What follows is a brief overview of the results in electorates I felt worth commenting on for one reason or another, together with projections of state vote shares based on ordinary votes results (which are not quite fully accounted for in the count, but close enough to it) and the extent to which postals, pre-polls and absent votes shifted the totals in 2010. New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory are covered herein, with the others to follow.
New South Wales
% Swing Projection Coalition 47.3 +2.6 47.2 Labor 34.9 -2.8 34.5 Greens 7.7 -2.2 8.1 Palmer United 4.3 Others 5.8 Two-party preferred Coalition 54.2 +3.2 54.3 Labor 45.8 -3.2 45.7
Banks. The 3.3% swing which ousted Daryl Melham was almost exactly equal to the state total, which followed an 8.9% swing in 2010. An increase in the number of candidates from four to nine restricted the Liberal primary vote gain to 1.7% and contributed to a halving of the Greens vote, down from 9.6% to 4.7%.
Barton. The seat vacated by former Attorney-General Robert McClelland is going down to the wire, the 6.9% margin exactly matched by the swing on ordinary votes. This was the second biggest swing against Labor in Sydney after Macquarie. Barton was another seat that witnessed a dramatic proliferation of candidates, from three to eight, with the five minor party and independent newcomers collectively drawing 11.3%. The Liberals nonetheless increased their primary vote slightly, the balance coming off Labor and the Greens.
Blaxland. Reports on the eve of the election suggested Labor had grave fears for Jason Clare’s hold on Paul Keating’s old seat, despite its 12.2% margin. This proved entirely unfounded, with Labor up 5.4% on the primary vote and holding steady on two-party preferred.
Charlton. For some reason, the seat vacated by Greg Combet gave the Palmer United Party what was comfortably its highest vote in New South Wales at 11.3% (UPDATE: Frickeg in comments reminds me the belated disendorsement of the Liberal candidate probably had something to do with it). The party’s second best showing in the state was 7.8% in neighbouring Hunter. That aside, Combet’s departure did not cause any disturbance to Labor, the two-party swing being slightly below the state average.
Dobell. Craig Thomson managed 4.0%, which was at least better than Peter Slipper and contributed to a double-digit drop in the Labor primary vote, their worst such result in the state. Also contributing was former test cricketer Nathan Bracken, running as an independent with the backing of John Singleton, who managed 8.3%. The Liberal primary vote was up slightly, and its 5.9% swing on two-party preferred adequate to account for the 5.5% margin.
Eden-Monaro. Mike Kelly appeared to be well placed early in the count, but the larger and later reporting booths, including those in Queanbeyan, tended to swing more heavily. Kelly is presently sitting on a swing of 4.8%, enough to account for his 4.4% margin barring late count peculiarities and maintain Eden-Monaro’s cherished bellwether record. This was higher than the state average, part of a pattern in which swings in the state’s regions were actually slightly higher than in Sydney, contrary to all expectations.
Fowler. After all the hype about Labor’s looming collapse in western Sydney, a seat in that very area produced the most anomalous swing of the election in Labor’s favour. The 9.0% swing to Chris Hayes was 12.2% above the statewide par for Labor, and was fuelled by an 11.2% drop in the Liberal primary vote and swings approaching 20% in Cabramatta, the very area the Liberals had hoped to target by picking a Vietnamese candidate in Andrew Nguyen. However, look at the seat’s behaviour over longer range suggests this to have been a correction after an anomalous result in 2010, when Liberal candidate Thomas Dang slashed the Labor margin by 13.8% and picked up swings ranging from 16.5% to 23.1% in the Cambramatta booths.
Gilmore. The south coast seat was one of three in New South Wales to swing to Labor, presumably on account of the retirement of long-serving Liberal member Joanna Gash. Her successor, Ann Sudmalis, has emerged with 2.6% remaining of a 5.3% margin.
Grayndler. The Greens vote fell only modestly, by 1.2% to 22.8%, but it looks enough to have cost them a second place they attained for the first time in 2010. With primary votes generally fairly static, the change in Liberal preferencing policy would presumably have inflicted a hefty two-party swing if they had made the final count.
Hunter. Joel Fitzgibbon was down 10.1% on the primary vote, and while this was partly on account of the Palmer United Party’s second best performance in the state, he also suffered Labor’s biggest two-party swing in the state at 8.9%.
