Seat of the week: Curtin

Despite bearing the name of one of Labor’s greatest heroes, and covering his old home turf of Cottesloe, the Perth seat of Curtin is blue in tooth and claw. Julie Bishop has held the seat since she unseated a conservative independent in 1998.

Blue and red numbers 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.

Julie Bishop’s seat of Curtin covers Perth’s most affluent and Liberal-friendly areas, from Mosman Park and Cottesloe north along the coast to the southern part of Scarborough, and along the northern shore of the Swan River through the prestige suburbs of Peppermint Grove and Dalkeith. An area of relative Labor strength is provided by the area immediately west of the city. The electorate was created with the expansion of parliament in 1949, prior to which the Perth metropolitan area had been divided in highly variable fashion between Perth and Fremantle, with each consistently accounting for some of the area of modern Curtin. Curtin was originally limited to Perth’s inner west, with Fremantle continuing to extend up the coast as far as City Beach, before acquiring its coastal orientation with the redistribution of 1955. Fremantle was thereafter concentrated more to the south of the river, although its present northern limit at the suburban boundary of North Fremantle and Mosman Park was not established until 1984.

Despite bearing the name of a Labor Party legend, Curtin has been a blue-ribbon Liberal seat since its creation, being held first by prime ministerial contender and future Governor-General Paul Hasluck, and then by Victor Garland, a minister in the McMahon and Fraser governments. Garland’s resignation in early 1981 led to a preselection brawl in which the then Premier, Sir Charles Court, marshaled forces behind Allan Rocher to thwart Fred Chaney’s ambition to move from the Senate to the House, which he would eventually realise when he became member for Pearce in 1990. Rocher was defeated for preselection ahead of the 1996 election by Ken Court, son of the aforementioned Charles and brother of Richard, who was then Premier. This greatly displeased the newly reinstalled federal Liberal leader, John Howard, who did little to assist Court’s election campaign or to dispel the conception that he owed his preselection to controversial party powerbroker Noel Crichton-Browne. Rocher was thus easily able to retain his seat as an independent on Labor preferences, while a similar story played out in the northern suburbs seat of Moore.

Curtin returned to the Liberal fold in 1998 when Rocher was defeated by a new Liberal candidate, Julie Bishop, who had previously been a managing partner at law firm Clayton Utz. Bishop’s early career progress within the Howard government was reckoned to have been constrained by her ties to Peter Costello, and in the wake of the Coalition’s 2001 state election defeat she signed on to an abortive scheme to move into state politics to succeed Richard Court as Liberal leader. She eventually won promotion to Ageing Minister in 2003, and attained cabinet rank as Education, Science and Training Minister in January 2006. Reflecting the continuing strong performance of the party’s Western Australian branch, she was elevated to the deputy leadership in the wake of the 2007 election defeat. Her success in maintaining that position under three leaders reportedly led internal critics to dub her “the cockroach”, although dissatisfaction with her performance as Shadow Treasurer caused her to be reassigned to foreign affairs in January 2009. She retained the portfolio throughout the remaining years in opposition, further serving in the shadow portfolio of trade after the 2010 election, and was confirmed as Foreign Minister with the election of the Abbott government in September 2013.

UPDATE: Channel Seven has reported the ReachTEL poll conducted on Thursday night found only 28% believe the government’s new policies to stop boat arrivals were working versus 49% who don’t, while 56% say the government should announce boat arrivals when they happen. Last night it was reported that 53% think the Prime Minister should deliver the explanation for spying activities demanded by Indonesia, while 34% say he shouldn’t; and that 38% support Australia’s bugging activities with 39% opposed. It appears Channel Seven are sitting on voting intention numbers.

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.

1,517 comments on “Seat of the week: Curtin”

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  1. [1393
    Resurgent Turkeys

    Being retro is hipsterism too. They’ve started re-issuing CDs on vinyl to accomodate the hipsters’ revival of record players.]

    Next you’ll be trying to tell us that Kevin Andrews belongs to the avant garde.

