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.
[tinned beetroot ]
I’m aghast at the idea. Tax it to the hilt, I say.
And those gherkins on Macca’s.
[http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/nrma-boss-defends-ads-on-jones-morning-show-20121103-28qt6.html
Be interesting if there is a campaign against the NRMA. Being an insurance company they would be down the bottom of any popularity list to start with. Headed by Wendy Machin an ex NSW National Party MP. Sticking by Allan.]
There are actually two companies – NRMA road service headed by Ms Machin and NRMA insurance. NRMA insurance was split from the NRMA organisation some years ago although to the public they appear as one, for example using a common shopfront.
NRMA insurance advertises heavily across the media and presumably seeks policy holders of all ages for its car, house and other insurance products.
NRMA road service seems to have membership skewed towards the older age group (if you read their “Open Road” magazine you will see what I mean). So it is perhaps logical that they would target the 2GB audience but there is also the political aspect with an ex Nationals MP in charge.
CTar
I reckon that steak, onions, cheese, bacon, eggs and bread. (IE A steak sanga with the works) should be tax free. As soon as the word Angus crops up +10%
Same with mucking about with the naked ingredients – we have fried onions (not caramelised red onion onion jus) any change another 10%.
Cheese is cheddar, (not the stuff Coles sell another 10%) a special exemption for Mainland imported from ENZED.
Bacon is KR Darling downs stuff, with an eye and streaky bits (fancy Italian prosciutto you guessed it 10%)
Eggs – real eggs, from the chooks who wake you up in the morning with orange yolks. (if the yolk is yellow 10%)
And bread, good thick sliced ploughman’s loaf. Naan, wraps, trendy olive and anchovy, pita, sourdough 37 grains etc you guessed it.
A steak sambo lead recovery I reckon. 😆
ruawake
I’m a steak sandwich sort of guy with it having steak, toast and lettuce and a bit of sauce.
On hamburgers with the lot – serious now – no f’ing pineapple.
Any stuff I don’t like should be taxed out of existence.
[On hamburgers with the lot – serious now – no f’ing pineapple.]
I really don’t know why people buy pineapple? Maybe it should be tax free on bogan pizza thus sparing everyone else its enzymes.
rua
Pineapple juice was an into thing when I was a child – we used to call it ‘pi##apple juice’.
😆
[Any stuff I don’t like should be taxed out of existence.]
OK a list.
Pineapple
Gherkins
Beetroot
Sprouts of any kind
American Mustard
…
any additions?
rua
Shi##y dried out cucumber;
Tough ‘alfalpha’;
Tomatoes that have nil taste; and
I could go on … and on!
And the onions have to be cooked properly – just enough sugar added and caramelised.
Raw is rude.
Enjoying watching Nate Silver on Rachel Maddow
Cheese is my whinge at the moment, I used to spend $40 a month on cheese at Coles. I now spend zero.
They have decided that they will sell their own brand cheese and a couple of block cheeses like Mainland Colby. That’s it.
A note to Coles – cheese does not taste like Styrofoam and it is supposed to brown under a grill.
rua
I guess I had a privileged childhood as a country child from a mixed farm.
One memory that is strong is my father being up before daylight to check sheep and being back to cook breakfast.
The morning after killing a sheep meant fresh lamb liver and kidneys with a medium thick gravey that had tomato sauce in it with grilled bacon done just short of being burned.
From among text messages exchanged between Rebekah Brooks and David Cameron one can see the hand of Rupert:
In another, it is reported that Brooks, who is standing trial next year on charges of phone hacking and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, tells the Tory leader that she felt so emotional listening to his conference speech she “cried twice”, adding: “Will love ‘working together’.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/nov/04/david-cameron-texts-rebekah-brooks
One cannot imagine a similar message passing between News Ltd and the Coalition out here…
[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.]
Any example would be subject to opinion and therefore pointless. I offer only that a fixed term is merely an improvement. Give me an example of how fixed terms would lead to bad outcomes and I might agree.
[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.]
This is simply not a logical argument. There is a world of difference in the depth of analysis possible in 3 weeks as opposed to the depth of analysis possible in 12.
[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.]
Why should any party be given an advantage at all, whether modest or not? How is the existence of the opportunity for abuse advantageous to the people?
[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.]
Not sure of the relevance here. Are you suggesting that any defined term is completely pointless?
[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.]
Don’t quite get what circumstances you imagine warrant the flexibility to call an early election as being beneficial to the people. Can you explain… noting of course, that I am not suggesting we abandon motions of no confidence.
[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.]
