The north-eastern Adelaide seat of Makin extends from Pooraka near the city to Tea Tree Gully and Greenwith at the limits of the metropolitan area. Labor is especially strong in the areas nearer the city, from Walkley Heights north to Salibsury East, beyond which are generally newer suburbs with more mortgage payers and families, who have helped keep the Liberals competitive or better for most of the seat’s history. The redistribution has added around 6000 voters from Port Adelaide in the west, including a newly developed Liberal-leaning area around the University of South Australia campus at Mawson Lakes along with strongly Labor Salisbury further north. The combined effect has been to shave the Labor margin from 12.2% to 11.8%.
Makin is one of three seats which went from being Liberal seats in the final term of the Howard government to Labor seats with double-digit margins after the 2010 election, together with Kingston in the south of the city and Wakefield in its outer north. It was created with the expansion of parliament in 1984 from an area that had mostly formed the southern end of safe Labor Bonython, the majority of which was in turn absorbed by Wakefield when it was abolished in 2004. Makin was held for Labor by uncomfortable margins from 1984 to 1996 by Peter Duncan, a former Attorney-General in Don Dunstan’s state government. A 4.8% swing put Duncan on the Keating government casualty list in 1996, and he returned to the headlines in 2007 after being charged with fraudulently obtaining government grants for his plastics recycling company.
Duncan’s Liberal successor was former nurse Trish Draper, who emerged as a prime ministerial favourite after strong performances at the next two elections. The swing against Draper at the 1998 election was just 0.2% compared with a statewide swing to Labor of 4.2%, and in 2001 she bettered her 1996 margin after picking up a swing of 3.0%. Draper went on to hit serious trouble in the lead-up to the 2004 election when it emerged she had taken a boyfriend on a study trip to Europe at taxpayers’ expense, in breach of rules limiting the benefit to spouses. She nonetheless survived by 0.9% at the 2004 election, despite suffering a swing which was not reflected in neighbouring seats. Draper retired at the 2007 election citing an illness in the family, before unsuccessfully attempting a comeback in the state seat of Newland at the March 2010 election.
Tony Zappia won Makin for Labor on his second attempt in 2007, and handsomely increased his margin to 12.2% in 2010. He had been the mayor of Salisbury since 1997, a councillor for many years beforehand, and at one time a weightlifting champion. Zappia was widely reckoned to have been victim of his own factional non-alignment when the Right’s Julie Woodman defeated him for preselection in 2001, and a repeat performance appeared on the cards when a factional deal ahead of the 2004 election reserved the seat for Dana Wortley of the “hard Left”. The arrangement displeased local branches as well as party hard-heads concerned that a crucial marginal seat should be contested by the most appealing candidate, and Premier Mike Rann prevailed upon Wortley’s backers to throw their weight behind Zappia.
The move appeared a dead end for Zappia in the short term, as he was unable to win the seat in 2004 whereas Wortley was elected from the Senate position she was offered as consolation. However, he performed considerably better with the electoral breeze at his back in 2007, demolishing the 0.9% Liberal margin with a swing of 8.6%. This was achieved in the face of a high-impact publicity campaign by Liberal candidate Bob Day, housing tycoon and national president of the Housing Industry Association who has since run for election with Family First.
The once non-aligned Zappia is now a member of the Left, and is believed to have backed Kevin Rudd during his February 2012 leadership challenge. His Liberal opponent is Sue Lawrie, who has variously run flower sales businesses and worked on the staff of various Liberal MPs. Lawrie has run several times at state level, most recently as an independent Liberal at the Port Adelaide by-election of February 2012.
[Lenore Taylor @lenoretaylor
Excited to be Guardian Australia’s new political editor. Leaving for new opportunities, not – as Oz claims – due to Fairfax management]
@AuSenate: Additional #estimates is now underway. Watch the live broadcast here http://t.co/mu0PvmG2
@AuSenate: Find all of today’s #estimates programs here http://t.co/HabHQY4z
Morning all.
What a shame the Guardian is employing existing press gallery journos instead of bringing in fresh eyes and a fresh perspective. There will be no change in how politics is framed in its reporting if they are just using the same deadwood who are already there.
confessions
You don’t think the editors have an effect?
confessions
Lenore Taylor is a good journo. katharine Murphy not so much
confessions
After Taylor’s performance at the Abbott NPC I am pleased she is political editor. Not afraid to hard on LNP. Will be balanced editor.
