Seat of the week: Grey

The seat which covers most of the geographical area of South Australia has typified Labor’s decline in regional areas by transforming from safe Labor to safe Liberal status since the early 1990s.

Red and blue numbers respectively indicate booths with two-party majorities for Liberal and Labor. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

The electorate of Grey has covered the bulk of South Australia’s land mass since the state was first divided into electorates in 1903, and it currently encompasses much the same territory as it did on its creation. The state’s eastern regions north of the Riverland were at times accommodated by Wakefield, but Grey has at all times accommodated the state’s west together with the “iron triangle” cities of Whyalla, Port Augusta and Port Pirie. Labor-voting Whyalla is the electorate’s largest centre with a population of around 22,000, while increasingly marginal Port Augusta and Port Pirie together with strongly conservative Port Lincoln on the lower Eyre Peninsula each have populations of slightly over 13,000. About 60 per cent of the electorate’s population is scattered through the remainder, the strongest concentration being in the rural conservative Yorke Peninsula. The latter area was added to the electorate from Wakefield when South Australia’s representation was reduced from 12 seats to 11 in 2004.

Grey’s industrial centres once made it a reliable seat for Labor, but their decline over recent decades has effected a decisive shift to the Liberals. Labor held the seat for all but one term between 1943 and 1993, the exception being after the landslide defeat of 1966. Laurie Wallis recovered the seat for Labor in 1969 and retained it by margins of 563 votes in 1975 and 65 votes in 1977, surviving on the latter occasion in the face of an unfavourable redistribution, and bequeathed the seat to Lloyd O’Neil in 1983. The turning point arrived in 1993, when the addition of the Clare Valley (since transferred to Wakefield) and the retirement of O’Neil opened the way for Barry Wakelin to win the seat for the Liberals on the back of a 4.3% swing. The Liberals’ position has been strengthening ever since, helping Wakelin to achieve swings of 6.4% in 1996, 1.9% in 2001 and 3.2% in 2004, with a correction of only 0.5% to Labor in 1998. Wakelin’s retirement in 2007 combined with the overall swing to Labor cut the margin that year from 13.8% to 4.4%, but the Liberal ascendancy has since been firmly re-established by successive swings of 6.7% and 2.4% in 2010 and 2013. The member since 2007 has been Rowan Ramsey, who runs a farming property at Buckleboo on the Eyre Peninsula.

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.

1,234 comments on “Seat of the week: Grey”

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  1. g

    I have checked with Ms Credlin and she has personally approved for that bit of nature to be deleted with prejudice. Nothing will be allowed to stand in the way of the Coalition Central Committee’s Communications Plan for the Twenty-First Century and a New Dawn.

  2. Sprocket you are correct about the carbon tax- it hardly matters to Holden. The real issues were volume. They were making 50,000 cars here. Even Porsche makes 140,000 a year. It is not the workers fault. It is not a viable business due to global oversupply in manufacturing capacity.

    One final comment on Qantas before I go. Clearly the management course has been disastrous, with them openly admitting they need assistance, or more capital, or face the wall. Yet Joyce has still been awarded “performance bonuses” in the past few years in his far too high pay package. The obvious question is: what were the performance targets he was supposed to achieve if this corporate performance has been good enough? Was union busting his only objective?

  4. I had never heard of Peppa until Piers valiantly took it upon himself to monitor the activities of this cartoon piglet so that he could warn us all of the dangers.

    On the other hand, as the second last para in the article linked by Lizzie in 34 above says:

    And when you think about it, perhaps it’s not so silly after all that a writer in the Akerman genre would feel adequately qualified to take on a cartoon pig, whose chief failing – feminism aside – is that she is shouty, argumentative, one-dimensional and just that little bit too loud

  5. PS Abbott really has handled the Holden politics badly. Serves him right. Shorten needs to be careful about Qantas. I do not see much national benefit to having a national overseas carrier. Countries get by without them. I do see a case for preserving Qantas domestic as an Australian carrier. That is the bit that makes money, and services some remote areas.

    Have a good day all.

  6. [Was union busting his only objective?]

    Probably many of these business leaders can barely focus on one thing let alone two or three.

  7. That uncorrected advertisement on this page:

    [Crikey: Christmas Extravagnaza … (sic)]

    is really beginning to give me the irrits. I assume the typo is intentionsl — aimed at attracting the attention of people in just the way that trolls on usenet would deliberately flame with typos — but it’s annoying none the less — like a buzzing mosquito.

