UPDATE (8/4/2013): Essential Research has Labor up a point to 32%, the Coalition steady on 49% and the Greens down two to 9%, with two-party preferred steady on 56-44. Perceptions of the economy have improved (good up 10 points since a year ago to 45% and poor down three to 26%). Those who answered good or poor were respectively asked why the government wasn’t popular, and what it was that made them think that given low unemployment and inflation. Strong support was also found for taxing superannuation earnings and contributions of high-income earners, at 55% compared with 35% opposed.
Known prior to the 2010 election as Prospect, the western Sydney electorate of McMahon covers two distinct suburban areas separated by Prospect Reservoir and semi-rural areas immediately to the west. Closer to the city are the suburbs of Greystanes and Fairfield approximately 30 kilometres from the CBD, together with Bossley Park and the Wetherill Park industrial area immediately to the west. These areas collectively account for about 80% of the electorate’s population. In the north-west of the electorate are the City of Penrith suburbs of St Clair and Erskine Park. There is a wide variability in ethnic diversity among the electorate’s suburbs, with English speakers accounting for over three-quarters of the population in St Clair and Erskine Park compared with barely a fifth in and around Fairfield, home to large Arabic and Vietnamese populations. This is broadly reflected in income levels, with family income in the former areas roughly double those of the latter.
Prospect was created at the 1969 election, at which time it covered Liverpool some distance to the south. It was drawn closer to the city with the expansion of parliament in 1984, which saw Liverpool accommodated by the new seat of Fowler. Labor has held the seat at all times, but a weakening trend has been evident since a 5.8% swing in 2004 reduced the margin to 7.1%. This was doubled by the swing to Labor in 2007, but a 6.0% swing in 2010 brought it back down to 7.8%. The area covered by the electorate turned from red to blue in the 2011 state election landslide, the only holdout being Fairfield (the majority of which is in McMahon’s eastern neighbour Blaxland) where the margin was reduced from 20.4% to 1.7%. The swings in Mulgoa, which covers St Clair and Erskine Park, and Smithfield, including Bossley Park and surrounding suburbs, were over 20%.
Prospect/McMahon has been held since 2004 by Chris Bowen, the previous members having been Richard Klugman until 1990 and Janice Crosio thereafter. A member of the New South Wales Right, Bowen served his political apprenticeship as chief-of-staff to state government minister Carl Scully. He was promoted to the front bench in 2006, and on the election of the Rudd government became Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs. His elevation to cabinet came when he filled the vacancy created by the resignation of factional colleague Joel Fitzgibbon in June 2009. He at first assumed the human services, financial services, superannuation and corporate law portfolios, before being delivered the hospital pass of immigration and citizenship after the 2010 election.
Chris Bowen emerged during the current term as one of the principal agitators for Kevin Rudd to return to the leadership, and he was discussed as a possible contender for Treasury and/or the deputy leadership if Rudd’s challenge in February 2012 had succeeded. He emerged unscathed from the reshuffle that followed, and was reassigned to Chris Evans’ portfolios of tertiary education, skills, science and research when Evans bowed out in February 2013. After the collapse of a second bid to draft Kevin Rudd the following month, Bowen forestalled imminent dismissal by joining fellow Rudd backers Martin Ferguson and Kim Carr in an exodus from cabinet.
The preselected Liberal candidate is Ray King, police superintendent for the Liverpool area who served in the same capacity in Fairfield from 2005 to 2008. Fairfield councillor Frank Oliveri had initially been considered the front-runner, but he withdrew amid an Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry into non-disclosure of election fundraising ahead of the 2007 election. Other contenders for the preselection were Casula real estate agent Joe Romeo and the candidate from 2010, Iraqi immigrant and Fairfield grocery store owner Jamal Elishe.
A ReachTEL automated phone poll of 630 respondents in the electorate, conducted in early March to coincide with five days of campaigning in western Sydney by the Prime Minister, found Bowen to be heading for a heavy defeat with 31.8% of the primary vote against 52.5% for the Liberal Party, panning out to a 62-38 Liberal lead after preferences. A further question on how respondents would vote if Kevin Rudd was leading the Labor Party had the Liberal lead at 53-47.
[KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN
Posted Saturday, April 6, 2013 at 10:03 am | PERMALINK
Zoomster – that’s hysterical. The plotters basically claim they had to knife Rudd because he hurt their feelings.]
In a way.. Kev up set the union back door boys and there power hold. They soon fixed that and now we have Gillard who should have gone two challenges ago but remain because she cements Union back door boys power over the Party. Funny how Labor support is geting close to the number of Australians in unions, which is sweet F all.
guytaur,
“I dips me lid”. You’re making sense this morning.
(Checks calendar for next Blue moon appearance).
[ Canada jobless rate rises
AAP
A loss of 55,000 jobs in March pushed Canada’s unemployment rate up 0.2 per centage points to 7.2 per cent, its government statistics agency says.
Fewer people were working in accommodation and food services, public administration and manufacturing, while there was little change in all other industries, said Statistics Canada on Friday.
The private sector shed 85,000 employees while the ranks of the self-employed rose by 39,000.
There was little change in the number of public sector jobs. ]
[But the reality is, the opportunity is being seized with both hands. And perhaps most importantly, Gillard also has a lot to show from it.
Under her tenure, Australia has hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and welcomed the Queen (Gillard flew there with 14 speeches already written); secured a temporary seat on the UN Security Council; helped lead a Western thawing of relations with Burma; won the hosting rights for the G20 in 2014 (after she called back every ambassador in March 2011 to devise a plan); reversed a damaging uranium sales ban to India; and delivered a White Paper on the Asian Century. Meanwhile, Gillard has personally been appointed a UN envoy on development aid despite Australia lagging behind.
While all but the latter four were actually the brainchild of ****, the fact that Gillard was able to carry through or successfully embrace these initiatives despite the turnover of three separate foreign ministers deserves credit. This week she will likely also announce a much-needed new annual two-way forum with China as well bolstering our bilateral architecture.]
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4611992.html
Good piece on how the PM uses foreign policy to push for issues she is passionate about.
[http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/facts_to_counter_this_anti_catholic_witchhunt/]
I fundamentally disagree with Bolt today.
[Stephen Koukoulas @TheKouk 3h
Judith Sloan takes issue with me on govt debt. My reply: http://www.marketeconomics.com.au/2361-judith-sloan-takes-issue-with-me-and-the-bogeyman-in-the-cupboard … ]
lizzie:
I believe WA police vehicles are fitted with similar technology.
Oh for Christ sake, this was a nice quiet enjoyable Saturday morning on the blog with lots of interesting discussion of policy matters until DTT launched his/her tirade and others immediately took the bait. Will some people ever learn? Just IGNORE it. This tedious battle does not need to be fought over and over again. It is all OLD stuff and had been done to death a thousand times over. Just scroll by and ignore it FFS.
ASP
Gillard was actually born in Wales and raised in SA. I think she left for Vic to do Uni.
Good morning all.
Getting back to the headline story.
It is a big call that Chris Bowen would lose a seat like McMahon. Should they do so, Labor would be in serious disaster territory.
One expects that a Chris Bowen would have a serious organisation on the ground that will help to see him through.
However, the Libs have some serious advantages in this election that they did not have in 2010. They will be able to get more people out on the ground than they have previously and they will have the added assistance of Liberal state MPs to provide back up in areas where they were previously uncompetitive. This applies in Qld and Vic as well as NSW.
It will be interesting to see where the Libs will focus their campaign – the low hanging fruit like Robertson or Dobell, the slightly harder like McMahon, or where after the 2011 landslide they have a once in a lifetime chance to make a serious inroad such as Newcastle or Shortland.
confessions@64
Yes, your first post was at 9:48am.
confessions
In that case, cheers for WA. In a large State, beats pulling vehicles over and circling around them!!
[Possum Comitatus @Pollytics 14h
@GMegalogenis Why don’t you have a blog yet? Getting bottled up with those thoughts you have unrelated to your book can’t be healthy!
George Megalogenis @GMegalogenis 14h
@Pollytics No, it’s not. But I signed a 12-month no compete with The Oz to avoid blog-like distractions.]
And News Ltd has the hide to carry on about free speech and free press!
