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| Red and blue numbers respectively indicate booths with two-party majorities for the Labor and Liberal. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room. |
Calwell covers suburbs around Melbourne Airport in the city’s north-west, including Keilor, Sydenham and Taylors Lakes to the west, Tullamarine to the south, and from Broadmeadows north along Sydney Road to the southern part of Craigieburn. The seat was created with the expansion of parliament in 1984 but at that time the electorate was oriented further to the west, with only the Keilor and Sydenham area west of the Maribyrnong River carrying over to the electorate in its current form. The redistribution which took effect at the 1990 election shifted it eastwards to include Broadmeadows, which it has retained ever since. Substantial changes at the 2004 redistribution saw the electorate lose the areas west of the river to the new seat of Gorton while gaining Sunbury and Craigieburn to the north from abolished Burke, but these were reversed at the 2013 election, when Sunbury and most of Craigieburn were transferred to McEwen and Keilor and Sydenham were returned from Gorton.
Calwell has been won by Labor at each election since its creation by margins ranging from 7.1% in 1990 to 19.7% in 2010, which were respectively the worst and best elections for Labor in Victoria during the period in question. The seat’s inaugural member was Andrew Theophanous, who had been member for Burke from 1980. Theophanous quit the ALP in April 2000 after claiming factional leaders had reneged on a deal in which he was to be succeeded by his brother Theo, who served in the Victorian state upper house from 1988 to 2010 and as a minister from 2002 to 2008. Andrew Theophanous was facing criminal charges at the time of his departure from the party for receiving bribes and sexual favours from Chinese nationals seeking immigration assistance, for which he would eventually be sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, which was halved after one of the major charges was quashed on appeal.
Labor’s new candidate at the 2001 election was Maria Vamvakinou, who shared Theophanous’s Greek heritage and background in the Socialist Left faction, having spent the eight years before her entry to parliament as an electorate officer to factional powerbroker Senator Kim Carr. Vamvakinou went entirely untroubled by Theophanous’s forlorn bid to retain his seat as an independent, which scored him 9.6% of the vote. Vamvakinou had her 17.7% margin at the 2001 election pared back 1.6% by redistribution and 6.9% by a swing to the Liberals at the 2004 election, before enjoying a thumping 11.1% swing in 2007 and a further 0.4% swing in 2010. The redistribution before the September election increased her margin another 0.4%, but she went on to suffer a 6.2% swing that was slightly above the statewide 5.1%, reducing her margin to its present 13.9%. Vamvakinou has remained on the back bench throughout her time in parliament.
Psephos
I cannot see the coalition elevating JBishop to the leadership in lieu of the Abbott
This is the last siting week of the Parliament for the year anyway.
Abbott on Mandela in earlier days
Briefly
I do not doubt you and know that China is by all measures totalitarian. The State has a powerful control of economic levers I agree. I just hesitate to call it communism. China operates very, very much like Singapore, but we do not call Singapore communist.
State capitalism might be a better description of BOTH economies.
Personally I think the key to any government is the term Legitimacy. By this I mean Does the government have the basic goodwill of most (say 80% of the people who accept its right to rule. In Australia we have democratic elections which confers the right to rule on Abbott which is accepted by all of us, even those who loathe what he stands for. In Monarchies such as Saudi, even undemocratic and totalitarian ones, if the bulk of the population accepts that an accident of birth makes you a suitable supreme ruler then you have legitimacy. In China while the majority of the population accepts that the ruling “communist party” has a right to rule and is acting for the net benefit of society as a whole then we need to get on and deal with that government, because it is the one the PEOPLE have chosen to tolerate and on which they confer “legitimacy”
George Bush Senior is 89 years old so travel to South Africa May be out if the question for him.
Climate debate???
Mr Churchill should realise that the right way to deal with Germany is not to lecture them in public but to use quiet diplomacy, as Mr Chamberlain has done so effectively. German hegemony in central Europe is natural and inevitable and does not pose a threat to this country. We should seek to accommodate Germany’s legitimate interests in Austria, the Sudetenland and Danzig. Germany is too important a trading partner for us to antagonise them over quarrels between far-away peoples of whom we know nothing. etc etc etc
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Lunchtime.
psephos
[I maintain my (obviously minority) view that Bishop is one of the few members of the Abbott government displaying signs of competence, and that if Abbott does indeed fall over before the next election, she is more likely than Turnbull or Hockey to be the successor.]
