Covering the greater part of Hobart, Denison produced one of the most significant results of the 2010 election, sending one of five cross-bench members to the first hung parliament since World War II. Andrew Wilkie achieved his win with just 21.2% of the primary vote, giving him a crucial lead over the Greens who polled 19.0%. The distribution of Greens preferences put Wilkie well clear of the Liberal candidate, who polled 22.6% of the primary vote, and Liberal preferences in turn favoured Wilkie over Labor by a factor of nearly four to one. Wilkie emerged at the final count with a 1.2% lead over Labor, which had lost the personal vote of its long-term sitting member Duncan Kerr.
Like all of the state’s electorates, Denison has been little changed since Tasmania was divided into single-member electorates in 1903, with the state’s representation at all times set at the constitutional minimum of five electorates per state. It encompasses the western shore of Hobart’s Derwent River and hinterland beyond, with the eastern shore suburbs and the southern outskirts township of Kingston accommodated by the seat of Franklin. It is one of the strongest electorates in the country for the Greens, who managed to increase their vote slightly from 18.6% to 19.0% despite the formidable competition offered by Wilkie. Booth results show a clear north-south divide in the electorate, with Greens support concentrated around the town centre and its immediate surrounds in the south and Labor continuing to hold sway in the working class northern suburbs.
Labor’s first win in Denison came with their first parliamentary majority at the 1910 election, but the 1917 split cost them the seat with incumbent William Laird Smith joining Billy Hughes in the Nationalist Party. The seat was fiercely contested over subsequent decades, changing hands in 1922, 1925, 1928, 1931, 1934, 1940 and 1943. It thereafter went with the winning party until 1983, changing hands in 1949, 1972 and 1975. The 1983 election saw Tasmania buck the national trend, the Franklin dam issue helping the Liberals return their full complement of five sitting members with increased majorities. Hodgman’s margin wore away over the next two elections, and he was defeated by Labor’s Duncan Kerr in 1987, later to return for a long stretch in state parliament (he is the father of Will Hodgman, the state’s Liberal Opposition Leader). The drift to Labor evident in 1984 and 1987 was maintained during Kerr’s tenure in the job, giving him consistent double-digit margins after 1993 (substantially assisted by Greens preferences).
Kerr bowed out in 2010 after a career that included a four-week stint as Attorney-General after the 1993 election when it appeared uncertain that incumbent Michael Lavarch had retained his seat, and a rather longer spell as Keating government Justice Minister. The ensuing Labor preselection kept the seat in the Left faction fold with the endorsement of Jonathan Jackson, a chartered accountant and the son of former state attorney-general Judy Jackson. What was presumed to be a safe passage to parliament for Jackson was instead thwarted by Andrew Wilkie, a former Office of National Assessments officer who came to national attention in 2003 when he resigned in protest over the Iraq war. Wilkie ran against John Howard as the Greens candidate for Bennelong in 2004, and as the second candidate on the Greens’ Tasmanian Senate ticket in 2007. He then broke ranks with the party to run as an independent in Denison at the 2010 election, falling narrowly short of winning one of the five seats with 9.0% of the vote.
Placed in the centre of the maelstrom by his surprise win at the 2010 election, Wilkie declared himself open to negotiation with both parties as they sought to piece together a majority. The Liberals took this seriously enough to offer $1 billion for the rebuilding of Royal Hobart Hospital. In becoming the first of the independents to declare his hand for Labor, Wilkie criticised the promise as “almost reckless”, prompting suggestions his approach to the Liberals had been less than sincere. Wilkie’s deal with Labor included $340 million for the hospital and what proved to be a politically troublesome promise to legislate for mandatory pre-commitment for poker machines. This met fierce resistance from the powerful clubs industry, and the government retreated from it after Peter Slipper’s move to the Speaker’s chair appeared to free it from dependence on Wilkie’s vote. Wilkie withdraw his formal support for the government in response, but it has never appeared likely that he would use his vote to bring it down.
Labor’s candidate for the coming election is Jane Austin, a policy officer with Tasmania’s Mental Health Services, who emerged as the preferred candidate of the still dominant Left. The Greens candidate is Anne Reynolds, an adviser to Christine Milne. The Liberals are yet to choose a candidate, prompting Labor to claim the party proposes to play dead in order to boost Wilkie. A ReachTEL poll of 644 respondents in mid-2012 had Wilkie well placed with 40% of the primary vote to 28% for the Liberals, 17% for Labor and 14% for the Greens.
