Seat of the week: Denison

With a state election looming on the horizon, Seat of the Week turns its gaze to Tasmania.

Held since the 2010 election by independent Andrew Wilkie, Denison encompasses Hobart along the western shore of the Derwent River and the hinterland beyond, with the eastern shore Hobart suburbs and southern outskirts township of Kingston accommodated by Franklin. Like all of Tasmania’s electorates, Denison has been little changed since Tasmania was divided into single-member electorates in 1903, with the state’s representation consistently set at the constitutional minimum of five electorates per state.

Grey and red numbers respectively indicate booths with two-party majorities for Andrew Wilkie and Labor. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

Prior to 2010 the seat was presumed to be safe for Labor, notwithstanding the local strength of the Greens. Labor’s first win in Denison came with their first parliamentary majority at the 1910 election, but the seat was lost to the 1917 split when incumbent William Laird Smith joined Billy Hughes in the Nationalist Party. Over subsequent decades it was fiercely contested, changing hands in 1922, 1925, 1928, 1931, 1934, 1940 and 1943. It thereafter went with the winning party until 1983, changing hands in 1949, 1972 and 1975.

Denison was held through the Fraser years by former state MP Michael Hodgman, who joined his four Tasmanian Liberal colleagues in picking up a swing against the trend of the 1983 election due to local anger over the Franklin dam issue. However, Hodgman’s margin wore away over the next two elections, and he was defeated in 1987 by Labor’s Duncan Kerr. Hodgman returned as a state member for Denison in 1992 before eventually bowing out due to poor health in 2010 (he died in June 2013). His son, Will Hodgman, is the state’s current Liberal Opposition Leader.

The drift to Labor evident in 1984 and 1987 was maintained during Kerr’s tenure, giving him consistent double-digit margins starting from 1993. In this he was substantially assisted by preferences from the emerging Greens. The preselection which followed Kerr’s retirement in 2010 kept the endorsement in the Left faction with the nomination of Jonathan Jackson, a chartered accountant and the son of former state Attorney-General Judy Jackson.

What was presumed to be a safe passage to parliament for Jackson was instead thwarted by Andrew Wilkie, who had come to national attention in 2003 when he resigned as an intelligence officer with the Office of National Assessments officer in protest over the Iraq war. Wilkie ran against John Howard as the Greens candidate for Bennelong in 2004, and as the second candidate on the Greens’ Tasmanian Senate ticket in 2007. He then broke ranks with the party to run as an independent candidate for Denison at the state election in 2010, falling narrowly short of winning one of the five seats with 9.0% of the vote.

Wilkie acheived his win in 2010 with just 21.2% of the primary vote, crucially giving him a lead over the Greens candidate who polled 19.0%. The distribution of Greens preferences put Wilkie well clear of the Liberal candidate, who polled 22.6% of the primary vote, and Liberal preferences in turn favoured Wilkie over Labor by a factor of nearly four to one. Wilkie emerged at the final count 1.2% ahead of Labor, which had lost the personal vote of its long-term sitting member Duncan Kerr. This left Wilkie among a cross bench of five members in the first hung parliament since World War II.

Wilkie declared himself open to negotiation with both parties as they sought to piece together a majority, which the Liberals took seriously enough to offer $1 billion for the rebuilding of Royal Hobart Hospital. In becoming the first of the independents to declare his hand for Labor, Wilkie criticised the promise as “almost reckless”, prompting suggestions from the Liberals that his approach was insincere.

The deal Wilkie reached with Labor included $340 million for the hospital and what proved to be a politically troublesome promise to legislate for mandatory pre-commitment for poker machines. When the government’s numbers improved slightly after Peter Slipper took the Speaker’s chair, the government retreated from the commitment. Wilkie responded by withdrawing his formal support for the government, although it never appeared likely that he would use his vote to bring it down.

Wilkie was comfortably re-elected at the 2013 election with 38.1% of the primary vote, despite an aggressive Labor campaign that included putting him behind the Liberals on how-to-vote cards. Both Labor (down from 35.8% to 24.8%) and the Greens (down from 19.0% to 7.9%) recorded double-digit drops, and most of the northern suburbs booths which had stayed with Labor in 2010 were won by Wilkie. His final margin over Labor after preferences was up from 1.2% to 15.5%, while the Labor-versus-Liberal two-party preferred count recorded a 6.9% swing to the Liberals and a Labor margin of 8.9%.

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.

775 comments on “Seat of the week: Denison”

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  2. Translated from Indonesian.

