First the ReachTEL polling. Yesterday morning the Seven Network brought us a big sample automated phone poll of 3018 respondents which broadly corroborated the Morgan SMS poll in returning the Coalition lead to margin-of-error territory. The poll had Labor at 38.3% on the primary vote, the Coalition on 45.1% and the Greens on 8.7%, panning out to 52-48 in favour of the Coalition after preferences. Now Fairfax brings electorate-level ReachTEL polls of Maribyrnong (located in western Melbourne and held by Bill Shorten), Chisholm (eastern Melbourne, Anna Burke), Blaxland (western Sydney, Jason Clare) and McMahon (western Sydney, Chris Bowen), which have Labor’s two-party vote at 58.6%, 55.2% and 58.9% for the first three, with McMahon annoyingly not provided but Labor evidently in front. Earlier ReachTEL polling showed Labor losing all bar Maribyrnong. Now on to a Seat of the Week I’ve been holding back for a special occasion …
Kevin Rudd’s electorate of Griffith covers inner city Brisbane immediately south of the Brisbane River, from South Brisbane east to Bulimba and Queensport, south to Annerley and south-west to Carina Heights. The seat was called Oxley until 1934, the name later being revived for an unrelated new Ipswich-based seat in 1949. Highly marginal historically, Griffith changed hands between Liberal and Labor in 1949, 1954, 1958, 1961, 1966, 1977, 1996 and 1998. Don Cameron won the seat for the Liberals at the 1966 landslide and then had his position strengthened by redistribution, enabling to hold on to the seat through the Whitlam years. A redistribution at the 1977 election moved the seat heavily in Labor’s favour, resulting in Cameron switching to the new Gold Coast seat of Fadden and Griffith being won for Labor by Ben Humphreys.
When Humphreys retired at the 1996 election the Labor preselection was won by Kevin Rudd, the former diplomat who wielded great influence as chief-of-staff to Wayne Goss during his tenure as Queensland Premier from 1989 to 1996. In doing so he established a factional association with the locally dominant AWU sub-faction of the Right, which secured his preselection despite grumblings that the state branch was failing to meet affirmative action standards. However, the statewide rout that Labor suffered at the 1996 election saw Rudd fall it his first electoral hurdle, with Graeme McDougall gaining Griffith for the Liberals off a 6.2% swing. Rudd returned for a second attempt amid the far more favourable circumstances of 1998, picking up a 3.9% swing to unseat McDougall by a margin of 2.4%.
Rudd established a formidable electoral record in Griffith, picking up a 3.3% and 2.4% swings against the trend of the 2001 and 2004 elections. The electorate was substantially reshaped by redistribution at the 2004 election, absorbing inner city areas at East Brisbane, South Brisbane and Dutton Park while its eastern parts were hived off to the new seat of Bonner. In what may have been an early portent of Rudd’s electoral impact, the booths which were transferred out of the electorate contributed to a surprise defeat for Labor in Bonner by swinging heavily to the Liberals in his absence. As his party’s candidate for the prime ministership in 2007 Rudd enjoyed a further 3.8% swing in 2007, and as its recently spurned ex-leader in 2010 he suffered what by Queensland standards was a relatively mild swing of 3.9%.
The Liberal National Party candidate for the coming election is Bill Glasson, former president of the Australian Medical Association. Glasson’s father, Bill Glasson Sr, was a state National Party MP and minister in the Bjelke-Petersen, Cooper and Ahern governments.
I think the departure of Combet is truly sad
Does anyone know what his surgery was for? He is actually not a very young man is he? Still not old enough to quit. I assume it is something serious.
[818
Sean Tisme
Howard stopped the boats. It’s not up for debate, he stopped the boats. The numbers make this is a historical fact.]
The displacement of people from Afghanistan also ceased, happily for Howard. Unfortunately for Rudd/Gillard, the renewed displacement of the exiled Afghan population has coincided with their own errors.
