Seat of the week: Oxley

Despite unfavourable redistributions and the statewide swing of 2010, Bill Hayden’s old seat has returned to safe Labor form since the famous interruption of Pauline Hanson.

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.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

977 comments on “Seat of the week: Oxley”

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  8. Wind turbine ‘delusionalitis’

    Some of the comments in the thread underline the unhingement associated with the delusionals on climate, whose tin foil hats are being disturbed by wind turbines.

    Senator Madigan (DLP) is an absolute hoot. He wants the regulator to suspend accreditation of a power station if they believe the power station is being operated in contravention of a law, written or unwritten of Commonwealth or state government.

  9. The fact that Abbott is a long-standing supporter of Israel is hardly surprising. Is this supposed somehow to be to his dicredit? It sometimes seems to get forgotten here, but the official position of both Labor and Liberal is and always has been one of strong support for Israel.

  14. Zoidlord:

    I do accept others are driven by different imperatives. I’m keen on equity, inclusion, social justice and respect for human dignity.

    Whatever others here think of these things, it’s clear that a number here rate these below tribal loyalty to the ALP.

  15. @Fran/214

    I don’t believe you at all if you blaming the ALP has or is going to change anything at all.

    Remember, The Coalition Goverment in Howard Era did little with the Pacific Solution, And the Greens are equally responsible by not allowing enough wiggle room on the issue.

    SO ALL Major parties are at fault because they all like to claim credit for the short term benefit.

  16. Fran Barlow@191,
    Your tawdry pejoratives do not an argument make.

    Still, come in spinner! To use a cricketing term(as you appear to be using cricket as a way to disarm here), as you are exhibiting all the characteristics that I have previously identified as being part of your modus operandi.

    Really, your attempted belittling of me is not going to work at all. I remain unabashed. Mainly because your attempted arguments are no more than unsubstantiated assertion. Plus a large helping of conflation with extraneous issues.

    Sigh. But if I must, let me turn my attention to the most recent bucket of drivel you have sprayed around here tonight.

    The question is better directed at you. Like the rest of your tribe, your principal concern is the integrity of ALP spin, and if citing drownings is needed, you will say it loud and often, even when it is at odds with other concerns you ticky tack on to your special pleading.

    * My principle concern, and you are certainly no informed source about what my principled concerns are, is NOT ‘the integrity of ALP spin’.

    My principle concern is workable, rational, reasonable solutions to political issues.

    Sadly, to my eyes, it is beginning to seem to me that it is The Greens’ responses to these political issues that is as spun, and as insubstantial, as fairy floss.

    Now, excuse me, but would you mind going a little easy on the slander too? A bit ‘tired and emotional’ are we again tonight? Because you have absolutely no right, nor any valid proof, to say that I ‘cite drownings’ as a concern to ‘ticky tack’ on to my other special pleading.

    Sorry, but as someone who has almost drowned themselves, who has recently nursed a husband with leukaemia until he passed away, and who has had a child who has been in Intensive Care for a week on the edge of death, I know the importance of death to families, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Asylum Seeker on a leaky boat, or Australian citizen on dry land. And you should be ashamed of yourself for suggesting otherwise. However, I have come to realise that ‘shame’ is not a word in your oh so pretentiously paraded vocabulary, Fran.

    Nor is care or concern for the asylum seekers who do drown on their way to this country of any moment to The Greens, as is made obvious by any number of posts from yourself or other Greens supporters. To what should be your collective shame. However, as I said, that’s a word that doesn’t seem to appear in The Green lexicon.

    Really though, saying one ‘cares’ is cheap. Anyone can say that, and most feel a need to do so, whether they do or not. Certainly it sounds better than affecting indifference if you are pushing for a policy aimed at brutalising those 96% who avoid drowning.

    Here we go again, with the slanderous assertion, followed by a half truth. Although, if any political party embodies the ‘Talk is Cheap’ motto, it’s The Greens. And their mates, the Liberal Party.

    Now, I neither care less about people who drown on their way here on the boats, nor want to feign indifference about their plight. Because that’s not how I feel actually. And if you could stop saying I don’t care I would appreciate that, as it is a lie, which you appear to need to say about me to bolster you already weak case.

    Nor do I wish to ‘brutalise the 96% who avoid drowning’. I just wish to give some of the suckers in the camps an even break. Unlike you and The Greens. Unless they can ‘all’ come here. Yet another of the crazy Greens notions.