    [Termination was carried out following the Australian tapping against the President. relations between the two countries re-heated when the Australian Navy patrol boat entered Indonesian waters by nearly seven miles from Rote Island].

    Seems at least one Australian Navy boat entered Indonesian Waters without permission. Maybe this is why secrecy has to be maintained.

  3. Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
    Hardly surprising. And what a term – “chicken mix”!
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/tests-reveal-supermarket-pies-not-even-onethird-meat-20140111-30nl4.html
    Sounds like a complete shambles with plenty left in it.
    http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/security-alarm-went-off-before-wetnwild-nye-party-20140111-30nmh.html
    Pyne’s man Donnelly has had previous links with Big Tobacco. What a sterling chap!
    http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/new-curriculum-reviewer-was-an-education-consultant-to-tobacco-giant-phillip-morris-20140111-30nj8.html

  5. And from the Land of the Free –

    Priceless! Little girls meets her father’s twin brother for the first time.
    http://americablog.com/2014/01/little-girl-meets-dads-twin-first-time-video.html
    Here’s a very determined and resourceful beagle.
    http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2014/01/10/video-overnight-thread-beagle-wants-chicken-nuggets/
    Poor Chris Christie. Nice knowin’ ya!
    http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2014/01/10/christies-either-naive-liar-neither-makes-presidential/
    Jon Stewart takes down Christie’s presser.
    http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017168668
    This is how Aussie journos should handle Abbott’s walk offs.
    http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017168857

  9. Morning all, thanks BK. How is Logan doing? He is still getting an atheist’s supportive thoughts.

    Nothing illustrates the need to redraft the far too easily abused definition of charities we have than this: the Victorian Chamber of Commerce, a business lobby group, is seeking to become a charity. I think I will stick to supporting Oxfam.
    http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victorian-employers-chamber-of-commerce-and-industry-seeks-charity-status-20140111-30ns4.html

  15. Socrates

    I cannot understand how a lobby group, or even an “advisory” group, can attain charity i.e. tax-deductible status. I thought the conditions had been tightened ~10 years ago. At that time the Howard govt was particularly keen to withdraw tax exemptions from such deviant groups as wildlife support and conservation advocates. Not sure how it all ended up.

  17. It is imperative that I wake up each morning with something to annoy me 😉

    Today it is this nonsense.
    [Undeterred by the threat of deep-vein thrombosis, Prime Minister Tony Abbott cheerfully took to economy class last month to fly overseas for a short family holiday.

    It was a commendable look for the leader of a government preparing to take the razor to the budget this year. And while Abbott’s office didn’t try to publicise his frugal travel arrangements, they did not go unnoticed.

    It’s hard to write these travel arrangements off as a media stunt for political gain. ]

    This was a private holiday, so Abbott had to pay for himself and family. He couldn’t claim it from the taxpayer, so what did he do? Went on the cheap. Because he’s so hard up, of course, with a mortgage and all. How does that affect the use of taxpayers’ funds?

    And the article makes a great fuss of it not being a stunt.
    😡

    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/abbott-finds-a-new-way-to-fly-20140111-30nr1.html#ixzz2q7xu6SMe

  19. BK

    Thanks, glad to hear it about Logan. Best wishes.

    Lizzie, confessions

    Regardless of whether it is for a right wing or left wing cause, surely lobbying is not the same as works for education, health or social welfare purposes that most charities do? As a minimum, a charity ought to be for a public purpose, not a private interest. Otherwise it is giving a deduction to what is nothing more than a gift from one individual to others with a similat interest.

  20. Socrates:

    The thing for me is that CCIs are there to advocate the interests of businesses, not the community. On a related matter the new Charities Act came into effect on 1 January. I wonder if that might make it easier or more difficult for the VCCI’s case.

  21. On the good news front, it is hard to mourn the death of Ariel Sharon, a man for whom troops under his control were responsible for the massacre of Palestinian civilians or Egyptian prisoners at least four separate times. Attention on the Lebabon refugee camp massacres in 1982 is appropriate, but they were only the most public examples. Sharon’s troops killed civilians in 1953, and surrendered Egyptian prisoners in 1956, 1967 and possibly 1973. This guy was.an ethnic cleanser from day one.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibya_massacre

  22. Confessions

    If it is possible for the VCCI to register then the new Charities Act is very badly written. How hard is it to define a public interest test? They are in lots of legislation.

  26. [It’s hard to write these travel arrangements off as a media stunt for political gain: neither the Prime Minister nor his Foreign Minister told the media of their plans.

    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/abbott-finds-a-new-way-to-fly-20140111-30nr1.html#ixzz2q865MWf5 ]

    Oh, of course… the Prime Minister travelling economy class would never be noticed by fellow passengers.