Kingsford Smith. One of a number of pieces of saved furniture for Labor in Sydney, Kingsford Smith turned in a largely status quo result in Peter Garrett’s absence, outgoing Senator Matt Thistlethwaite easily defending a 5.2% margin against a swing of 1.9%.
Lindsay. The swing that unseated David Bradbury was slightly on the high side for Sydney at 3.5%, more than accounting for a margin of 1.1% without meeting the more fevered expectations of a western Sydney disaster.
Macarthur. Liberal sophomore Russell Matheson picked up the second biggest two-party Coalition swing in New South Wales, up 6.8% on the primary vote and 8.4% on two-party preferred.
Page. The expectation that Labor would perform better in regional New South Wales than in Sydney was most strikingly defied in Page, where Janelle Saffin unexpectedly fell victim to a 7.2% swing.
Parramatta. Julie Owens’ seat produced a fairly typical result for Sydney in swinging 3.4% to the Liberals, which hasn’t been enough to account for the 4.4% margin. (UPDATE: I speak too soon. In keeping with a general trend of late counting away from Labor, postal votes are flowing heavily to the Liberals and putting Owens at very serious risk.)
Robertson. As expected, the seat Deborah O’Neill did well to retain in 2010 with a margin of 1.0% was an early election night casualty for Labor, the swing of 4.0% being perfectly typical for non-metropolitan New South Wales.
Throsby. Gary “Angry” Anderson managed 10.5% as candidate of the Nationals, nearly doubling the party’s vote from 2010 despite the number of candidates being up from five to 11. The Greens conversely were well down, by 6.5% to 5.3%.
Werriwa. Frequently written off during the campaign, Laurie Ferguson is set to retain about 2.2% of his 6.8% margin from 2010.
Queensland
% Swing Projection Coalition 45.3 -1.9 45.5 Labor 30.1 -3.9 29.7 Greens 6.1 -4.7 6.2 Palmer United 11.3 Others 7.2 Two-party preferred Coalition 56.0 +1.1 56.3 Labor 44.0 -1.1 43.7
Blair. One Labor MP with good cause to feel glad about Kevin Rudd’s return was Shayne Neumann, who picked up a 1.4% two-party swing and held firm on the primary vote in the face of 12.8% vote for the Palmer United Party. Here as elsewhere in Queensland, the Greens crashed in the absence of the Kevin Rudd protest vote in 2010, dropping 6.9% to 4.2%.
Brisbane. While Labor had much to be relieved about in Queensland, its high hopes for recovering Brisbane were not realised, with Liberal National Party member Teresa Gamabaro up 1.8% on the primary vote, Labor steady. A 6.9% drop in the Greens vote to 14.3%, coming off Andrew Bartlett’s high-profile campaign in 2010, produced a significantly weaker flow of preferences to Labor.
Capricornia. The central Queensland seat vacated by Kirsten Livermore is going down to the wire after a heavy 8.9% drop in the Labor primary vote. This was mostly down to the competition from the Palmer and Katter parties, the former outscoring the latter 7.9% to 5.3%. With the Liberal National Party vote little changed, Labor suffered a 4.4% swing on ordinary votes off a margin of 4.6%.
Fairfax. Clive Palmer seems to be fighting to hold on to a 1411 against a strong trend in late counting towards Liberal National Party candidate Ted O’Brien. However, O’Brien’s current vote count looks to have been inflated by a discrepancy you can read about here. As things stand, the key to Palmer’s potential victory is his clear success in outpolling Labor 27.3% to 18.1% on ordinary votes, with LNP candidate Ted O’Brien’s 41.0% below the safety zone with Labor and Greens preferences flowing strongly against him.
Fisher. With Palmer United Party candidate Bill Schoch apparently primed to overtake Labor on preferences, despite trailing them 21.0% to 18.3% on the primary vote, Mal Brough’s 43.8% share of the vote was an uncomfortably long distance from the 50% mark. Nonetheless, Brough appears to be gaining about a quarter of the overall preferences on offer, enough to get him over the line with a few per cent to spare.
Griffith. Kevin Rudd suffered Labor’s equal biggest swing in Queensland of 5.2%, with Bill Glasson’s 5.9% lift on the primary vote the second highest achieved by an LNP candidate.