    If the 96% who avoid drowning make it here, and are found to be genuine refugees, then they should be treated in accordance with the law. However, I would appreciate it if they, and their friends in the Immigration Law business, would stop wasting taxpayers’ money with endless appeals if they are determined not to be genuine refugees by the department. There are lots of Australian citizens unable to get Legal Aid because so much of a limited pool of resources is soaked up by these people. No doubt you’ll quibble with that assessment too, I imagine.

    What you don’t acknowledge is that the palpable but small risk of drowning is taken on by those who presumably see their alternative life prospects as inferior to the risk of drowning.

    And that makes their drowning acceptable to The Greens because? Their prospect of a better life in Australia outweighs the risk? Like I said before, Fran, just pretzel logic from The Greens, and their mouthpieces such as yourself.

    And, you know, these people’s ‘alternative life prospects’, as evidenced by many an interview with them, isn’t as bad as you make them out to be. Some of them have openly admitted that they don’t really like their lives in their home countries and they really want to come here to improve their prospects.

    Fair enough. At least they’re honest about it. Especially those from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and, to a lesser extent Iran and Afghanistan. Though I must admit, Afghani Hazaras have recently admitted as much also to an interviewer, from the relative normality of their lives in Kabul.

    But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good Greens smear of the Labor Party, will you now?

    Frankly, at the moment, if the boats were filled with Rauhinga and Syrians and Congolese, I’d understand entirely.
    However, they’re not. They’re actually still in fear of their lives and haven’t had the luxury of booking a plane flight to Indonesia yet, or paying a People Trafficker for their boat ride.

    You imply that you know their interests better than them, but of course you don’t, and can’t.

    No, I can only go on the words uttered from their own mouths in interviews. Plus anecdotal evidence from others. Guess that will have to do.

    What are you going on?

    . Yours are crocodile tears uttered with arrogant disregard not just for the IMAs but reason as well. You believe those boats are sinking your preferred regime. That’s all that matters to you and you and your tribe will utter shameful nonsense in defence of it if you think it needed.

    You really are scraping the bottom of the barrel for puerile insults tonight, Fran.
    * My feelings of sadness at the pointless loss of life is real. I can assure you of that. Your arrogant assumption otherwise is frankly, offensive. But then, that’s The Greens and their fellow travellers for you when they are cornered and their arguments are without a shred of credibility.
    * I don’t believe ‘the boats are sinking’ the Labor Party. The last verifiable poll on the issue I saw had a majority supporting the actions of the government. Also, the government’s polling has been improving, in case you hadn’t noticed, caught up as you are defending the indefensible position of The Greens.
    * And Fran, might I say, that it is your ‘tribe'(another offensive & puerile insult you attempt to peddle in the direction of the Labor Party), that are actually the ones who will ‘utter shameful nonsense’ in defense of their ridiculous position on the asylum seeker issue.

    If you really cared primarily about the safety of IMAs you’d press for them being processed more rapidly at aggregation points.

    This makes no sense.
    * I do care about the safety of boat-borne asylum seekers. Always have, always will, right back to the safety of the Jews at sea, through the Vietnamese and on to today’s voyagers.
    * However, I do not believe that this means that I have to automatically agree to a rapid and continuous assessment of all asylum seekers who turn up at ‘aggregation points’. I don’t believe our fragile Australian environment has the carrying capacity for the sort of numbers that the scenario you outline, suggests.

    You’d insist on rapidly shipping the successful ones here by orthodox means.
    * See above. Also, I don’t believe it is incumbent on the Australian government to provide the means of transport from another nation to ours if they have not been chosen by the department to come here. Such as occurs with the refugees in the camps.

    You’d press for conditions in the camps that were protective of vulnerable people. You’d be arguing for the first world especially to contribute much more to the relief of FDPs.

    * I do.

    I hear none of this from you or your tribe.

    * You haven’t been listening then.

    When foreign aid was cut, I heard no protest from you.

    * Funny, I don’t remember seeing you at the meeting organised by my Local Member and addressed by Kevin Rudd about this exact issue? The one where I stood up and asked the question about how the Foreign Aid Budget could be maintained whilst bringing the overall Budget back to surplus.

    But then I forget that you are the all-seeing, all-knowing, Fran Barlow. Actually, I think you need a Seeing Eye Dog, Fran.

    When Carr said more of it would be spent in this region I heard no pleas for “those languishing in camps in Africa” from you.

    * Memo to Fran: This government can walk and chew gum at the same time!
    Guess what the meeting I went to that was addressed by Kevin Rudd was about? That would be ‘Increasing Australian Aid to Africa’. Oops!

    Your tribe is big on cant — not the type with a “K” obviously.

    Your increasingly farcical party, Fran, is in no position to lecture anyone.

    You have no standing at all to hector me or the Greens about “getting real”. There’s not a skerrick of honesty or integrity in any of your pleading on this issue.

