UPDATE: Essential Research has the Coalition lead up from 55-45 to 56-44, from primary votes of 48% for the Coalition (steady), 33% for Labor (down one) and 9% for the Greens (steady). There are also numerous questions on national debt, led off by the finding that 48% are aware that Australia’s is relatively low compared to other countries against 25% who believe otherwise. However, 46% believe the main reason for Australia’s debt is that the “government are poor economic managers”, against 26% for the world economy and 17% for the high dollar. Same-sex marriage has been gauged for the second time in a fortnight, showing 58% support (up four on last time) and 32% opposition (down one).
Extending from outer northern Adelaide into rural territory beyond, Wakefield has existed in name since South Australia was first divided into electorates in 1903, but its complexion changed dramatically when its southern neighbour Bonython was abolished when the state’s representation was cut from 12 seats to 11 at the 2004 election. Previously a conservative rural and urban fringe seat encompassing the Murray Valley and Yorke Peninsula, it came to absorb the heavily Labor-voting industrial centre of Elizabeth in the outer north of Adelaide while retaining the satellite town of Gawler, the Clare Valley wine-growing district, and the Gulf St Vincent coast from Two Wells north to Port Wakefield. Labor’s overwhelming strength in Elizabeth is balanced by strong support for the Liberals in Clare and the rural areas, along moderate support in Gawler.
The redistribution to take effect at the coming election has cut Labor’s margin from 12.0% to 10.3% by making two changes at the electorate’s southern end. The boundary with Port Adelaide has been redrawn, removing 8000 voters in the strongly Labor area around Salisbury North while adding around 700 west of Princes Highway. Immediately east of Gawler the boundaries have been made to conform with those of Barossa Valley District Council, adding 2600 voters around Lyndoch from Barker and 2100 around Williamstown from Mayo.
Prior to 2004, Wakefield was won by the prevailing major conservative party of the day at every election except 1938 and 1943, the only two occasions when it was won by Labor, and 1928, when it was by the Country Party. The seat was held for the Liberals from 1983 to 2004 by Neil Andrew, who served as Speaker from 1998 onwards. When the 2004 redistribution turned Wakefield’s 14.7% margin into a notional Labor margin of 1.5%, Andrew at first considered challenging Patrick Secker for preselection in Barker, but instead opted to retire. Wakefield was nonetheless retained for the Liberals at the ensuing election by David Fawcett, who picked up a 2.2% swing off a subdued Labor vote around Elizabeth to unseat Martyn Evans, who had held Bonython for Labor since 1994. Fawcett’s slender margin was demolished by a 7.3% swing in 2007, but he would return to parliament as a Senator after the 2010 election. As was the case with Labor’s other two South Australia gains at that election, Wakefield swung strongly to Labor in 2010, boosting the margin from 6.6% to 12.0%.
Labor’s member over the past two terms has been Nick Champion, a former state party president, Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association official and staffer for state Industrial Relations Minister Michael Wright. The SDA link identifies him with the potentate of the South Australian Right, Senator Don Farrell. Champion came out in support of Kevin Rudd in the days before his unsuccessful February 2012 leadership challenge, resigning as caucus secretary to do so. Champion’s Liberal opponent will be Tom Zorich, a local sports store retailer, former Gawler councillor and one-time player and club president of the Central Districts Football Club. Despite the size of the margin he faces, the Liberals are reportedly buoyed by weak polling for Labor in South Australia generally, and by Holden’s announcement in April that 400 jobs would be cut at its Elizabeth plant.
ahh, the “true deluded” are really proving their mantra. Gillard lost the plot in the 2010 election because of the number of firmware upgrades she received to make her look remotely palatable. Her efforts in the town hall meetings were pathetic at best at least earlier on. Perhaps you guys can ask GIllard why she avoided meeting the dirty locals in her recent slither to Western Sydney. She got an ego boost at rent-a-crowd gatherings but she avoided any locals like the plague. This isn’t the approach that a PM should be taking but there we are.
Good stuff from the PM so far, articulate and sensible.
Cannot imagine monkey with his ahhs and umms getting close to this level of intelligent engagement.
[it would just be a ballet shoe!]
There is truly substance to your comments.
Next question to PM from Lisa Simpson
[Prime Minister Gillard: your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?]
the students u can tell
are so proud of our pm
what ashame the media don’t treat her with the same
respect
these young people are showing the way
Lol pick the kids with the Lib parents 🙂
[my say
Posted Monday, May 6, 2013 at 9:52 pm | PERMALINK
the students u can tell
are so proud of our pm]
Young and stupid my say… they will grow out of it.
I thought Rudd did something similar with the schoolkids on QandA back in the day (and was excruciatingly poor if i recall correctly), yet Tony Jones suggested this was a first??
To say it is equivalent to someone on $100k having a mortgage of $10k is just wrong
rummel@2157
You didn’t.
What would be a suitable Qanda audience for Abbott?
the possibilities are endless:
1. Round up some of the business owners on whose premises he has appeared in fluoro vests
2. Alan Jones listeners
3. News Limited executives
4. Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy
5. Oil company executives
…
Henry:
Correct re R*dd. He was quite simply appalling.
rummel
I ignore u please ignore me
confessions:
So would you vote for Abbott if Rudd took over the ALP leadership again?
[Enterprise bargaining is presumably not Workchoices or else Labor would have gotten rid of it by now.]
Enterprise bargaining was just another Keating reform. Up until workchoices all Howard offered was rubbish AWA’s that almost no one took up unless they were being massively overpaid by Rio Tinto in order to break the influence of the union. The vast majority of employers stuck with awards and collective enterprise agreements.