Kennedy. Bob Katter emerged a big loser of election night with a 17.1% slump in his primary vote, reducing him to 29.5%. Liberal National Party candidate Noeline Ikin was the beneficiary of a 14.0% spike that put her well in front on the primary vote count with 40.6%, but preferences are flowing solidly enough to Katter to leave him with a margin slightly below 3%.
Leichhardt. There was strong movement to Labor in Aboriginal communities, doubtless reflecting the background of Labor candidate Billy Gordon. This briefly created the illusion of a potential Labor victory as the first booth-matched results came through on election night, but that was negated by a strong performance by LNP member Warren Entsch in Cairns and the electorate’s rural areas.
Lilley. The 1.6% swing against Wayne Swan was well in line with the statewide norm, and if anything a little above it. Given the pre-election publicity though, Swan’s success in retaining almost all of his 2010 primary vote was among the results that lifted Labor’s spirits on an otherwise grim evening.
Petrie. Kevin Rudd’s election night boast of having defended all of Labor’s Queensland seats to the contrary, it appears that Yvette d’Ath has been unseated by a swing of 3.0% on the ordinary votes, compared with her pre-election margin of 2.5%.
Northern Territory
% Swing Projection Coalition 41.2 +0.8 41.6 Labor 38.3 -0.2 37.7 Greens 7.7 -5.0 7.9 Palmer United 4.6 Others 8.2 Two-party preferred Coalition 49.7 +0.9 50.1 Labor 50.3 -0.9 49.9
Lingiari. As usual, swings in the extra-Darwin Northern Territory electorate were all over the shop, the general picture being of a slight swing to Labor in remote communities blunting the swing against Labor to 2.7%, short of Warren Snowdon’s 3.7% margin. This followed a 2010 result which delivered huge swings to the Country Liberal Party in remote communities but partly balanced them out with strong swings to Labor in the major centre, specifically Alice Springs.
Solomon. Natasha Griggs, who unseated Labor’s Damien Hale in 2010, notably failed to enjoy a sophomore surge, Solomon delivering a rare 0.7% swing to Labor to reduce the CLP margin to 0.9%.
‘” All filler no killer”’
Just about sums up the ALP I suppose.
triton
I have outlined a way of dealing with that – a solid commitment on the part of caucus and the new leader to genuine party reform (which means consultation with branch members) accompanied by a statement that at present the party can’t afford to sit around waiting a couple of months for the leadership to be sorted out.
We don’t KNOW how long the process of electing a leader will take, given it hasn’t happened before. Easy to say ‘allow a month for the ballot’ but that in itself implies a wait of a couple of months for a leader – rolls need to be finalised before ballots are issued (a time consuming process) and any decision will be subject to appeal (and, given it’s a new process, it’s not going to be hard for a candidate for find reasons for this).
Internal party ballots of a few hundred members can take weeks to be resolved.
So, to my mind, the best way forward is for caucus to elect a leader, get a team in place, and commit itself to genuine reform.
At present, we don’t have that. We have a grab bag of random ideas imposed upon the party without consultation and with little consideration or discussion.
It looks as though Tasmania’s entire World Heritage listing might be endangered by this new government
http://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/tasmanias-entire-world-heritage-area-under-threat-if-protected-areas-rolled-back/story-fnj4f7k1-1226717252461
This would be a disaster for us.
Rosie
You are in a frenzy this morning arn’t you? Calm down and smell the flowers which should be blooming in Tasmania right now
zoomster
[The rule changes were not about empowering the membership, reforming the party, or making things more democratic – they were about keeping Rudd in power when he knew caucus really didn’t support him.]
So glad you’re up and about again – and fighting. 🙂
What is Conroy offering here? The dead hand of factional power returning. And he has defenders? After the last three years?
Why is ANYONE seeing the new rules as a negative?
1. You make the deputy the interim leader for public comment (presumably this is why a deputy was appointed). Calling them the “interim leader”highlight to the public yur new process of democratic selection.
2. This becomes the new ALP story: putting the last 3 years behing it FOREVER. The national confernce will be a good news story:
– members voting,not just faceless men
– massive ad for joining the party (hey there’s actually some point to it!)
– an extended democratic process as a public theatre that highlights that factional knifings CANNOT happen again.
Latham hates Rudd: but he sees the sense in this.
