The western Sydney electorate of Greenway delivered the government a crucial win at the 2010 election, prompting much soul-searching from a Liberal Party which had been tardy in preselecting candidates in this and other key New South Wales seats. Greenway now stands as Labor’s most vulnerable seat ahead of an anticipated tidal wave in suburban Sydney.
The current boundaries of Greenway extend northwards from Blacktown and Toongabbie, about 30 kilometres west of the central business district, through Lalor Park and Kings Langley to Kellyville Ridge and Riverstone. The seat was substantially redrawn at successive redistributions before the 2007 and 2010 elections, of which the first increased the Liberal margin from 0.6% to 11.0% and the second created a Labor margin of 5.8%, boosted by a 6.5% swing to Labor at the intervening election. The more recent redistribution largely reversed the effects of the former, restoring the suburbs south of the M7 which had been accommodated in the interim by Parramatta and Chifley. The scale of the changes was such that the redrawn Greenway had more voters from Parramatta than the electorate as previously constituted. To Macquarie it lost the areas of Hawkesbury which had temporarily given it a semi-rural rather than outer suburban character.
Greenway was created in 1984 and held for Labor by margins at or near the double-digit range until 1996, when inaugural member Russell Gorman was succeeded by Frank Mossfield. Mossfield retired after a low-profile parliamentary career in 2004, after suffering a 6.5% swing that reduced his seat to the marginal zone in 2001. He was succeeded as Labor candidate by Ed Husic, spokesman for Integral Energy and a non-practising Muslim of Bosnian background. The Liberals were perhaps more astute in nominating Louise Markus, a community worker with Hillsong Church, then located in the electorate. Amid muttering of a whispering campaign targeting Husic’s religion, Markus secured a narrow victory with a 3.7% swing, aided in part by an 11.8% informal vote fuelled by a bloated field of candidates and the electorate’s large proportion of non-English speaking voters. This delayed Husic’s entry to parliament until 2010, when he won the outer western suburbs seat of Chifley.
The buffer added by the subsequent redistribution allowed Markus to comfortably survive the 2007 swing, and its effective reversal at the 2010 election had her seeking refuge in marginal Macquarie, which had absorbed the electorate’s outskirts areas. In what at first seemed a secure new seat for the party, Labor endorsed Michelle Rowland, a former Blacktown councillor. Rowland was said to have been “courted” by the party, and was imposed as candidate by the national executive with the backing of the Right. This met with displeasure among local party branches, as such interventions usually do, with critics said to have included Frank Mossfield. Rowland went on to survive a 4.8% swing at the election to retain the seat by 0.9%.
A Liberal preselection ballot held last weekend was won by Jaymes Diaz, a Blacktown immigration lawyer of Filipino extraction, who was also the party’s candidate in 2010. Diaz is associated with the Christian Right faction of state upper house MP David Clarke, and is said to have forged strong local connections through his work as a Blacktown immigration lawyer. It was reported in early 2012 that the party planned to choose the candidate from a US-style primary in a “calculated bid” to freeze out Diaz, with Tony Abbott said to favour a different candidate (there was a disputed suggestion he had approached former rugby league player Matt Adamson).
In the event the matter determined through a normal local party ballot, the result of which confirmed his strength in the local party. Sixty-nine votes were recorded for Diaz against 27 for Brett Murray, a motivational speaker and anti-bullying campaigner associated with the “soft Right” faction of Mitchell MP Alex Hawke, and a solitary vote for accountant Mark Jackson. Other high-profile contenders were former Rose Tattoo singer Gary “Angry” Anderson and Hills councillor Yvonne Keane, both of whom withdrew when it became clear Diaz had the numbers. Padding out the original field of nominees were business coach Robert Borg, gym owner Rowan Dickens, senior financial analyst Mathew Marasigan, marketing manager Ben Jackson, Hills councillor Mark Owen Taylor, security supervisor Renata Lusica and, curiously, Josephina Diaz, mother of Jaymes.
[ So what is exactly taught in journalism ]
my say,
An excellent question. I suspect the short answer is: nothing much.
Andrew
Yes
Agreed.
This is what the blogg needs not old fashioned
People living in the pastbravo
And would sen. conroy bring on important. leg. If any thing was brewing
No. That’s another thing they don’t want
They really should vote liberal
With the ghost of the old lib party
Socrates. Alarmed??
Sheesh. I accept the argument, I think it was maybe Zoomster, sorry if in error of attribution, that Obeid was a person intent on entering the political arena solely for personal gain, but Maitland?