Whatever Howard may or may not have accomplished, the policies of the past will not solve the current problems. This is perfectly obvious. There needs to be a new bi-partisan settlement on this issue.
@Sean/850
Refer to your link:
http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2012-2013/BoatArrivals
In October 1999, the Howard Government introduced Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) for asylum seekers who arrived unauthorised and were subsequently assessed by the immigration department to be refugees.[92] A TPV was valid for three years, after which time a person’s need for protection would be reassessed. Holders of TPVs were provided with access to medical and welfare services, but given only reduced access to settlement services, no access to family reunion, and no travel rights. If a person who held a TPV left Australia their visa could be cancelled. Approximately 11 000 TPVs were issued between 1999 and 2007, and approximately 90 per cent of TPV holders eventually gained permanent visas.[93]
TPV is the core of their policy.
Boerwar
Someone on Twitter suggested they could form a Party of their own because they had so much talent. I doubt they’d want to.
[Still waiting for the policy which Abbott has got you excited about]
PPL
Mod Lib
Posted Saturday, June 29, 2013 at 4:54 pm | PERMALINK
Still waiting for the policy which Abbott has got you excited about
PPL
——–
and yet you still not going to vote for the coalition
bw@741: Abbott is certainly a bit dotty, but he’s not a sociopath. I have never seen any sign of internal rage, or the yearning need for redress for past hurts: I still very much doubt the wall-punching story, which is out of character. . He’s always been pretty comfortable in himself. He grew up the darling of his wealthy family, was awarded a Rhodes scholarship, had a charmed rise through a career of journalism and political advising and into the safest of seats. Once he was in Parliament, Howard treated him like a favored son, forgiving him his many trespasses (which, as he have seen, wasn’t necessarily the best of training). He then lucked into being Opposition leader when it looked a long way off for him (perhaps never).
So the guy has had a charmed run to the top and has had the nous to seize all the golden opportunities presented to him. I have never heard the slightest suggestion that he is inclined to disloyalty, or a reluctance to do unpopular things on behalf of the party. His pursuit of Pauline Hanson, however one judges it, was surely a pretty brave thing for him to do. I struggle to imagine Rudd doing something like that.
To equate Abbott to Rudd is to misunderstand both men in different ways. Rudd is an egregious example of someone who pursues power to try to rid himself of an enormous chip on his shoulder, and to avenge every slight -no matter how petty -he has ever received. Abbott is driven by ego, sure but also – coming from a priveleged background – by some of your old-fashioned noblesse oblige. If his grandfather hasn’t converted to a zealous form of Catholicism, Abbott would be a slightly ADHD, sports jock-style of Sydney North Shore Liberal pollie. Instead, his shtick is somewhat ruined by an edgy sort of obsessive Catholicism, which makes him more than a little scary to most people. But it is the scariness of suppressed zealotry rather than of sociopathy.
If Abbott ever experiences what Rudd did in 2010, he certainly wouldn’t hang about gnawing on the cold bones of revenge. With the urge towards noblesse oblige kicking back in, he would head off to Africa to be a missionary or some such.
Would it be ok to mention that for all the Abbott/Liberal ranting that one of the reasons the Malayasia solution should not happen because Malayasia was not a signatory to the UN Convention.
This shows the hypocrisy of Abbott and the Liberals as they continued to support the use of Nauru from 2001 to 2007 and they continued to campaign for its re-opening.
Nauru did not sign the UN Convention until July 2011.
Silly Statement by Carr
___________
His claim that Boat arrivals are 100% made up of economic migrants is silly and insupportable…and at best shows a statistical illiteracy…we know that such a statement cannot be founded on fact
strange stuff for Bod Carr
[NBN, Employment, AAA Economy, Road/Rail, Education, Carbon Pollution reduction, Disability Insurance, Accountability re Child Sexual Abuse, Aged Care, Tasmanian forests, Ocean Parks, Murray/Darling water… ]
Well, you can leave out carbon pollution reduction already. Let’s wait and see how many of the others Rudd is willing to sacrifice on the altar of his own popularity, shall we?
lizzie
‘Boerwar
Someone on Twitter suggested they could form a Party of their own because they had so much talent. I doubt they’d want to.’
