Seat of the week: Brisbane

With the change in the state’s political breeze recently, Labor is hungrily eyeing Queensland as a potential source of seats to counterbalance anticipated losses in Sydney. An inner-city seat with the LNP’s lowest margin represents an obvious target.

The electorate of Brisbane has existed without interruption since federation, and presently covers the north shore of the Brisbane River from Milton through the CBD to Eagle Farm, extending northwards to Stafford at its western end and Hendra in the east. It was the most surprising of the Liberal National Party’s eight gains in Queensland at the 2010 election, as Labor had held the seat since 1931 outside of the interruption of 1975 to 1980, holding on even in the face of the 1996 disaster which reduced Labor to two Queensland seats. The defeated Labor member was Arch Bevis, who had held the seat since 1990 when he succeeded Manfred Cross, whose tenure went back to 1961. Peter Johnson held the seat for the Liberals from 1975 until 1980, when Cross recovered his old seat on the second attempt.

Brisbane’s complexion was changed somewhat by redistributions in 2004 and 2010, the more recent of which cut the margin from 6.8% to 3.8% by adding 26,500 voters at the eastern end of the electorate at the expense of territory out to Ferny Grove and Upper Kedron in the west and Stafford in the north. The former area included Clayfield and its highly affluent surrounds, which have contributed to the electorate’s current status as the highest-income electorate in Queensland. This proved doubly damaging for Labor as the swings around Clayfield were especially strong, in keeping with a national trend in which the air went out of the Howard-era “doctors’ wives” balloon. The effect was to counterbalance a relatively static result in the inner city, contributing to a decisive 5.7% swing to the LNP. The result was also notable for the 21.3% vote for the Greens (compared with a Labor primary vote of 30.4%), whose candidate was former Democrats Senator and party leader Andrew Bartlett.

The LNP victory facilitated a return to parliament for Teresa Gambaro, who had held the northern Brisbane seat of Petrie from 1996 until her defeat in 2007. Gambaro is a member of a family famous in Brisbane for its seafood business, its restaurant being located in the electorate at Petrie Terrace. Nonetheless, Brisbane did not seem an especially strong prospect for her at the time of preselection, which occurred at the peak of the Rudd government’s fortunes in the opinion polls. Gambaro held parliamentary secretary and assistant minister positions in the final term of the Howard government, and has served as shadow parliamentary secretary for international development assistance and citizenship and settlement throughout the current term. She made headlines in January 2012 when she called for migrants to be given hygiene lessons, for which she subsequently apologised.

Labor has preselected Fiona McNamara, an organiser with the Queensland Teachers Union, of which Arch Bevis was also an official before entering parliament. The union is not affiliated with the ALP, but is said to wield influence in the Labor Unity faction. McNamara has been twice unsuccessful as candidate for Peter Dutton’s northern Brisbane seat of Dickson, falling short by 0.1% in 2007 and 5.1% in 2010.

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.

2,333 comments on “Seat of the week: Brisbane”

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  1. Dan Gulberry@146


    vic

    I believe The chaser guys were charged and had to go to Court


    The charges were quashed as it was highly unlikely they could find 12 people (jurors) who would return a “guilty” verdict. Especially Sydneysiders who had to live through the “police state” security setup for the event. Virtually everyone thought the “stunt” was the perfect response.

    To prove my point, no-one remembers what was actually discussed at the conference, but EVERYONE remembers the stunt.

    Brilliant summary of it. 😆
    It would have been hilarious to listen to the jury room discussions if it had ever got to a jury. 😆

  3. “@latikambourke: Comms Minister Stephen Conroy ‘decision about whether to investigate the call for possible breaches .. is one for the..regulator.’ #2DayFM”

  5. Pegasus@150


    Though, i must add that i do not ‘do’ pranks, nor particularly find them funny.

    Perhaps, that’s because i am a “humourless Greens”, eh, Confessions?