Good experience to supervise newbies. Good combination happening at Guardian in my view.
castle@1117
SIGH….
Yet another gratuitous slander of Kevin Rudd without a shred of evidence.
It really gets tedious and shows just how little substance some people have.
I love the way the media are characterizing Sportsgate as some kind of diversion put on by the government to deflect attention from its other “woes”.
These people have the attention span of a freshly hatched gnat.
Within 24 hours the whole deal was written off as a scam. Why?
No prosecutions, no “names” named, nothing specific.
Brought up watching Law & Order and those other stupid American TV shows where intractable cases are solved within 15 minutes (in one show by a psychic!… can vampire-detectives be far behind?) and expecting instant gratification as their right, they have decided that doping in sport doesn’t exist and there’s nothing to see here except Gillard “desperately” trying on a diversion effort.
The inanity of it is only exceeded in infmay by the solidarity of the groupthink.
Hartcher didn’t help the other day by including a pitch for Western Sydney into the mix via Jason Clare.
Surely the 24 hour media circus is close to reaching its nadir? It seems to be spiralling into circles of ever-decreasing radius and sure soon must begin the painful process of disappearing up its own bum.
What next? Will reporters expect bound and gagged footy players in orange jump suits doing the perp walk at press conferences, or else there’s no story?
Everyone’s supposed to be corrupt and in on the scam. The Minister for Justice, the Prime Minister, the Australian Crime Commission, the state police (well, maybe they’re right there, given the inordinate amount of attention being paid to the AWU case).
In their rush to settle things – so they can move onto the next gasping scandal – the media seem to have delivered their judgement before the ink is dry in the ACC’s report.
The same thing happened with Gonski and the NDIS. It wasn’t a day in either case before “journalists” had dismissed these ground breaking policies with the dreaded “Where’s the money coming from?” angle.
Reality TV strikes another blow. Unless crime investigation authorities can deliver names, dates, convictions and jail sentences all at the first presser, then the journos write year long investigations off as pap.
There is only one exception. The investigation into the AWU saga.
It’s taken 20 years for the cops to get around to interviewing witnesses and every day we hear breathless updates on old evidence that’s done the rounds countless times before (complete with full rehash of the story so far).
That’s one investigation they seem to WANT to string out. No instant convictions required. The longer AWU survives to feed headlines the better. Suddenly “long is good”.
I must say that taking on Big Sport is a hard ask for the ACC. They have deep pockets and even deeper vested interests – connections between drug suppliers, organized crime, gambling companies, grog pushers, urgers and lurk merchants of various hues – to protect… as well as their own sorry hides.
The only problem is that when it’s finally established that our footy codes are as crooked as a John Hopoate sidestep the fans might require some explaining from the relevant “authorities”, especially the punters who put a bet on the other side and did their dough.
I just think it’s an opportunity to get a fresh perspective. People are deserting the OM in droves because of the tired groupthink. I can’t see The Guardian offering anything different while the same groupthinkers are there. I will be happy to be proven wrong, however.
Excellent. Taylor is a top performer.
Meanwhile, Gomes sells out of Crikey…
Bushefire
[In their rush to settle things – so they can move onto the next gasping scandal – the media seem to have delivered their judgement before the ink is dry in the ACC’s report.
The same thing happened with Gonski and the NDIS. It wasn’t a day in either case before “journalists” had dismissed these ground breaking policies with the dreaded “Where’s the money coming from?” angle.]
How right you are.
It is editorial rather than journalists. Hopefully the guardian will not follow the same editorial agenda as the current MSM, which is either controlled by Sauron or in the case of ABC/SBS stacked by ex Liberal staffers by Howard.
Given the current journalist career path Limitations your either an employed journalist following the editorial line or an unemployed journalist attempting to sell your stories in hostile marketplace. The guardian has to differentiate from the current MSM, simply reporting the facts and putting editorial and opinion in it’s place would be a good start.
confessions
‘I will be happy to be proven wrong’
Excellent as well.
confessions
The questions Taylor put to Abbott were exactly some of the questions raised here. Her most notable being “when are you going to stop running away from press conferences, especially ones you have called?”