I have seen other workplaces destroyed by sociopaths over the years. The human wreckage can be quite awesome. The interesting thing in each case was that reasonable people kept trying to be reasonable with the sociopaths. It just does not work.
Slackboy
[Sean,
I think you’re confusing illegals (mostly NZ and UK) with asylum seekers.
In 2002 we had 5000 asylum seekers. Not 1.]
1. A great many people, from many nations, of many colours & faiths, qualify for citizenship “from descent” so are NOT “Illegals”
2. A great many people (mainly non-White) from Papua, Pacific Islands and New Zealand (inc those from Tampa & others detained by the Howard Government, can enter Australia and settle here freely.
So “illegals” do not include NZers, most Pacific Islanders which were UK/NZ territories or dependencies many/most from PNG.
2.1. NZers aren’t “illegals”. They have a right to be here, as we do in NZ
[The Australian and New Zealand Governments have had arrangements in place since the 1920s to facilitate a free flow of people between the two countries.
The 1973 Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement has allowed Australian and New Zealand citizens to enter each other’s country to visit, live and work, without the need to apply for authority to enter the other country before travelling.]
2.2 Pacific Islanders who are New Zealand citizens, also have the right to move freely to Australia as have Chinese Peoiple with NZ Citizenship These include:
[When the British Nationality and New Zealand Citizenship Act 1948 came into effect on 1 January 1949, Cook Islanders, Niueans, Tokelauans and Western Samoans who were British subjects gained New Zealand citizenship….
On 28 July 1982, following a stiff tightening of Pacific Island immigration by the Muldoon government, in its interpretation of the 1923 and 1928 British Nationality and Status of Aliens Acts, the Privy Council ruled that all Samoans born between 1924 and 1948, and their children, were British subjects and hence, on 1 January 1949, had become New Zealand citizens.]
3. Australian citizenship by descent for persons born in Papua
There are more; but that should be enough to convince anyone that a great number of people of many nations, ethnicities, colours, faiths etc can legally enter Australia
(a) Those from Papua, Pacific Islands, New Zealand, can freely enter Australia
(b) Those from nations not listed above can freely enter Australia with an Aussie passport
All of the above come from Google!
Pity people don’t try googling before jumping to conclusions and getting things embarrassingly wRONg.
[and yet you still not going to vote for the coalition
]
Not enough, given the ALP have a PPL, albeit an inferior version.
[ Okay Zoidlord you can not stop every single boat. ]
Oh? So Howard didn’t “Stop the Boats”?
Abbott was put as leader by faceless men , while he continued to lie to turnbull and hockey
[Meguire Bob
Posted Saturday, June 29, 2013 at 4:58 pm | PERMALINK
Abbott was put as leader by faceless men , while he continued to lie to turnbull and hockey]
What a load of tosh
deblonay
I saw Carr’s statement and had the same thought as you originally. It is, of course, quite possible to be a genuine refugee for valid refugee-type reasons AND an economic refugee at the same time.
Carr should probably have a look at his language and sort out his position a bit more clearly, IMHO.
BW
Gillard lost Roxon for no apparent reason and Faulkner and Tanner early on,
She drove out Evans, Mclelland, Ferguson, Crean and Carr of whom the last three all had some if not overwhelming talent.
Swan, Conroy and Ludwig are no loss at all to Cabinet and had reached use by date.
I an surprised at the departure of Emerson, Combet, Smith and Garrett. However perhaps they feel that they will either face 6 years in opposition OR 6 years as second fiddle to Rudd or Shorten
Combet gone?
That’s a political tragedy.
[ Let’s see… what about Jessica? ]
What a shame Jasper is not with us any more!
[Oh? So Howard didn’t “Stop the Boats”?]
These are silly word games.
He stopped the boats from coming which is why we only had a handful during the PS years.