Unbelievable!
Darn:
Well said.
I’m shocked, that this could happen, shocked.
[ Investigators Hit Brick Wall; Bank Of Cyprus CEO Hard Drives Wiped
As the investigation into unusual loan write-downs and the ‘premature’ movement of capital away from Cyprus by the elites of that nation progresses, Cyprus Mail reports that the investigators – Alvarez and Marsal (A&M) – have found that the information provided by Bank of Cyprus (BoC) was incomplete and data deleting software were found on the computers of two senior executives.
“Our computer forensic technologists have found that the computers of two employees, (former CEO) Mr. (Andreas) Eliades and (senior manager group treasury and private banking) Christakis Patsalides, have had wiping software loaded, which is not part of the standard software installations at the BoC.”
Investigators found no e-mail files, mailboxes or user documents on Eliades’ desktop computer – “we had significant gaps in the e-mail data received from BoC for the period 2007 to 2010, a key period for our scope of investigation,” and no email backups were performed.
A&M is looking into how BoC accumulated €2.4bn worth of Greek government bonds (GGBs), later suffering huge losses because of that, and into BoC’s expansion to Romania and Russia.
We are sure this is all above board and normal IT protocol for the bank… or not. ]
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-05/investigators-hit-brick-wall-bank-cyprus-ceo-hard-drives-wiped
[bemused
Posted Saturday, April 6, 2013 at 10:26 am | PERMALINK
confessions@64
Good grief looks like the unhingement has started early today.
Yes, your first post was at 9:48am.]
lol.
No, who was demoted from PM, was appointed FM yet still had to chuck a tantrum and lose the FM position?
I am sorry Crean got mixed up in Rudd’s machinations but for the rest of the rats I feel only contempt.
Time for all Labor people to work for victory on 14/9. Against hollow man Abbott victory is very possible!
[John Bruce @JohnFBruce 2m
Andrew Forrest joined Lateline live from China last night: Australia/China relationship, 457s, productivity: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3731241.htm … ]
Did anyone else think that Forrest was more interested in talking about himself than the purpose of the group’s visit?
The Member for Indi could find herself back in court.
http://www.bordermail.com.au/story/1413108/im-not-sorry-says-sophie/?cs=11
[who was demoted from PM]
Demoted .. demoted .. the delusion goes on. It was a dumping , pure and simple. Demotion and or promotion denotes that the action was promulgated from above – in the June 2010 case, it was from below and/ or outside – not above. So it was a dumping.
political animal@115
DTT was 100% correct and I reserve all of my contempt for the people behind the coup of 2010, including it’s main beneficiary.
Gillard is unelectable and will allow a complete moron like Abbott to win the election.
You and your ilk will be able to share the credit for this.
Enjoy!
bemused
Going for sorest loser of the decade
@ABCnewsIntern: If The @DailyTelegraph was concerned about press freedom, wouldn’t they have Gina Rinehart on the front page as Imelda Marcos or Eva Braun?
The term ‘fabulously wealthy’ has been floating around over the past week or so. What does it mean? I suggest that it might be more or less synonymous with the term ‘millionaire’ in the traditional sense, someone with assets of £1,000,000 before inflation took over in post war period, especially from the late 60’s to about 1990.
According to this calculator from the RBA, £1,000,000 in 1960 would be equivalent to about $26,000,000 now.
http://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualPreDecimal.html
So one definition of ‘fabulously wealthy’ might be having assets valued at more than about $25 million. That would certainly be very comfortable – all the things that worry most people – having a nice place to live, health care, kids’ education, transport, let alone day to day living, would not be an issue.
So someone with $2,000,000 in super may not be ‘fabulously wealthy’, but he/she would still be quite comfortable, much more so than someone on a typical wage or salary.
The backgrounding continies.
Wayne baby, you weren’t born to run
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/wayne-baby-you-werent-born-to-run/story-e6frg75f-1226613587088
But the real target for most of Crean’s frustration, ire and criticism, and the one Crean most wanted to remove, was Treasurer Wayne Swan. In that long conversation with Gillard, Crean aired grievances about the budget process, policy formulation, Swan’s inability to sell a positive message and Labor’s inability to “frame” the economic debate in its favour.
