Seat of the week: Cook

To mark today’s Miranda state by-election, a tour of the corresponding federal electorate of Cook, held safely for the Liberals by Scott Morrison.

UPDATE (Morgan poll): The latest Morgan multi-mode poll, which will be reporting fortnightly for the rest of the year at least, is a better result for the Coalition than the last, having their primary vote up 1.5% to 43.5%, Labor’s down 2.5% to 34.5%, the Greens up a point to 10%, and the Palmer United Party steady on 4.5%. As was the case in the previous poll, there is an implausibly huge disparity between the respondent-allocated two-party result (51.5-48.5 to the Coalition) and that using 2013 election preferences (55-45), and as was the case last time, I can only conclude that something is going awry with the latter calculation. My own modelling of preference flows from the recent election produces a result of 51.5-48.5 from these results, exactly the same as the Morgan respondent-allocated preference figure.

Blue and red numbers (if any) respectively indicate booths with two-party majorities for the Liberal and Labor parties. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

Cook covers southern Sydney suburbs to the south of the Georges River, including Kurnell, Cronulla, Miranda and Sylvania. The electorate was created in 1969 to accommodate post-war suburban development, the area having previously been accommodated by Hughes from its creation in 1955 and Werriwa beforehand (an unrelated seat called Cook covered inner southern Sydney from 1906 to 1955). There has been little geographical change to the electorate since its creation, its boundaries being set by Botany Bay and Georges River in the north and Port Hacking in the south, but its character has transformed from marginal mortgage belt to affluent and safe Liberal. The seat’s inaugural member was Donald Dobie, who had won the hitherto Labor-held seat of Hughes for the Liberals with the 1966 landslide, but he was unseated in 1972 by Labor’s Ray Thornburn. Dobie again contested the seat in 1974 and 1975, suffering a second narrow defeat on the first occasion and winning easily on the second. Thornburn followed Dobie’s example in twice recontesting the seat in 1977 and 1980, but like all future Labor candidates he was unsuccessful. Dobie prevailed by 148 votes when the Fraser government was defeated in 1983, and the closest margin since has been 3.5% in 1993.

Dobie was succeeded upon his retirement at the 1996 election by Stephen Mutch, who had been a member of the state upper house since 1988. Mutch fell victim after one term to an exercise of power by the party’s moderate faction, which at first backed local barrister Mark Speakman, who had been best man at Mutch’s wedding nine years earlier. The resulting dispute ended with the installation of another noted moderate, Bruce Baird, who had been a senior minister through the Greiner-Fahey NSW government from 1988 to 1995. Mutch’s demise greatly displeased John Howard, who pointedly failed to promote Baird at any point in his nine years in Canberra. It also did not help that Baird was close to Peter Costello, and was spoken of as his potential deputy when fanciful leadership speculation emerged in early 2001. After reports that growing Right control of local branches was putting his preselection in jeopardy, the 65-year-old Baird announced he would bow out at the 2007 election.

Even before Baird’s retirement announcement there was talk of him being succeeded by Scott Morrison, former state party director and managing director of Tourism Australia. According to Steve Lewis in The Australian, Morrison boasted “glowing references from a who’s who of Liberal luminaries, including Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, former Liberal president Shane Stone, Howard’s long-time chief of staff Arthur Sinodinos, and Nick Minchin, the Finance Minister and another close ally of Howard”. However, it quickly became clear that such support would not avail him without the backing of the Right, which had been successfully courted by local numbers man Michael Towke. Imre Salusinsky of The Australian reported that Morrison was further starved of support when moderates resolved to resist Towke by digging in behind their own candidate, Optus executive Paul Fletcher, later to emerge as member for Bradfield.

The ensuing preselection ballot saw Towke defeat Fletcher in the final round by 82 votes to 70, with Morrison finishing well back in a field that included several other well-credentialled candidates. However, Towke’s preselection success met powerful resistance from elements of the party hierarchy, whom conservative Sydney Morning Herald columnist Paul Sheahan credited with a series of damaging reports in the Daily Telegraph. The reports accused Towke of branch-stacking and embellishing his CV, culminating in the headline, “party split as Liberal candidate faces jail” (a defamation action brought by Towke against the paper was eventually settled in his favour). It was further reported that Towke had been the victim of a whispering campaign relating to how his Lebanese heritage would play in the electorate that played host to the 2005 Cronulla riots (Towke’s surname being a recently adopted Anglicisiation of Taouk). The party’s state executive narrowly passed a resolution to remove Towke as candidate, and a new preselection involving representatives of local branches and the state executive duly delivered victory to Scott Morrison.