  4. Djakarta was the official spelling until 1972, when Jakarta was adopted. Other spellings were also changed – Soeharto to Suharto, for example. I think this was a shift from a phonetic system designed by Dutch-speakers to one designed by English-speakers.

  5. [Next you’ll be trying to tell us that Kevin Andrews belongs to the avant garde.]

    Brylcreem could make a comeback any day now.

  7. Some time since the middle of the last century, my birthplace has changed from ‘Tjimahi’ near Bandoeng to ‘Chimahi’ near Bandung.

  8. Psephos@1400

    Netanyahu already calling the deal “a historic mistake”.

    That guy is never happy with anything.


    He is the elected PM of a country which Iran’s leaders have repeatedly threaten to destroy, and which is busily acquiring the means to do so. It’s his job to be concerned about this deal, and he has every right to be.

    That sort of argument has never made any sense.

    If Iran or anyone else was to launch a nuclear attack on Israel then they would also wipe out the Palestinians on whose behalf their enmity with Israel is supposed to rest.

  10. Boerwar@1407

    Some time since the middle of the last century, my birthplace has changed from ‘Tjimahi’ near Bandoeng to ‘Chimahi’ near Bandung.

    That sort of thing can play havoc with birth certificates. Someone very close to me has to submit a stat. dec. as well every time she has to produce her birth certificate because the German issuers wrote her family (Croatian father’s) name in phonetic German instead of the correct Croatian spelling.

  11. Sadly I think from the likes of some of my co workers that Abbotts tardy, lazy and incompetent response will be acceptable to the switched off Australian public until something bites them on the bum. How will the nats feel when the live cattle trade is compromised. After all they made such a big deal over labour stuffing it up….there is so much further for this debacle to go. A simple phone call and some sensible remarks here could have made it go away. It is now definitely a problem of Abott and for Abbott. He does not have the skill set to deal with it. As an employer I would not employ him. The love for him is being tested. He massaged the populace to believe he had the answers. He doesn’t and he knows it…it shows on his face. He wants to hide now. All ballsy before he now has to face the problem of his own making and he knows he can’t. He’s set on pugilist mode and he doesn’t know how to do it any other way. He is incompetent for the job. I look forward to watching his richly deserved undoing.

  12. [What if the spying allegations were made public when Gillard was PM?]

    The leftwing Guardian and ABC sat on the story for 4 months until after the Coalition won so that’s an interesting scenario

  13. [That sort of argument has never made any sense.]

    The particularly sect of Shi’a Islam to which the Iranian leadership belongs believes that the Hidden Imam will not return until the foreign presence in the Islamic world (namely Israel) is destroyed. They don’t actually care a toss about the Palestinians, who are Sunni heretics.

  14. don

    I have a sort of existential dread about all this.

    The political entity into which I was born is gone. The official language of that entity is gone. The spelling of my birthplace is gone. I doubt very much whether I would ever be able to replace my birth certificate so that is an option that is gone.

  15. [Spider
    Posted Sunday, November 24, 2013 at 7:23 pm | PERMALINK
    victoria
    Posted Sunday, November 24, 2013 at 6:37 pm | Permalink
    In same article i linked above

    This is only Australia’s most recent argument with Indonesia and former coalition foreign minister Alexander Downer says it’s nothing like the freeze following the 1999 East Timor crisis.

    With careful diplomacy, he says, it could be resolved in a few weeks
    ——————————————–

    With careful diplomacy and some 1970′s porn star style fishnet stockings, he says, it could be resolved in a few weeks]

    Good one. Lol!

  16. lyndajcla@1411

    He massaged the populace to believe he had the answers. He doesn’t and he knows it…it shows on his face. He wants to hide now. All ballsy before he now has to face the problem of his own making and he knows he can’t. He’s set on pugilist mode and he doesn’t know how to do it any other way. He is incompetent for the job. I look forward to watching his richly deserved undoing.

    So do I, with relish.

  17. [Napthine 37.5% against Andrews 42.5%
    Coalition on the nose.]

    LOL Naptime on 37.5 only just trailing Andrews.

    Looks like they are both on the nose

  18. Boerwar@1414

    don

    I have a sort of existential dread about all this.