The existence of a ‘populist advantage’ is an assumption that has no merit, given populism in itself is irregular by nature. That you acknowledge the existence of advantage identifies a flaw in my view.
[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 people are always duped, it is limiting the degree that’s the issue.
I just wrote a letter telling Floridians how appalling their voting system seems from here. They are having problems again. If close result in election more court cases could be coming.
http://www.news-press.net/CS/index.php?addnewsform
Is Andrew Robb for real?
[But opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb said it was embarrassing to hear Senator Wong speaking of the government’s “supposed fiscal discipline”.
“If Labor was serious about offsetting spending why has its spending outstripped revenue by $173 billion since coming to office?” he said in a statement.]
Did the largest global depression since the 30’s miss his house?
ABC News – ‘Hilliary would win in a landslide’.
Deluded.
A domestic dove without solutions; and
An international RW’er without the money to support it.
The US is in deep sh@t.
[The US is in deep sh@t.]
I wonder when the citizens of the US will accept this truth? The time has come to repay debts, devaluing the US dollar no longer works.
Time to raise taxes so they can keep spending.
fish fingers that have no fish in them, 30%.
Anything sold by a slimming company – ditto.
Oh and those suppose-ed ‘rock cakes’ with hardly bluddy dried fruit in them.
Anything food sold in styrofoam containers.
and tofu.
Any of that imported crap labelled as ‘garlic’.
Gecko –
If you start from this position then there is no point in even talking about democratic ideals.
A crisis arises. The government and opposition differ on how to respond. The government tries to implement its legislative agenda to tackle the crisis but is unable to pass the relevant legislation, or its regulations are disallowed, or it is otherwise thwarted.
Unable to respond to the crisis, and negotiations having failed, what does the government do? According to the fixed termers on here it just sits there like a stunned mullet waiting for however many years are left to run before going to the people and saying “well, 2 years ago we needed to do this, now give us the mandate to tackle it our way”.
And DDs are not the answer here – DDs are specifically for deadlocks between the house and the senate. A minority government (and if we mature enough to move away from a strict 2 party system minority government will be the norm not the exception) will be stymied in the house without its platform making it to the senate.
You can come up with all sorts of rules and conditions that could be met (government declaring certain legislation essential or whatever), but fundamentally governments don’t run based on individual pieces of legislation – if they are being thwarted on key regulations or whatever it happens to be they should be able to go to the people to get a mandate, or for the public to reject the government’s proposals and choose the alternative.
Excuse me? Are you suggesting election campaigns need to be 12 weeks long rather than 3? The illogical argument here is yours. The first assumption is that there is no scrutiny or debate prior to the election being called, which is simply untrue. From there I’m struggling to understand how the major themes of the day cannot be explored adequately in 3 weeks of debate, but how 12 weeks would be better? To be honest modern 3 week campaigns seem to run out of puff after about 3 days, so a 12 week campaign horrifies me as a concept.
“Abuse” is a silly description. If the government “abuses” its privilege, the people are given the opportunity to punish them. And they do.
And as I’ve been saying, the advantage is a side-effect of the flexibility of the system. I value the flexibility – you obviously do not. If it was possible to have a flexible system (ie non-fixed terms) without the advantage to the government, I would support that, but I don’t see how that is possible in practice (and I’m not including recall petitions and that kind of populist nonsense). Ultimately when a party forms government it is given a 3 year lease to implement their program. As far as it goes I think it’s reasonable to allow the government to say “ok, this is a decent time to round out our program and seek another mandate”.
Government terms should be limited, as they are now, to a maximum period. This whole debate has been about the merits or otherwise of fixed terms. My position is that I think the arguments in favour of fixed terms are weak and that there is, in my mind, a significant penalty in terms of removing flexibility and responsiveness of government to changing circumstances.
Right, so parliaments don’t go the full term if the parliament wills that it doesn’t, but if the government wants to end the term that’s not kosher?
The government and opposition are inherently not symmetrical positions.
It’s not possible to talk about them as being on the same footing to fight elections.
Governments have some advantage from incumbency, although that has diminished a great deal in recent decades. Governments have a natural disadvantage from the hits it takes over implementing policy and overseeing the public service and the mistakes that are made.
Oppositions have the advantage in terms of not having to actually implement stuff, and not really being held to account for their populist positions.
To pretend that it’s all an even playing field when a fixed term election comes around is naive.
Given that it’s not a level playing field I think the mild bias of being able to choose a “good” time for the government to go to an election is not a serious problem, and allowing the government to show themselves in the best light to a certain extent allows them to match the opposition who can always present their position however they like.
