UPDATE (Morgan): The weekly Morgan poll is little changed on last time, with Labor down half a point to 41.5%, the Coalition steady on 41%, and the Greens up two points to 9%. There is actually a slight move in Labor’s favour on two-party preferred as measured using preference flows from the previous election, presumably because of rounding, their lead up from 51.5-48.5 to 52-48. On respondent-allocated preferences, the lead is steady at 52.5-47.5. Regrettably, the poll does not come with state breakdowns, which keen observers among us had started to think would be a regular feature (as it surely should be with such a large sample size). We will surely have Newspoll along later this evening, while the regular Essential Research is delayed this week and will be along tomorrow.
Two for the price of one this week as I scramble to catch up with the Queensland seats suddenly deemed in play under Kevin Rudd 2.0 …
Seat of the week #1: Forde
Straddling the southern edge of Brisbane, Forde was one of a number of Queensland seats which fell Labor’s way under Kevin Rudd’s leadership at the 2007 election, only to be lost again in the wake of his demise three years later. The electorate contains the eastern part of the municipality of Logan City around Beenleigh and extends southwards along the Pacific Motorway to accommodate, somewhat awkwardly, the rapidly growing suburb of Upper Coomera at the interior northern edge of the Gold Coast. The latter area was acquired in the redistribution which preceded the 2010 election, when Forde provided the new seat of Wright with about a third of its voters in rural territories extending to the New South Wales border.
Forde was created with the expansion of parliament in 1984, at which time it covered Brisbane’s outer south-west. Liberal candidate David Watson won the seat on its debut by 43 votes, but was unseated after a single term at the 1987 election by Labor’s Mary Crawford. Watson would later return to politics in the state parliament, eventually leading the Liberal Party into a disastrous result at the 2001 election. Crawford meanwhile built up a handy margin on the back of swings in 1990 and 1993, before a punishing redistribution pulled the seat into the rural Beaudesert region on the New South Wales border. Thwarted in a bid to be reassigned to an outer suburban seat, in part as a consequence of the party’s determination to accommodate Kevin Rudd in Griffith, Crawford was left with no buffer to defend herself against the savage swing that hit Labor across Queensland, which struck in Forde to the tune of 9.6%.
Forde was then held for the Liberals throughout the Howard years by Kay Elson, who retained comfortable margins in 1998 and 2001 before enjoying a further 5.9% boost in 2004. Elson’s retirement at the 2007 election was presumably a factor behind the spectacular 14.4% swing to Labor, making the seat one of three in Queensland where Labor was able to overhaul double-digit Coalition margins. It was then held for a term by Brett Raguse, a former teacher, local newspaper publisher and TAFE college director who had more recently worked as an adviser to state ministers associated with the AWU/Labor Forum sub-faction of the Right. The aforementioned redistribution improved Raguse’s margin from 2.9% to 3.4%, but this proved insufficient at the 2010 election in the face of what by Queensland standards was a fairly typical swing of 5.0%.
The seat has since been held for the LNP by Bert van Manen, a financial planner from Slacks Creek who had run as the Family First candidate for Rankin in 2007. Van Manen’s Labor opponent at the coming election is Des Hardman, a radiographer at Logan Hospital. Brett Raguse meanwhile re-emerged as a candidate for the preselection to succeed Craig Emerson in the neighbouring seat of Rankin, in which he was narrowly unsuccessful despite claiming support from Kevin Rudd.
Seat of the week #2: Herbert
The Townsville-based electorate of Herbert has been in conservative hands without interruption since 1996, although it has been highly marginal throughout that time. The seat has existed since federation, at which time it extended north to Cairns and south to Mackay. More recently it has covered central Townsville and a shifting aggregation of surrounding territory, the pre-2010 election redistribution having transferred the southern suburbs of Annandale and Wulguru to Dawson and added Deeragun and its northern coastal surrounds from Kennedy. The strongest booths for Labor are generally around the town centre, while those in the outer suburbs tend to be more volatile as well as more conservative, having moved strongly with the statewide tides toward Labor in 2007 and against it in 2004 and 2010. Lavarack Barracks makes the electorate highly sensitive to defence issues, with the sector accounting for about one in eight jobs in the electorate. Presumably as a consequence, the electorate is unusually youthful, the median age of 32 being four years lower than for any other seat in regional Queensland.