[I fear I too may be suffering. ‘Vibro Acoustic Disease and Visceral Vibratory Vestibular Disturbance’.]
CrikeyWhity Don’t fear. It sounds loverley – I want some please 🙂
Punt, more likely.
Good writing by Tony Wright IMO. Also explains exact details of the spill that never was.
Perhaps it’s the Libs on the edge of their seats, not Labor.
[When some excitable soul, identification unknown but likely from the Coalition, saw the ambassador’s security detail milling outside McClelland’s office, he or she mistook the bodyguards for Gillard’s protectors.
A mighty leap of logic was made:]
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/virtual-world-all-sound-and-fury-no-substance-20130315-2g5zd.html#ixzz2NeIUU6eX
BK
[
Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
How will this argument stand the Coalition/MSM test – after all it is n=based on facts and scientific analysis?]
The Danes did a study a few years back and made an amazing discovery about “Wind turbine sickness”. Money offers immunity. Those who fell ill were the neighbours of those being paid to have turbines on their land.
BH. Damn Poroti. Still, an ill wind!
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/mps-tap-dance-but-gillard-stands-firm/story-e6frezz0-1226598479033
LaurieOakes
It looks like the “Labor insiders” who told Bob Gosford yesterday that PM Gillard was gone, didn’t talk to any of the Fairfax/Murdoch/ABC commentators!
Soc
Bringer of gloom
And doom
Think about it when. Was. Your, last. Positive post
I don recall one
Crikey
The first rule of good administration is to ensure that the checks and balances apply to everyone, no matter how good their reputation. For example in the (well administered) PS department I worked in nobody could sign off on their own expenses, no matter how small. All were checked by somebody else, even the DG.
Maitland is reported to have made ten million $ from a share deal that was supposed to fund a union training mine, that never happened.
From Mr Denmore on previous thread:
“Mr Denmore
Posted Saturday, March 16, 2013 at 9:02 am | PERMALINK
The !surplus’ is a political obsession. It has no resonance outside of Canberra horse race commentary
circles or the shrill inward looking, economically ignorant partisans on blogs such as this.”
My say
Earlier this week I posted several. I also lambasted the Victorian Liberal government as well.
Socrates –
I think there’s some jumping-to-conclusions going on here. From that ABC article there’s no suggestion that Maitland used CFMEU monies for his initial investment (only $200k which it is quite conceivable he financed himself).
So, in that sense the CFMEU doesn’t really have anything to do with it and certainly wasn’t in a position to have known or done anything.
The “training mine” concept had been pursued by Maitland as an official, but hadn’t gone anywhere until 2008 after Maitland had retired from the CFMEU in 2006.
Obviously there is a big question over McDonald’s granting of the mining licence and exploration licence, and whether any information was improperly disseminated from McDonald’s office to Maitland – which is presumably what ICAC are looking at – but apart from having been a leader in the CFMEU what are you suggesting went wrong at the CFMEU?
Mr Denmore
Quiet right.
And our national private debt shows that the vast majority of Aussies are quite comfortable living within a deficit realm, facilitated of course by their credit cards and the lenders who happily allowed them to commit to huge monthly mortgage payments.
On a much ore serious note, I don’t know if you’ve read last night’s discussions here, but it is an open secret in Cambra that when the leadership coup is executed early next Monday morning, the new PM Janette Saffon will commit Labor to having no surplus until 2037. She is going to make that a law, L-A-W.
I have several close friends in the PM’s office who have leaked this to me.
It s
Like little green bottles
That’s what junos remind me of
citizen
Agreed. The Labor sources obviously have not spoken to the msm, otherwise they would be reporting the same thing surely
Socrates. I too was a public servant.
Petty Cash? Maybe still applies in the PS.
Sure as hell does not apply for politicians.
Little wonder but no excuse for Union bods.
Good to take an international perspective sometimes, instead of imagining that Australia is unique.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/15/greenland-government-oil-mining-resources?CMP=twt_fd
[London Mining, which has a former British foreign minister, Sir Nicholas Bonsor, on the board, has been at the centre of a row in the country after speculation it could bring in 2,000 Chinese workers to build one of the world’s biggest iron ore mines expressly to serve steel mills in Beijing.
The activities of Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy, which drilled for oil off Greenland’s south-west coast in 2011, had also polarised opinion between those who welcomed the potential for a hydrocarbon strike bringing huge economic wealth and those worried about spills.