What else is on offer? Some dubious deal between Shorten (the epitome of facelessness) and Conroy (who hate each other) – united only to preserve the rotten borough of factional overlordism.
That is no way to start a new term. Albo should throw his hat in the ring, if only to make the new process happen.
Its in Shorten’s interests too: if he gets there via the new process he will be more bullett-proof to accusations of a return to ALPs old culture.Sadly, its a culture which he represents – its it will remain his weak suit as a leader, his albatross, unless he gets a public mandate from a revitalised deomocratic party process.
What on earth is the ALP doing? Why do Conroy and co find it necessary to talk to the media, the media! about ALP leadership? What possible reason is there for that?
By all means have these discussions but have them behind closed doors- the publicity just reinforces the view that the party is a disorganised rabble.
Meanwhile, I may never get the opportunity to see the Great Barrier Reef because of Abbott and his vandals.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/get-out-of-our-way-on-huge-mines-abbott-told-20130911-2tks7.html
Rosey
You can use the hook of ITS TIME in a minor key as the dirgey bit or maybe the DES IRAE
Time for dying, time for losing, Time for Abbott…yes its time!!!
Nelson lasted less than a year. There was initially a three way tussle for the leadership before Abbott pulled out. Then, right up to Turnbull’s appointment, Nelson made blunder after blunder and also had a number of Newspoll ratings of under 10% as preferred PM. It was chaos for the Libs, and didn’t really improve all that much under Turnbull. Not until Abbott got on board did they sort themselves out internally, and it took him four years to complete the job.
THERE ARE NO NEW RULES.
Must go save lives back later
“@MayneReport: For all his media posturing, Conroy really was Packer’s poodle. Delivered Murdoch pay-TV monopoly by approving Jamie’s $4b Austar/CMH deals.”
Morning all
I’ve changed my mind, Albo for me
Shorten needs some time to sort himself out. The next generation isn’t ready. Albo the perfect man to win a double dissolution on climate change
Have a great day all
[104
mari
Posted Thursday, September 12, 2013 at 9:22 am | PERMALINK
Rosie
You are in a frenzy this morning arn’t you? Calm down and smell the flowers which should be blooming in Tasmania right now]
Mari – it’s too cold to be outside! Only 7 degrees.
Roxanna@93
You can’t drive my say away. She huffs and puffs, chucks a tantie, then posts as much as ever.
Is it my feverish imagination or did Whitlam and his deputy not form a two man government almost as soon as the election results were in and they made several executive decisions before cabinet was sworn in?
Did Abbott not campaign on the fact that the country was “in extremis” and needed the miracle of the Liberals to save it (think of all that debt mounting up whilst nothing is being done! LOL) and would therefore be hitting the ground running? Or has Peta not told him which colour lycra or speedos to wear this morning?
If so, I have a lot of sympathy with Roseamour’s posts. We seem to be in some sort of twilight zone. I appreciate Abbott has not announced his cabinet, far less has he and it been sworn in by the GG, but how did Whitlam manage it? Or as I said up front, was I dreaming?
Roxanna
Did it really snow in the CBD?
Anything like in times past of people skiing across the Tasman?
I’m puzzled at this strange new notion that Labor is “letting Abbott get away with murder” by not picking its new leader right now. Abbott hasn’t even taken office yet (a lot of people on twitter don’t seem to realise this.) Rudd is still PM. The election count isn’t finished, and Caucus can’t meet until its membership is known. It’s five days since the election, and 1,090 days until the next one. Parliament doesn’t sit until late October. Everyone should calm down. Caucus will meet, and it will elect a new leader, all in good time.
lefty e
1. Well, obviously the ‘new rules’ didn’t do this. Which sort of points to the fact that they don’t work.
2. right, so it’s a triumph for the ordinary member to rubber stamp decisions made without any consultation being held with them.
Great precedent that.
Fran – if you read my post on the last thread you’ll see I’ve moved at least to the point of being ok with OPV for the Senate with only a single candidate being required to be nominated by the voter for a formal vote, so with respect to Senate voting reform I think you and I are on the same page.
Lower house I still have reservations; as I’ve said before I think I could approve of OPV in the lower house with a minimum of 1st and 2nd preference, and I know you responded with a specific example where even that would be problematic for you, but not impossible.