‘Energy’ drinks, 100% tax on those buggers. Drink coffee like your predecessors did.
No tax on coffee. I mean real coffee, not powdered rust scrapings.
[I wonder when the citizens of the US will accept this truth?]
About when they take notice – when the barricades are already so breached that it will be over for them.
Doomed.
PtMD
[in styrofoam containers.]
Even Macca’s have got this bit worked out. Hormone confusion anyone!
Thinking about fixed terms I think I do not support the idea.
If a Govt wants to chance an early election (and fail as is usual lately) let them. If a Govt wants to put itself out of its misery (NSW) let them.
Fixed terms solve nothing. In fact it causes problems, let the Govt govern until it wants an election (within the term).
I just saw one Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner on Huckabee predicting 315 electoral votes for Romney. Let’s wait and see. Maybe he’s a genius, but that looks ridiculous with the current polling data. He sounded so intelligent and knowledgable too. I think I’ll watch Fox News on Wednesday.
Our meat has no added mercury will be the next wank.
Has anyone else noticed that the supermarkets are selling individual shrink wrapped serves of meat? You can buy a single sirloin steak for $29.99 a kilo. 😯
triton,
The only plausible theory I’ve seen so far that might contradict the current polls is to do with polls of early voters. But I’m still trying to make sense of it.
ruawake, fixed or not, three years is too short a term for good government, though as a politics junkie the more frequent the better.
[ANOTHER 11 Sri Lankan men have abandoned their refugee claims and opted to return to their homeland, the immigration department says.
This brings the total number of Sri Lankans who have returned home in 2012 to 126.]
Would these men be assessed as refugees under the Greens open door policy?
[ruawake, fixed or not, three years is too short a term for good government…]
Or as NSW proves 4 years is too long.
cud chewer, some analysts seem willing to have their reputations trashed (Dick Morris is another) to sway a minuscule fraction of the electorate towards Romney with positive comment on Fox News (though I don’t know how their reputations have fared before now).
This morning the large caption attending a live speech by Romney said, I recall, Romney boasts successful record (in government). No quotation marks, so it came across as Fox News’s assessment of him.
National Wildlife Corridor Plan released.
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/wildlife-corridors/index.html
Do nothing Govt.
triton,
I’m sure the partisan hacks there are trying to sway voters with the usual “everyone else is voting for Romney, why shouldn’t you?” line (well, that’s the translated message.
But, I can’t find Nate Silver’s response to the issue of early voting and the other data related to it. He’s pretty thorough so I’m wondering how he factors that into his models.
[In another, it is reported that Brooks, who is standing trial next year on charges of phone hacking and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, tells the Tory leader that she felt so emotional listening to his conference speech she “cried twice”, adding: “Will love ‘working together’.”
]
Fivethirtyeight now has Oboma 85.1%/14.9%. I don’t want my Wednesday viewing ruined with a one-sided contest! (The darkening mood on Fox as the afternoon progresses would be adequate compensation, though).
Dick Morris has an abysmal record as a political pundit.
In fact, evidence shows that expert pundits are no better than random monkeys with their prognostications.
Just look at how dismally pundits in Australia and the odd one on PB have gone.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/08/is-dick-morris-worlds-worst-political-pundit
Would anybody except rednecks, teapartyites etc watch FoxNews in America. I watch it for a laugh.
Dio # 988: Errk!
triton@989
While being careful not to count progressive victories before they happen, if Obama gets up in a few days I might just have a look at Fox Channel.
Will the refrain go “We wuz robbed” ?
What sort of a sportsfan are you triton!
In victory, magnanimity by all means. But first, VICTORY.
A Great Big New Tax on lycra bike shorts. And not just because of Tony Abbott.
This is a report on the study showing how terrible pundits are with their predictions.
Not surprisingly, Paul Krugman is the best.
Cretins like Joe Lieberman and Thomas Friedman do very poorly.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/03/study-pundits-wrong-most-_n_856886.html
More candidates for taxation treatment.
Bottled water.
Bottled water – this time masquerading as homeopathic medicine.
What’s happening on TV and on PB for the US election?
When does the coverage start? (Talking as someone who doesn’t get cable)
The GST is a con!
I don’t like debating it, it’s a real YAWN.
Many many have been fooled.
It acts as a depressent in the economy.
You want to raise taxes? Well tax the real so called “growth tax”… income tax.
I say lower the rate of the GST to ZERO and raise income tax.
The first Party to propose an increase to the GST will LOSE and rightly so!