Herbert was a working class and Labor seat for much of its history, being in Labor hands until the 1960s and turning in a 34.2% vote for Communist Party candidate Frederick Paterson in 1943 (Paterson went on to win the state seat of Bowen the following year, the only such success for a Communist candidate in Australian history). A watershed moment came with the victory of Liberal candidate Robert Bonnett in the 1966 landslide, which was followed by further Liberal swings against the trend of the 1969 and 1972 elections. The seat came back on Labor’s radar after the 1980 election, when their candidate Ted Lindsay succeeded in reducing the Liberal margin to below 1%. Lindsay went one better when he ran again in 1983, gaining the seat with a 3.7% swing and retaining it throughout the Hawke-Keating years. Together with most of his Queensland Labor colleagues he was unseated at the 1996 election, when unrelated Liberal candidate Peter Lindsay won off a 9.0% swing. Ted Lindsay came within 160 votes of pulling off a comeback in 1998, before Peter Lindsay consolidated with swings of 1.5% in 2001 and 4.7% in 2004. He survived another close shave by 343 votes in 2007, a swing to Labor of 5.9% being slightly below a statewide 7.5% which cost the Coalition eight seats.
Lindsay bowed out at the 2010 election and was succeeded as candidate for the Liberal National Party by Ewen Jones, an auctioneer for local real estate agency Ferry Property. Jones’s Labor opponent was Tony Mooney, who served for nearly two decades as mayor of Townsville and earned a footnote in Australian political history when his failure to win the 1996 Mundingburra by-election for Labor led to the downfall of the Goss government. Perhaps reflecting the loss of Lindsay’s personal vote, Jones picked up what by Queensland standards was a modest swing of 2.2%, which was nonetheless enough to secure his hold on a seat which the redistribution had made, by the narrowest of margins, notionally Labor. Jones’s Labor opponent this time is Cathy O’Toole, a former chief executive of a disability employment service and member of the Left faction.
jv
I am sure that the unions will be re-assessing their campaign contributions. Why would they want to hand campaign funds to the likes of Rudd?
yes dave and I cannot think of much else he has put forward in his postion, as ind, for us
I can think of many one big one would or could of been a new ferry for bass strait,
or something to do with trade
In my previous post, the ‘situation we have now’ is:
* People-smuggling now a sophisticated venture operating on what might be described as an industrial scale. The few thousand arrivals per annum of the 90’s and early 00’s were not a major problem but daily arrivals of hundreds, adding to tens of thousands per annum is. This can be partly but not entirely blamed on changes to our approach to asylum seekers in 2008. It can be partly sheeted to the rejection of the Malaysia solution by a cynical and opportunistic opposition.
* Both major parties competing to see who has the most punitive approach.
* Opposition and their cheer squad continually shifting the goalposts to keep the issue alive, now pretending to be concerned about the asylum seekers’ welfare, then decrying them as disease carrying terrorists who are lavishly provided for after jumping non existent queues. Tony Abbott actually working to keep the boats to keep coming by rubbishing Labor’s attempts to punish asylum seekers while pushing their own punitive strategies with 3 word slogans.
* many on the left just want the problem / issue to go away by any means possible.
Boerwar
[
So, clean and green? Renewable energy?
]
Too right it is. Green plants take up CO2 and convert it to starch and sugars yeast convert it into alcohol and CO2. Green’s pollies then convert the ethanol back in to CO2 ready to be used again by green plants.
p
*laughs*
Did you, uh, note the NZ link I thoughtfully provided, above?
I see the FBT thing was a 5 minute wonder.
I guess the the 11 million voters who just can’t crack this perk did not give a stuff – vis a vis the 320 thousand odd who do.
[Everyone pointing towards Aug 31st for election.]