The Siumut party in Greenland, led by Aleqa Hammond, has just won 42% of the vote, allowing it to form a coalition government in place of the current ruling party led by Kleist.
The election campaign was dominated by a debate over the activities of foreign investors and concerns among the 57,000 population that Greenland’s future could be dictated by the demands of potentially polluting new industries such as mining and oil rather than traditional Inuit trades of fishing and hunting.]
so b ack
To my question
What do teachers of. Junos
Teach
Pls. Lwilliam
Andrew@40
A very nice summary!
Jackal
You may be right; I don’t know. But even that is still not ok. Most organisations, public and private, have written rules in your contract of employment barring you from using information gained in your work for personal gain or to damage their reputation after you leave. They often specify periods of years after leaving when this applies. Have unions not heard of such things? Or are conditions of employment not their area of expertise?
In case were were unsure, PVO signals the OM’s utter determination to talk leadershit all the way to the election.
He misses the obvious point that he could stop writing the shit right now and end it now. But chooses not to .
Jackol
Sorry that was my autocorrect striking, not a swipe.
lizzie
We can be an insular lot here. Due to our geography no doubt
Andrew
It is a strategy that works to continue the destabilisation within the ALP. i have always maintained that a united Labor can win, a divided one, not so much.
Player One
“So it’s Ruddstoration! all the way to the next election! Yay!
The PB trilobites will be pleased!’
As a fearless predictor of Ruddstoration last week, you should be pleased too.
But you’re behind the game.
Saffonstration is where the government is going next week.
An unknown insider who I trust implicitly but can’t name, to protect his/her privacy and most vulnerable position, has assured me of this.
I am 100% confident it will happen. Trust me!
Have a pleasant day all.
My Say
Type aja journalist australia ethics
Plenty of meat there. None edible.
Socrates –
Ok.
You don’t know.
You don’t know whether such provisions were in place.
You don’t know whether such provisions would be appropriate for union officials.
More to the point, even if they were in place, or would be “world’s best practice” or whatever, all that does is say that Maitland allegedly did the wrong thing.
Sure – in the context of the ICAC inquiry, and what has come out with regards Obeid and McDonald, particularly with respect to mining and exploration licences it is quite possible that the alleged actions of Maitland mean he has done the wrong thing in cahoots with Obeid and McDonald.
That still doesn’t tell me that the CFMEU did anything wrong or could or should have done anything differently to head off the alleged wrongdoing.
Of course the CFMEU will be tainted by association with anything Obeid/McDonald related.
But you said:
Without pointing to anything that the CFMEU organisation has done or failed to do that they should have/should not have done.
Obeid/McDonald/ICAC is fertile ground for slinging mud at everyone with the most tenuous connection. I think it’s important not to jump to conclusions or start damning individuals or organisations only based on McCarthyist style beatups.
Lizzie. Good links, thanks.
Jackol
Point well made.
Press reform NOW !
[Phone hacking: Rupert Murdoch hit by 600 fresh claims
Suspect turned informant gives new evidence to Met before parliament vote on newspaper regulation.]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/mar/15/phone-hacking-murdoch-news-world
News Corp keeping crossing the line re : journalism and won’t have a bar of it. Refuse to buy their rags. Their death will come sooner than they think.
[‘the role of the fourth estate was to present the facts in an even-handed, unemotional way, with little colourful language so as not to lead my audience to be predisposed to a certain side of the story’]
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/news-of-labors-death-has-been-severely-exaggerated/
The 4th estate enjoys writing the easy stuff now that the editors and owners demand it. Even Tingle sounds very dispirited lately – probably as much with her own profession as she does with the political scene.
BK – I read your Tiser link re the Iraq War. How sickening that Howard is out and about protecting his reputation and part in it.
Nothing has been said in the Oz media about Bob Woodward’s comment (after the book he wrote on Bush and the war) that Howard had been quite instrumental in Bush deciding to go into Iraq. Apparently Howard told Bush in a phone call wtte ‘go for it’.
The kids gave me the Woodward book but it’s on my ‘to read’ list. Must do it.
Laura Tingle is the spouse of Alan Ramsay, I believe,
Must be dispiriting dinner table conversation.
Good morning. A miserable day here: windy, raining, but thankfully not cold.
William has serendipitously chosen Greenway for his seat of the week because I had an interesting text message last night from a friend in Canberra telling me that a leadership spill would be called on Tuesday, and on Wednesday Ms Rowland would nominate for the leadership and win on the back of the Anyone-But-Rudd vote.