Being required to vote 1 + 2 in the lower house at the minimum won’t stop people who deliberately want to exhaust their vote, but will still require people to have considered something beyond their ‘team’ and remind people they have flexibility and nuance in how they vote.
One of the first things Labor need to do is SHUT THE FCUK UP and stop airing the ‘dirty’ laundry through the media.
Shut the doors, do what needs to be done, then announce, then shut up and not keep leaking bits about dislikes/likes/preferred options to the media.
They need to become more disciplined and stop seeking to see their name in the press. that “15 minutes” of fame is damaging Labor.
Can I suggest something a little lateral here. What would be wrong with the ALP deciding not to have a leader, at least for the near future?
Artificial consensus is not better than an absence of consensus. That fools nobody worth fooling.
Wouldn’t it be better to beraver away on working out what policies are apt in the coming period and the likely problems in the LNP’s approach to the various matters in front of them and how best to illuminate these to the public at large?
If the LNP/Murdoch would have nobody in particular to attack, making it harder to be attacked. There’s no election imminent anyway and it’s far better that politics,such as it is be about the new regime and its challenges than the ALP.
And pseph’s ‘There are no new rules’ says what I’ve been saying but more succinctly!
ROXANNA 114
Point taken it is already 20 c here was 28 celsius yesterday
Maybe Rosie could warm up the air with some of his venting?
What is all this fuss about the leadership for Labor?
The party has just lost office after 6 years and many would still have the “heavy hearts” Stephen Smith made mention of on election night.
For goodness sake, the election was only 5 days ago. The conservatives have not got their act together and they seem in no hurry. Why are political junkies getting concerned?
As a totally non-objective bit of research I listened to the local red neck talk back station last night. Topics relating to politics = 0
There was not loud cheers for Abbott but, there were no boos for Labor either.
I sense the electorate is fed up with “politics” and want to drop back into “set and forget” mode for the next three years.
This may well work to Abbott’s favour at the moment but then every new government gets a honeymoon – Labor included – for weeks – in 2007. Much shorter in 2010 of course.
I would suspect other than the malice filled Murdoch press, nobody out in voter land is listening, or care two hoots about who leads Labor at the moment.
oops …
[If the LNP/Murdoch
would have{had} nobody in particular to attack,making it{would be} harder to be attacked.]Psephos
I think the annoyance is probably stemming from the media b.s. which has to have a fight to create. They’re still talking this morning about the “lost” vootes in Indi that have been “found”. Implying, of course, that someone might have stuffed them down their trousers!
zoomster@83
Caucus has its own rules and standing orders which it can change.
Hitherto, it has always been a Caucus prerogative to choose a leader according to its rules and procedures.
Caucus made a decision to change its rules relating to election of a leader, to extend the franchise to the membership as a whole. This would now require complementary party rules to properly give it effect.
Of course, in the meantime, Caucus could change its mind.
The driver between Rudd wanting a rule change was to head off accusations that if people voted Labor they had no guarantee who they were really voting for to be PM. This was one of a number of issues Rudd sought to neutralise.
On Labor’s carbon price disagrrement, I see that The Age has described Nick Champion and Richard Marles as “loyal to leadership hopeful Bill Shorten” – another indication that Shorten would rather be a wimp and let Tony Abbott push him around than stand his ground on principle and take the fight to Abbott. It would be very bad for Shorten to be rolled by his own party on his first big leadership test, but it would be worse for the party to bullied into dropping a long-standing policy, which they took to the election and were voted in accordingly.
[ meher baba
Posted Thursday, September 12, 2013 at 8:11 am | Permalink
Likewise, many Labor members and supporters adore Albo because he abuses the Libs in Parliament: exactly the sort of behaviour that -shown in short grabs on nightly TV news – led the public to loathe Keating. ]
Good point – particularly given the way the public ‘punished’ abbott, pyne, mesma etc for their ‘behaviour’ in the parliament over the last 3 years.
/ sarcasm off
Why we getting worked up:
1) Conroy
2) Rosemour
3) Letting ourselves get carried away by (1) and (2)
Well, I can do something about (3) but (1) and (2) will have to sort themselves out :P.
Jackol
[Being required to vote 1 + 2 in the lower house at the minimum won’t stop people who deliberately want to exhaust their vote, but will still require people to have considered something beyond their ‘team’ and remind people they have flexibility and nuance in how they vote.]