    I used to buy into the “humourless Greens” meme, but Fran has been coming out a bit lately and shattering it. 😉

    I have always seen confessions as the humourless one, although she is unintentionally hilarious.

    I agree pretty much with Son of foro @ 132 too.

  8. Jackol@88


    Gigi, HaveAchat and others – what are you suggesting, that prank calls should be banned or self censored or prevented in some way on the off chance the recipient might not be in a healthy mental state?

    This is a tragic situation, but life throws all kinds of nonsense at all of us – suicide is not the foreseeable choice. Someone answering a phone for an institution needs to be able to deal with scammers, frauds, kooks of all kinds including those of the radio host persuasion – it’s part of life.

    The fact that this particular individual couldn’t cope with the situation is more about the support networks available to her and whether she should have had the responsibility to take phone calls in that situation.

    So you believe it is perfectly okay for these people to abuse another persons dignity, cause that person to be held up as laughing stock all for their ‘little prank’. This was a woman, a human being and they used her as part of their joke with little care for her feelings or what may happen to her in her job, her personal life or anything.

    They were callous in their disregard for her or any of the people involved, their use of other people as jokes has to stop.

    How many lives do you think that we should let the media destroy so that they can get a few chuckles from their mindless audience as they drive to work. How many lives should society let be sacrificed so that the shareholders of these media organisations can make profits.

    Where is the line that tells them that we are sick and tired of them pontificating to us while they are belittling fellow human beings supposedly for our entertainment.

  9. [“Blagging addresses, phone bills, bank statements and health records has been illegal since 1994.” ~BBC News

    Destroy the Context ‏@SpaceKidette

    “Knowingly or recklessly obtaining or disclosing personal data or info without the consent of the data controller,” Data Protection Act 1998 ]

  11. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/cash-may-gag-council-vote-20121207-2b1ce.html
    [MELBOURNE City Council could be denied a say on key building projects, with a majority of councillors unable to vote because of developer donations that bankrolled their election campaigns.

    Major city developers, including high-rise apartment pioneer Central Equity, donated to the campaigns of more than half the candidates now on the council.

    Monash University governance expert (and former Labor MP), Ken Coghill, said the council quandary highlighted the problem of politicians at all levels being reliant on corporate money.

    He said it was an embarrassing paradox that the council could not do the job it was elected to do because of its dependence on developer dollars.
    ”There has to be an absolute ban on corporate donations to political candidates and their parties, it is as simple and straightforward as that.”]

    Large corporate donations to political parties erode democratic processes.

  18. bemused
    [I have always seen confessions as the humourless one, although she is unintentionally hilarious.]

    😆 Not 2 encourage u 😉 i totally agree with your observation.

  19. Interesting finding from a recent annual youth survey:

    [More than 15,000 Australians aged 15-19 participated in this year’s survey. To gauge the significance of the sample, that’s about seven times the number of respondents to the largest political poll conducted for media organisations, and 14 times the size of polls that can – and have – sunk prime ministers.

    Most of those in the youth survey, of course, are not yet voters, and the vast majority are still at school. But they soon will be taking their views to the nation’s polling booths, and their attitudes are worth noting for all sorts of sensible reasons.

    Many of the matters explored within the survey showed a continuity of attitudes over the years. As in previous surveys, friendships and family relationships ranked as the two most important values in young people’s personal lives, at 83.2 per cent and 82 per cent respectively.

    But where things got interesting was when respondents were asked to list the most important issues facing Australia today.

    In the past few years, the environment had come in at number one, no contest.

    This year, however, the environment was relegated to number five.

    Top of the pops among the 15 to 19-year-old group was ”the economy and financial matters”. Population issues came in at number two, followed by alcohol and drugs, followed by ”politics and societal values”.

    Australia’s young, in short, are craving economic and financial security and appear to be increasingly conservative. The finding melded with several other findings within the extensive survey.]