    William: please pass on my sentiments …

  9. Here’s something to mark in your diaries

    Who wrote this yesterday re AWU saga:
    “Gillard quite probably did nothing illegal.”

    Answer: Andrew Bolt.

  10. [Apostrophes to the right of them
    Apostrophes to the left of them
    Into the Valley of Human Error
    Rode the Grammarians.]

    Not sure how this one ends…

  13. [Apostrophes to the right of them
    Apostrophes to the left of them
    Into the Valley of Human Error
    Rode the Grammarians.

    Not sure how this one ends…]

    Only the Grammarians cared!

  15. [
    AussieAchmed
    Posted Sunday, December 15, 2013 at 9:08 am | Permalink

    Here’s something to mark in your diaries

    Who wrote this yesterday re AWU saga:
    “Gillard quite probably did nothing illegal.”

    Answer: Andrew Bolt.
    ]
    You have fortitude, it wasn’t written in the first couple of paragraphs, and a couple of hate filled column inches is enough to put me off reading more.

  16. Fran

    What you really have to look out for are the Extravagnazis*. When they get going they trash continents.

    *With due apologies to the Reductio ad Hitelerum crowd.

  20. Morning bludgers

    This was posted on previous thread by Fulvio Sammut. Worth reposting in light of what implications it may have for a fresh WA senate election

    [My wife is a member of a group of ladies who have known each other since our kids were pre-schoolers 35 years ago. They meet half a dozen times a year or more and have a Christmas gathering each year to which the husbands are invited.

    The guys are all pretty much right wingers, small business types, who over the years I have known them have seldom had a good word to say about Labor.

    Last Christmas it was all about Gillard the witch, Labor waste, Labor’s internecine warfare, sink the Illegals, etc etc.

    We met again tonight.

    Tonight it was all about Holden leaving, Australia going down the gurgler, Coalition clueless, Abbott a dud.
    When I raised the secrecy, the lies re boat arrivals, the malicious destruction of sound Labor policies such as the NBN, the National disability Scheme, Gonski etc, they raised not a murmur of disagreement.

    Some of them are in the know, and raised the prospect (in their minds the done deal) that Barnett was so much of the problem in WA that Grylls would join the Liberal Party shortly and there would be spill in which he would take over as Liberal Premier, there being no one else in the current Liberals competent to take over.

    Interesting times.]

  21. As I posted here last week, any Government assistance to Qantas should include the following conditions:
    1. Resignation of the Qantas board
    2. Resignation of the CEO
    3. Resignation of the CEO’s direct reports. The Government may choose not to accept some.
    4. Full disclosure and cancellation of any dodgy tax minimisation arrangements on the part of Qantas, its subsidiaries and senior executives
    5. Rescind all bonuses for senior executives – after all, they’re failures.
    6. Cap the salary of the replacement CEO and other senior executives at around $500K. I’m sure there will be many who want a shot at a top Qantas job at that salary.

  22. victoria:

    In my view, the stuff about Grylls joining the Libs and taking over the leadership from Barnett is fanciful.

    Buswell is the obvious replacement.

  24. Steve777
    I always assumed that the Duke of Fraudband supported gay marriage because there is a large gay community in his electorate? Am I wrong about the composition of his electorate?

  25. lefty e

    I am not so bullish just yet. Three years is a long time in politics. Whilst, the coalition as per usual do projection and were suggesting that Labor were going to be the most negative opposition in history, i am expecting The coalition together with Uncle Rupert to engage in concerted attacks on Shorten/Plibersek team at some point in time. I am unclear at this stage as to what strategy Labor have in response, but it had better be effective

  26. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-11/why-do-forecasters-keep-forecasting-.html

    That’s a better link for #69 above.

    Here’s the nitty gritty.

    [So, as year-end approaches, let’s take a look at how much “this much” is — how badly various Wall Street market forecasts missed it with their prognostications for the S&P 500 in 2013. The chart below tracks their “achievements,” noting by how much they missed (using firm forecasts from the beginning of 2013).