Bishop has displayed signs of competence and signs of incompetence. The balance between the two is improving.
To be fair to Bishop, it is sometimes difficult to disentable her personal contribution to the Abbott Government’s undoubted genius at managing foreign affairs.
Arguably, she could not make Hunt go to Warsaw, she could not stop Abbott saying that Japan is our best friend in Asia, and she could not stop the Abbott Opposition cum Government repeatedly stating that their policies were not a threat to the Indonesia’s sovereignty when some of them were just that. Arguably, though, a good Foreign Minister marshals all the government to behave itself in a diplomatic fashion.
We can assume that Abbott and Bishop were as one with a largely unnoticed but potentially crucial decision about pre-position US military hardware around Darwin. Ditto the decision of Australia to do a one-eighty on more Israeli settlements displacing still more Palestinians. We can probably assume that she was, at best, to some notably destructive behaviour by Australia at Warsaw. She probably did have some input to the way in which Australia became the odd country out in Sri Lanka. There was virtually no public policy discussion about any of these issues and there was very little attempt to sell them either. (The parallels with the public management of the Abbott Government’s Gonski policy-making are unmistakable)
OTOH, there are some bits of our foreign affairs efforts over the past five months that are all Bishop’s own work. Some of them have been, to put it mildly, appalling.
Bishop, as Shadow Foreign Minister, a couple of months before the election stated, wtte, ‘It does not matter what Indonesia thinks, we can implement our asylum seeker policies’.
This would have been duly noted in Jakarta.
Shortly after being sworn in, she had a series of meetings with Natalegawa. She deliberately and publicly misrepresented these meetings – until Natalegawa published the contents.
Was it Bishop’s fault or Abbott’s fault or ASD/ASIS fault that different things were being said by Abbott and Bishop in relation to intelligence activities last week. (Surprisingly, this was smoothed over by, of all people, Natalegawa who opined, WTTE, that differences between what Abbott and Bishop were more apparent than real. There must be a reason.
Bishop did a good job marshalling aid to the Philippines post-Haiyan. She topped this off with another public statement that was, well, remarkably undiplomatic: ‘The United States and Australia are working together to restore order in the Phillipines.’ In public, at least, Bishop has demonstrated an ability to come up with the sorts of egregious arrogance and insults that presumably, mirror her private performance.
Cutting $4.5 billion in aid, reminding aid recipients that there would be ‘mutual obligation’, cutting aid specifically to global attempts to conquer pandemics such as malaria and HIV, resetting aid to ‘economic development’ are all signs of a weak Minister for Foreign Affairs. She has been Shadow spokesperson for Foreign Affairs long enough to have provided us with something of a prospectus for what is meant by ‘economic development’. De nada.
But Bishop has shown some good policy signs, IMHO. She is right about China. She has shown signs of being a quick learner vis-a-vis the Six Points to rapprochement with Indonesia.
To sum up:
(1) Bishop was an early victim of, and perpetrator of, Abbott Opposition/Government arrogance at least some of which garnered destructive blowback.
(2) Bishop has been lazy at policy development in Opposition.
(3) Bishop appears to be incapable of getting the Government as a whole to understand that making enemies is dead easy. Making friends takes years.
(4) Bishop has said some appallingly undiplomatic things.
(5) Bishop is energetic, smart, and is showing signs of learning from her mistakes.
(The rumour mill is that the Department is, on the whole, happy with her. But that may include an element of isostatic rebound of morale after the Rudd years.)
[201
victoria
Psephos
I cannot see the coalition elevating JBishop to the leadership in lieu of the Abbott]
victoria, Bishop has failed to get to grips with her past portfolios and she will probably fail as FM too. She is making the same mistake as Abbott, which is to try to use the platform to speak to domestic constituencies for partisan purposes.