    And just in case we didn’t notice the frugality, there is always Bianca Hall to tell us what a barefoot saint the PM really is.

    I give it six months… no, three months… before they’re all out of cattle class and back on the gravy train.

    Abbott does nothing, nothing, without it being political. Be it a Prime Ministerial address at a funeral, a speech to a visiting head of state, or just a bike ride, Abbott is All Politics, All The Time.

    Being humble in getting journalists to write up how humble he is is the ultimate vanity.

  27. Final thought regarding Kevin Donnelly and the education curriculum review, it is a great pity. IMO there IS a need for a review, but not in the political and religious agendas Donnelly will focus on. The content and standard of teaching for basic maths, science and english is not standard between states. This has many disadvantages, especially for students whose families move interstate. States that perform less well on skill tests, including SA, simply withdraw from national tertiary entrance assessments. The only beneficiaries I can see, are the far too many useless education bureaucrats and policy officers I have met in attempts to encourage better maths teaching, so we will have a larger pool of people capable of doing courses like engineering.

    Chris Pyne, please fix the actual problem, not the culture wars Mk II.

    Have a good day all.

  28. Undeterred by the threat of a car accident, zoomster cheerfully drove her clapped out twenty year old Peugeot to the local shops to do her grocery shopping.

    It was a commendable look for an average citizen trying to save a bit of dosh. And while zoomster didn’t try to publicise her frugal travel arrangements, it was because they were of no significance to anybody.

    It’s hard to write these travel arrangements off as a media stunt for political gain, particularly since zoomster would never have been able to claim a cent off the taxpayer for them.

  30. Abbott travelling economy class for his personal travel on holidays has nothing to do how with how he and his Govt spend the public purse.

    Are we meant to forget all the charity bike rides etc and the thousands he claimed on the public purse?

    Are we meant to forget the thousands of dollars spent on charter flights and living allowances he claimed while “volunteering: at an aboriginal community?

    Or ignore his attempt to claim travel allowances for his book signing?

    This travelling economy class for his holiday only highlights that he is tight fisted with his own money but quick to dip into the public purse when he can

  33. A VERY remarkable thing is happening to the Australian economy; something we’ve never achieved before.

    The biggest mining boom since the Gold Rush days is coming to an end and our economy is chugging along relatively intact.

    This is no mean feat. Mining booms of yonder year have always ended in tears, in a burst of inflation or recession, sometimes both.

    But thanks to some nimble gear changes by the Reserve Bank over the past half decade, there is hope that 2014 will be the year we finally end up on the road to more balanced growth.
    —————————————–

    Lets remember that “past half decade” we had a Labor Government.

  34. Funny that Abbott ‘was not interested in an upgrade’. A flick through his register of interests shows he has been only too happy to accept them in the past, no matter who paid for his overseas flights. I have a suspicion that he just wasn’t offered one this time. A man who is happy to spend $13,000 for a lousy rug for the freaking family room, expects to be chauffered around in BMWs and loves hanging out with billionaires is not going to be wanting to fly cattle class all the way to London.

    There could be all sorts of reasons for his failure to get that upgrade. He was flying with a wife and two daughters, maybe there just wasn’t room in business class for all of them. We don’t know what airline was involved. If it was Qantas then this, a few days before he flew, wouldn’t have helped. The airline might have decided to ‘address its financial woes’ by not offering four upgrades to the Abbott family.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/qantas-has-to-fight-its-own-battles-tony-abbott-says-20131215-2zf17.html

    You can bet that Abbott was expecting an upgrade. It’s good to know he didn’t get it.

  35. Saw Father Bob on the subject of religion in schools.
    They should have him as one of the “advisors”, but I fear he might be too “socialist”. He gently panned the conservatives for their ideological approach to religion.

  38. The media and inept Abbott and his equally inept government would like us all to forget all the events prior o September 7 2013.

    They are making an effort to expunge from memory the weddings, book signing, charity rides, football and rugby games, so-called volunteering and even the visits to investment properties that the now Government MP’s claimed on the public purse.

    It’ an inconvenient truth that they well and truly had their heads in the public trough and sucked on the taxpayer funded teat.

    And arrogantly claimed they were “entitled” to swill from the trough

  39. frednk

    Posted Sunday, January 12, 2014 at 9:49 am | Permalink

    Step aside IPA we now have the Center for Right Wing apologist politics (CRAP).

    http://theaimn.com/2014/01/12/centre-for-right-wing-apologist-politics-crap/
    =================================
    What shame that our mainstream media have not the courage, fortitude or ethics to produce these type articles on the pages of their papers.

