The electorate of Canberra covers the southern half of the national capital together with the bulk of the Australian Capital Territory’s thinly populated remainder, with northern Canberra accommodated by the seat of Fraser. Both seats were created when the territory was first divided into two electorates in 1974. The Australian Capital Territory had been a single electorate since the expansion of parliament in 1949, but its member only obtained full voting rights in 1968. A third electorate of Namadgi was created for the 1996 election, accommodating Tuggeranong and its surrounds in Canberra’s far south and pushing the Canberra electorate north of the lake to include the city’s centre and inner north. However, the previous order was reinstated when the seat entitlement to slipped back to two at the 1998 election, in large part due to Howard government cutbacks to the federal public service. The two ACT electorates presently have enrolment of around 130,000 voters each, compared with a national average of around 96,000.
The Australian Capital Territory electorate was won by an independent at its first election in 1949, but was held by Labor after 1951. Kep Enderby came to the seat at a 1970 by-election and carried over to Canberra in 1974, serving as Lionel Murphy’s successor as Attorney-General in 1975. He was then dumped by a 10.4% swing to the Liberals at the December 1975 election, and for the next two terms the seat was held for the Liberals by John Haslem. The seat’s natural Labor inclination finally reasserted itself in 1980 with the election of Ros Kelly, who served in the Hawke-Keating ministries from 1987 until she fell victim to the still notorious “sports rorts” affair in 1994. Kelly’s indulgent departure from parliament a year later was followed by a disastrous by-election result for Labor, with Liberal candidate Brendan Smyth gaining the seat off a 16.2% swing.
Smyth unsuccessfully contested the new seat of Namadgi at the 1996 election, and Canberra was won easily for Labor by Bob McMullan, who had served the ACT as a Senator since 1988. The reassertion of the old boundaries in 1998 caused McMullan to move to Fraser, the Labor margin in the redrawn Canberra being 5.1% lower than the one he secured in 1996. Canberra went to Annette Ellis, who had entered parliament as the member for Namadgi in 1996, while Fraser MP Steve Darvagel agreed to go quietly after a brief parliamentary career which began when he succeeded John Langmore at a by-election in February 1997. Ellis added 7.2% to an existing 2.3% margin at the 1998 election, and held the seat safely thereafter.
In February 2010, both Ellis and McMullan announced they would not contest the election due later that year. Large fields of preselection contestants emerged for both seats, with the front-runner in Canberra initially thought to be Michael Cooney, chief-of-staff to ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr and a former adviser to opposition leaders Mark Latham and Kim Beazley. However, Cooney shortly withdrew amid suggestions Kevin Rudd was ready to use national executive intervention to block him. The eventual winner was Gai Brodtmann, a former DFAT public servant who had established a local communications consultancy with her husband, senior ABC reporter Chris Uhlmann. Together with Andrew Leigh’s win in Fraser, Brodtmann’s win was seen as a rebuff to local factional powerbrokers who had pursued a deal in which the Left would support Mary Wood, adviser to Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek and member of the Centre Coalition (Right), and the Right would back the Nick Martin, the party’s assistant national secretary and a member of the Left, in Fraser. However, Brodtmann was able to build a cross-factional support base of sufficient breadth to prevail over Wood by 123 votes to 109.
The Liberal candidate for the coming election is Tom Sefton, a Commonwealth public servant who has served in Afghanistan as a commando officer. Sefton polled a respectable 4.2% as a candidate for Molonglo at the October 2012 Australian Capital Territory election.
[ http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/post/2013/06/23/Newspoll-The-Killing-Machine.aspx ]
While reading this very interesting article, it occurred to me that we generally blame the poor quality of journalism in this country on many factors – money, corruption, political bias, laziness … etc etc
But what if the poor quality of journalism in this country is just because we have very poor quality journalists?
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am of an age where I have had direct experience of people across several generations … and you know what? The quality of people I am employing now is not a patch on the quality of people I used to employ even just a few years ago. Their general education standards are lower, their expectations are higher, and their work ethic and commitment to quality outcomes is almost nonexistent.
I work in a highly technical area, where most employees require at least one degree, and these days it is becoming very unusual to employ people without at least two degrees. Yet the people themselves are of far lower quality. In my view, this can be traced directly to the drastic lowering of standards in our schools and universities that has occured over the past 20-30 years.
What had not occurred to me with such force before, however, was that this must also apply equally to other areas – such as journalism.