258 Boats a year under Gillard is a complete and total loss of Australia’s border protection systems.
dtt@845. I’m a Liberal like Chris Judd plays for the Eagles.
@Mod Lib/855
Dispite it being expansive, and highly critisised ?
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/abbott-faces-call-to-defend-paid-parental-leave-plan-20130506-2j3nt.html
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/abbotts-paid-parental-leave-at-mercy-of-rightwing-lobby-20130509-2j988.html
Mod Lib
Posted Saturday, June 29, 2013 at 4:58 pm | PERMALINK
Meguire Bob
Posted Saturday, June 29, 2013 at 4:58 pm | PERMALINK
Abbott was put as leader by faceless men , while he continued to lie to turnbull and hockey
What a load of tosh
—————–
Its facts
Abbott told turnbull he would lead the coalition to the 2010 election , and had abbotts 100% support
next few days Abbott challenge , and he allegedly told hockey he wouldnt challenge if hockey did
but lied to hockey as well
@Sean/871
Your doing the word games, not us.
Howard stopping the boats explains the 1700 processed through Nauru and the $1 billion cost
[845
daretotread
Bemised
Not so sure about Briefly – think he is an embittered Beazley Boy, but I did our Meher Baba the other day. Not Menzies house but a Lib all the same.]
Not at all embittered about Kimbo, not at all. I am just deeply suspicious of KR.
I don’t know if you are familiar with hypoglycemia – gnawing, aching feelings; grinding cold in one’s muscles, especially around the shoulders and neck; a chill running through one’s core. That’s what KR does to me. I am willing to give him a second shot from my sense of loyalty to Labor. I suspect this is much against my own better judgment and just hope that in this I am completely wrong.
In any case, as I have said, I do not wish to add to the truculence we see here. But equally, I am not going to offer obsequious obedience to revenge and treachery.
Psephos
You are wrong on boats. If you are not wrong we are no better than the Chinese we try and lecture on human rights.
Sociopaths
A lot get to the top
_____________________
One can assume that Hitler and Stalin were such.and likewise Thatcher ..I knew of a Uni Vic-Chnacellor in Oz who was a classic case…and senior Educ Dept person who was the same way…it seems they abound…and are always intolerable..but they often get to the top…
but it is part of the human condition
Howard back on the hustings. This means WorkChoices is back on the hustings.
lizzie@564
Wanting the ALP to have a credible leader, capable of making Labor at least competitive, has nothing to do with grief and longing, and a lot more to to with the frequently inept performance of the then leader.
Mod lib
Abbott in the challenge relied on the faceless men in the liberal party to not allow a absentee vote which was for Turnbull
and Slipper’s tainted vote which Abbott accepted
[ These are silly word games. ]
Those are your words, ST – not mine.
Just like your “sea transfers” nonsense which (as soon as you are challenged) suddenly morph into “plane transfers”.
[What a shame Jasper is not with us any more!]
First Dog has raised Jasper’s zombie corpse. As a political metaphor, I think.
Or maybe it is just a doggie thing.
bemused
I think you do not understand the truly abysmal performance of the MSM.
Rudd will do much better but its still the same MSM and they will continue to promote the LNP so be prepared for that.
daretotread
‘BW
Gillard lost Roxon for no apparent reason and Faulkner and Tanner early on,
She drove out Evans, Mclelland, Ferguson, Crean and Carr of whom the last three all had some if not overwhelming talent.
Swan, Conroy and Ludwig are no loss at all to Cabinet and had reached use by date.
I an surprised at the departure of Emerson, Combet, Smith and Garrett. However perhaps they feel that they will either face 6 years in opposition OR 6 years as second fiddle to Rudd or Shorten’
It is not straightforward, IMHO and you are quite right to raise the issues you do. I could never quite understand Faulkner’s departure. My rating of Faulkner as Defence Minister, incidentally was not nearly as high as Faulkner’s. Tanner and Gillard obviously had a history. I have no idea of the ins and outs of that. It could well be that Tanner had good reason to dislike Gillard. I don’t know.