It may well be but if Rudd hasn’t visited Quentin Bryce by Friday, then it won’t be G20 date, not Gillard’s day, not AFL or NRL weekends, so we are out to Oct 12th.
if u love dogs what commercial tv now sorry done know which one
so lovley
NZ should capture tremor energy for their energy needs.
poroti:
😆
TLBD
Did you see the footage? The waterfront looked a bit tatty…
Boerwar
I did but chose to pretend I had not 😉 Speaking of Rawiti. After the PNG gambit Labor could do with a chap like him. Rawiti and his construction crew would be just the people for putting up secure custom made camps in no time at all.
[Oh… I should mention that I agreed with one of yours earlier too.
I wasn’t aware of having any dark days last year.
]
Maybe it was this year perhaps.
In any case, Good to hear. We can embark on a new spirit of agreement and unity to ensure Rudd Labor are returned at the election!
Do you agree Rudd should be made eternal leader (or emeritus leader) if he does the unthinkable and wins the unwinnable election? 😉
[Peter Brent @mumbletwits 3h
Presumably main point of Labor policy is actually to slow boats before the election, not to appear tough. #justsayin]
Of course the point is to slow and hopefully stop the boats before the election. The PNG PM made that obvious with he quip that he didn’t expect many people being sent to Manus.
With the full media coverage and advertising the message will already be pretty well understood throghout Indonesia, and when the first lot are shipped out to Manus around the end of next week the prospective passengers will be making alternate arrangements.
The government won’t come out and say it as they’ve been burnt by unforseen circumstances before, but short of a successful court action to put an injunction on the Minister sending arrivals to Manus I won’t be surprised at all if we don’t see any boats in about a fortnight’s time. PNG ain’t what these people are paying their cash for.
No Essential this week?
ruawake
Posted Monday, July 22, 2013 at 7:48 pm | Permalink
Everyone pointing towards Aug 31st for election.
It may well be but if Rudd hasn’t visited Quentin
==========================================
ru whats your opinion If the libs change leader,
poroti
Yep. I imagine that they would have been dab hands at the Laura Norder stuff as well. I imagine that the first Nauruan rioter with two broken legs following a club swipe would have been screaming to his comrades to snuff out their matches.
meher baba
That is totally incorrect. Those lucky enough to arrive in Australia by air with a visa, or false papers and seek asylum are kept onshore to be processed. Only 20-30% are found to be genuine refugees compared with boat arrivals at over 90%.
It is discrimination based on method of arrival, and has been since well before the government started using risk of drowning as an excuse.
As to identity, that is the first thing established, papers or not. Have you looked at what the Department does, and the methods for establishing bona fides and where people come from?
ratsak:
Agreed. I will be surprised however, if there is no legal challenge to the PNG arrangements.
Tomorrow, confessions.
Well, whatever one thinks of the policy, it was a masterstroke to make Tony Burke immigration minister.
[ru whats your opinion If the libs change leader]
I don’t think they can change leaders, its all they have left to campaign on.
Rudd will do better with Abbott, but still beat any other leader.
If the Libs change leader then Labor will bury them with “sent a leader to the knacker’s yard”.
ruawake, it’s getting very late, but if the election is held off for a while and the polls get better for Labor, nothing would be more fun than to see the Liberals implode over leadership. A month ago they thought they were home and hosed, so I can’t see them meekly accepting a possible loss, but they won’t remove Abbott without a lot of public anguish and division. We might see it yet.
What are the points of the Raskols Cargo Cult Solution?
There are not just one or two.
(1) Rudd has once again demonstrated that he will say and do anything at all to gain power. Nothing new there. It is just another facet of his dishonesty, lack of integrity and his lack of committment to values, principles or Labor policies. But we all knew that already.
(2) The Raskols Solution will fail. Whether it will fail worse than what is happening now is difficult to predict.
(3) The failure will sow the seeds for the elected arm to drag the currently distorted power from the judicial arm. This will, IMHO, almost certainly require a change to the Constitution and reforms of, or withdrawal from, the Refugee Convention.