    Bollocks. And Good Night.

  19. Psephos@209


    The fact that Abbott is a long-standing supporter of Israel is hardly surprising. Is this supposed somehow to be to his dicredit? It sometimes seems to get forgotten here, but the official position of both Labor and Liberal is and always has been one of strong support for Israel.

    I suspect that rather than his support for Israel being to his discredit, the article:

    [Ms Sattler said those who backed the PLO visit were beaten with rolled up newspapers and umbrellas and spat upon during the course of the conference.]

    Points up another instance of our esteemed LOTO allegedly being part of groupings prone to the use of violence and intimidation against political opponents during his Uni days that is rather to his discredit.

    Of course not the kind of thing that would happen if he had been from a good College ……. oh, he was wasn’t he?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYJO-Gjr4rg&feature=youtu.be

  23. http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/i-hope-to-be-australias-first-female-foreign-minister-20121124-2a027.html
    [‘I hope to be Australia’s first female foreign minister’ November 25, 2012
    Jessica Wright
    federal political correspondent for The Sunday Age and the Sun-Herald.

    Julie Bishop says she wants the foreign affairs gig in a Liberal government and gives Tony Abbott her full support. But seeing Bishop in action there’s little doubt she could handle the top job.]
    The last bit re AWU slightly overtaken by events, but worth reading closely.

  25. I don’t think there are many longer profiles of her around, at least recently. The take away bits for me are her importance in shoring up Abbott’s support, that she’s staked her claim to the FM job, and that she’s keeping her options open if Abbott was to lose the support of the party and step down. She would put her hand up and run.

  31. CTar1,

    It was a “well-played match by both sides”, as it will be reported.

    Oz made many mistakes, mostly in trusting to a forward-infested back-line. By the looks of it, Deans said keep it tight in the rucks and mauls, then go one and two out, THEN spread the pill.

    I have always said that players should be sacked before the coach.

  34. One interesting aspect of the Blewitt stuff in the “AWU Scandal”.

    Now that Blewitt has made his statement to the police, if the PM is questioned on any matter relating to it, wont she just say that as the matter seems to be under investigation by the police its inappropriate for her to comment?

    Then launch into a lecture to the Ooposition on proper parliamentary behaviour and how Mesma, with her legal background should know this.

    Would be enormously frustrating for whoever brought Blewitt out to say his bit.

  35. imacca

    Blewitt turned up, got paid, and told Plod nothing interesting.

    No indemnity and told ‘go back to where you came from’.

  37. [LNP veteran Ray Hopper resigned from the party just before midnight last night and joins Katter’s Australian Party this morning in a shock defection set to rock the Newman State Government.

    Mr Hopper says he has held discussions with eight disgruntled government MPs weighing up their options on whether to follow him.]

    Everyone loves Campbell, 😆

  38. Queensland LNP Senate Team. No wonder McGrath played dead in Fairfax.

    The LNP has selected the Party’s senate ticket for the next federal election.
    The candidates, in ticket order, are:
    1. Senator the Hon Ian Macdonald, LNP Senator for Queensland
    2. James McGrath, campaign director and consultant
    3. Matthew Canavan, Chief of Staff to Senator Barnaby Joyce
    4. David Goodwin, businessman
    5. Dr Theresa Craig, small business owner and scientist
    6. Amanda Stoker, Barrister

  39. Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
    [Looks like Bishop the Younger wants to keep on digging….

    Opposition deputy leader Julie Bishop, who has led the coalition’s attack on Ms Gillard and the affair, said last night Mr Wilson’s comments clearing Ms Gillard were “part of his continuing cover-up” and she called on him to give a “frank and full statement” of the 17 year old episode.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/former-boyfriend-defends-prime-minister-20121124-2a0vp.html#ixzz2D8ptGDva ]
    I am reminded of those gangster movies where a victim is forced at gunpoint to dig their own grave.

    This is an interesting defence. It also goes to show what life was like at St Johns.
    http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/society-rapist-sues-religious-brothers-20121124-2a09r.html
    A good start, Ted. But it will need a prosecution or two to show they mean business.
    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/mandatory-reports-for-priests-20121124-2a0ho.html
    This is an interesting development – particularly the capping of legal costs.
    http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/south-australian-rego-costs-to-be-cut-under-sweeping-reforms-from-july-2013/story-e6frea83-1226523427999

  41. Zoidlord:

    [The Coalition Goverment in Howard Era did little with the Pacific Solution, And the Greens are equally responsible by not allowing enough wiggle room on the issue.]