Mod Lib, lover of lists, makes another pathetic list.
Points 1 to 3 are … duh duh duh … the same point? Something about managing budgets, not exactly “reform” to begin with, and you have to puff it out to 3 points? How pathetic.
Point 6 – yup, state revenue is so “fixed” that basically all the states are running deficits now. That sounds “fixed” to me. No one, but no one, thinks that the fiscal imbalance between the States and the Feds is “fixed”.
So, your list of Howard “reforms” is actually – GST, guns and going to war with the MUA.
Not much of a legacy.
If we had a variable sales tax and a services tax that would allow for variations in the dollar.
Who would notice if a new TV was taxed at 25%, nobody with the price reductions, but Oh no Peter knew best.
Then he caved in and reduced the GST base, incompetence.
[Mod Lib
Posted Sunday, May 26, 2013 at 8:18 pm | Permalink
..
Now you say they dont exist!
]
They did once, but they are all gone, your left supportimg a bunch of right wing reactionaries, how does it feel to be a sucker.
[briefly
Posted Sunday, May 26, 2013 at 8:20 pm | PERMALINK
….
Howard did very little other than reworking indirect tax and shifting our debts from the public sector (where they were not a problem) to the household sector (where they are a huge problem). ]
You mean by making folk so rich they bought more expensive stuff?
[Beyond this, he subverted public finance and planted a bomb under national financial stability.]
It appears to have gone off in the Gillard and Swan era
frednk, Gough had the tremendously good fortune to be advised by Nugget Coombs, who really knew a thing or two about guiding national economic development, and the role of the Commonwealth.
I wish we could find another Coombs. We need one.
[Then he caved in and reduced the GST base, incompetence.]
Well, it was the ALP that blocked this despite losing the election on the GST.
Yes, I think that is a fair word- “incompetence” the ALP has lived up to it ever since to boot!
Mod Lib has been saying the same thing here for years, the same clapped out platitudes, the same cherry-picked data, the same empty phrases and the same disinformation.
No matter how many times you prove Mod Lib wrong, it will never make any difference.
Mod Lib’s modus operandi tonight is too prevent any serious and factual discussion on Gough Whitlam and his legacy for Australia. This is done by hijacking the debate and steering it into the boredom of surplus fetish.
It is a tram I refuse to board.
Rummel, you should be ashamed of yourself for being involved in this.
[Now you say they dont exist!]
I agreed they were courageous at the time. Which reminds me, where are these courageous moderates now? And where is evidence of their courage since Team Abbott took over?
The last shred of Liberal courage I can recall was Troethe and Boyce crossing the floor to support Labor’s bills on carbon pricing.
Since then we’ve seen alleged moderates in Pyne, Hunt, Turnbull, Washer, Moylan, Brandis and others all cave on their beliefs and convictions. Hunt even denies his own honours thesis these days. Moylan allows herself to be paired so she can’t express a vote on issues she feels strongly about. Brandis I linked to the other night. Meanwhile Cory Bernardi is the number 1 spot on the Liberal SA Senate ballot.
The lasting legacy of the Liberal party over the generations is a stunning capacity for eating its own, and turning its back on its own moral compass.
[It appears to have gone off in the Gillard and Swan era]
No it is yet to go off. Do you really trust Abbott and Hockey to diffuse it? Swan has cut spending by $127 billion the fastest fiscal consolidation in out nations history.
Abbott will follow Howard as a high spending high taxing waste.
Instead of discussing an ALP icon, Gough, we are discussing Howard. The Lib bridge dwellers are doing very well tonight.
[You mean by making folk so rich they bought more expensive stuff?]
On credit, by extending their mortgages.
Thank heavens we’ve had a Labor government all these years to increase personal savings and arguably remind households that booking TVs, cars and holidays against the mortgage is ultimately self-defeating in the long term.
The big worry with Abbott is the Liberals now lack the competance to get rid of him. If he wins it’s going to be three years of hell.
I don’t like recessions. The Liberals have created one in Queensland, that is enough.
It is a sign how much trash there is at the bottom of the AFL when a team with positive win loss ratio (Collingwood) is coming 11th.
Melbourne should be relocated to Tasmania.
Yes, the ALP making people poorer is probably good for net foreign debt! :devil:
[Well, it was the ALP that blocked this despite losing the election on the GST.]
I think they won the 2PP vote. So Howard did not have a mandate, he also did not control the Senate, which was also the will of the people.