    Firm / S&P 500 Target / Missed it by this much (%, as of 12.10.2013)
    ◾Wells Fargo / 1,390 / 29.7%
    ◾UBS / 1,425 / 26.5%
    ◾Morgan Stanley / 1,434 / 25.7%
    ◾Deutsche Bank / 1,500 / 20.2%
    ◾Barclays / 1,525 / 18.2%
    ◾Credit Suisse / 1,550 / 16.3%
    ◾HSBC / 1,560 / 15.6%
    ◾Jefferies / 1,565 / 15.2%
    ◾Goldman Sachs / 1,575 / 14.5%
    ◾BMO Capital / 1,575 / 14.5%
    ◾JP Morgan / 1,580 / 14.1%
    ◾Oppenheimer / 1,585 / 13.8%
    ◾BofA Merrill Lynch / 1,600 / 12.7%
    ◾Citi / 1,615 / 11.6%
    ◾AVERAGE / 1,534 / 17.5%
    ◾MEDIAN / 1,560 / 15.6%

    In other words, they all missed by miles (short of a major market correction over the next 14 trading days). Nobody was remotely close.]

  27. [In my view, the stuff about Grylls joining the Libs and taking over the leadership from Barnett is fanciful.

    Buswell is the obvious replacement.]

    Depends how many chair sniffs and bra strap victims might come out of the woodwork.

  28. Steve777

    Your reference to Crabbe over Akerman and what must surely be called “Peppagate” left out Crabbe’s best line, taken from the Orwell classic, Animal Farm:

    [The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, but already it was impossible to say which was which]

    I’m not that keen on Crabbe, who strikes me as a rather vacuous media mouth and thus debaucher of public discourse (albeit one who is fairly harmless in the grand scheme of things) but this was pretty good.

    Mind you, I suspect I could discern which of Akerman and Peppa was the more authentic stereotypic pig.

    NB: Pigs have, like so many of the animals exploited by humans, been cast in dreadful terms. They are far cleverer than humans generally suppose. When one considers the Akerman cohort, I’d say that pigs would do far worse being compared to him than the other way about.

  29. We are watching a reg.tradesman removing an asbestos roof dressed in shorts and singlet.

    His young offsider is dressed in a similar fashion and is carrying the sheets over his bare shoulder and throwing them in the skip.

  30. confessions

    You are probably correct in that respect. My take on the feedback of this group is that they have lost confidence with their state and federal Liberals. if this is a trend amongst the usual supporters of the Liberals, it could indeed have a dramatic impact on the WA senate elections

  35. [I always assumed that the Duke of Fraudband supported gay marriage because there is a large gay community in his electorate? Am I wrong about the composition of his electorate?]

    You’re right about his electorate, wrong about him.

  36. WWP:

    We all said exactly the same thing of Buswell when Barnett brought him back to the front bench.

    We said the same thing when he was promoted to Treasurer.

    We’ll no doubt say the same thing when he is leader. Etc etc.

  37. DN

    [Is it food? Can you eat it?]

    One should be able to eat it. I’m seeing it as a kind of Black Forest Cake with liqueur in it and dollops of cream and glazed cherries …

    Going back to the mediaeval semantic content, “extravagnaza” certainly is off the orthographic reservation and is wandering into territory where nobody should tread.

  39. Kevin-1-7 @74: Am I wrong about the composition of his electorate?

    I don’t know for sure but I expect that you are right. Turnbull’s electorate of Wentworth covers Sydney’s well-heeled and and liberal (small ‘l’) inner Eastern suburbs. It includes Sydney’s Kings Cross and Darlinghust precincts and its gay Mecca Oxford Street. However, Turnbull is a member of a Government that feels a need to pander to not only social conservatives and traditionally-minded church-goers but also to bigots. Championing the gay community would be as career-limiting for an ambitious Federal Liberal as championing action on climate change or a fair go for asylum seekers.

  40. Socrates

    The problem with you “market is just fabbo” Economics AO1 thinking is that if you do not make cars because it is cheaper elsewhere, you do no fly overseas because they can do it cheaper, etc etc, just what DO you do.

    People often say OK this industry goes because it is not competitive without EVER nominating a realistic substitute. I have no problem with soemone rationally saying that “the care industry is outdated and uncompetetive and we have demand for similar skilled workforce in industries XYZ however I NEVER, NEVER NEVER know what industry X Y and Z are. Sometimes someone nominates some whizz bang industry employing three people and a dog for security, but this in pie in the sky trivia.

    The thinking is always, always predicated on a high Australian dollar and many years of peace with NO external threats or disruption to trade routes. This is pretty much like a home owner saying “There has not been a flood for 69 years so I will not take out home insurance”. Stupid bean counter thinking with little long term strategic thought or planning.