The Guardian’s first test it must pass is to thumb its nose at demands from the OO that it report its agenda. Currently the ABC and Fairfax refuse to do this, and so happily fall into line behind the OO, hence the groupthink and poor reporting.
BB
Yep. The Government is doping athletes, corrupting clubs and fixing matches in order to steal oxygen from all the policy discussion about Liberal policies as well as oxygen from all the in-depth interviews Abbott is doing.
Creative Writing 101.
What was the question that Taylor put to The Stuntman at the Press Club.
In the context of todays announcement it would be interesting to see it again.
jeffemu
Look for NPC on iView Abbot address. Last half hour
jeffemu
She asked about Brough/Slipper/Ashby and Abbott’s support of Brough.
‘You must have missed the meme, according to many in the msm including BOF, the drugs in sport is a political ploy by the govt to divert attention away from “its problems”’
Don’t these morons get it.
The ALP doesn’t do politics.
@vexnews: Collingwood implicated in AFL drugs saga, with Fairfax claims at least seven clubs, and as many as nine, involved http://t.co/b5S0ajPK
Katherine Murphy…
[What does a new dam in far north Queensland have to do with a traffic snarl in western Sydney? Nothing at all actually, despite some heroic connect-the-dots efforts by Labor ministers last week]
I’d regard myself as reasonably well informed and up to date with the news – but this ‘heroic effort’ on the part of Labor MPs passed me by.
Possibly, of course, these heroic efforts went unreported at the time….
[The first parliamentary week of the year spotlighted Labor pitching to an outer-urban ”frontier” – western Sydney, where it is in dire political trouble; and it revealed the Coalition’s early thinking about how to court Katter country.]
Alternatively, of course, it shows the Coalition’s thinking about how to court Gina Rinehart, but her poetic efforts (heroic as they were) don’t seem to rate a mention.
[Helpful to Labor because it could renew its efforts to portray Tony Abbott as a wild-eyed whack job – a man of uncosted retro thought-bubbles, unconstitutional tax regimes and forced public service relocations from Penrith to Karratha]
Thanks, but Labor doesn’t need any help with that.
Er, Katharine, no comment at all from you about why anyone would include in any policy – however much a draft or discussion document – something that was unconstitutional?
Surely even a draft/discussion paper/something the office boy thought up and fired off to Premier’s without anyone knowing what he was doing — should exclude impossibilities?
If Labor put out a similar document, suggesting a policy option dependant on breaking the speed of light, would you excuse that on the basis that it was only a draft?
[Gags about the ghost of Joh Bjelke-Petersen wafting around miss the point that this isn’t actually nostalgia – this is present thinking from elements of the mining industry and the once tinder-dry champion of free markets, the Institute of Public Affairs; and, politically at least, a response to the Katter effect of 2013.]
The mining industry. These are guys that think Titanic II is a forward thinking idea whose time has come.
And the IPA? Seriously?
[If his movement can raise the requisite cash and not implode, it’s at least a possibility.]
And how’s Katter’s party going so far, Katherine?
Not saying it won’t get a Senate spot, because stranger things have (alas) happened, but you’d think the difficulties Katter’s having holding it together so far rates some kind of mention, even in passing…
[Voters need to be able to consider Katter’s world view and what it might mean if he’s in a position to influence policy-making directly through parliamentary horse-trading.]
Well, do they?
According to Murphy, his base is far North Queenslanders. It’s out of the hands of mainstream voters whether he gets up or not. We could all spend our time angsting about the possibilities if a mad Katterite gets balance of power in the Senate, but we have as much control over whether or not that happens as we have over whether or not a meteorite hits the earth.
So, unless one likes contemplating doomsday scenarios just for the heck of it, for the average voter it’s suck it and see.
There’s an awful lot of ‘ifs’ to be ticked off before it’s reality.
[His indirect influence is already evident. Given the on-the-ground appeal of Katter’s new-fashioned developmentalism, it will embolden the Nationals to dream big. It will prompt a lot of enthusiastic talk by folks like Queensland senator Barnaby Joyce about building dams in Queensland.]
Ah, so Barnaby and his ilk have only been coming up with batshit crazy ideas like this since Katter formed his party.
My memory must be very faulty….
[Frontier dreaming is popular – a recurrent strain in our history and the history of countries where new inhabitants have occupied territory and set up thriving outposts of civilisation.]
Five seconds ago, Murphy was telling us this was a way out of field idea that had only been resurrected because of Katter….