Oh sorry forgot you do no believe in first term Fed Govts losing votes at the next election. 🙂
Nite all.
As usual Mod Lib fails to defend his position on anything. 😛
this is mod lib in raving, pouting ratbag mode. enjoy. it’s nicely on the road to self inflicted senility.
ruawake
Posted Sunday, May 26, 2013 at 7:29 pm | Permalink
Whitlam
Withdrawal for Vietnam War
Libs – war in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan
Labor – withdraw from wars
[654
Mod Lib
Beyond this, he subverted public finance and planted a bomb under national financial stability.
It appears to have gone off in the Gillard and Swan era]
Well, not yet. They have reduced some of the payload, so when the bomb does detonate, the damage will be less than it would otherwise be.
The timeline for the bomb is 2014/15/16.
Declines in the terms of trade…deepening depreciation…weakening household incomes….subsiding demand…escalating deficts…sagging demand for labour…falling investment rates…falling household incomes…stress in property and banking…spiraling current account deficits and deteriorating public finance…stress in the forex markets…negative gdp… downgrades in the debt markets…crisis in state and territory budgets…and so on…soaring deficits…soaring inflation, collapsing employment…
Shall I go on? This is to be the harvest of LNP incompetence, neglect, complacency and cynicism.
briefly:
Agree about the intellectual vacuum in the Liberal party today.
Hatred of Labor appears to be their sole motivation these days.
Fraser left a $40 billion debt when Howard gained Govt and the so-called about Labor debt was started $40 billion was Frasers.
Institute of Public affairs
If Tony Abbott wants to leave a lasting impact – and secure his place in history – he needs to take his inspiration from Australia’s most left-wing prime minister.
No prime minister changed Australia more than Gough Whitlam. The key is that he did it in less than three years. In a flurry of frantic activity, Whitlam established universal healthcare, effectively nationalised higher education with free tuition
He enacted an ambitious cultural agenda that continues to shape Australia to this day. In just three years, Australia was given a new national anthem, ditched the British honours system, and abolished the death penalty and national service. He was the first Australian prime minister to visit communist China and he granted independence to Papua New Guinea. Whitlam also passed the Racial Discrimination Act. He introduced no-fault divorce.
[670
confessions
Posted Sunday, May 26, 2013 at 8:35 pm | PERMALINK
briefly:
Agree about the intellectual vacuum in the Liberal party today.
Hatred of Labor appears to be their sole motivation these days.]
That’s a bit rich when left posters here only break from there liberal hating to partake in a spot of Rudd hating. Lol
[Puff, the Magic Dragon.
Posted Sunday, May 26, 2013 at 8:25 pm | PERMALINK
Mod Lib has been saying the same thing here for years, the same clapped out platitudes, the same cherry-picked data, the same empty phrases and the same disinformation.
No matter how many times you prove Mod Lib wrong, it will never make any difference.]
Not sure where you get the idea that I have been proven wrong.
Oh, thats right, we are in the PB reality where <10% of the vote is an ALP triumph!
Surging from 27% to 28% is a sign that the LNP is under threat in Qld. Who knows, the ALP may make it from 7 seats to……the sky is the limit, lets say- double digits perhaps?
LOL 🙂
[That’s a bit rich when left posters here only break from there liberal hating to partake in a spot of Rudd hating. Lol]
If only there was a second tier Gandalf award! 🙂
Mod Lib
Howard:
1. Paid off the ALP debt and Frasers
2. Saved us having to pay billions in ALP and Fraser interest payments
3. Saved money for the recent economic rains What?? see below
4. Fixed the waterfront-set attack dogs on workers
5. Cleaned out Australia of excess guns with a gun buy back levylevy
6. Fixed the state revenue problems
7. Fixed a myriad of tax problems by introducing a GST*
8. Financial services reforms which helped in the GFC all set in place by Keating – and even Howard was gentleman enought o acknowledge that
*which Keating and Hawke squibbed running for cover when the going got tough.
And in the last 5 years of office spent $120 billion on tax cuts and $130 billion on things like the baby bonus, things that we are still paying for today. $250 billion spent during the good times instead creating a Soveriegn Fund
Reading the earlier comments. Spot the double speak.
‘“The Aboriginal dimension is as much a part of Australia as our law, our language, and our democracy,” Mr Abbott said at the start of the relay on Sunday.’
On Australia Day we had this from Abbott, which generated a lot of outrage from people who’d never vote Liberal anyway. If you chopped the last two paragraphs those remarks would have been perfectly apposite, the sort of thing people who like Abbott mean when they speak well of him.
