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.
[Darren Laver
…..
What did he say?]
He was some sort of ALP branch leader or president or something from Western Sydney and he thought Rudd’s PNG approach was worth a try as it might work, but his circle of leftish associates all disagreed with him and didn’t like it.
He ended his question with “am I a monster?”……quite a nice touch I thought! 🙂
Curly head is quoting Cuba from WWII. PB buried that one earlier today.
What the lawyer is actually saying is that if the Australian Government wants to make the decisions it feels necessary to stop boat-borne asylum seekers, it is going to have to pull out of the Convention.
But that is not what she meant to say, of course.
Gawd over half an hour into the show and still on bloody boats!
Is there nothing else happening in the country?
guytaur@2146
Very true.
TLBD
The St Louis is fact,
confessions@2148
He is probably the closest thing to intelligent life in the Liberal party.
Buy the Pacific Pearl and bring everybody here to Australia.
Let them all call Australia home 😐
Hey Sinodinas is half decent 😯
“@senthorun: It’s not about “taking everyone.” How about just talking to the experts and basing refugee policy on evidence not electoral politics? #qanda”
Oooh. Sinondinos was being (a) honest and (b) showing some integrity and (c) demonstrating committment to his values, principles and policies.
We will have to rope him into the Informal Party.
Is this an accident?
Abbott will be on the phone later telling Sinodinos STF.
[Peter van Onselen @vanOnselenP 4m
How good is Arthur Sinodinos! #qanda]
I thought he was opposed to offshore refugee processing.
Less than 0.5% of people arriving in Australia every year are actually asylum seekers arriving by boat.
What is Shorten on about with this “we can’t take all 45 million”?????
If it is about not being able to take everyone, can someone explain why the PNG policy only applies to asylum seekers arriving by boat, and not asylum seekers arriving by plane?
DD but Fishcher takes the piss out of the questioner.
Fischer.. Abbott a “good” prime minister. He could hardly get the word out. Why not “great” or “excellent” or “top notch”.
Why? Because Fischer knows he’s a goose.
“@greencate: Who says we want to take EVERYONE @billshortenmp? Who has ever said that? #qanda”
Can anyone tell me why is Burke not on ABC and Shorten is?
ML
You want the lot? Then take 45,000,000 now because the miserables are increasing at the rate of multiple millions a year.
guytaur,
Rest secure in your shell.
You will be one of the 60 per cent who countenances no contrary view to yours.
Come the election, you will say “what happened?”
BW
See 2167
“@senthorun: Is it just me, or is it odd that Liberals who support economic mobility or enterprise then condemn asylum seekers who exercise it? #qanda”
zoidlord
Same reason Morrison is not there?
*rolls eyes
Boerwar@2162
It will be talked up as virtue, when tory policy is the opposite.
Positioning for post election?
2164
People are not dying in great numbers by attempting to fly to Australia.
[He is probably the closest thing to intelligent life in the Liberal party.]
were he not in the Senate perhaps he could be a Howardian-style leader?
surely even Howard blushes at times to Abbott’s stupidity, despite the latter being his political love child with B Bishop.
z
‘Can anyone tell me why is Burke not on ABC and Shorten is?’
Sometimes one or the other is busy. It usually happens that the topics cover more than one minister’s responsibility.
TLBD
I want Labor not Liberal as Government. I have made it plain to all here I hate the policy but do understand the politics of it.
Yes, Arakis was the planet in Dune. The Le Guin planet was Anarres.
Which will come first, Newspoll or The Baby?
Um, Mod Lib, if “irregular maritime arrivals” are running at somewhere in the ballpark of 20 000 a year, and the regular immigration program is around 180 000 a year, how do you get 0.5%?
TLBD
All that does not change the fact it was a bad look for Shorten to avoid the question.
Zoid is right Burke would have answered it well
[Boerwar
Posted Monday, July 22, 2013 at 10:22 pm | PERMALINK
ML
You want the lot? Then take 45,000,000 now because the miserables are increasing at the rate of multiple millions a year.]
I am saying that if you are arguing that we have to be cruel to the few thousand asylum seekers arriving by boat because there are 45 million displaced people around the world is facile.
I am saying that if you are arguing that we have to adopt these policies because of the potential numbers of asylum seekers who could apply for refuge in Australia, then why does the PNG policy ONLY apply to boat arrivals and not plane arrivals?
If it is about numbers, what relevance is mode of arrival?
[If it is about not being able to take everyone, can someone explain why the PNG policy only applies to asylum seekers arriving by boat, and not asylum seekers arriving by plane?]
Not this crap again. There are no unauthorised arrivals by air. No airline will board anyone without a passport. If you don’t believe me, try it.
Psephos
ABC proves you wrong there. Forged documents.
