that we shouldn’t throw away because of the mild annoyance value of early elections or some “unfairness” that never seems to have stopped the process of changing governments in the past.
I don’t have a problem with giving incumbents a very modest advantage. We know perfectly well that governments wear out their welcome over time – it’s a natural process of losing skin over time and getting tired. Governments will inevitably be voted out, so it’s not an issue about preventing tyranny or stealing elections or what have you. Governments are always on the back foot because they are assessed based on what they are obliged to decide and implement – oppositions always get to play the populist card. It doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable for the government to be able to decide when they should be assessed against their populist opponents.
And ultimately the people decide. These arguments seem to be making the case that the people are dupes and are fooled in some way by sleight of hand by the government of the day sucking in their guts and holding their breath to get over the line. If that was ever true it is certainly not true now.
The fixed elections issue is something with which I used to be pretty comfortable but in the last five years, I’ve soured greatly on the idea.
[Mung-bean sprouts George … what do you reckon? More or less than alfalfa sprouts? What if they are in a salad?]
It would be referred to the standing committee on rabbit food taxation. An increase in the rate of all alien salad ingredients (tomato, iceberg lettuce and tinned beetroot being zero rate for tax) will be recommended every time a request to lower the rate is made. 😆
Doyley@946
Strongly recommended for the political party that wants to remain out of government for yonks.
Its not going to happen anytime soon.
GST takings will pick up as the economical cycle picks up.
So much of the spending in the first decade of this century was pulling forward consumption and paid for with debt. In the same way savings are deferred consumption, which can be spent down the track and that will happen again.
The other thing with state finances is they get used to windfall income from high levels of property turnover and get conditioned to elevated income levels. Its not permanent and they find out all too soon.
But they adjust to the new circumstances in time. Luckily the electorate will not tolerate new taxes every time we have a bust or even a slowdown.
The business cycle remains alive and in force. Government, business and the community all get large shocks when they forget it.
“This time” is never different.
Its very healthy to distrust everything business say about tax and a lot of other things as well. We all know or should know, the same goes for politicans.