In any case, here’s the first of those final two paragraphs, delivered by Abbott at the Holdfast Bay Australia Day Awards and Citizenship Ceremony in Adelaide:
It is a proud people that you are joining. We had inauspicious beginnings.
The first lot of Australians were chosen by the finest judges in England, not always for good reasons, and from that rather inauspicious beginning we have become a rich, a free and a fair society which has contributed so much to the wider world in good times and in not so good times.’
Howard sell off
Telstra: $50.24 billion
Australian airports: $8.5 billion
Commonwealth Bank: $5.15 billion received
Reserve Bank gold assets: 167 tonnes sold for $2.4 billion,
National Rail Corporation and Freightcorp: $1.05 bn received,
Broadcast Australia: $650 million received,
DASFLEET: $407 million in 1997,
Telecommunications spectrum: about $1.3 billion received,
Radio licence spectrum: about $1 billion received,
Property portfolio 59 sites: for $1 billion,
Total value from sales: $71.7 billion
confessions, the LNP, should they win the election, are going to find out that their old claims to economic management will no add up to anything. They will be lost from Day 1. And it will be obvious to all. Abbott is practically innumerate and obviously struggles to comprehend the economy, while Hockey is so lazy that he also will be unable to cope.
They seem to imagine they can put things off to another term. This is just laughable. The economy won’t wait three months let alone three years. To me, this merely signifies how weak they are. They are as feeble in spirit as in mind.
Howard hardly had a mandate for GST he had a swing against him in the “GST” election of over 5% and lost seats. He had such a swing against him he was forced to negotiate with the Democrats to get the legislation passed.
Their conditions – no GST on fresh food, health and education and distribution to be managed by independent body
[And in the last 5 years of office spent $120 billion on tax cuts and $130 billion on things like the baby bonus, things that we are still paying for today. $250 billion spent during the good times instead creating a Soveriegn Fund]
So the government that had the biggest surpluses and set up the biggest future funds are to be criticised by those who created the biggest deficits and set up the biggest interest rate payments.
Oh, the irony!
[Howard:
1. Paid off the ALP debt and Frasers]
And Howard actually created a large portion of that debt by being the most incompotent treasurer in Aust history. not only did he deliver record high interests rates and unemployment but also a massive recession. Swan who you consistently call incompetent has delivered low unemployment, growth and no recession whilst the world has been mired in the GFC. Aust debt is negligible and at 10% of GDP is nothing on world standards and Aust has a AAA credit rating from 3 ratings agencies – never happended before. For you to crap on a about debt constantly indicates your lack of understanding of basic economics.
[So the government that had the biggest surpluses and set up the biggest future funds are to be criticised by those who created the biggest deficits and set up the biggest interest rate payments.
Oh, the irony!]
Aust debt is nothing – 10% of GDP. Are you a complete fool or just a parrot of media lines. Do you not understand this.
[That’s a bit rich when left posters here only break from there liberal hating to partake in a spot of Rudd hating.]
Hate? I’ve given you specific examples of the failures of both R*dd and the Liberals, none of which you seem able of responding to.
Cory Bernardi No. 1 on the Liberal Senate ticket in SA.
Eric Abetz No. 1 on the Liberal Senate ticket in Tas.
How can you explain this if your argument seems to be that the LIberals are a broad church encompassing alleged moderates?
[Aust debt is nothing – 10% of GDP. Are you a complete fool or just a parrot of media lines. Do you not understand this.]
You claim Howard didn’t stash enough away and then minimise all the debt that Swan has racked up!
So Howard massive surplus after massive surplus = bad economic management
and Swan massive deficit after massive deficit = good economic management
I do follow, I am just laughing thats all, its not that I don’t get what you are saying.
[They will be lost from Day 1. And it will be obvious to all.]
briefly:
They are lost now.
They are promising to keep the good stuff for households from carbon pricing while pledging to ditch the budget mechanism which funds it.
Meanwhile they can’t explain where all those trees will be planted, or how companies hit by the LOTO PPL won’t simply jack prices for consumers in order to pay for it.
It’s just illogical.
[You claim Howard didn’t stash enough away and then minimise all the debt that Swan has racked up!
So Howard massive surplus after massive surplus = bad economic management
and Swan massive deficit after massive deficit = good economic management
I do follow, I am just laughing thats all, its not that I don’t get what you are saying.]
John Howard as treasurer = record debt and recesssion – read some history.