As the seasoned journalists that we regard as “household names” reach their dotage (and there are countless instances of this we see on every news or current affairs program, or in the opinion columns of every major OM outlet), it may be that the replacement generation is simply not up to the task of critical analysis that is an essential ingredient of good journalism.
The current “up and coming” generation of journalists in particular seem to misunderstand that we don’t pay them money simply to re-tweet rumours or promulgate party propaganda on various social media outlets – we pay them to sift, filter, analyze, dissect and criticize their inputs – and then present them coherently and objectively as outputs – so that their readers don’t have to. That is the service we pay them for, and that is the service they are so obviously not providing. Which is of course why they are losing readers and listeners at an astounding rate.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this – it just occurred to me that the undoubtedly pernicious influence of Murdoch and Rinehart on our media may be slightly overstated, and the pernicious influence of decades of underinvestment in education may be equally to blame.
Or I may simply have had a glass of wine too many, and may also be just disheartened by the recent quality of debate here on PB, which has deteriorated noticeably even just in the last few days.
[Peter Van Onselen still shit stirring on Twitter:
…as I say, fascinating Newspoll. Full details in the paper tomorrow, a hint later tonight on Sky News.”]
Does this mean we will have the results tonight?
[lizzie
Posted Saturday, June 22, 2013 at 8:53 am | Permalink
Mike Carlton @MikeCarlton01 3m
I gotta say the Labor trolls are a change from the Tory trolls I usually get.]
The fact that he has upset the “Labor trolls” should have told him something about his gratuitous call for Gillard to resign.
Should probable tell the Rudd spear throwers something., but it won’t.
Darn,
I have a nice line in cloth ears available for your inspection.
Law and politics mixing in the argument over whaling
“The ICJ expects senior ministerial representation by countries bringing cases before it, which is why I will be there,” Mr Dreyfus said on Sunday.
The court members decide as per the direction of their respective governments.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/whale-watch/japan-plans-determined-defence-of-whaling-case-20130623-2oqc0.html#ixzz2X25UZq8t
Duckie
It’ll come to you
later
[The fact that he has upset the “Labor trolls” should have told him something about his gratuitous call for Gillard to resign.
Should probable tell the Rudd spear throwers something., but it won’t.]
It tells us that the Cult of Gillard can be pretty delusional and not exactly appreciative of people expressing their opinions.
Surely Conroy should realise that his promise not to serve under Rudd is an inducement for change?
Hopefully JamesJ will beat PVO with the result.
“Or I may simply have had a glass of wine too many, and may also be just disheartened by the recent quality of debate here on PB, which has deteriorated noticeably even just in the last few days.”
bemused is back. Say no more.
[Does this mean we will have the results tonight?]
Yes, but maybe not for another 4 hours or so if we have to wait for them to go up on The Australian website.
Keep an eye on Ghost Who Votes’ twitter account too:
https://twitter.com/GhostWhoVotes
Newspoil has been coming in on a regular basis every fortnight.
However the last Newspoil reported on this blog was on 3rd June, three weeks ago.
So by applying the logic that, because of all his court cases and out of court settlements around the world over many years of being crooked, including the Leveson inquiry, Rupert is bent, then it follows that there was a Newspoil done at the end of last week and as it was too favourable for the ALP then Rupert binned it.
He then set about a frenetic week of attempting to destabalise the government and jeer up the populace with a full on week of frenetic leadershit bullshit.
He then sends his Newspoil out and polls enough people until he can have ALP voters discarded and then come in with having polled 1092 or however many and the result is 61-39 to LNP for the last week of Parliament.
The media will be like a frenzied shark attack on a school of pilchards this week.
Why do they all want to get rid of Julia?
I can’t see them wanting to get rid of her because she is bad. If to them she is bad they would be better off leaving her there.
I can understand all the unhinged Rudd supporters wanting her shut down because they have the utmost faith in Rupert and his honest activities in Australia, which are reporting to those who believe in him that there’s a train wreck about to happen.
I can understand Rupert and the reactionaries wanting the ALP to go back to Rudd as between them, Rupert and Abbott did Rudd over real easy with the HIS. Bushfire Bill nailed it at the time when Rudd told Barrie he would take the blame for it.
Once they found out how easy it was to do him over they thought they had the 2010 in the bag.
They hadn’t counted on the ALP changing leaders.
They missed out so now they are doing all in their power by fair means or foul to get rid of Julia and reinstate Rudd so they can have an easy road to the lodge in 2013.
They know deep down inside that Julia will do Abbott like a dinner and if they get the chance they will do Rudd like a dinner.