The crap that the OM seems to be writing is why recently I gave up buying any newspaper. The only printed stuff I buy now is the “Inside Footy” – an AFL paper which only provides commentary and some opinion pieces on the AFL.
They don’t understand or perhaps understand but still don’t realise how the SM will be the main force.
confessions, stop spreading false rumours. Word has it that Michelle Grattan is being parachuted Newman-style into the Labor leadership. All the anti-Gillard stuff was just laying the ground for her takeover
Andrew:
I can assure you that my sauce is impeccable. 😛
The latest in a series of breaches and problems at Graylands.
[Highly sensitive information about mentally ill patients, including the names of dozens of asylum seekers, has been leaked from Graylands Hospital in a security breach that has also revealed a lack of beds.
The Weekend West has obtained internal documents from meetings of the hospital management team’s clinical group that reveal services struggling to cope, including a warning that beds for rehabilitation are being used to cope with an overflow of urgent patients.
It says this can lead to the “clinical deterioration” of patients, despite the hospital insisting this week that all acute and rehabilitation patients are provided with the care they need.]
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/16380290/secret-graylands-papers-leaked/
The latest rumour is that Gillard will stay on as Leader, take the Party to the election and win a famous victory.
abc giving a lot of coverage to Abbott again, over ten minutes on the radio on his wonderfully vague new thoughts on looking after the aborigines, have also kept the story on their front page for the last two days.
That it gets so much more prominence and coverage than government policies is right given it is the first detailed policy of the lnp however vague it is.
As for the two ministers, in PM&C and and indigenous affairs, Abbot will be looking after the true aborgigines whilst scullion will have responsiblity for the pretend urban ones, bolt will be an advisor to scullion
GG:
You obviously haven’t heard of the N word.
Andrew
As you will say, what you outlined, many of us have been saying for months and months.
I have been around long enough to see the conservatives 5-6 points behind in the polls just 2-3 weeks out and still get up.
Yet, the conventional wisdom, 6 months out with parliamentary sessions still to run, the Budget Session to come, let alone an an election campaign is something along the lines of the advice given to John Howard – Mr 18% – “Why does this woman bother?”.
Well, she bothers, apart from anything else, because many of us are not in the mood for the lay down misere hand the media – especially the Murdoch one, the host of this site – and it must be said by “friends of Labor” such as Mungo McCullum have handed down.
Labor should soon be in a fighting mood and dispel this attempted self-fulfilling stuff especially by the media and so called experts, which as some contributions here have shown, have been wrong so many times they should hang their heads in professional shame.
Just to show how quickly things change, several promises made by Colin Barnett are already broken because he will not have the money from the Feds to carry them out. The WA debt, already at $18 billion is likely to rise to $23 billion and the much vaunted AAA rating will go out of the window.
Traffic chaos to continue in Perth, further attempts will be made to widen freeways which will further compound the traffic problems here, the Poly Pipe is now was wide as it can be made with no room for safety,the extra few carriages for the trains have yet to arrive and schools in the inner suburbs over full.
Mind you a new football ground might just be finished by 2017 – though likely not to be on time and certainly not on budget, while chaos will continue round Betty’s Jetty with its high priced real estate and expensive coffee for the punters.
The Conservative Paradise here in the West is what awaits in spades with a Coalition government federally.
crikey whitey 87
Three odd couples having interesting conversations during their evening meals:
L Tingle and A Ramsay
C Whitlam and K Williams
G Brotmann and C Uhlmann
[I read your Tiser link re the Iraq War. How sickening that Howard is out and about protecting his reputation and part in it.]
Yet he stays silent on O’Farrell and guns, so much for his much vaunted so called brave stand against guns.
He refused to support gun control when a labor premier called for it and now he refuses to condemn gun prevalence now that a liberal premier is championing more guns.
Come on Bludgers – my poor old brain is trying to work out which rumour I’ve got to follow. Is it to be Saffin, Crean, Burke, Shorten, Combet, Carr, Mar’n, or Rowlands?
If’s I’m too spread
Meanwhile I love the photo of Abbott and Murdoch in this article.
http://thesnipertakesaim.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/the-most-important-vote-in-a-lifetime/
castle,
Abbott looking after Indigenous Affairs is just more white man paternalism. Apparently, he’s the only person that has their interests at heart and will solve their intractable problems by fiat.