Current facts plain and simple on Aust economy are low unemployment, growth, low inflation and low debt. these facts all that is needed to swat away ignorant fools such as yourself
Mod Lib
You are always wrong. I had no idea what the topic you were specifically referring to, and that did not matter.
Your wrongness is universal.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/string-of-tax-cuts-blamed-for-budget-shortfalls-20130522-2k09y.html
[But in an embarrassment for the Coalition, Treasury estimates that Australia sank into structural deficit in the last budget of the Howard government, in 2007-08, and was already deep in structural deficit when the global financial crisis hit in 2008-09.
…
Both papers implicitly punch gaping holes in the claims of both sides to be responsible economic managers. Without directly saying so, they imply that the Howard government and the Labor governments were both responsible for the slide into structural deficit, by introducing big tax cuts based on temporarily high export prices.]
The Howard government, to use your term, spent like hje expected to win the lottery every year, making permanent spending based on temporary increases in revenue.
By the time we stopped winning the lottery, Howard was gone and Swan was left to pick up the pieces.
Mod lib is light on economic facts because it does not suit his rant. A bit like Tisme.
[Your wrongness is universal.]
I cannot argue with that, you are completely right there….
Boerwar….much earlier.
‘Not only that, but we have a swarm of apologists come out from under their rocks to explain that that is not really racism after all or it was not so bad, really and that Goodes should have sucked it up like a man.’
And indeed. I have previously mentioned the in denial friend. A very decent guy. Clearly of aboriginal descent and recognised by his Alice Springs etc peers as one of their own. He was adopted by his now late two very white parents. By that I mean in appearance. Damn good people, by the sound of it.
I should not have been, but was astonished to hear him say he has lost all respect for the hitherto highly regarded Adam Goodes.
It was ‘suck it up’ Goodsy. And she is only thirteen.
[686
confessions
They will be lost from Day 1. And it will be obvious to all.
briefly:
They are lost now.
They are promising to keep the good stuff for households from carbon pricing while pledging to ditch the budget mechanism which funds it.
Meanwhile they can’t explain where all those trees will be planted, or how companies hit by the LOTO PPL won’t simply jack prices for consumers in order to pay for it.]
The LNP are ridiculous. They cannot even properly define a policy to plant trees. How do they think they are going to run the economy?
ModLib
[The ABC show just had Gough going public to complain about the faceless men bullying leaders and trying to impose their will.
….sounds just like Rudd to me, nothing like Gillard (she is one of them).]
Totally false analogy, which shows you either have no understanding of history or are being willfully misleading.
As Leader of the Labor party, Gough was excluded from decision making, and called in once unelected party officials had set the agenda to be told what it was.
The party has – since those days – maintained a very rigid separation between the party administration and the parliamentary party. Of course unelected outsiders still have influence – just as they do in every other party – but they can’t simply tell the party leader what’s going to happen and expect unquestioning obedience.
Gough was a towering legend, a giant of a Prime Minister. The lying rodent was pipsqueak.
Gough took a nation by the scruff of its neck and dragged it from 1850 where the boring dunderhead Menzies had trapped it for his Lib PM successors, into modern times. He was exciting, inspirational and dared us to believe we could be more than mice counting little heaps of grain from birth to death.
Gough and his government took us into the twentieth century at last, as the ALP is now taking us into the twenty-first century, by dragging the fearful, the timid, and the hysterical along with us, in spite of their shivering spines.
confessions, LNP-slapping is lots of fun, I’m finding. They are so slap-worthy too. Ever since budget week they have been held up to the light. We can see right through them, and there is nothing inside. Zero. They have got nothing but make-believe policies.
Mod Lib
You, as usual, discuss little things from a little mind.
Puff, hi.
I am still not talking so much; leads to coughing. Cannot bear the sore as ribs.
Hope you are wellish.
Deblonay’s suggestion of ginger sounds good. I looked up ginger syrup recipes, as an alternative. Fresh ginger, water, sugar. Don’t know how long it lasts refrigerated. I often add grated fresh ginger to chicken soup.
Ginger seems to beckon. And I do love ginger beer. Bickfords do a cordial which is excellent with a spritzy drink.
ModLib.. don’t forget… Howard stopped the boats, saved Australia $3 Billion a year Labor now has to spend on boat people.
Confessions,
Having so many people support the Liberals while having Abbott as leader is testament to how broad Liberals are.
Labor on the other hand have dis owned anyone who is a Kevin Rudd supporter.