    So before we go all Frer market and close our industries NAME THE REPLACEMENT, not pie in the sky cargo cultis oh the market will come and fix it fo us. Idiocy plus. Give me names of industiris which can grow, show me their potential markets, show me the workforce needed and the skill set (and pay rates), show me the tax revenue for government etc. THEN tell me it is OK to close our industries and cash earning businesses.

    Otherwise shift to PNG and join the cargo cultists. Pie in the sky may give a warm inner glow but it does not fill the bellies.

  41. [ Fulvio Sammut
    Posted Sunday, December 15, 2013 at 3:08 am | Permalink

    My wife is a member of a group of ladies who have known each other since our kids were pre-schoolers 35 years ago. They meet half a dozen times a year or more and have a Christmas gathering each year to which the husbands are invited.

    The guys are all pretty much right wingers, small business types, who over the years I have known them have seldom had a good word to say about Labor.

    Last Christmas it was all about Gillard the witch, Labor waste, Labor’s internecine warfare, sink the Illegals, etc etc.

    We met again tonight.

    Tonight it was all about Holden leaving, Australia going down the gurgler, Coalition clueless, Abbott a dud.
    When I raised the secrecy, the lies re boat arrivals, the malicious destruction of sound Labor policies such as the NBN, the National disability Scheme, Gonski etc, they raised not a murmur of disagreement.

    Some of them are in the know, and raised the prospect (in their minds the done deal) that Barnett was so much of the problem in WA that Grylls would join the Liberal Party shortly and there would be spill in which he would take over as Liberal Premier, there being no one else in the current Liberals competent to take over.

    Interesting times. ]

    Roll on the Qld by election, the new Senate ballot in the West and the various State elections.

    They are what really count – they can’t be spun or not reported although the will try to separate state/ federal issues of course.

    Those who voted abbott will have a chance to reassess their vote and many will have been effected by his policies directly – some losing jobs and working conditions because abbott.

    He still hasn’t fronted for a long format interview on his destruction of our car industry. And that appears to have just been accepted.

  42. victoria:

    The WA govt has stumbled badly since the election, reneging on all their pre-election promises, and having to backflip on some of the broken promises due to community anger.

    A small part of me takes some pleasure from the buyers remorse of those who voted out Labor. Surely they knew they were signing onto an empty vessel, driven by anti-equality ideology.

  43. BW

    [What you really have to look out for are the Extravagnazis*. When they get going they trash continents.]

    Well yes … ubiquity, randomness and excess are a bad combination. 😉

  44. [WWP:

    We all said exactly the same thing of Buswell when Barnett brought him back to the front bench.

    We said the same thing when he was promoted to Treasurer.

    We’ll no doubt say the same thing when he is leader. Etc etc.]

    It is because he is clearly unfit for any of those roles, but is desperately needed. If he is their leader what does it say about the rest of them.

  45. [Last Christmas it was all about Gillard the witch, Labor waste, Labor’s internecine warfare, sink the Illegals, etc etc.

    We met again tonight.

    Tonight it was all about Holden leaving, Australia going down the gurgler, Coalition clueless, Abbott a dud.]

    Abbott wanted the Christmas holiday campfire conversations to be positive about the government.

    But what he failed to appreciate is that if you create a Frankenstein’s monster of hate, chaos and cynicism – as he has done with the collusion of shit sheets like the Daily Telegraph and shock jocks like Ray Hadley – when it’s finished with the villagers, it turns on its creator.

    That’s what we’re seeing now.

    We were told that the Carbon Tax was an imposition on us because action on carbon emission should leave our consumption habits utterly unchanged. It wouldn’t have mattered if Labor’s Carbon Tax had been 50c a tonne, the level of whingeing about it would have been about the same.

    Although the Carbon Tax imput to GM cars was only $45, the myth persists – stenographed daily in the media – that it is actually $400. The Carbon Tax has had virtually no effect on the making of cars. $45 in $25,000 is the equivalent of a $0.0016 rise in the exchange rate, something that happens if a currency trader burps while eating his sandwich at the keyboard.

    Yet even this is, on the surface, unacceptable to the whingeing mentality in Voterland that has been created by Abbott.

    Is it any wonder that when something real is taken away from them – be it education funding, a decent, workable NBN, a pay rise for low-paid workers, a superannutation concession, or any of a host of other things disappeared or about to be disappeared since the election – they will squeal like stuck pigs?

    Camping holidays at Christmas have been my barometer since before Howard was defeated. After a few days of the kids sorting themselves into gangs and play groups, the parents get to meet each other and start sharing a beer or a marshmallow roast around the campfire.