(4) It shatters any possibility of Abbott colouring Labor with the Greens brush. The Greens, including on Bludger, are doing Labor a large favour in this matter. Perversely, it has also resulted in them scrabbling back a modicum of electoral support.
(5) It will cost a shit load of money. The few tens of thousands of individuals involved are generating an amazingly large opportunity cost.
(6) The human wreckage will persist in many forms for decades to come.
(7) It might well precipitate a fall of government in PNG.
(8) Refugees resettled in PNG face a life with extremely high probabilities of violence, robbery, rape and murder.
(9) I have consistently said that I believe the solution to refugees lies in Australia and cannot be outsourced. Eventually, IMHO, this will mean consigning tens of thousands of boat-borne asylum seekers to permanently living in camps in Australia with no hope of getting visas. IMHO, the more or less inevitable reason for the camps in Australia is that they would be the only way that the government of the day would be able to guarantee acceptable safety standards for the asylum seekers.
(10) If you think the issues are challenging now, think again. The dimensions of this issue are going to grow inexorably over the coming centuries as AGW and over-population render more and more of the planet uninhabitable. The current 45,000,000 DPs are going to look like a drop in the ocean in the decades to come.
Maybe I’m late to the party but can anyone tell me why the Gremlins are fed at eight o’clock here?
Ruawake – the greens only have an upper limit for offshore processing, but none for anyone who arrives here by boat. So if the Greens were the govt you could expect 200,000 plus in the first year. They’d only stop when this place became uninhabitable and everyone has responded by stringing up the greens.
Boerwar,
[The Raskols Solution will fail.]
I think you need to define failure.
Confessions, no doubt there will be a challenge. That’s not the same thing as success though. The Malaysia decision put the framework in place for what is required as an offshore processing location and Manus has been acceptable under that standard. Arguably the only difference between what was happening under the old arrangement and now is that instead of people who are found to be refugees being brought to Australia they are now being accepted to remain in PNG by the PNG government.
Thanks triton.
[Agreed. I will be surprised however, if there is no legal challenge to the PNG arrangements.
]
I am surprised David Manne and Burnside QC haven’t been wheeled out to already promise legal challenges like they did for Malaysia, despite not even having an aggrieved client to represent at the time!
Surely it is unethical for a lawyer to promise to launch an action on behalf of someone who does not even exist at the time? Or is it they are trying to effect policy outcomes rather than represent the interests of a particular person with a complaint to be heard?
Why don’t we just hand them High Court to make advisory opinions and be done with it — who needs standing if refugee policy is to debated! Bugger the parliament while we are at it too.
RUAWAKE – if there is no election on 31 August then the window of opportunity closes for more than a month during which the ALP becomes a hostage to fortune. That would be very, very foolish.
A month ago I half expected a Lib leadership change.
Very very doubtful now. Almost off the table
[Maybe I’m late to the party but can anyone tell me why the Gremlins are fed at eight o’clock here?
by This little black duck on Jul 22, 2013 at 8:08 pm
]
Where is don when you need him? He needs to send another rocket up Crikey to get this bug sorted out! It is a real inconvenience out here in voter land.
@ducky/1925
Yup the old 8pm gremlins.
Deterring the discussion taking place 🙂
Darren Laver@1913
No, but I believe he and any other leader should be protected from capricious actions by caucus.
What I would also like to see is the entrenching of proper Cabinet processes so that it operated in a a collegiate manner and the leader was ‘first among equals’ and unable to behave in an autocratic manner. I do not know what is already in Caucus Rules or any Cabinet Rules, but this needs to be there and be enforced.
Any popular leader with a talent for campaigning and presenting Labor’s case to govern (like Hawke) needs to be co-opted whenever they can assist in a campaign. I see Rudd, when he is no longer in Parliament, operating in this mode.
ruawake
The G20 is 5-6 October.
Suggest you get your facts right.
[I am surprised David Manne and Burnside QC haven’t been wheeled out to already promise legal challenges like they did for Malaysia, despite not even having an aggrieved client to represent at the time!]
I thought they already had? Someone (I can’t remember who) was interviewed on radio this morning about it. I was scanning through the stations when he popped up and seemed to be talking about a legal challenge.