[But just how big and activist government gets is always a matter of contention within the Coalition between economic dries and those who would be pure, but not yet. An outbreak of Barnabyism always makes for a bit of tetchiness – and someone was troubled enough by that northern Australia policy draft to leak it. Not a great sign.]
Indeed not. And – to channel BB a bit here – surely that’s what this column should be about….
[But Katter isn’t only a problem for the Coalition. He’s also a problem for Labor in a state where the party is counting on a political recovery of sorts.
Katter is nipping at the heels of Labor’s blue-collar base. It’s perhaps not widely understood that he is strongly pro-union.]
Right. So he might bleed votes from Labor which will come back as preferences. Not ideal, but not a body blow, either.
Does Murphy consider the alternative? That Katter types, who would normally vote Coaltion, might vote Katter first and then cheerfully follow a preference card which sends their vote to Labor?
(It’s a rhetorical question – you can guess the answer…)
[(Katter) is busy telling his constituency it is Labor that’s letting them in to take their jobs on lower wages and conditions just to please billionaires like Gina Rinehart.]
Whereas Liberals talking about letting more workers in on 457 visas IF they commit to working in the Far North won’t upset them at all…
[”Keep the cheap foreigners out” is not only a pleasing political message for the ”new working class” – Katter’s term for his voters, the blokes who once would have inherited the family farm but, given it has more-then-likely gone to the wall, now work down the mines. It’s also a fairly unsubtle pitch for union donations.]
See how she mentions the Libs’ 457 visa stuff, and how it connects with this? Nup, neither did I.
[Unions have donated to Katter before. When I visited Charters Towers just before Christmas for a chat about the political year, he showed me a hard hat in the shape of a stetson that Dean Mighell of the Electrical Trades Union bought for him in Texas.]
Wow. The unions gave him a hard hat. Talk about a cheap lay…
[And when it comes to labour market regulation, Katter is more or less on the same page as the Greens on some policies, which could make life interesting for either a newly elected prime minister Tony Abbott – or a re-elected Julia Gillard.]
Well, it could. It hasn’t so far, where Katter sits on the cross benches in a Parliament where every vote counts, but apparently if he has a SENATOR sitting on the cross benches where every vote counts, woohoo, look out….
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/katters-world-causing-cluster-headaches–20130210-2e6g5.html#ixzz2KXJdQaV6
The elephant in the sports corruption room is the journalists’ complete failure to declare a conflict of interest.
Every single MSM outlet has skin in the sports game.
Taking due note of RoL’s comment which is designed to distract from another uncomfortable Liberal Party reality, not a single journalist has pointed out that the sports corruption is a primarily matter for state governments: Baillieu, O’Farrell and Newman. Yet another FAIL missed by the same journalists whose financial masters have money in the game.
‘Yep. The Government is doping athletes, corrupting clubs and fixing matches in order to steal oxygen from all the policy discussion about Liberal policies as well as oxygen from all the in-depth interviews Abbott is doing.’
Another great bit of PB sarcasm which someone from the government could flog at a doorstop but probably won’t because they wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
PS.
Anyone from the ALP reading this. Can you get one of your better media performers to start delivering this sort of killer put down when they’re in front of a microphone please.
Careful though, you might end up winning.
@sspencer_63: Tipping point for print media? 3 of the best and most senior Gallery print journos leave for online in one week.
Personally I do not include Grattan in that
[Stephen Spencer @sspencer_63
Tipping point for print media? 3 of the best and most senior Gallery print journos leave for online in one week.]
I certainly wouldn’t rate them the best. But they’ve all gone from Fairfax. Surely that’s notable.
[The elephant in the sports corruption room is the journalists’ complete failure to declare a conflict of interest.
Every single MSM outlet has skin in the sports game.]
That is an excellent point.
So, would an on-line Australian version of the Guardian compete directly with Crikey…
rol
We have had only one crackpot policy leaked by an internal enemy of Abbott. Abbott himself spends all his time hiding from scrutiny.
What are you guys so terrified of? The truth about Abbott? The truth about your policies? Trying to sneak into government by the back door, are we?
