Still famous 15 years later as the former electorate of Pauline Hanson, the modern seat of Oxley was created around the satellite city of Ipswich west of Brisbane in 1949 (a seat bearing the name earlier existed in southern Brisbane, before being renamed Griffith in 1934). Redistributions in 2004, 2007 and 2010 sent the electorate’s remaining share of Ipswich to Blair, pushing Oxley towards Brisbane with the addition of Middle Park and Jindalee in the north and Algester to the east. The changes before the 2010 election garnished the margin from 14.1% to 11.3%, and the punishing statewide swing against Labor that followed pared it back to 5.6%.
Oxley was was held for the Liberals on fairly comfortable margins for a decade after its creation by Donald Cameron, who served as Health Minister in the Menzies government. However, a 9.4% swing in the near-miss election of 1961 portended a long-term shift, delivering the seat to Labor’s Bill Hayden. Hayden did extraordinarily well to lift his margin to 19.1% by 1969, but Queensland’s reaction against the Whitlam government was enough to cut it back to 3.8% in 1975. By the time Hayden resigned to become Governor-General in 1988, the seat was safe enough for Labor that Les Scott was able to survive a sharp swing at the resulting by-election with a 4.0% margin.
After retaining a margin of 12.6% at the 1993 election, few suspected that Scott would be in serious danger despite the hostile environment Labor faced in 1996. However, trouble came in the form of Liberal candidate Pauline Hanson, whose campaign remarks about Aboriginal welfare saw her disendorsed by a party sensitive about its leader’s complicated history on racial issues. The voters by contrast rewarded her with an astonishing 48.6% of the primary vote, resulting in a 4.7% win after preferences. Unfortunately for Hanson, Oxley was substantially redrawn with the 1998 redistribution, losing its rural areas beyond Ipswich to newly created Blair along with parts of Ipswich itself, while absorbing the very safe Labor urban area of Inala. Rightly or wrongly, Hanson decided the new seat offered her the better prospects and Labor’s Bernie Ripoll had no trouble regaining Oxley at the 1998 election.
A member of the Australian Workers Union/Labor Forum faction, Ripoll served as a parliamentary secretary in opposition after the 2004 election, but was passed over when Labor came to office in 2007. His preselected Liberal National Party opponent for the coming election is Andrew Nyugen, a 28-year-old policy adviser to Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk.
Bemused @# 509
”She did not set up a “Slush Fund” as there is no such legal entity. She set up an “Incorporated Association”. End of story.”
It appears that many are getting things and terms mixed up. What we have is the creation of an incorporated Association which has an account that is described as a slush fund. Gillard did not set up a slush fund as such and in that respect you are right. It is just a shorthand way of talking that people in all areas of endeavour use when talking about things in house. What was meant by Gillard was that she had set up an association which would have an account which she referred to a a slush fund.
The sneering contempt with which the inner-city elite left regards the working class has been examined in a recent book in Britain: ”Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/08/chavs-demonization-owen-jones-review
Greensborough Growler@542
Are you seeing “Rudd people” too GG?
[“Bogans” is what we once used to call the great Australian working class.]
Yes, well these days it probably refers to people who like to pick on other groups of people (boatpeople a classic case)to make themselves all feel better.
joe2
Agreed. I dont pretend to understand how I would have handled such a situation all those years ago at that age. From a personal perspective, I have discussed issues of unplanned pregnancies with my own children. Conclusion was that responsbility for contraception should be taken by both parties, but should an unplanned event occur, we would support them and help them raise the child. No ifs and buts.
Ratsars@551
Yes. But it has pejorative connotations and I would think it unwise for anyone in public life to use such terms, except maybe when referring to opponents.
The fund you refer to was presumably a bank account the Incorporated Association opened. I bet it wasn’t called “Slush Fund”. 😉
The very best thing the Greens can do to help the very people they supposedly care about (asylum seekers) is to support Labor’s Malaysian solution.
It’s in everybody’s best interests, except the Coalition of course, that boats stop coming to our shores.
I’d threaten the Greens, support the policy or be put last on how to vote cards.
@bemused/556
It’s funny how you paint others by calling on others to not use terms specified on this blog, but then you went and did it yourself with the “I bet it wasn’t called “Slush Fund” with a 😉 on the end of your comment, shows the immaturity of this blog.
joe2
To add further to my comment. One event that shaped my thinking was when I was about 16 years old and a girl the same age as me who lived in my street, fell pregnant. The young boy and his family refused to take any reasponsibility or interest in the baby. Despite this, She had the child and her parents helped raise the baby. He was a gorgeous child who was much loved and gave the family a lot of joy. Of course, the young mother could not have done it without her parents fully supporting her at the time. I really admired this family for being there for their daughter, and vowed I would do the same if the need ever arose. I would much rather have a grandchild in my life, then given away to someone else. I am selfish that way!!