Morrison was quickly established as a senior figure in a Liberal Party newly consigned to opposition, winning promotion to the front bench as Shadow Housing and Local Government Minister when Malcolm Turnbull became leader in September 2008 and securing the high-profile immigration and citizenship portfolio when Turnbull was deposed by Tony Abbott in December 2009. He further gained productivity and population after the 2010 election, before having his political role sharpened with the title of Immigration and Border Protection Minister following the 2013 election victory.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

2,307 comments on “Seat of the week: Cook”

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  1. Hockey must think we’ve all got smoke in our eyes. The man who promised to get rid of the debt plans to increase the debt to half a trillion dollars.

  2. Serious political journalism:

    [Annabel Crabb ‏@annabelcrabb 6m
    Far out. Joe Hockey annouces Government will extend debt limit to $500 billion.]

    ‘Far out’.

    FMD

  3. DN,

    Reminds me of the Television Repairman who made his fortune fixing what his handyman clients had first tried to repair themselves.

    Hockey is the guy with a screwdriver tring to repair his television.

    It never ends well for the client or the TV.

  4. “@jothornely: A lot of the same people who think that same sex marriage will affect their lives think that climate change won’t.”

  5. Don quoted Diogenes

    [And as someone who actually has a PhD in science, I know that you can’t demonstrate that any single bushfire is due to climate change.]

    then said:

    [Dio, that is not worthy of you. Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, and is not a proof of your ideas. ]

    That would be fair enough if Diogenes were using his PhD in science to underpin a claim but the quoted words don’t suggest that. He was underlining his acceptance of a claim by others by citing his PhD. I would know that because I’ve studied science was his claim.

  6. Someone asked when the insurance companies were going to start taking notice of climate change. They already have – premiums are rising much faster than inflation.

  7. guytaur

    [Tony Abbott, stop fighting bushfires and start the job you were elected to do]

    Even Steve Price said Abbott should stop fighting fires and be a PM.

  8. This is a classic, Abbott’s off goofing around playing fireman, Hockey’s increasing the debt ceiling way beyond what was predicted & Morrison’s branding asylum seekers as illegals. Meanwhile no one esle is to be seen. Talk about a loose caboose.

  9. kakuru,

    I have no problem with there being registered civil unions between consenting adults if that is what they want. So much of the balderdash and horseshit about denial of rights is just that. Perhaps if the Homosexual Lobby took this tack they might garner more widespread support in the community.

    However, marriage is precisely and definitionally a civil union between a man and a woman. Look it up. It’s the Law.

  10. Slash welfare spending by $10 billion (The system needs a hair-cut)

    -Abolish JSA & DEP
    -Abolish any program that hasn’t delivered real results for people with disabilities
    -Increase the rate of DSP providing them with more spending power
    -Introduce taxes for churches
    -Limit negative gearing to one property
    -Provide corporate tax cut equal to size of headcount
    -Consider purchasing shares in blue chip stocks particularly former government business like the CBA

    Basically accept that as along as the debt is stable their isn’t a problem.

  11. CTar1

    Posted Tuesday, October 22, 2013 at 3:53 pm | Permalink

    Serious political journalism:

    Annabel Crabb ‏@annabelcrabb 6m
    Far out. Joe Hockey annouces Government will extend debt limit to $500 billion.

    ‘Far out’.

    FMD
    ——————————————–

    You have foot-mouth disease, CTari ?

    …. or when you are not so upset – a wish for something better to happen 😉

  12. BB

    [The Frog-In-The-Pot analogy is apt here. Between any two arbitrarily short periods of time the increase in temperature in the slowly boiling water is not noticeable. But that doesn’t mean the frog is going to survive when it finally boils.]

    I know you are not going to thank me for this but the Frog-In-The-Pot story is a myth. The frog would actually become more active as the water heated up and would jump out of the pot. 😀

  13. Greensborough Growler@2263

    kakuru,

    I have no problem with there being registered civil unions between consenting adults if that is what they want. So much of the balderdash and horseshit about denial of rights is just that. Perhaps if the Homosexual Lobby took this tack they might garner more widespread support in the community.

    However, marriage is precisely and definitionally a civil union between a man and a woman. Look it up. It’s the Law.

    The good thing about laws is that they can be changed. Keeping slaves is no longer allowed in the US. Look it up. It’s the Law.

  14. Hockey blaming the Labor budget for the problem. Joe you are now in Govt and the budget is all yours.

    So why hasn’t he done something about introducing his own budget?

  15. GG:

    [ I have no problem with there being registered civil unions between consenting adults if that is what they want.]

    ‘They’ want marriage. Who am I to deny ‘them’?

    [ So much of the balderdash and horseshit about denial of rights is just that. Perhaps if the Homosexual Lobby took this tack they might garner more widespread support in the community.]

    Is the Homosexual Lobby the same as the Gay Mafia (which featured in a Will & Grace ep)?

    Please.

    [ However, marriage is precisely and definitionally a civil union between a man and a woman. Look it up. It’s the Law.]

    Laws can change. In some parts of the US, marriage between whites and blacks was once against the law. Look it up. Guess what. They changed the law. Amazing.