Guardian will offer better and fairer reportage than Fairfax/NewsLtd. It has got a very good & profitable international online model…
…It will strongly support the NBN
So, weather-related premiums will once again rise faster than the rate of inflation. Wonderful stuff, AGW. It may work in some mysterious ways as the pseudo-sceptics constantly point out, but there is a rule-of-thumb about where the mysterious ways end – in our hip pockets:
http://www.news.com.au/business/breaking-news/iag-takes-claims-of-up-175m/story-e6frfkur-1226575103838
Peter Anderson of ACC is on about too much regulation of Labor market.
Expect LNP to promote this to the hilt.
Perthians might like to speculate about whether there is any sort of link between sea surface temperatures up to four degrees above normal and their run of forties:
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/ocean/sst/anomaly/index.html
[markjs
Posted Monday, February 11, 2013 at 9:36 am | PERMALINK
Guardian will offer better and fairer reportage than Fairfax/NewsLtd. It has got a very good & profitable international online model…
…It will strongly support the NBN]
Agree, is there a link up at all with the Global Mail?
guytaur
Was he specific about exactly which regulations he wants to remove from the labour market?
It is when the rubber hits the road that the true colours of these chappies comes out.
bw
he is still on. Business programme ABC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian
Most interesting The Guardian, had a long discussion with David Donovan of IA, who was closely aligned with it while in UK
There is an article in today’s The Australian on ant species disappearing from the Karri forests as a result of the long-term drying trend in the South-west.
The ants have a role in seed dispersal, soil conditioning and nutrient recycling.
No-one knows all the complexities of the long term impact on the forest of ant species loss.
But the foresters are noticing that the forest quality is declining and that the forests are recovering more slowly from stochastic events.
bw
Its the usual stuff. I was not paying too much attention myself. Just enough to know its same old argument
BW
[So, would an on-line Australian version of the Guardian compete directly with Crikey…]
Yes, I can reveal that Williams absence last night was due to a high level meeting between him and The Guardian. He’s being headhunted. 😉
I believe it was Laura Tingle who asked the question about Abbott bolting from pressers at the NPC.
Thanks for the answers to my questions folks
[There is an article in today’s The Australian on ant species disappearing from the Karri forests as a result of the long-term drying trend in the South-west.]
I’ve also noticed an increasing number of kookaburras in the time I’ve lived here. Where once I used to get plenty of small birds (wrens etc), and heaps of frogs, now it’s rare to see smaller birds, and you no longer hear frogs at night.
g
Ta. I might just give it a miss…
Here are some things that big money never talks about when it talks about improving productivity:
(1) companies reinvesting more in training
(2) the productivity costs of complete or partial monopolies
(3) the productivity costs of having a system of board recruitment that is non-transparent, opaque, puts the same old snouts in the troughs and excludes 99.9% of the population
(4) the productivity costs of linking CEO remuneration bonuses to annual outcomes rather than to decadal outcomes.
(5) the productivity costs of insider trading and the multifarious other ways in which the finance industry spivs go about separating the woodies from their hard-earned.
Henry
Ah my mistake. Thats memory for you. I was remembering Tingle asking about Ashby/Brough.
confessions
If you don’t mind, whereabouts do you live, roughly speaking?
The reality of life under Liberal governments:
[Almost one-third of the homes where State-owned electricity retailer Synergy cut the power last year were those of struggling families and the elderly, figures show.
In its latest report into the performance of energy retailers, WA’s economic regulator found there had been an increase in the percentage of Synergy customers with a concession card being disconnected.
Those with the cards are often among the State’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged people, including pensioners, low-income families, single parents and the disabled.
The Economic Regulation Authority noted 30.7 per cent of the 7723 customers disconnected last year had concession cards – up from 28.7 per cent of the 7631 whose power was cut in 2011.]
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/16104930/more-battlers-power-cut-off/
It would be great if Megalogenis and Tingle also headed to the Guardian.
“@Simon_Cullen: ABC’s @abcmarkscott tells Senators the ABC will take a “common sense” approach to election coverage (1/2)”
ABC24 yesterday morning – Miriam Corowa: WTTE ‘John Key took time out from politics and took the chance to promote Queenstown in the summer as a tourist destination’. (Video in the background showing Keys mouth moving.)
What did Key say?
We don’t know because they didn’t actually play it.
Obviously the ABC saw through this sneaky attempt to get them to run an ‘ad’.
‘Ha, ha, John Key, you’re a naughty boy – we’re smarter than that!’.
What wa^kery.