Her role is to represent Australia to other countries and to argue for our interests with her foreign peers – something for which she has so far shown almost no aptitude. Instead, she has managed to damage and/or badly misread relations with several of those countries we most rely on. She is a dud.
vic
[Mandela’s body will lie in state in the administrative capital Pretoria from this Tuesday until Friday.
But the South African government has announced the former president’s funeral cortege will also travel through Pretoria and people have been urged to line the route.
His funeral will be held next Sunday, just days before South Africa is due to commemorate its National Day of Reconciliation.
Mandela will be buried in a ceremony in his ancestral village of Qunu, a town in the Eastern Cape where he grew up.
Some world leaders have already confirmed they will be attending the memorial services.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will travel to South Africa next week.]
I cannot see world leaders going to the public memorial at a soccer stadium, the security would be impossible.
I may be wrong, but I still reckon Abbott and Shorten will be leaving on Friday or Saturday.
Boerwar
I am not qualified to judge Bishop’s level of diplomatic skill or her emotional intelligence (empathy quotient?), but I have noted her gleeful laughter at Mr Poodle Pyne’s deluded remarks on Gonski, and I have an instinctive dislike of the lady.
[(4) Bishop has said some appallingly undiplomatic things.]
Her general overall smug condescension is another point against her IMO. It’s one thing to have tickets on yourself, but you look a right prat when you can’t deliver on it.
I agree that J Bishop has shown competency in her role and it’s very telling that when she answers questions in parliament, they’re not littered with the partisan bluster and showboating that other ministers have been guilty of.
I disagree that she’s the likely choice for leader if they toppled Abbott. I think that honour would go to Hockey. However, if Bishop gets some strong diplomatic victories under her belt, my prediction would start moving in her favour (especially considering the foreign policy reputation Abbott has already started accumulating.)
Lizzie
Ditto! She looks to me as if she is flirting with every one she encountering.
Carey
[I disagree that she’s the likely choice for leader if they toppled Abbott. I think that honour would go to Hockey.]
An appalling look forward.
Not sure why they would for Bishop, after attacking Gillard.
I’d rather them suffer in Opposition for a couple of more years to get rid of dead wood including Hockey.
Isn’t Hockey supposed to be less of a hard-righter?
[and it’s very telling that when she answers questions in parliament, they’re not littered with the partisan bluster and showboating that other ministers have been guilty of.]
Given her responses would be monitored by other countries, I wouldn’t have thought she could afford to be overly partisan.
[isostatic rebound of morale after the Rudd years.]
🙂
lizzie
[Isn’t Hockey supposed to be less of a hard-righter?]
So said but he wants to sell our superannuation and no idea about much else.
I see we Morrosonites are few in number.
Psephos 207
Should England have gone to war over a quarrel in a far way country between people of whom the English knew nothing?
[207
Psephos
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.]
Quite so.
And yet China does not have the territorial ambitions of the Third Reich; nor is it ruled by a demented Fuhrer and a crowd of incompetent, racist and militarist zealots.
If you want to gain a hearing with the Chinese, it’s best not to rebuke them in public in order to make yourself look better or stronger than you actually are. You can be as plainly spoken as you like in private, but it is pure folly to hector them in public and expect to be taken seriously.
To cap it off, following on from Bishop’s self-aggrandisement, Abbott showed that he really just takes our trade relationship with China completely for granted. Neither of them seem to understand that relationships count almost more than anything for the Chinese. Our ability to influence China will suffer – has already suffered – as a result.
What was the last “Abbott administration” like? Meet Tony Abbott, 1979 president of the SRC.
http://bit.ly/1dbgGtn
Olivia Illyria @OliviaIllyria 40m
.@randlight ‘Peta is totally fine’ said Pyne and Cormann in suspiciously high-pitched voices
Love this have they been neutered??
[CTar1
Posted Sunday, December 8, 2013 at 1:06 pm | PERMALINK
mari
like put away the chairs and table on the patio if you want to keep them
Nephew and I did this in London not to long ago after I spotted an almost 3 year old perched on a chair on the balcony … only 32 floors down to the Podium.]