As a former Keating government minister, a former opposition leader, a past shadow treasurer, a then cabinet minister and expenditure review committee member, Crean was in a sound position to offer advice on Labor’s direction and directly express a dissatisfaction with Swan’s performance widely shared among his colleagues.
While Rudd supporter and Left leader Anthony Albanese has been accused of hypocrisy and betrayal in not adding his resignation to those of other Rudd backers who went after Crean imploded, it is Swan who has survived and prospered as leader after leader has been removed or resigned, including those he helped replace.
Yet he has also been central to key policy and political failures since November 2007: the mining tax and the class war rhetoric, including a modish invocation of Bruce Springsteen.
[guytaur
Posted Saturday, April 6, 2013 at 10:43 am | PERMALINK
bemused
Going for sorest loser of the decade]
Bemused is far from that. Team Gillard will take sore loser award in five months while trying to defend attacks about doing nothing to stop Abbott. I personal cant wait for Gillards concession speech and the opening of the Labor blood letting season.
Oops, Sorry about the bold
[116
lizzie
Did anyone else think that Forrest was more interested in talking about himself than the purpose of the group’s visit?]
I thought he was verbose, repetitious, evasive, over-blown and boringly political…could not watch the whole lot: too annoying
rummel
Your supporting bemused just makes my point. You have made clear your goal of Abbott as PM.
Your motives are clear.
guytaur@120
I will be a very sore loser under Abbott PM.
But he won’t hurt me as much as he will hurt many others.
The SMH has a fairly long story today about the alleged shenanigans of Richard Torbay. It would be interesting to know how much or how little Tony Windsor knew about these over the years. If so, the latter would have been able to dig up the skeletons during the election campaign.
[The backgrounding continies.]
Indeed it does:
[Barely a week goes by without The Australian newspaper running an article by either Nikki Savva, Peter Van Onselen or Janet Albrechtsen calling for Tony Abbott to remove the ‘deadwood’ from his frontbench and to replace them with the ‘young up and comers.’
It was Savva’s turn this week, naming the usual targets and for good measure throwing in a malicious lie about Kevin Andrews not taking PMO advice during the Haneef case.
Van Onselen, Savva and Albrechtsen are all in sync as to who the dead wood is. At the top of their list are Kevin Andrews, David Johnston and Bob Baldwin. And sometimes Peter Dutton. Unsurprisingly they are also in sync as to who the up and comers are, namely Paul Fletcher, Kelly O’Dwyer, Josh Frydenberg, Arthur Sinodinos, Jamie Briggs and Alan Tudge.]
…
[It’s not hard to figure out what journalists and commentators the likes of O’Dwyer, Tudge and Frydenberg speak to. It’s even less hard to figure out those journalists and commentators that Johnston and Andrews don’t speak to.]
http://www.vexnews.com/2013/04/lib-log-jam-club-fed-conservatives-positioning-for-power-after-september/
bemused
You do not want Abbott as PM. Then it is clear start campaigning for JG as PM that is your only alternative.
briefly@126
Did you pick up his reference to ‘gramophone diplomacy’? He used it more than once.
It’s a new one on me. Surely he meant ‘megaphone diplomacy’?
They sure are a confused lot out west. 😉
[Why does Maley say that the PM is a bad communicator in pressers? Does she always walk away from the hard questions? ]
Communication in pressers is the journo’s way of evaluating politicians.
It’s all about production values to them.
In fact, Gillard is a good communicator in pressers. She stays to answer questions, works the room fairly (as opposed to the screeching matches Abbott seems to encourage) and doesn’t take any shit from reporters asking loaded gotchas.
When Maley says “the public isn’t listening” I think she means “I’m not listening.”
To a journo production values are everything. The worst TV program and the most egregious Daily Telegraph beat up will be professionally produced, well-directed, pleasing to the eye (from a layout point of view, I’m not talking content here) and so on.
These things become of paramount important to our very conservative 4th Estate. They might not like to think it but they’re incredibly wowserish.
Do or say something unexpected thatthey didn’t twig to, or didn’t receive a press release about, and they raise their eyebrows and start muttering words like “extraordinary” or “unprecedented” or “gaffe”.