    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/wind-change-forecast-by-tomorrows-voters-20121207-2b12i.html#ixzz2EPiL94BO

  20. Puff, my internet connection is dropping in and out at the moment, the line has been playing up of late and is particularly bad this morning. So if I don’t respond quickly it is not because I am ignoring you 🙂

    Worth trying a simple quit and restart of Firefox.

  21. From Mike Carlton:
    [John Faulkner’s latest call for root and branch reform of the ALP makes sound good sense, as he always does, but it will wither and die in the factional wilderness. Only the nuclear option from the Independent Commission Against Corruption will bring the party to its wits, probably around next winter.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/exit-westwards-from-sorry-mess-20121207-2b0qh.html#ixzz2EPhy4hJB ]

    Spot the problem with that?

    Only a couple of months out from an election.

    The ALP needs to move NOW while there is still time and not be seen to have left it to ICAC.

  25. PMJG was on the Rachel Maddow show yesterday. The Apocalypse speech. Ezra Klein fill in host used to lead up to Fiscal Cliff discussion.
    You could tell there was admiration aplenty from the Maddow Show people.

  26. George Monbiot:
    http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/wanted-a-new-politics-to-save-planet-earth-20121207-2b17l.html
    [In other words, the struggle against climate change – and all the crises that now beset both human beings and the natural world – cannot be won without a wider political fight: a democratic mobilisation against plutocracy. This should start with an effort to reform election campaign finance – the means by which corporations and the very rich buy policies and politicians.

    But this is scarcely a beginning. We must start to articulate a new politics, one that sees intervention as legitimate, that contains a higher purpose than corporate emancipation disguised as market freedom, that puts the survival of people and the living world above the survival of a few favoured industries. In other words, a politics that belongs to us, not just the super-rich.]

  33. Puff, what worked for my mac was:

    Chrome
    tampermonkey
    cccp

    But install cccp into tampermonkey, not native in chrome, chrome spits the dummy if you do that.

    tampermonkey is specifically designed to work with chrome.

  34. HaveAChat –

    So you believe it is perfectly okay for these people to abuse another persons dignity, cause that person to be held up as laughing stock all for their ‘little prank’.

    I’ve said I don’t think these pranks are funny, and I think the world would be a better place without them.

    However, I’m also sick of the outrage machine. I think it’s fine to accuse the radio hosts of being unfunny, offensive, insensitive, etc. It’s not ok to accuse them of being responsible for the death of this person.

    I’m not an absolute freedom-of-speecher, but humour throughout human history has frequently had an unpleasant edge to it. Always. Just because you and I don’t find this kind of thing funny doesn’t give us the right to prohibit it when there is rarely any harm done. List those things (“abusing dignity” “held up as a laughing stock” “hurt feelings”) and you’ll find that much humour depends on these things.

    There is a long tradition of “prank pulling” in all societies, and there’s probably a good reason for that. Why is April Fools’ day an institution? My theory is that it’s a deliberate way to exercise peoples’ minds in ways of being skeptical about what is put in front of them. Radio pranks are presumably funny because the listener is in on the hoax, but they are lessons in avoiding gullibility.

    Outlawing pranks is not the way to go. Express your outrage, but don’t expect everyone to join in.

  36. “@latikambourke: ‘The ACMA does not propose to make any comments at this stage, but will be engaging with the licensee.’ #2DayFM #RoyalPrank”

  37. I haven’t said prank calls should be banned but if you upset enough people, bad things will happen.

    The suicide is the tip of the iceberg with damage the media causes due not giving a shit about the effect of their actions on people.

    I agree with philmour. Famous institutions HATE bad publicity. They may have supported the nurse but she would still have felt crushed.

    You wouldn’t believe the number of people who end up seriously mentally unwell after the media gets at them. Not everyone is a Gillard or Abbott who can take that kind of attention.