Possibly not quite what Tory MP Margot James meant to say
https://twitter.com/JamesManning4/status/359240080306601984/photo/1
Claire Perry is another Tory MP and campaigner against internet porn.
[RUAWAKE – if there is no election on 31 August then the window of opportunity closes for more than a month during which the ALP becomes a hostage to fortune. That would be very, very foolish.]
Agreed. When you have the enemy on the back foot you press home your advantage. Give Abbott another month and a few weeks of parliament with which to make mischief and he could recover or the Libs could reTurnbull. It also gives refugee lawyers another month to find a chink in the PNG deal. Or just something completely out of the blue. 9/11 came out of no where and benefitted Howard, but something equally unforeseen could come along and destroy Labor’s chances. It’s very high risk to wait longer than this week.
Uhlman at his worst tonight. Burke sorted him out OK.
[I am surprised David Manne and Burnside QC haven’t been wheeled out to already promise legal challenges like they did for Malaysia, despite not even having an aggrieved client to represent at the time!]
I am not since Burnside was not involved in Malaysia. It was Deborah Mortimer SC who Mark Dreyfus just appointed to the Federal Court
TLBD
‘Boerwar,
The Raskols Solution will fail.
I think you need to define failure.’
Fair suggestion.
I suggest the following tests:
(1) That it can last in and of itself for three years. For example, it survives things such as a typhoon might take out Manus Island and any and all of the implementation things that can and do go wrong.
(2) That it does not lead to the fall of the O’Neill Government.
(3) That the Manus Islanders do not decide to take things into their own hands.
(4) That the wave of suicides and self-harm in the permanently incarcerated, on top of the horrendous things that will happen to the small percentage of resettled refugees, and there will be some, does not lead to a backlash of revulsion in Australia.
(5) That the judiciary don’t delay or hinder it sufficiently for it to collapse under its own weight.
(6) That boat arrivals stop.
(7) That the escalating costs of non-returnable non-refugees continue to be tolerable.
(8) That the notion of increasingly unbearable assymetrical costs does not apply.
Taken as a set, a betting person would get set on failure, IMHO.
Psephos,
The meaning of that from Margot James is unequivocal: you will have access to p0rn unless you choose not to.
I think Margot does not “get” the internet.
At least Burnside seems to get it this time, he just tweeted:
@JulianBurnside: Let’s face it: the PNG Arrangement is a shabby deal, but at least if might stop Scott (“illegals”) Morrison becoming Immi Minister
Now the gremlins have been fed, anyone remember T Burke’s previous achievements – the super trawler & marine parks.
ratsak,
I honestly believe that the more time people have to consider Abbott’s non policies the worse it gets for him.
Up until now, noone was listening. Now they are, despite the feral behavior of the Murdoch media.
It would be even nice to see the Daily Telegraph become even more a joke on the street.
gloryconsequence@1932
Time is running out and it would be an admission of serious failure of the entire abbott years. All those trips in fluro and predictions of doom and gloom. wRONg!
Don’t think though that the libs aren’t shitting themselves and abbott’s not going around the bend seeing it all slip away – anothor unloseable election going….going……..
What they are doing now is revert to classic form and get more and more dirty and that will take its course.
Its all now about the reaction of voters in the seats that both sides need to win in order to form Government and they are both putting heaps of resources into assessing that.
It will be a sure sign that the libs see destruction coming if they change to turnbull.
thank you ru, I value your opinion
@ducky/1943
UK is doing a Conroy with Internet Filters atm.
And everyone was complaining Labor was bad.
Imho.
[I am surprised David Manne and Burnside QC haven’t been wheeled out to already promise legal challenges like they did for Malaysia, despite not even having an aggrieved client to represent at the time!]
I hope they do, and in a way I hope they win, because then we would have to withdraw from the Convention, and if that doesn’t work we can have a referendum to strengthen the migration power in the Constitution. EVENTUALLY the elitist lawyers will have to learn that in Australia the Australian people are sovereign and not them.