It was all pretty much ho-hum until Workchoices. Granted ‘Fair Work’ (yes it’s ridiculous that Labor continued with Howard’s Orwellian doublespeak in naming legislation and institutions) did not return the law to it’s pre-Workchoices position so that individual agreements are much more the norm, but it did return the balance quite some way with greater safeguards and access to collective agreements.
So you would give Howard a credit for individual workplace agreements, but Labor’s reform of that reform I’m sure will be much more robust.
Henry,
Im burdened with my stupidity for life, but i try and share a little bit every day.
my say
Do you ignore me too?
@rummel
So you saying kids are young and stupid.
pathetic.
there
u go a liberal tweet
we get tge basic wrong what a joke
they are they have no polices
and the ppl is gone\
they have nothing
not even a decent interet system
lol
Tis a bottomless pit Rummel…
[zoidlord
Posted Monday, May 6, 2013 at 9:58 pm | PERMALINK
@rummel
So you saying kids are young and stupid.
pathetic.]
I am when it comes to politics.
I didn’t think QandA could get a “Children’s” rent-a-crowd, but hey it seems they can. Were they handed pre-prepared questions on the way in.
Next question.. .”Ms Gillard, why are you so wonderful and why is everyone who doesn’t think so the spawn of the devil ? “
[I am when it comes to politics.]
and thats regardless of what party who they support.
Morpheus @ 2151 – you could go for a job on the Daily Telegraph (if you don’t already have one).
Meanwhile, Abbott will only appear in locations of his choosing with handpicked participants, protected from anyone who would be likely to challenge him.
[Henry
Posted Monday, May 6, 2013 at 9:59 pm | PERMALINK
Tis a bottomless pit Rummel…]
I have a lot to offer and will redouble my efforts for the next 130 days.
rummel @2171
Hence why Gillard feels at home. Intellectual equivalency is a wonderful thing.
t
if the students read the nasty remarks here and
the juvenile remarks from the libs here
they would gobsmacked.
Seve777 @2174
So essentially doing a lot more than GIllard… Glad you worked it out.
well if the
computer doen work that’s a state thing
I have a cousin who teaches in qld
and he tells me the computers are sitting not fixed
there
is your answer
lnp gov
There’s no way Abbott could handle this kind of scrutiny or questioning. Even with the Jones Gotchas the PM is kicking arse tonight.
Ignore em mysay. Miserable prats the lot of them.
They can’t handle it that the PM is absolutely killing it here with these kids.
Monkey will be flushed out after this, he will simply have to front up. And that will be fun to watch.
ratsak: I don’t think we are so very far apart. I certainly don’t rate the Howard Government anywhere near as highly as the Hawke-Keating Government or even the Rudd-Gillard Government.
But Howard, with all his faults, was a reformer over his first two terms. Then, emboldened by the success of Children Overboard, he became obsessed by spin and wedge for several years. Then he got back to reforming again in the last 18 months or so before the public gave him the flick.
But, if (when) Abbott gets in, his government will make Howard’s look like a golden era of policy brilliance!!
Very occasionally one slips through: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRMI4Z7ri8A
BTW the coal industry is still going strong.
[Henry
Posted Monday, May 6, 2013 at 10:05 pm | PERMALINK
Ignore em mysay. Miserable prats the lot of them.
They can’t handle it that the PM is absolutely killing it here with these kids.]
Yep… but loosing big time with the adults….
Howard and reforms? I don’t think so meher.
His only “reform” was gun laws, where he really had no choice but to act.
Howard was good at winning elections and not much else.
Glad Gillard admitted the current school funding is crap. Too bad the ALP has been at the help for 5 years, spend $16B to actually go backwards and throw laptops into schools and then remove the funding which will allow for ongoing support. Its amazing what you can’t do by thrown money around like confetti. Still havn’t heard Gillard answer a question that address the link between $$ and educational results. She knows its crap but telling everyone she cares and using plenty of emotive terms seems to get the suckers falling in line.
misspelling loose and lose is one of my internet spelling bugbears…
I think it’s not the kids that are stupid, I think it’s the other way around, i mean, look what they caused all over the world already.
Oxley isn’t rural, I can tell you that much. I also note that most of the audience appear to be from private schools, which is odd and extremely unrepresentative.
Meher, we’ll have to agree to disagree on the last 18 months, but otherwise we are as you say not so very far apart.
The PM’s passion is and always has been education. She’s made it a focus of her time in Cabinet.
What’s Abbott’s passion? Riding a bike for personal gain at the taxpayer’s expense? Being a media focus just because he can?
I’m sure Ludwig will handle this with his usual brilliant skills.
[A SICKENING new video allegedly showing Australian cattle being slaughtered inhumanely in Egypt has triggered fresh calls to ban live exports.
Video broadcast by ABC’s 7.30 program showed the cattle being abused late last year in two Egyptian abattoirs that process Australian cattle.
In one incident, one of the animals had their leg tendons slashed and eyes stabbed in an attempt to kill them after escaping from a slaughter box, breaking its leg in the process.]
Oh goodie… I vs P question!
James J?
Perhaps a levy will create peace in the middle east….
Dio:
That report is 2 days old.
I think you are confusing levy with Levi, rummel
Stupid question about the election date.
Lot of israel questions here. Where are they filming this, Elsternwick, neutral bay?
I KNEW OF A SPECIALIST IN THE TREATMENT OF DEPRESSIONB CALLED DR NERVO