    Ah ‘wiggle room’. In this context this is just a euphemism for poltical pretense, logic chopping and abandonment of principle. If you want to abandon or modify a principle, one should do so explicitly and say why the principle is no good or improperly specified, and how one came to the mistake and why this new position is robust and apt. Wiggle room is weaselly.

    Get this into your head. We Greens are not responsible for the ALP’s marginal seat defences in electorates with above average numbers of xenophobic bigots. If the ALP wants to get those votes, it will have to soil itself without our help or cover.

  45. c@tmomma

    [I would appreciate it if they, and their friends in the Immigration Law business, would stop wasting taxpayers’ money with endless appeals if they are determined not to be genuine refugees by the department. There are lots of Australian citizens unable to get Legal Aid because so much of a limited pool of resources is soaked up by these people]

    Ah yes … ‘the Immigration Law business’ “wasting taxpayers’ money” “endless appeals” the rival goods argument: “There are lots of Australian citizens unable to get Legal Aid because so much of a limited pool of resources is soaked up by these people” …

    Who needs the Daily Telegraph or Gemma Jones when we have you to channel their populist wisdom? It’s telling that in your desperate desire to protect the regime, you are now running an apologia for inadequate legal aid funding. Are there no depths to which you will not sink in your tribalism?

    The basic problem with your lot is that at some point long ago you decided for whatever reason that the last best hope for all things good and decent was ALP rule. From my recollection of the time when I was an ALP supporter, you may well have been moved by some of the things that drive me — social justice, equity, inclusion and human dignity. Yet having invested your hopes and dreams in the success of the ALP as the necessary condition of the best of all possible worlds, you have become its sorry apologist. Every twist and turn in response to every political vicissitude has become your problem, and the problem of every person who can be bullied into joining you momentarily in protecting them.

    If a claim made is corrosive of the rule of the ALP then it must be struck down as soon as possible with whatever comes to hand, regardless of its form or content, or the constituency it serves — including — and here is the tragic irony — even when it serves social justice, equity, inclusion and human dignity.

    That is why you find yourself defending the imprisonment of 10 year olds for up to five years on some malria-wracked hell hole — surely not to defend social justice or equity or inclusion or human dignity — but what you regard as the necessary condition for these in the imaginary future. The suffering of children is for you just an overhead in the bigger game in which you imagine yourself a player. They are your chump change. I’m not surprised that you and your kind are uncomfortable when I remind you of what is just and fair, but if you were once an elf, now your investment in the ALP has turned you into an orc. Somewhere buried under layers of rationalisation and apologias, there may well linger some non-instrumental regard for justice but when you reflect upon it, there is nothing but pain and shame — which you direct at us Greens.

    None of that is my problem though — it is yours.

  46. Julie Bishop was on SkyNews at 7am apparently, revealing the spin for the day. Not sure this one will stand up to scuitiny

    @ljayes: J Bishop: On the eve of the last sitting week Wilson comes forward. His defence is not supported by docs or recollections of many others.

  47. Kevin

    [Analysis of the Tasmanian Legislative Council]

    Trying to analyise a State Upper Chamber?

    Irrationality reigns!

    You’re a better man than I, Kevin.

  50. Morning all. An interesting article from Fairfax online on the dramatic fall in LNP popularity in Qld. Some amusing quotes from Clive Palmer too.
    [Dr Williams said the unpopularity of the Campbell Newman government’s public service austerity measures and to a lesser extent the same issues with his coalition counterparts in  Victoria and New South Wales had put federal Labor back in the game.
    His comments followed the resignation from the party of one of the LNP’s biggest backers, Queensland’s richest man, Clive Palmer, who launched a blistering attack on the state government on Friday.
    Labelling Mr Newman “Caesar”, Mr Palmer previously one of the premier’s biggest supporters, said he had quit the party “due to an arrogant disregard for accountability which has made the LNP organisation redundant” and opined that the rights of citizens “were never so much in danger as they are at the current time”.
    “I just want to say to you now that the current government is much worse than anything that was around at the time of the Fitzgerald inquiry,” he told reporters.]
    http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/lnps-plunge-in-popularity-unprecedented-expert-20121124-2a0nk.html#ixzz2DAwFWVN2

    Seriously though, it might be time for Federal Labor to start saying something about Qld. Campbell Newman, after putting together two multi billion dollar failed deals for toll roads, has cut the State public service to shreds on the excuse of debt. He did this by counting the debt (most from one off events like the floods) and ignoring the $70 billion in savings. Now the State is in a self induced recession. This is not Federal Labour’s fault – Canberra gave Qld $5 billion in flood assistance. Labor should point this out often. There may be an opportunity here.

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