If politicians, especially Gillard, don’t play by their rules and present arguments in a way that they require them to be presented, then they start to say things like “bad communicator”.
The annoying part is that the public accepts this line, to a great extent. If they are told a policy looked good, but was made bad by what the journalists judge to be “poor presentation” or “bad production values” then the policy, no matter what its true content is, is written off as just a bad policy.
The public has been conditioned by television production values to be very critical of trivial things like make-up, camera angles, set design and so on (even if subconciously) but not so much about actualy content. They eventually tend to equate a less-than-dazzlingly produced show as not worth watching.
This is perfect fodder for political journalists who mostly write about process and appearance, rather than policy.
Maley’s article this morning, while calling an end to the phoney war and a serious discussion about policy, declined to do that.
Rather she wrote most of her piece on the performance aspects of Gillard press conference technique and some typically smartarsed remarks about who’s rich and who’s not. All very superficial and utterly uninformative. She’s much rather talk about the showmanship than the play itself.
There’s something ironic about a piece calling for greater policy discussion that not only makes fun of the facts behind the policy for a few (very) cheap laughs, and mocks the policy makers, referring only to their production values and not their political and policy values.
Another wasted opportunity by Maley. I don’t know how anyone could possibly think she is anything more than a flake out to be a smartarse for its own sake.
guytaur@131
Her replacement by someone electable would be a good first step.
briefly @ 126
You put it so well!!
bemused
Stop with the fantasy. Your choice is PMJG or ABBOT. Nothing else.
[123
Gauss
The backgrounding continues..]
Yes…and, in all this, Crean is trying to position himself as an alternative to the Rudd-Gillard pair. We’ve seen what years of backgrounding, whispering and posing by Rudd has done. Crean is now copying Rudd’s tactics in a bid to appear relevant. This is farcical. Crean is a clown. Like Rudd, all he has done is harm the Government.
guytaur@136
Persisting with JG guarantees Abbott. So where is the choice in that?
Anyway, I am out of here for a while.
[Mike Kelly MP @MikeKellyMP 25m
@alivicwil @geeksrulz have to also wonder why no investigative journalism was done on the Ashby scandal.]
Confessions @ 130
Those journalists are right – there is serious deadwood on the Libs front bench that has to go.
Kevin Andrews is the Libs answer to Chris Evans – everything both has touched has turned to s**t
bemused
So you opine. You may want to throw in the towel and hand the keys to Abbott I do not.
So I am supporting PMJG as that is the only alternative to Abbott.
[132
bemused
Did you pick up his reference to ‘gramophone diplomacy’? He used it more than once.]
I did indeed, bemused. I thought of recorded messages…and then thought he was a bit of a recording himself. “The Obsequious Ore-man” came to mind.
“gramophone diplomacy” was the only interesting statement in the whole speech 😆
[135…..lizzie]
cheers lizzie… 🙂
bemused @ 134
<blockquote. Her replacement by someone electable would be a good first step.
I was never of the opinion that Rudd could come back. The events of Feb 2010 put paid to that; too much ill will and rancor.
The danger time for Gillard is the time immediately after the budget; Jun/Jul. A poorly received Swan budget and continuing bad polls may be fatal for the Prime Minister with the ALP turning to a 3rd contender.
If this happens it will be a hoot watching the reactions of the usual suspects on PB.
@danielhurstbne: Journos charged w/ unauthorised access after story highlighting privacy concerns re ALP database. Background details: http://t.co/0SKDRp8T5k
Does this mean we need a royal commission into the media. Hacking after all was the Murdoch company problem in the UK?
[Those journalists are right – there is serious deadwood on the Libs front bench that has to go.]
We-ell, I wouldn’t call Savva, Albrechsten or even PvO journalists, but yes, there is serious deadwood on the Lib front bench.
The interesting thing is that they all push for O’Dwyer and Frydenberg, neither of whom have contributed anything of note to public policy since being elected.
Bemused, try as you might you cannot pretend Rudd did not cause grave harm with his leaking, destabilising and whiteanting. Until you accept the damage he has done I will regard you as a brain dead old man incapable of accepting a female PM.