    The political entity into which I was born is gone. The official language of that entity is gone. The spelling of my birthplace is gone. I doubt very much whether I would ever be able to replace my birth certificate so that is an option that is gone.

    Trust me, scan it at 600 dpi and put it in the cloud, and put printouts in more than one safe deposit box, and a couple with trusted relatives, with instructions to treat it as they would family photos in case of emergencies.

  20. [The leftwing Guardian and ABC sat on the story for 4 months until after the Coalition won so that’s an interesting scenario]

    By way of offering a very stark contrast, here’s what someone intelligent thinks:

    [Picture the scene: it’s some time in July 2013. Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, is in a bunker deep beneath his paper’s new offices in London’s King’s Cross, chatting on a super-secure, triple-encrypted video link to his good mate Mark Scott in Sydney.

    ”Mark, we’ve got a corker for you from this Snowden stuff. Your DSD tapping President Yudhoyono’s phone. Spying on SBY.”

    ”Hmm, sounds good, Alan, but you know we’ve got an election coming up down here. Everyone reckons that horrid Tony Abbott will get in and implement his nasty, cruel policy on the poor boat people. My heart bleeds for them. Let’s hold off till he’s trying to get his ‘tow back the boats’ policy past the Indons. That’ll be the time to break your story.”

    ”Good thinking. I’ll tell the lads to put in on the backburner and rediscover it in November. Meanwhile, mum’s the word.”

    Well, some of Bolt’s more rabid followers might believe it. But to anyone who has worked in a serious news organisation, no matter what their political stripe, the scenario is utterly ludicrous.

    What’s a thousand times more likely is that for staff in The Guardian’s undermanned New York office, wading through the hundreds of thousands of documents on Edward Snowden’s thumb drives, a four-year-old power point presentation by Australia’s Defence Signals Directorate (now the Australian Signals Directorate) didn’t rise straight to the top of the pile. When they eventually took a closer look, they alerted head office, who alerted The Guardian Australia in Sydney, who decided the story would have more impact if they got the ABC on board.

    If they had known about the document before or during the election campaign, it would have been an even bigger story, because the prime minister then, Kevin Rudd, had been the prime minister in August 2009 when the phone-tapping allegedly took place.

    Of course, there’s a legitimate argument about whether or not the national broadcaster should have co-operated in breaking a story that was bound to be damaging to the Australian-Indonesian relationship.

    But the story was going to break anyway. ”Mark Scott”, wrote Paul Sheehan, ”had a clear choice”. So he did. He could have told his senior editors to turn down the scoop, wait until The Guardian had broken the story, and then follow it up as best they could. Or he could let them take the offered documents and run first.

    To any real journalist, that’s no choice at all. If it’s legal, and it’s verifiable, and it’s not endangering lives, and it’s not invading privacy or intruding on grief, and it’s a huge story, you publish, and let the chips fall where they may.

    Unless you’re Bolt, or Devine, or Sheehan. It’s for them, not the ABC, that the politics matter more than the story.]

  22. Psephos@1413

    That sort of argument has never made any sense.


    The particularly sect of Shi’a Islam to which the Iranian leadership belongs believes that the Hidden Imam will not return until the foreign presence in the Islamic world (namely Israel) is destroyed. They don’t actually care a toss about the Palestinians, who are Sunni heretics.

    An equally stupid argument unless you believe an irradiated an uninhabitable Israel and surrounds is their objective.

    Of course Iran would probably end up in the same state.

  23. Sean, ‘The leftwing Guardian and ABC sat on the story for 4 months’ Not that I am doubting you, but could say where you got this little gem from?

  24. seam…evidence please…why would a newspaper sit on a story that would have been gold during the election campaign. You are glass jawed and paranoid. Whenever this info came out someone would have yo deal with it. The so called grown ups don’t know their arse holes from.their elbows. No one to blame but their own ineptitude. Gillard or Rudd would have responded quietly and quickly ….Tone can’t and needs a committee to write a letter…in the meantime he let’s Rectory and red neck radio speak for him. Out of his depth entirely…embarrassing and dangerous.