Why do you absolutely need to have a second preference no matter what? If I go into a shop that lacks what I want at the bare minimum,I walk out empty handed rather than buy something I know won’t be adequate.
[The driver between Rudd wanting a rule change was to head off accusations that if people voted Labor they had no guarantee who they were really voting for to be PM. This was one of a number of issues Rudd sought to neutralise.]
But in doing so, we’ve been left with an entirely forseeable problem – the leader has resigned and there’s no process in place for a new leader to be elected by the membership.
Psephos –
You’ll need to let Conroy know then:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-12/stephen-conroy-labels-new-labor-leadership-rules-a-farce/4952532
DisplayName
yes, we should all be careful (me included) about buying into the media’s meme du jour.
Yesterday it was all IF Bob Carr steps down Paul Howes MAY replace him (a factual sentence, but a few steps away from reality) — today it’s obviously leadershit.
Pseph is right – we don’t even know who is in caucus yet, and it’s up to them to meet and make the decision.
[I think the annoyance is probably stemming from the media b.s.]
Well, indeed. Why don’t you all follow my example? I don’t own a TV. I have a radio but only for the football and cricket. I never buy newspapers. I only read selected bits of commentary online if I really feel I ought to. The only publications I buy are The Economist and Foreign Affairs. That way, all the day’s froth and gibber flows around me, unseen and unheard, and my mind remains clear and focussed on higher things, like LOLcats.
bemused, Labor should fight hard to argue that it’s the team and not the leader that counts. They need to fight to change the so-called narrative, because what we’ve seen over the past 3 years is Labor policy – that most people apparently like but won’t vote for – play second fiddle to everything else.
[@AuSenate: 2.30 today: Queensland Parl. expected to fill the #Senate vacancy caused by the resignation of former Senator Joyce]
Psephos@118
Good insertion of some reality and common sense. 😛
socrates
I enjoyed Maiden’s article on the Chinese economy for its rah rah foolishness.
The gist of the article is that the economy is growing and that is going to be good for the Abbott Government.
Que?
What about a nod at the empty cities? What about the bad debt that laces the Chines economy? What about the growing costs of environmental blowback?
I don’t mind if Maiden has an on-balance judgement about all this. But at the very least he should stop finance industry spiv spruiking and do some balance.
Oh… wait.
Fran –
As I said, FPTP is basically anathema to me for a voting system.
For me OPV in the lower house with a “just vote 1” possibility is just a pathway back to FPTP and I will never support it (which doesn’t mean it won’t happen of course).
Having to think about relative ‘goodness’ of candidates or parties seems like a good thing to me, and almost no one will be unable to pick a 2nd preference: it hardly seems onerous to me. Even you – someone who has one of the most extreme views on this I’ve heard – basically acknowledged that you could force yourself to have a 2nd preference if required to do so to have a formal vote.
Fran
I am looking forward to Milne resigning as leader and hading over to the Greens Consensus.
Another point to address.
What is wrong with Labor arguing in public.
It is not “Labor in disarray” Its Labor being strong by not hiding different views occur from the public.
No Labor candidates were kept from talking from media like the Liberals do.
In fact now I am wondering what Liberal members are going to be like at the “Doors” pressers of a parliamentary morning. Invisible?
The Australian really has two messages today. The first the reflects mass movement of finance industry spivs towards the troughs.
The second is Rudd!
The gift that keeps on giving.
DisplayName@137
I agree.
I think we actually need a more collegiate leadership both in Caucus and Shadow Cabinet.
I also don’t see what all the panic is about.
It is embarrassing to point to something Abbott is saying, he is talking about moving slowly and deliberately to get it right first time. {Our definitions of ‘right’ would be somewhat different.} But the point is, why rush into hasty decisions that soon have to be revisited.
The Rosemour ‘headless chook’ approach mistakes motion for progress.
And here is some of the recent biography of our next Senator from Queensland, Barry O’Sullivan.
He will be a worthy replacement for Barnaby.
[: Barry O’Sullivan has been asked to explain his offshore accounts to the ATO.
Barry O’Sullivan, the wealthy detective-turned-property developer who was recently chosen to replace Barnaby Joyce in the Senate, is one of the many high-profile Australians who has had a company registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Mr O’Sullivan has been a divisive figure in Queensland politics. Last year he was in the spotlight over an appointment to a state government audit job while he was a party executive.