    In Howard’s last Christmas as Prime Minister – the holiday season of 2006-2007 – the talk around those campfires changed dramatically for Howard. The consensus was that he was gone, whenever the election was held. I wrote a post about it at the time, on the old Road To Surfdom site.

    This year’s cam[fire talk is going to be very similar for Abbott. It’s unprecedented, and virtually impossible, but I have the feeling that the talk will be how to get rid of Abbott in the shortest possible time.

    Christmas is the period when people are supposed to relax. But instead we’ve seen monumental breaches of promise, reversals, confusion, outright idiocy and what seems like sheer bloody-mindedness from the Abbott government.

    From Indonesia, to schools, to trade training centers, from superannutaion to General motors they have stuffed up just about everything.

    Joe Hockey promises us – gloatingly – even more rotten news next Tuesday. The last thing the voters will have in their minds come Christmas will be Hockey’s glum visage telling us how bad things are. j\Just when it is his job to talk the economy up, he’ll be talking it down.

    Despite being out of power, with the main players completely out of politics, Abbott intends to run a series of what amounts to show trials against the previous incumbents. What a monumental miscalculation! Preliminary hearings are due for December the 23rd – two days before hristmas. More misery. Nothing positive.

    The punters are already sick and tired of Abbott (as can be seen from the polls). More excuse making, more Daily Telegraph style muck-raking over the coals of programs long since disposed of, or alleged misdemeanours that occurred 20 or more years ago isn’t going to make the voters feel any better about Abbott.

    It will only confirm in their minds just how big a mistake they made in trusting him to carry out anything he said he would do.

    The hurly-burly of the campaign is over. The sensational headlines that entertained the crowd during the Election Reality TV show are landfill. The tit-for-tat is exhausted. People don’t want blame and entertainment anymore. They don’t want whipping boys and girls. They want action. They want their lives bettered, just like Abbott told them they would be.

    They can see now that’s not going to happen.

    All the facets of Abbott’s personality are on the table for judgement: bovver boy, minister, priest, physical fitness junkie, father, brother, orator, liar… with the final two facets – Prime Minister and statesman – now revealed in all their tawdry, disappointing glory.

    Over Christmas – with nothing to look forward to, with everything to be depressed about, deliberately and relentlessly confirmed by the abbott government in its pre-Christmas campaign of mindless negativity – the voters will take the facts on the table, the personalities and the promises aginst the performance, and make a decision that will doom this government to the same junk status they themselves worked so hard to confer upon the Gillard government.

    The monster will come back to eat its creator alive. You don’t get two chances to fool the public. The Coalition have had theirs, and there are no more opportunities left.

  46. Dee #79

    Then we need another RC.

    Obviously this is a Labor government, not an employer, who is at fault.

    Or is it that we’re just a nanny state and should man up and not worry about the so called dangers of asbestos ….. that’s probly a conspiracy by lefties and scientists, like AGW.

    Tism will soon be here soon to tell us that mesothelioma is just a state of mind.

  47. I am assuming that Wikipedia is correct.

    [A by-election was held for the Australian House of Representatives seat of Kalgoorlie on 18 December 1920. This was triggered by the expulsion of Labor Party MP Hugh Mahon.

    The by-election was won by Nationalist Party candidate George Foley. It is the only federal by-election in Australian history where the government has won a seat from the opposition.]

    The odds and prevailing mood are firmly stacked against the coalition winning Griffith.

  48. confessions

    [A small part of me takes some pleasure from the buyers remorse of those who voted out Labor. Surely they knew they were signing onto an empty vessel, driven by anti-equality ideology.]

    Unfortunately the voters buy the mantra of i am okay and stuff everyone else. Redistribution of wealth is a dirty word in the US, and look where they are now, Australians need to wake up before it is too late.

  49. This quote brings memories of the mess we had under Howard, with endless changes. Conroy got hold of it all by the scruff of the neck and shook it. Amazing how quickly the Coalition can put things into reverse.

    […in its landmark Strategic Review document published today, and available online in PDF format, NBN Co instead recommended a drastically reduced rollout schema, which it dubbed an “Optimised Multi-Technology Mix”]

    http://delimiter.com.au/2013/12/12/nbn-co-abandons-fttn-rollout-hfc-areas/

  50. [If he is their leader what does it say about the rest of them.]

    Well exactly. But the point is that he is there in the Cabinet, and there are no other obvious candidates to replace Barnett should he retire or be removed.

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