[Jackol
Posted Monday, July 22, 2013 at 10:25 pm | PERMALINK
Um, Mod Lib, if “irregular maritime arrivals” are running at somewhere in the ballpark of 20 000 a year, and the regular immigration program is around 180 000 a year, how do you get 0.5%?]
The issue was “loss of control of our borders”.
The phrase I used was <0.5% of people "arriving" in our borders each year, a number in the several million each year.
The clear point is that there is absolutely no issue with our borders whatsoever, at least <0.5%
[Who says we want to take EVERYONE @billshortenmp? Who has ever said that? #qanda]
Boerwar for one – over and over and over as he has for the past 4 years or thereabouts since i have been posting on PB about asylum seekers.
It’s just a fear mongering strawman of hysterical proportions.
Every year I have posted a link to the UNCHR’s annual report on global trends on AS, refugees, displaced persons…which puts the lie to this strawman.
I would have thought that by now PB would have cottoned on to the fact an amazing or an absolutely dismal performance on Q&A counts for jack shit in the real world.
Shorten could rock up advocating an Australian branch of NAMBLA and no one who isn’t a political tragic would ever hear about it.
@guytaur/2181
You’d think they communicate knowing Shorten is not in Imms Minister!
When is Kerry O’Brien going to host this crap?
ML
‘I am saying that if you are arguing that we have to be cruel to the few thousand asylum seekers arriving by boat because there are 45 million displaced people around the world is facile.’
Facile? There are basically only two policy settings here: asylum seekers set the cap on numbers or the Australian state sets the cap on numbers. Boat borne asylum seekers are increasingly setting their own cap.
If you don’t believe that, have a look at the trend increase in boat-borne asylum seekers.
twaddle
Not exactly true. There is a reason Abbott has been running from it
[Not this crap again. There are no unauthorised arrivals by air. No airline will board anyone without a passport. If you don’t believe me, try it.]
Hang on, the argument is about numbers of asylum seekers.
That is a fair enough argument, so I was addressing it directly.
You certainly can arrive in Australia by plane, and then seek asylum. More Australia asylum seekers have come by plane than boat in the last decade. So why does the policy relate only to boat arrivals if it is addressing a number issue?
I understand a Houston recommendation was a ‘no advantage’, and those arriving by plane without papers will also be subject to offshore processing.
If the gaming of our asylum system started at airports, then sure, they could be resettled in PNG too.
[ABC proves you wrong there. Forged documents.]
Even if the documents are forged, the arrival is still authorised, so the analogy doesn’t hold. You cannot arrive at an Australian airport with no papers and seek refugee status. This is a completely bullshit argument. So is the one about visa over-stayers, so don’t start on that. So is the one about Jewish refugees in the 1930s, so is the one about Vietnamese boat-people in the 1970s. When are you people going to think of something original?
guytaur,
Tony Abbott answers more questions than you. Be happy in your failure.
absolute twaddle
[I would have thought that by now PB would have cottoned on to the fact an amazing or an absolutely dismal performance on Q&A counts for jack shit in the real world.]
I totally agree. Stupid programme. Lots of heat, no light.
An infuriating example of the current ABC.
Pegasus
Could you provide the link for how much the Greens are willing to pay for the Pacific Pearl?
They’d want to keep on the catering staff, I heard they’re excellent 😯
Some good tweets on refugees from my #qanda timeline. I particularly like @angrygoat’s contribution:
cathy wilcox @cathywilcox1
#qanda I’ve just thought of a hitch: we’re now proposing to fix PNG’s social problems so we don’t have to fix ours?
=–
Vikki @Vikkik88
Things are tough when even Bill is struggling with fur balls as he tries to justify Labor’s new asylum policy
=—
Grahame @angrygoat
next time shorten says business model I hope his intestine’s conscience drives it to leap up through his neck and strangle his brain #qanda
=—-
Bradley C Hughes @Entregreeneur
Rudd, master of irony. Now we send asylum seekers to settle in a country from whence we grant asylum to women fleeing sexual violence #QandA
=—–
Ben Pobjie @benpobjie
We don’t have to obey international law, “international” isn’t even a country #qanda
=—–
James Harrison @JamesHarrisonAUIf this is about punishing people smugglers, then punish the smugglers – not the innocent people seeking a better life. #QandA
=—-
julianburnside @JulianBurnside
Will any politician show actual leadership and point out that boat arrivals are not “illegals”? #qanda
=—-
eithne @eithne52
There is no queue #shorten #sinodinis – #qanda
=—
Richard Di Natale @RichardDiNatale
Illegals, terrorists, queue jumpers, floods, we decide, border control…The debate is not and never has been about refugee welfare #qanda
=—-
ASRC @ASRC1
Howard did not stop the boats.
2005: 18 year global low in number of #refugees.
2013: 18 year global high in number of refugees #qanda
TLBD
You be happy in your failure
Why isn’t Sinodinos a shadow minister when the useless Member for Dickson is?