What luck you saw the 3 year old
Pyne on Gonski
[Should England have gone to war over a quarrel in a far way country between people of whom the English knew nothing?]
If Chamberlain had stood up to Hitler over the Rhineland or the Sudetenland, Hitler would have fallen and there would have been no war. General Halder was ready to stage a coup if war had broken out on either occasion.
Psephos
A couple of questions on last night’s discussion about terrorism.
(1) Would you count ‘Schrecklichkeit’ as an instance of state terrorism?
(2) Is it possible to argue, in certain circumstances, that there is no such thing as ‘innocent’ civilians?
The line would go that civilians (a) know the state/army is up to something massive and massively evil and (b) quietly benefit from same without doing anything at all to try to prevent the state from continuing its behaviour. In this case, arguably, there are no ‘innocent civilians’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrecklichkeit
ru
Memorial service on Tuesday and burial is on Sunday 15th December
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/07/21805707-obamas-to-attend-memorial-service-for-mandela-in-south-africa-on-tuesday
Bowen holds his own effortlessly against Kelly and van Onselen in the re-run of AM Agenda.
Bowen has a similar quality to Shorten: they both use their own voice. It comes across as authentic.
Boerwar
Shorten, Bowen, and Burke have been rather impressive to date
Psephos
You are a fool to assess history and the historical wisdom of any action in the light of any particular outcome. Hindsight tells us that Britain was wise to go to war with Germany in 1939 because our side WON.
However if Japan had NOT bombed Pearl Harbour and the US had stayed out of the war, I wonder how many people in Britain of Australia would have claimed Churchill as a hero. Chamberlain would have been the wise statesman.
A German aligned UK with King Edward restored and on the throne, the “colonies” like Australia with pro German leaders such as Menzies would have caused no trouble, and the USA would have become Hitler’s best friend.
It was chance or good luck or Japanese folly that brought the USA into the war and changed the course of European history.
There still would have been war of course but it would have been the USA, Germany and the UK versus Russia.
Would the extermination of the Jewish people have happened. Probably NOT, if Germany was winning the war. Resettlement in the USA, Israel, Australia or Canada, may have been negotiated by the USA as a price for joining Germany in its European expansion, BUT I would not want to have bet my life on it.
In the 1930s it was Russia which was seen by the world as a “pro Jewish state, so it is more likely that Jews and communists would have been lumped together in the public mind.
My point. Never be simplistic in foreign affairs and assume that what by chance had a good outcome in 1945 is the model to follow. Do not believe your own rhetoric. Things a re never simple not what they seem to be.
boerwar, I think Bishop suffers from the same defects as the rest of the Abbott Cabinet, which is that they see politics solely thought the prism of inter-party conflict.
Practically everything they do in the pursuit and use of power is refracted by conflict with and hatred of Labor. This is their mission: to oppose and destroy Labor and all that Labor stands for.
So they all adopt an overtly militant line on things – doing anything they can to distinguish themselves from the pragmatism, modernism and centrism of the ALP. In the process, they drag themselves off to the right again and again in the self-justifying belief that the country will follow them up that particular ideological cul-de-sac. This is a futile charge into a no-man’s land, but is about all they know. It will end in tears, no doubt at all.
[If Chamberlain had stood up to Hitler over the Rhineland or the Sudetenland, Hitler would have fallen and there would have been no war. General Halder was ready to stage a coup if war had broken out on either occasion.]
So how does China equate to post war Germany and who in China is about to lead a democratic revolution based on a US / Japan / and other unimportant countries threatening war.
I’m not seeing the comparison at all to be frank.
We love football, meat pies, kangaroos and – um – Asian cars…………….
Your achievements this week Liberal and National Voters!! Stand Proud!!
http://polyfeministix.wordpress.com/2013/12/08/your-achievements-this-week-liberal-and-national-voters-stand-proud/
[A couple of questions on last night’s discussion about terrorism.
(1) Would you count ‘Schrecklichkeit’ as an instance of state terrorism?
(2) Is it possible to argue, in certain circumstances, that there is no such thing as ‘innocent’ civilians?