JV and whoever else
The polls are wrong necessarily
they just dont predict the future
they just tell you what a sample of peeps thought at a particular time to a particular question
The peeps need to have a better think about Abbott before they vote
Is there a Newspoll that PvO has not considered fascinating?
As Sveta might have said: “I can’t wait to get excited over that one!”
[But what if the poor quality of journalism in this country is just because we have very poor quality journalists?]
I have been asserting for a while now that the best writers and observers of politics are in the blogosphere, not in the Old Media.
OM journos are too caught up in the drama of the day to day to give any objective perspective, or not qualified enough in specialist areas to provide an informed perspective.
Outsource them to Entertainment Tonight, where their daily reports of personalities and who is doing what to whom will be welcome. And bring in the bloggers!
bemused, if the party can resolve the leadership issue, the way will open for Labor to assert its messages on education, other social policies, and the economy. But the leadership issue must be resolved first. Until this is done, there can be no peace.
It is painfully obvious the public has lost confidence in JG, while the party long ago lost confidence in KR. We need a unity candidate. There is no choice and no time left.
Some history: The last time there was a leadership ballot in Caucus in which the Right was united behind one candidate and the Left behind another was in 1968, when Jim Cairns challenged Whitlam. After that, every leadership ballot for 40 years was been between two members of the Right (although Hayden is hard to classify): Whitlam v Hayden*, Hayden* v Hawke, Hawke v Keating, Beazley v Crean, Latham v Beazley, Rudd v Beazley. Only in 2010 did we get a leadership candidate who was even technically a member of the Left, and her name was Julia Gillard, who is cordially loathed by the “faction bosses” of the Left – Carr, Albanese and Faulkner. But she is supported by others in the left: Wong, Combet, Butler, Macklin, King, Plibersek, O’Connor.
* Hayden started his career in the Left, but by 1977 he was a right-winger in all but name, and by 1982 he led his own sub-faction, which was called the Centre Left but was in fact a “dry economics” faction.
[Is there a Newspoll that PvO has not considered fascinating?]
The one/s where Ghost beat him to the chase for publishing?
[ ShowsOn
..
Should probable tell the Rudd spear throwers something., but it won’t.
It tells us that the Cult of Gillard can be pretty delusional and not exactly appreciative of people expressing their opinions.’
]
As I said, they won’t.
Labor will probable lose this coming election, and the blame can be solidly place on the shoulders of the white ant and his team of merry men.
Rudd, Abbott and the Canberra press gallery, destruction is their main game.
At least Abbott has the excuse it is his job.
Kinkajou,
I’m OK on long-term and short-term memory. Anything in-between may not compute.
Jackol@1548
I’ll dispute “we basically have no basis to judge Reachtel’s historical record”. Among other things we have:
* ReachTEL polling for states that is not greatly different to Newspoll polling for same states.
* ReachTEL polling nationally (twice) that was a little over federal Coalition 2PP of other pollsters at the time, but not hugely.
* ReachTEL projections of massive swings in Queensland electorates that in many cases happened.
* ReachTEL accurate polling of Melbourne (state) by-election (very difficult to poll for). On the other hand they were well under on the size of Greenwich’s vote when he replaced Clover Moore, but that was even more difficult.
* ReachTEL polling of Nelson (Legislative Council election). I used this in doing projections for that election and it worked.
They have enough runs on the board that I think the onus is on anyone who thinks their polls might consistently be way out to put up evidence to that effect.
You can question ReachTEL’s methods (NB “methodology” in this context is a misnomer, albeit a very common one) but if those methods were prone to produce massive errors consistently we would have seen it by now. Unsubstantiated distrust of robopolling is just not a valid argument.
And bear in mind that usually in Tas the only available seat pollster is EMRS with known massive house effects and colossal undecided rates. I would take ReachTEL over EMRS any day.
[So by applying the logic that, because of all his court cases and out of court settlements around the world over many years of being crooked, including the Leveson inquiry, Rupert is bent, then it follows that there was a Newspoil done at the end of last week and as it was too favourable for the ALP then Rupert binned it.]
Go outside and howl at the moon.
You aren’t helping Labor’s cause one bit.
ShowsOn@1598: what a one-dimensional view of politics. If maximising the votes is all that matters, then Labor might as well campaign for bringing back the death penalty for serial rapists like Adrian Bayly and Terrence Leary.
A sensible approach to politics involves maintaining a balance between principle and pragmatism. If I am a Caucus member, I will be trying to balance in my mind the two facts that a) Kevin Rudd seems to be more popular at the moment than Gillard and b) notwithstanding how she is going in the popularity stakes, Gillard is doing quite a good job as PM I know Kevin Rudd is an incompetent dickhead, along with the problem of c) there is a risk that Rudd’s supposed popularity might evaporate if we were to make him leader again.