Only last week, a series of conversations secretly recorded by former Queensland Liberal leader Bruce Flegg revealed that, in 2011, Mr O’Sullivan and Dr Flegg discussed ways to topple then opposition leader John-Paul Langbroek.
Named: Political cartoonist Larry Pickering is listed in leaked documents. Photo: AAP
”It’s 7 o’clock in the morning. We should be rolling over and patting someone on the arse,” joked Mr O’Sullivan as he and Dr Flegg sat in a cafe, cold-bloodedly discussing how to knife Mr Langbroek and replace him with Campbell Newman.
”He’s been at the centre of so much embarrassment to the party for the past year or two, they just cannot be serious,” said former Liberal MP and radio presenter Gary Hardgrave, of the push to install Mr O’Sullivan as Mr Joyce’s replacement.
Mr O’Sullivan, the former Liberal National Party state treasurer, recently received a ”please explain” letter from the Australian Tax Office over his offshore company.
”We have identified people we believe we should at least be asking questions of, and giving them an opportunity to explain to us in the first instance how and what is going on,” said the ATO’s Greg Williams, deputy commissioner of serious non-compliance.
Mr Williams confirmed that the US, British and Australian tax authorities are working together on possibly the largest tax investigation in history.
In 2010, millions of files from two companies including Portcullis TrustNet, which manages offshore companies in tax havens for wealthy people, was leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The Portcullis documents indicate Mr O’Sullivan set up Asia Pacific Claims Management in the British Virgin Islands in March 1998.
The burly would-be Senator confirmed he recently received an inquiry from the ATO about his offshore company. ”That company has never, not for one day, not for one week, not for one month, not for one year since 1999 until now, ever operated,” Mr O’Sullivan said.
Mr O’Sullivan said he was a detective for 15 years and for the following two decades after leaving the police force he ran an international business ”preparing briefs of evidence predominantly for US [law] firms for clients who had been injured in catastrophic air crashes”.
Mr O’Sullivan said that because ”we had a presence all over the world” a law firm in Singapore suggested he establish an offshore company.
He said it cost him ”an arm and a leg” to set up, but when he returned to Australia, his accountants advised him against having an offshore entity.
”Here was my mistake, which I am alive to now; I just automatically assumed it [his BVI company] would be wound up … It wasn’t a case of trying to go up a shady alley somewhere,” he told Fairfax Media.
Mr O’Sullivan said his accountants were working on getting all the documentation together and the ATO had agreed to give him extra time to comply with their queries due to an accident in which his five-year-old grandson was seriously injured when he fell from a ride at a school fete.
NSW state independent Richard Torbay was set to contest the federal seat of the Northern Tablelands for the National Party. But his dramatic resignation from public life over a donation scandal left the way clear for Mr Joyce to contest a lower house seat.
Mr O’Sullivan, who has made a fortune in property development, was chosen to replace Mr Joyce in the Senate. In February, Mr Joyce notified the Parliament he had accepted a flight between Brisbane and St George on a private four-seater plane owned by Mr
]
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/accounts-queried-in-tax-sweep-20130615-2oax4.html#ixzz2edBIVYNU
Zoomster @ 50…
Thanks for that dose of reason/common sense..
As an ALP member, I want a say in who is elected leader of my party. The Rudd’s rules don’t give me that …rather, a ballot of members without a legal change of rules, ie ratified by National Conference, would only give the party an illegitimate leader. The loser(s) would be entitled to legally challenge the leader…
Conroy is right, Rudd’s rules are a complete farce …
bemused@139
Particularly as the person mainly pushing that line declared surrender the day the election was called AND urged a non vote to Labor –
[ Rosemour or Less
Posted Saturday, September 7, 2013 at 10:44 am | Permalink
Vote Green with a clear conscience. ]
It’s hailing in East St Kilda.
[117
guytaur
Posted Thursday, September 12, 2013 at 9:30 am | PERMALINK
Roxanna
Did it really snow in the CBD?
Anything like in times past of people skiing across the Tasman?]
I don’t think anyone’s ever skied across the Tasman. Do you mean the Derwent? 😉
No, no snow in the CBD since 1986, but a bit of sleet flying around, and of course, snow on the mountain.