    Perhaps if they were more balanced they would not be seeing a decline n sales.

  40. [The media and inept Abbott and his equally inept government would like us all to forget all the events prior o September 7 2013]

    LOL, dumbest post of yours for a while.

    I think they’ll be reminding us all endlessly what happened prior to September 7th 2013 for the next 3 years. It’s Gold, Jerry! Gold!

  41. [I think they’ll be reminding us all endlessly what happened prior to September 7th 2013 for the next 3 years. It’s Gold, Jerry! Gold!]

    Well not so much what really happened but the dishonest version they spin madly.

  42. Well, having won all their matches up until the Final, my son’s team lost (to a team they’d previously beaten by 100 runs).

    However, he came out of it very well, being named as one of the ‘Dream Team’ – made up from players of all u 14 and u 17 teams who had taken part in the tournament from across NE Victoria.

  44. WWP,

    1. Labor promised to Stop the Boats instead took boat arrivals from an average of 60 a year under the Pacific Solution to 20,000 in 2013

    2. Labor promised to open a detention centre in East Timor before the 2010 election, Gillard too silly to call the East Timorese first

    3. Labor promised on over 500 seperate occasions to deliver a budget surplus, delivered a $19 Billion Dollar Deficit instead

    4. Gillard promised 1 day before the election never to introduce a Carbon Tax under a government she led, introduced a Carbon Tax after the election

    5. Gillard and Swan said they’d “fix” the mining tax, instead spent the Billions the mining tax was going to make before it made it, only to find out it only actually makes $150 Million a Year

    6. Senator Conjob and his $2 Million dollar man Quigley promise 1.26 Million FTTH connections on the NBN by July 2013, deliver 200,000 instead

    7. Live Cattle ban to Indonesia because they watched a 4 Corners program, destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds if not thousands of workers which we are still recovering from.

    8. Oceanic Viking embarrassment by Rudd, took the boatpeople back to Indonesia but then had to promise all onboard an insta-Visa to Australia in a show of incredibly weakness to people smugglers, Indonesia and their customers

    9. Constant infighting between Rudd and Gillard camps. Rudd considered SO bad he had to be rolled by Gillard. Gillard considered worse than bad, had to be rolled again by Kev.

    10. Disunity in the party, everyone leaking against others. Nasty backroom deals for cabinet positions, backstabbing and vindictiveness after losing their cabinet spot. General hate and spite run rampent through the party room.

    11. Union Heavies causing disaster for the party, many of the ALP sucked into the controversy.

    And that’s just a taster!

  46. I admit I was expecting the Libs to run a pretty poor government, but never in y wildest dreams did I expect them to be this shambolic. It’s been a fabulous four months, may there be many more of the same!

  48. 42
    zoomster

    [Well, having won all their matches up until the Final, my son’s team lost (to a team they’d previously beaten by 100 runs).]

    Ah, the variability of human performance and happenstance.

    [However, he came out of it very well, being named as one of the ‘Dream Team’ – made up from players of all u 14 and u 17 teams who had taken part in the tournament from across NE Victoria.]

    Well done him and all the others for participating, including the many volunteers that would have been essential to the matches.

  49. lizzie@17

    It is imperative that I wake up each morning with something to annoy me

    Today it is this nonsense.

    Undeterred by the threat of deep-vein thrombosis, Prime Minister Tony Abbott cheerfully took to economy class last month to fly overseas for a short family holiday.

    It was a commendable look for the leader of a government preparing to take the razor to the budget this year. And while Abbott’s office didn’t try to publicise his frugal travel arrangements, they did not go unnoticed.

    It’s hard to write these travel arrangements off as a media stunt for political gain.


    This was a private holiday, so Abbott had to pay for himself and family. He couldn’t claim it from the taxpayer, so what did he do? Went on the cheap. Because he’s so hard up, of course, with a mortgage and all. How does that affect the use of taxpayers’ funds?

    And the article makes a great fuss of it not being a stunt.

    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/abbott-finds-a-new-way-to-fly-20140111-30nr1.html#ixzz2q7xu6SMe

    Abbott need not worry about “deep vein thrombosis” – you have to have actual … you know … blood … circulating in your veins before that becomes a possibility.

    But what really bring home the utter stupidity of this whole apalling puff piece is the final line:

    [ Sometimes, perhaps, leading by example is more about image than reality. ]

    So … being all image rather than reality is now something to be applauded?

    Welcome to Abbott in Wonderland!

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