You try to make it all sound so simple. But it isn’t that way. If it was, Labor would have never gotten rid of Rudd in the first place. But, old-fashioned as it might seem, how someone actually perform as Prime Minister is perceived by some parliamentarians as a factor that deserves to be taken into account alongside the issue of how the public perceives the cut of their jib.
I’m sure that eventually we will be able to replace all these parliamentarians who think for themselves with a bunch of robots who respond purely to the results of opinion polls. And perhaps a good thing too: as WS Gilbert so aptly put it:
“…a lot of dull MPs, in close proximity, all thinking for themselves is what no man can face with equanimity”.
A US expert says we don’t get enough sleep nowadays
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/you-need-some-sleep
Seven times! Those South Australians!
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/sa-driver-almost-7-times-over-the-limit/story-e6frfku9-1226668317924
[It is painfully obvious the public has lost confidence in JG, while the party long ago lost confidence in KR. We need a unity candidate. There is no choice and no time left.]
Who might that be? Crean has trashed his reputation. Shorten would be fiercely opposed by the Rudd camp, Bowen by the Gillard camp. Smith is capable but dull. Combet is capable but scary. Bob Carr is in the wrong house. That leaves Jason Clare, from the NSW Right but a pro-Gillard clean-skin. Nothing is impossible.
yo, Gaffhook !
thanks fer that ….
I take it as acknowledgement of at least one person reading my repetitive delerium.
‘she just won’t go away ….’
Psephos
You argue against yourself. Of course there are factions other than those controlled by the affiliated union blow-throughs we currently endure. It’s just a group that coalesced dedicated to seeking internal power and influence first. Principle and good progressive policy were relegated to ridicule. That’s what the split is about, not who leads the party.
[Labor will probable lose this coming election, and the blame can be solidly place on the shoulders of the white ant and his team of merry men.]
HA! What a perfect example of Cult of Gillardism!
You think Labor will lose, don’t really care about that much, and when that does happen you will argue that Julia Gillard’s personal unpopularity will have absolutely nothing to do with the election loss!
That’s Cult of Gillardism par excellence.
In fact you may even be one of the cult leaders!
The OO shills are wetting themselves.
Can just about smell those promised fat success bonuses from Rupert.
[@TroyBramston: Big #Newspoll in @australian tomorrow! Check out the paper. And I’ll be discussing it on @thetodayshow just after 7.00 am.]
[ShowsOn@1598: what a one-dimensional view of politics. If maximising the votes is all that matters, …]
Well bloody hell mate, you have a zero-dimensional view of politics!
Yes it IS the aim of political parties to maximise the number of votes they win at elections!
That is what they spend a lot of time and effort trying to do.
Clearly you are clueless when it comes to politics which makes me wonder why the hell you keep writing long posts about nothing much in particular at this blog.
Psephos@1626: Jason Clare is a great idea. Flick the switch to Generation X (and a relatively young member of Gen X, for that matter: as opposed to Shorten, who is just a couple of years short of being a baby boomer).
And a man from Western Sydney.
The more I think about it, the better it looks. If Gillard doesn’t have the numbers, I rather like the idea of Clare. Hey, with the first name “Jason” and the second name “Clare”, he even has a bit of cross-gender appeal.
You know it makes sense.
[You argue against yourself. Of course there are factions other than those controlled by the affiliated union blow-throughs we currently endure. It’s just a group that coalesced dedicated to seeking internal power and influence first. Principle and good progressive policy were relegated to ridicule. That’s what the split is about, not who leads the party.]
I have no idea at all what that means.
[Combet is capable but scary.]
He is a mauler with acid but he doesn’t quite exude the poise that our Prime Minister has.
Julia Gillard: the only leader in human history that bears no responsibility for anything that happens in government.
Some examples of how Rudd undermined the Gillard government’s credibility:
1. Climate change
a. Dump the CPRS as it was becoming unpopular
b. Dump Rudd- she knew nothing about it beforehand…just an accident!
c. Carbon tax community forum
2. Asylum seekers
a. Citizen’ assembly
b. To Timor L’este- oops they refused!
c. Malaysian rendition- oops, High Court says no
3. Mining tax
a. Deal to pay State Royalties for the big miners- oops, forgot to get an agreement with States that they wouldn’t increase the Royaties that we are now committed to pay for the miners….
b. We’ll raise $4 billion per year, oops make that $2 billion, oops, make that 0.1 billion!