  39. [ Peter Brent ‏@mumbletwits
    Like blaming Carmen Lawrence for Penny Easton’s suicide. Shows no understanding of depression & roads to suicide. ]

  40. thank you again for kind words this morning.

    this happening in london made me remember
    how i hate jokes,

    i ask my fiance then, to hide our v w , as i could not stand things being tied on it cans and like and just married and all that rot, as he is a car buff he quickly agreed we locked in a friends garage and he and his wife bought it safely around to our hotel the next morning
    i have always hated jokes,

  41. “@LucyBattersby: Given Today FM is already on special behavior bonds, it will be very interesting to see how the ACMA assesses the prank call.”

    @LucyBattersby: Re last tweet: here are the special license conditions imposed on 2Day FM in March http://t.co/Szr8ro1z

  42. From a reporter in the business section at The Age and SMH.
    [Lucy Battersby ‏@LucyBattersby
    Given Today FM is already on special behavior bonds, it will be very interesting to see how the ACMA assesses the prank call.
    11:37 AM – 8 Dec 12

    Lucy Battersby ‏@LucyBattersby
    Re last tweet: here are the special license conditions imposed on 2Day FM in March http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_410318 …
    11:40 AM – 8 Dec 12]

  43. Diog

    Never had to reprimand a nurse or orderly for inappropriate professional practice? The consequences are always going to be (potentially) fraught, because true professionals are overly conscientious, and take lapses to heart.

    In this case, the second the nurse/receptionist put the call through, the damage was done. Even if the DJs had hung up at that point, she would have been facing a reprimand.

    The DJs did not expect their call to get past reception – which was a reasonable expectation.

  45. Bushfire Bill @ 57:

    [ Then again, the radio jocks aren’t “journalists”, I assume. ]

    Journalists, columnists, shock-jocks and TV “news-presenters” have each had crises of self-definition since the old Australian Journalists’ Association was amalgamated with Actors’ Equity to form the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, their current industrial representative.

    Now, news reporters feel they have a licence to entertain, and mouths for hire feel their facile political discourse should be taken seriously.

    As a member of the final generation of news reporters trained in the old cadetship system, under the aegis of the AJA, I date the decline in standards of news reporting to that union amalgamation, and to the introduction of tertiary degrees in journalism. Once it became a profession, rather than a craft, the writer’s opinions and interpretations became more important than the mere facts of any story.

  47. z

    This wasn’t a reprimand. This was a prank but the media for ratings. It served no other purpose.

    The damage wasn’t done when the call was put through. If they hung up, there would have been no international prank call and no confidential information about the patients condition would have been given out.

  49. Orson Welles did a famous broadcast in the ’50s, based on H.G. Wells ‘War of the Worlds’ which caused mass panic —

    http://www.transparencynow.com/welles.htm

    Was that a ‘stunt gone wrong’ or – as it’s usually portrayed – a brilliant bit of theatre?

    If someone had died in the panic, should Orson Welles have been charged with murder?

    I’m not equating the DJs concerned with OW (I certainly am with The Chaser) but pointing out that one person’s senseless prank is another’s timeless theatrical event.

  50. puff every time the baby got sick this year so have i
    he gets so many colds, they say heart babies are like that.
    this morning the sore throat and the aches started.
    i baby sat. george’s cold again. so who have to who i font know,

    at the audiologist last week we where discussing this i have known the recepist for years, she told me that her husband was similar, he was laking in magnesium
    since he took magnesium has never had a cold.
    so i am going to investigate, last Christmas i was unwell
    and tomorrow my knitting group have their Christmas event at a lovely restaurant.
    as they understand my hearing difficulties i really want tog
    so lots of Tasmanian black currant juice this morning,

    i think cross my fingers and toes, he may not be as bad as i thought,

    jt horrible being unwell this time of year, so much to
    and in the heat its worse take care as my aunt ended up in hospital this week with a chest infection.

    but i never take additives like vitimins ect unless i discuss them with my gp

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