Psephos @ 547 re John Black
Thanks for that, it was my faulty cut and paste, Bolt says he is a former Senator.
Phil Vee
Is Bolt suggesting that Shorten is going to put his hat in the ring?
Unless Gillard is found to have done something wrong, this S&G stuff will not change one single vote, in fact it may work in Labor’s favour as it presents the Liberals as desperate.
Voters wouldn’t have a clue about the details of the matter, NOT a clue!
zoidlord@558
WTF are you on about?
That comment makes no sense at all.
[t’s over 20 years since Black was a Senator.]
As a Labor member I want to put all those ex Labor pollies with big mouths against Labor in a bag and seal it until 2014.
If the PM is replaced then Labor can forget about a huge number of female votes.
guytaur@323
If it is the theory I don’t think it’s sound. There will be more opportunities to remove TA and while there is indeed a spike for leader removals in the “killing season” (I did the stats on it at http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/is-killing-season-real.html) it still only accounts for a quarter of dispatchings.
I’m not convinced all this threadbare AWU hoopla was really to save Abbott from a challenge this week because I don’t believe anyone was ready to roll him anyway. There needs to be more time for realisation to set in, the polls to close up further and ideally Labor to take some 2PP leads on a pollster other than Morgan before they will really start to panic.
Hi Bludgers.
Just back from spending 5 hours at a flare up of a fire we spent 6 hours on yesterday afternoon.
I didn’t see Insiders. Was there anything worthwhile on it?
victoria@559
Way to go victoria!
I just don’t understand that young bloke and even less his parents.
Centre,
That’s why the front pages of the Telegraph and Herald Sun are gold for the Government at this time.
BK
These fires are taking up quite a bit of your time lately, and it is only November!
Thanks vic. I hope not!
Kevin,
It also assumes that Tony Abbott is not the Government’s Opposition Leader of choice. Sacking Abbott chnages the dynamics.
Afterall, there is only one Tony Abbott.
Centre
I don’t think racial tolerance was ever a strong characteristic of the Australian working class.
If you think “Bogans” can be used as a slur against certain members of the working class because of racial intolerance, you are wrong.
Centre@562
Neither conveyancing nor setting up an Incorporated Association for a client is illegal.
It is all BS.
GG
I haven’t checked the papers, how are Murdoch’s press reporting it now?
[If everyone here who has been told to STFU did STFU this place would be quiet as a morgue.]
The old fart declared to the world, joy, joy, joy, he STFUed me and wont have to read my posts anymore. yet, like a peeing tom, he keeps peeping my posts.
Them BISONs ROAR ………
OC
WTF?
[There is only one solution: announcing that no-one who arrives by boat will ever get a visa.]
Herr Doktor, disagree. they will still come, come and come.
[There is only one solution: announcing that no-one who arrives by boat will ever get a visa.]
SHY will save them!
bemused
I guess that the family of the young boy felt it was going to ruin his life. But the truth is that ignoring or denying this child, ends up haunting them all their lives. I hope I am making sense!!
bemused @#556
“Yes. But it has pejorative connotations and I would think it unwise for anyone in public life to use such terms, except maybe when referring to opponents.”
Could not agree with you on that see may previous post where I describe a “slush fund”. What we have is those who seek to gain personal advancement imposing their interpretation on what the term “slush fund” means
You ask most that deal with the accounts of entities you will find that they have a slush fund or a reserve account that is used almost every day to help record the activities of the company.
Boguns = working class?
A joke surely?
The genuine working class died with wooden clogs, going down the pit or to the mill.
Boguns have no class and certainly plenty do not work.
The concept of the lumpen proletariat is long gone.
I am inclined to think Boguns to be socially conservative local representatives of Archie Bunker or Alf Garnett in Oz.
It is a complete mystery to me why they see the conservatives as their friends and helpers.
Yet, they vote in droves for the Republicans in the US, the Tories in the UK and the conservatives here.
Odd.
[It is a complete mystery to me why they see the conservatives as their friends and helpers.]
Uniquisitive and shallow thinking. Exposure to none but the dumbest of news information. Disengagement.
[“Bogans” is what we once used to call the great Australian working class.]
Christ, Psephos, you sound like Karl Marx.