4. Saying Julian Assange was guilty before he was ever charged with anything.
5. Australia Network tender process (another Conroy stuff up)
6. Lets make Peter Slipper our Speaker- why don’t we let the ALP absorb him as its own?
7. Lets lie to Andrew Wilkie
8. Lets stake our economic credentials on delivering a surplus- Oops
9. Calling election date for certainty- oops 2 Cabinet ministers resigning
10. Trying to push through half-baked media reforms in days without consultation 6m pre-election (Media Tsar without defined powers!)
11. 2011 National Campaign: “We are us”- what a ripper speech, eh?
[You try to make it all sound so simple. But it isn’t that way.]
Hear hear!
The leadership change now crowd only think to the change itself, and not beyond. They forget that a leadership change (esp to R*dd) will bring on many ministerial resignations, swamping the Mar’n/Bowen/KCarr resignations in terms of perception of collateral disunity within the party.
Not only that, how does the new leader explain his leadership? Sorry, but ‘Hi, I’m Kevin, and I’m here just to f*ck over those who removed me in the first place, so vote 1 me, dudes!!!’ won’t cut it in the lead in to an election. This assumes people are idiots.
And then there’s the look of desperation, that the party is only changing leaders in order to win the election. Not to mention what happens to Labor policies.
It would be a huge mess, and one the R*dd Cultists can’t justify with any credibility.
ClothesOff@1631: as I have said before, you sure as hell are one dimwitted sort of MOFO.
You only pop up on here when the prospect of Ruddstoration rears its ugly head. So we know where you stand.
I note that you advised another poster that they should keep their posts short and make sure that they were full of content.
Well, I must agree that your posts are generally short…………..
[You know it makes sense.]
A Clare-Plibersek ticket, with Combet for Treasurer, would be a game-changer, to be sure.
Actually further to #1621 (not sure if Jackol is reading) it’s wrong to pigeonhole me as having “jumped wholeheartedly into just accepting Reachtel polling.” If you mean that I consider a generic ReachTEL poll result to be almost as reliable as a Newspoll or Nielsen (for the same sample size) and much more reliable than an EMRS then that’s true. But to imply, even unintentionally and sloppily if that’s what it was, that I’d ignore the possibility of normal error in any poll, is just silly.
Indeed this was in the report on the ReachTEL I was quoted in on pp 1 and 4 of last week’s Sunday Tasmanian:
Dr Bonham cautioned that polls were an inexact science.
“The picture for Labor in the state polls … this poll and the EMRS poll are two extremes and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I don’t believe Labor is on 19.7 per cent statewide. [the ReachTEL figure] I think it’s a bit better than that.”
[It would be a huge mess, and one the R*dd Cultists can’t justify with any credibility.]
…and testament to what a huge mess Gillard has got you into that the Rudd re-ascendancy mess would probably be 3% better for the ALP thank sticking with the Gillard mess.
The thing Rudd would bring is:
1. Revenge on the backstabber
2. Return to the state before the Gillard chaos
3. An ability to reclaim legitimacy of the “we saved yous from the GFC” argument
showson
i cant remember how many time rudd has been buried on this blog
the amazing thing is that he is still subject of debate – three long years on
on that’s right, it is own bastardry that spoils the government’s brilliant – and the msm, and males, and abbot, and the indonesian government …
…anyhow, not enough time to deal with denialists right now….plane to catch!
see you on the other side of Newspoll (should be good for the ALP as couldnt get worse!)
🙂
Clare as leader.
Nope, he hasn’t a hope in hell against a rampaging, populist opposition.
[a game-changer, to be sure.]
“Labor has discarded a leadership which has achieved marvels in a hung parliament.”
Can’t wait for Rupert and Gina to start with that one.
[A Clare-Plibersek ticket, with Combet for Treasurer, would be a game-changer, to be sure.]
a bit NSW centric
[A Clare-Plibersek ticket, with Combet for Treasurer, would be a game-changer, to be sure.]
But not in a good way. It would reek of desperation, and neither of them appear to have the iron determination of Gillard to stand defiant against the R*dd whiteanting.
It’s definately a super moon night tonight.
Very old GhostWhoVotes poll tweet deleted at commenter’s request – The Management.
[Stephen Koukoulas @TheKouk 1m
On 24 August, @JuliaGillard will overtake John Gorton to be 13th longest serving PM]
FWIW
28 Oct is so last year.
delete that lats post pls William, sucked in…