  25. [
    Psephos
    Posted Sunday, November 24, 2013 at 8:26 pm | Permalink

    That sort of argument has never made any sense.

    The particularly sect of Shi’a Islam to which the Iranian leadership belongs believes that the Hidden Imam will not return until the foreign presence in the Islamic world (namely Israel) is destroyed. They don’t actually care a toss about the Palestinians, who are Sunni heretics.
    ]
    And this differs from the belief that the second coming requires the establishing of Israel how? (noting of cause that not many believe this sort of shit).

  27. Wasn’t it Tony who used to advise Julia to ‘just pick up the phone and call the president of Nauru’. Wonder why he didn’t follow hi sown advice and ‘just pick up the phone and call’ SBY.

  30. Having had lunch moored at West White Beach, with maybe a swim for the crew, I hope so, poor buggers, Ocean Protector is now back on patrol, back and forth, back and forth, in front of Christmas Island.

    Geez it must be boring.

  32. I read that article William… then I realised it was Jonathon Holmes who also worked for the ABC and also IMHO had an anti-Abbott agenda especially when it came to the boats.

    Andrew Bolt also claims he was verballed in reponse to the article because he says he never claimed they sat on the story, only that the ABC and Guardian released it to try and do maximum damage to run their pro-boats campaign.

  35. But lets make it clear… The Guardian had all of the info in June.

    Make of that what you will on how long it takes for journalists to get through to the good bits. A few weeks?

    Apparantly over 4 months.

  36. Boerwar, at the risk of pedantry, are you sure your birthplace is now spelled as “Chimahi”? It was the location of a large Dutch military base! and I visited the Leuwigajah War Cemetery there last year. It is now known as Cimahi: http://www.ogs.nl/docs/NetherlandswarcemeteriesIndonesia.pdf

    If you have never been there, I can assure you it is a very moving place. I went there with an Indonesian friend of mine, whose father was one of the minority of Indos who stayed on in Indonesia. Her surname is actually English – she is descended from one of the English Bencoolen traders (now Bengkulu) from West Sumatra whose family became “Dutch” in the 1820s following whatever treaty it was that separated English and Dutch possessions in South East Asia. She knows of no one else in Indonesia with her surname, but there are many Indo descendants in the Netherlands with that name. She was very moved to see the graves of so many of her relatives in Cimahi. Having been raised as an Indonesian, she just had no idea of her family’s history, and it’s diaspora post 1950.

  40. [An equally stupid argument unless you believe an irradiated an uninhabitable Israel and surrounds is their objective. Of course Iran would probably end up in the same state.]

    None of which will matter if the Hidden Imam returns.

    [And this differs from the belief that the second coming requires the establishing of Israel how? (noting of cause that not many believe this sort of shit).]

    It differs to the extent that the people who believe in the return of the Hidden Imam are running Iran and building nuclear weapons.

  43. [Make of that what you will on how long it takes for journalists to get through to the good bits. A few weeks?]

    You of course would have absolutely no fucking idea how long it would take, but are determined to reach conclusions anyway to sustain your moronic argument.

    [Apparantly over 4 months.]

    So Andrew Bolt believes, it would seem.

  44. Boerwar@1434

    don @ 1430
    good story, IMHO. But why did they draw a ‘B’ with their wake?

    B for Boredom?

    They were heading straight for the beach, then paralleled the coast (why? not time yet for lunch?) chucked a couple of doughnuts, then said “what the hell, let’s have a swim and then lunch and then a few tinnies of Fosters before we head back out to do our patriotic duty”

    Ya know, this is what Morrison and co do not understand. There are ways to find out information that they do not even dimly comprehend. The world has changed, and they have NFI.

  46. Outsider

    Thank you for that.

    ‘Cimahi’ it is. The nearest I have been to going back is flying over it to somewhere else, and a very brief stint in a yacht in the Riau Archipelago.

  47. Confessions ‘Where do you think he got it from?’

    My instant response to your question would be thin air.

    But Sean’s reply in 1432 seems to indicate that, as Zoidlord said was right, ‘in his head’.

    Which I guess is the the same thing.

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