It seems to me that Roxon wanted to move on, not because of Rudd and Gillard, but for personal reasons.
Of Mclelland, Ferguson, Crean and Carr, I would rate Mclelland and Crean as average at best. Ferguson was a climate denialist, nuff said. Carr was a nasty piece of work as an individual and a dud as a minister: no great loss there.
All the other losses basically comes down to Rudd’s persistent engineering of a disloyal opposition in his pursuit of personal power.
There is not a lot of very high quality left, IMHO.
[ Wanting the ALP to have a credible leader, capable of making Labor at least competitive, has nothing to do with grief and longing, and a lot more to to with the frequently inept performance of the then leader. ]
Agree 100%
Who do you suggest?
DTT –
Distorting the past to make the disaster unfolding at the moment smell sweeter.
Roxon and Evans had nothing to do with the transition from Rudd to Gillard.
“Ferguson, Crean and Carr” “overwhelming talent” LMAO. Crean is decent when he sticks to his portfolio. Carr (of the Kim variety) has no talent whatsoever. All 3 were happy to be ministers under Julia Gillard but couldn’t help themselves when it came to Rudd and eventually their positions became untenable.
At the Rudd to Gillard transition we saw Faulkner and Tanner walking away.
The Gillard to Rudd transition has already seen many more people walk and much more talent leaving the PLP.
The Rudd gamble has already had a very high price for the ALP. Let’s hope there’s some reward that lasts beyond the next few weeks to in any way justify the current carnage.
Abbott beat Turnbull because the Liberal party didn’t want Turnbull’s agreement with Rudd to implement a CPRS and Hockey screwed up by opting for a free vote so Abbott was the last man standing and unexpectedly took the leadership by 1 vote.
Abbott today had the opportunity to be a leader and tell Australia what are his major policies which arent slogans
But as expected . all he could do was the news ltd/abbott coalition only can do is personal attacks
Back to Pakistani election statistics.
*poof*
[I assume it is something serious.]
realising you have a unhinged narcissistic psychopath as a leader would qualify as serious.
[Wanting the ALP to have a credible leader, capable of making Labor at least competitive, has nothing to do with grief and longing, and a lot more to to with the frequently inept performance of the then leader.
Agree 100%
Who do you suggest?]
Hilarious … reality sinks in very slowly.
Mod Lib
Posted Saturday, June 29, 2013 at 5:08 pm | PERMALINK
Abbott beat Turnbull because the Liberal party didn’t want Turnbull’s agreement with Rudd to implement a CPRS and Hockey screwed up by opting for a free vote so Abbott was the last man standing and unexpectedly took the leadership by 1 vote.
——————————
Mod lib no mater how much spin you try to put on it
Abbott told Turnbull he wasnt going to challenge and Turnbull would lead to the 2010 election
Liberal party faceless men put abbott in over their leader
[Craig Emerson MP @CraigEmersonMP 52s
Dear friend Greg Combet is not recontesting. A wonderful comrade, great fighter for the vulnerable. Thoroughly decent man. A legend!]
lizzie @ 895
Yep. It just makes me more angry with what is happening.
guytaur@880
Wonder whether it was planned – or are they looking at the unthinkable. The unbearable.
Looking down the barrel of losing another unloseable election?
Far to early to tell of course but they can at least forget about controlling the senate and we may just see abbott come under real pressure for the first time as LOTO.
Greg Combet
Amazingly I believe the man when he states personal reasons and nothing to do with leadership change for retirement.
Of course the LNP cannot believe the honesty. They will believe its due to Rudd because they just live mendacity every day.
Indeed, the big question is for how long and how comprehensively can the ALP hold the illusion of supporting its new leader…
[I have seen other workplaces destroyed by sociopaths over the years. The human wreckage can be quite awesome.]
And do we condemn the victims of those sociopaths who leave the workplace because they could not work there anymore like most are doing here.