The “Great Australian working class” have now turned into the full snivelling, wowserish, cowering, malleable, suggestible bogans they were always destined to be, particularly by John Howard, who set it all up for them to whinge as a way of life.
victoria@579
You make perfect sense.
OTOH, accepting the responsibility may well have been the making of him. I have seen it happen. 🙂
My next tactical move (it’s all a battle of tactics with the Coalition and boats)would be to adopt all of their policies.
The boats will still keep coming because picking up the phone to Nauru, TPVs and pretending to turn back the boats is not a solution.
BK@578
I agree. The asylum seekers will simply be told that if enough of them arrive this way, and make enough fuss, one or the other of the idiots who sit in our senate will make it a partisan political issue – and as soon that happens then (based on past history) they’ve got it made!
The only thing that will stop AS arriving by boats is when it is made clear to them that this is a ticket to the back of the queue in a regional centre – and if they had applied there in the first place they would probably now be at the front of that same queue.
Of course, it means we have to take a meaningful intake from the front of the regional processing centre queues – which is why Abbott is now trying to close that door as well by reducing our overall intake. He knows a regional solution will work if our general intake is reasonable, and he is getting increasingly desperate that Malaysia (at leas) will be in place and functioning before the next election.
The last thing Abbott wants is a workable solution.
BK:
The only thing worth seeing on Insiders this morning was Andrew Probyn.
I could watch that man all day.
Wearing your heart on your sleeve, eh fess?
victoria @ 561 Is Bolt suggesting that Shorten is going to put his hat in the ring?
Well Bolt hasn’t used the phrase “I am not saying that” , which is usually the way he puts across the message that he is really is saying it, so I can only go on the evidence that he did say something and by mentioning it he may be planting the seed that it could be possible if it happens. Although it is unlikely, and he didn’t say anything really so you cant pin him down in any way. Its just the maths you know. The numbers. Its obvious.
They are coming to take me away now.
Ratsars @ 580
[You ask most that deal with the accounts of entities you will find that they have a slush fund or a reserve account that is used almost every day to help record the activities of the company.]
That is a minority of the electorate and it still carries the connotation of “not quite right” in the minds of most.
[Herr Doktor, disagree. they will still come, come and come.]
Yes, I think sending them away, to another country where they can try again after a decent period of reflection as to whether they are econoic or political refugees, “best worst” solution as it is, is the only way.
That we take in four times the number we send away, is what makes the Malaysian Solution such a potentially successful one.
I was always vaguely in favour of accepting refugees, particular from Iraq with whom we had made war and destroyed their country, but when I saw boatie after boatie DEMANDING “their” rights – to the dole, family reunions, housing etc. – withing a couple of weeks of setting foor on XI, while others festered in camps, patiently waiting their turn, I changed my mind.
Phil Vee
Bolt is a legend in his own hat!!
Were Bogans righter, faster than Bludgers, on asylum seekers?
Caught SKY news earlier in the day.
Their political reporter said the ‘scandal’ was important, because (her words)’the mainstream media’ had been focussing on it for months; it obviously had some substance, because Julie Bishop was a lawyer and understood these things and she said it did; and they (the media) were going to continue to focus on it over the next week.
And then they wonder why people don’t listen to them.
Greens Policy:
To resurrect the fun ship The Fairstar and provide free transport, food and alcohol to all asylum seekers and refugees to our shores fully at taxpayers expense.
C’mon, you know they want to 😈
[“Bogans” is what we once used to call the great Australian working class.]
“Bogans” has nothing to do with class, it’s attitude that defines a bogan. In fact, it’s the middle class bogans who are the problem. They are the ones who receive middle class welfare, yet complain about how their hard-dodged taxes are being wasted on “dole bludgers”. They are the ones who live in a white as snow, fenced-off, suburb and rarely ever see a refugee – yet complain about us being “overrun”. They’re the ones watching ACA/TT and shaking their heads, they’re the ones who think the government is there to wipe their arses and they’re the ones who give Abbott et al their support base.
I don’t care if they’re essential to gain government, I’ll be in the grave before I concede they are a sub-culture that deserves any form of respect.
A bogan is always Righter than me. They just are.
BK:
🙂
You’re on the money there, Carey.
As I said, I lurve Qld politics 😀
[Local Government Minister David Crisafulli labelled Mr Hopper “bitter and twisted” and said the defection would do more damage to his reputation than the LNP’s.
“I think it’s damaged his credibility. Mr Hopper has now been to more parties than Paris Hilton,” he said]
http://m.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/lnp-veteran-ray-hopper-resigns-to-join-katters-australian-party/story-e6freoof-1226523418232