    The law is not immutable. Some people’s attitudes are.

  16. Diogenes@2267

    BB

    The Frog-In-The-Pot analogy is apt here. Between any two arbitrarily short periods of time the increase in temperature in the slowly boiling water is not noticeable. But that doesn’t mean the frog is going to survive when it finally boils.


    I know you are not going to thank me for this but the Frog-In-The-Pot story is a myth. The frog would actually become more active as the water heated up and would jump out of the pot.

    From your bete noir, Wikipedia:

    [In 1869, while doing experiments searching for the location of the soul, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain removed will remain in slowly heated water, but his intact frogs attempted to escape the water.]

    Thus, frogs without brains will be boiled without attempting to escape!

    I have a little list……..

  17. GG:

    [ Some would argue that endorsing Homosexual Marriage would be re-introducing slavery.]

    Is this a joke? It’s hard to tell.

  18. Someone is saying on Twitter that Hockey’s sweating is because of complications from his gastric banding.

    If the man isn’t well, perhaps he shouldn’t have taken on the extra responsibilities of Treasurer? Or is it just a little wind?

  19. DisplayName

    Posted Tuesday, October 22, 2013 at 4:02 pm | Permalink

    Dio, stop being such a wet blanket.
    —————————————–

    Dio might have got his PHD in “Frogs In Pots Behaviour” ?

    ( joke Dio – I pay you respect )

  20. So it appears the Audit will be conducted by senior PS, ex-pollies and Industry group talking head.

    Is there any actual auditing experience or is Liberal Party membership the most important skill set.

  21. The proposition that we do not know whether this fire was caused by AGW is specious. AGW is progressing so ALL climate- related events are affected by AGW.

    If someone wishes to try to demonstrate that a specific event is not related to AGW then they are free to do so. But a simple assertion that the event is somehow dissociated from the world’s climate would be very difficult.

  22. GG

    [My point was that Morrison and the Homosexual Lobby were using pretty much the same tactics on their issue de outrage. Re-defining the meaning of a word to mean something it does not.]

    Putting Morrison to one side for a moment, your argument here begs the question. You assert that marriage by defintion refers only to the union of a man and a woman and then accuse “the homosexual lobby” of trying to redefine the word “marriage” to something it’s not.

    Of course, it’s only “redefining it to something it’s not” if it really is not. That is what you need to argue. In cases of usage, the crowd is king. If the crowd thinks marriage describes only male-female unions, then so it is. If they think it includes same sex unions, then so it is.

    I am sympathetic to the need to preserve distinctions in terms when they serve some useful function, even in the face of trends to do otherwise. I don’t like blurring the boundaries between implying and inferring even though there’s a tendency to use ‘infer’ as if it menat ‘imply’.

    Yet I see no value at all in reserving marriage for only opposite sex unions. Such insistence in the face of robust claims by same sex couples really only communicates one’s disrespect for the choices of others without adding anything of value to the language.

    Your argument as I’ve read it so far, including your sneering reference to ‘the homosexual lobby’ does sound like your own private excursion into rightwing culture war. I wonder why you’d want to go there, particularly as this is a place where most attest respect for the rights of ethnic and sexual minorities.

  23. [ Someone is saying on Twitter that Hockey’s sweating is because of complications from his gastric banding.]

    Not to be cruel, but does anybody see the irony?

  24. Seems it is a popular expression of tories – provided its not happening to them –

    [ The chairman of Southern Cross Media – which owns the radio station responsible for the infamous royal prank call – played down the controversy to shareholders in Melbourne today saying ‘‘shit happens.’’

    Southern Cross was forced to suspend all advertising on 2Day FM after a scandal involving the suicide of a British nurse, who was taken in by a prank call by presenters Mel Greig and Michael Christian. The pair phoned the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated for a pregnancy-related illness, pretending to be the Queen and Prince of Wales.

    “These incidents were unfortunate, no doubt about that,” Southern Cross chairman Max Moore-Wilton told shareholders.

    “But in the immortal words of someone whose identity I cannot recall, shit happens.”

    He did not shy away from the comment after the meeting.

    ‘‘I think it was a one sentence comment wasn’t it,’’ he said when asked by Fairfax Media whether he regretted what he said.

    ‘‘I have no comment, I made a comment in one sentence. I am glad the media is so busy,’’ he said.]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/2day-fm-chairman-on-radio-prank-shit-happens-20131022-2vym7.html#ixzz2iQOOxS17

  25. William Bowe

    Posted Tuesday, October 22, 2013 at 4:12 pm | Permalink

    New thread.
    ——————————-

    Thanks William – hopefully save Mari and I double posting any news items first thing tomorrow 🙂

  26. Headline we will not see:

    “No Budget Crisis as Debt Limit Raised to $500 zillion/billion/trillion as Treasurer Hockey and Sergeant Shultz Run from Press Conference.”

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