The line would go that civilians (a) know the state/army is up to something massive and massively evil and (b) quietly benefit from same without doing anything at all to try to prevent the state from continuing its behaviour. In this case, arguably, there are no ‘innocent civilians’.]
I think the word “terrorism” ought to be reserved for the actions of terrorists, whom I would define as non-state actors who seek to terrorise civilian populations in order to achieve political objectives.
Of course states also seek to terrorise, but I would class that under war crimes or crimes against humanity, which are recognised crimes that heads of state and their agents can be charged with.
Killing civilians in a righteous cause is a much tougher moral dilemma. Allied bombing killed 600,000 German civilians, including infants who were clearly “innocent” in a personal sense. Was this morally justified by the clear necessity of defeating Hitler? I would say yes, but it’s a very difficult one.
Psephos
The UK had little choice in the negotiations with Hitler.
Britain DID NOT HAVE AN AIRFORCE.
The troubled years of the 1920s as Britain sought to adjust to the aftermath of WWI meant that it was militarily way, way, way behind Germany. The UK government HAD to buy time to build its military.
My source. A book written by John F Kennedy, which was a detailed analysis of the military strength of European powers in the 1930s. It may have been his Master’s thesis.
Warning to Samsung S4 owners, or any Samsung owners:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QHd-_qncEU
We need another wicket.
[228
Psephos
Should England have gone to war over a quarrel in a far way country between people of whom the English knew nothing?
If Chamberlain had stood up to Hitler over the Rhineland or the Sudetenland, Hitler would have fallen and there would have been no war. General Halder was ready to stage a coup if war had broken out on either occasion.]
We know this in hindsight, which makes Churchill’s criticism of Chamberlain seem like prescience.
But in contemporary terms, is there a North Asian Sudetenland (Tibet perhaps) or a Rhineland (Taiwan, say)?
I doubt it.
I think the manouvres of China have to be construed in the context of regional counter-pressure from the US and its many allies; and against the reality of US strategy, which, ever since WW2, has been to create and sustain platforms for the forward deployment of its forces. There is an aphorism in US policy-making, which is that if there is going to be war, it will fought somewhere other than in America. So this jostling needs to be seen as a part of this. The US is defining the theatre of competition, and China is caught up in this a much as the rest of us.
IMHO a FA Minister should at least be able to:
1) Elevate themself above the hurley burley of domestic politics, especially during QT.
2) Talk authoritatively and with some air of gravitas on international matters.
JBishop can do neither.
One might make the excuse and say that she limited any possibility of being able to muster up an air of gravitas in her new role as FA Minister by the extremely low levels of partisanship and personality politics to which she readily sank in the last parliament, and that she will grow in the role, but that would be wrong.
Her behaviour in the last parliament and her incompetence as FA Minister come from the same root cause. She is a twerp.
A twerp is what you get when you get JBishop in any role at all.
mari
[What luck you saw the 3 year old]
Scared hell out of me.
My fault I guess. We have a telescope and the day before her parents and two older siblings made it up to the top of St Paul’s and were flashing us with mothers ‘compact’ mirror.
Lessons in life.
[We know this in hindsight, which makes Churchill’s criticism of Chamberlain seem like prescience.]
They knew it at the time, because emissaries from the German opposition told them.
zoidlord
Thanks for (not) making my day. I’ve just been given a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 as a Christmas present. Still on Learner’s permit.
[We need another wicket.]
Do we ever! These two are getting VERY comfortable out there!
AussieAchmed
[Bill Lawry of pigeon racing??]
I settle for commentary from one of his birds. A gentle cooing would be quite soothing between the prattle of the others.
I think Aggers, Blowers and Johnners should do all cricket commentary, everywhere, all the time.
Revisionism over Chamberlain is an interesting but futile activity.
There is evidence that England knew that a failure by Hitler in Munich might have led to a coup attempt but would the coup have been successful?
This also ignores one of the key issues – the actions of the Sudetens who, admittedly under Nazi leadership,had started what amounted to a civil war. Would England have been expected to aid the Czecho-slovaks to suppress the rebellion? Would Germany be expected to stand to one side?