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| Red and blue numbers respectively indicate booths with two-party majorities for Labor and Liberal. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room. |
The north-eastern Adelaide seat of Makin extends from Pooraka near the city to Tea Tree Gully and Greenwith at the limits of the metropolitan area. Labor is especially strong in the areas nearer the city, from Walkley Heights north to Salibsury East, beyond which are generally newer suburbs with more mortgage payers and families, who have helped keep the Liberals competitive or better for most of the seat’s history. Together with Kingston in the south of the city and Wakefield in its outer north, Makin is one of three Adelaide seats which the Liberals held in the final term of the Howard government before blowing out to double-digit Labor margins at the 2010 election, and which remain securely in the Labor fold despite the 2013 election defeat. In Makin’s case the Labor margin reached 12.0% in 2010, before the 2013 swing reduced it to 5.1%.
Makin was created with the expansion of parliament in 1984 from an area that had mostly formed the southern end of the safe Labor seat of Bonython, the majority of which was in turn absorbed by Wakefield when it was abolished in 2004. It was held for Labor by uncomfortable margins from 1984 to 1996 by Peter Duncan, a former Attorney-General in Don Dunstan’s state government. A 4.8% swing put Duncan on the Keating government casualty list in 1996, and he returned to the headlines in 2007 after being charged with fraudulently obtaining government grants for his plastics recycling company. The seat was then held for the Liberals by Trish Draper, who emerged as a prime ministerial favourite after strong performances at the next two elections. A swing against Draper of 0.2% in 1998 compared with a statewide swing of 4.2%, and she consolidated her margin by 3.0% in 2001. Draper hit trouble in the lead-up to the 2004 election when it emerged she had breached parliamentary rules by taking a boyfriend on a study trip to Europe at taxpayers’ expense, but she survived by 0.9% in the face of a swing that was not reflected in neighbouring seats. Draper retired at the 2007 election citing an illness in the family, before unsuccessfully attempting a comeback in the state seat of Newland at the March 2010 election.
The seat was then won for Labor on the second attempt by Tony Zappia, who had been the mayor of Salisbury since 1997, a councillor for many years beforehand, and was at one time a weightlifting champion. Zappia was widely thought to have been a victim of his factional non-alignment when the Right’s Julie Woodman defeated him for preselection in 2001, and a repeat performance appeared on the cards when a deal ahead of the 2004 election reserved the seat for Dana Wortley of the “hard Left”. The arrangement displeased local branches as well as party hard-heads concerned that a crucial marginal seat should be contested by the most appealing candidate, and Premier Mike Rann successfully prevailed upon Wortley’s backers to throw their weight behind Zappia. The move appeared a dead end for Zappia in the short term as he proved unable to win the seat, whereas Wortley was elected from the number three Senate position she was offered as consolation. However, Zappia performed considerably better with the electoral breeze at his back in 2007, demolishing the 0.9% Liberal margin with a swing of 8.6%. This was achieved in the face of a high-impact publicity campaign by Liberal candidate Bob Day, housing tycoon and national president of the Housing Industry Association who has since been elected as a Senator for Family First.
The once non-aligned Zappia is now a member of the Left, and is believed to have been a backer of Kevin Rudd’s leadership challenges, and of Anthony Albanese over Bill Shorten in the post-election leadership contest. After spending the period in government on the back bench, he won promotion after the election defeat to shadow parliamentary secretary for manufacturing.
CTar1@94
William confirmed it, but did not state a duration.
Steve777
Whilst LOTO, Abbott was out and about in full cry beating up on Labor. Now that the buck stops with him, he has to explain what is going on, and taking responsibility for it. He cant blame Labor anymore. Suddenly he speaks slowly and not very often. How unsurprisement.
Surprise No 86. Despite mentioning absolutely nothing about this before the election the Abbott Government has cut 100% of Australian funding for international environment programs. What is not a surprise is that this decision is consistent with all domestic environment decisions which, in no known case, have provided additional statutory protection to the environment or additional funding to the conservation of, or repair of, the environment.
SORRY
I read the article a far while ago. Due to dimming memory, I would argue about when Mummy made the call for him.
That should have read ….WOULD NOT argue….
AA @86 – is there any link? If true, that requires wide circulation.
Ohhhh…. Drat, he may be back… Oh well.
Sean-free PB….the abscess finally burst.
Steve777
If circulated again, Libs will say it’s unfair smearing of him and will defend him, talking of Labor’s “dirt file”. Let’s stay above the Coalition tactics.
Steve777
Posted Sunday, January 19, 2014 at 12:01 pm | Permalink
AA @86 – is there any link? If true, that requires wide circulation.
=======================
Scratching head (ouch-splinters) trying to recall where I read it.
I will look around over the day to see if I can find it again…
AA
I thought he included it in his Battlelines book ??
You know there are many like minded people to Tisme out there that can very easily swing an election one way or the other?
You let Tisme have is say, he does nothing for the LNP cause, you reply with an intelligent rebuttle, he disappears, repeats himself, then the process restarts.
The problem begins when he repeats himself.
I’d propose that he seriously suffers from Constant Memory Lapse Syndrome 😐
Helo all. Putting politics aside for the far more important topic of cricket, I find I am led back to politics. I think this article by Adam Collins, while well meaning, is plain wrong.
[If we want to see Test cricket thrive and expand, we need to give struggling newer teams like Zimbabwe and Bangladesh a chance to hone their skills against the established giants, writes Adam Collins.]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-17/collins-the-stragglers-of-international-test-cricket/5204958
I see no good coming from Australia playing countries like Zimbabwe, and much bad. Such events are used as PR stunts to prop up the dictatorial government, not benefit the game. Cricket in Zimbabwe and Bangladesh is broke, not because of lack of revenue, but because of systemic corruption. Pouring more money in won’t fix that.
I realise that often a policy of engagement is best in international politics, but you must draw the line somewhere. The sporting boycott of South Africa did some good in the fight against apartheid. Zimbabwe and Bangladesh are arguably no better now than Zimbabwe was then, in some ways worse. I hope Australia does not play them, until after they have each had an election that independent observers can describe as fair. They have not met that criteria for some time.
Here’s the source of the ‘Abbott asked his mum to phone’ story – Bob Ellis.
http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/tony-abbott-who-is-he,5699
It could be fantasy. In ‘Battlelines’ Abbott says only that he intended to get married but got cold feet.
Here’s a link – scroll up a few pages and you’ll find it.
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=R42rfIr82LkC&pg=PT13&lpg=PT13&dq=tony+abbott+jesuit+network&source=bl&ots=3jQmqOXRaC&sig=sN2Yaf3UBeOftWxwCtKvAG6Exr4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jCbbUpbANI2OiAftzYDgDw&ved=0CG0Q6AEwCTgK#v=onepage&q=tony%20abbott%20jesuit%20network&f=false
If #86 and #90 above refer to Mr Abbott’s relationship with Ms McDonald, I found this in an SMH article from 2012, an edited extract from Quarterly Essay 47, “Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott”, by David Marr. It doesn’t mention Mr Abbott delegating his mother to break off the relationship:
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/early-elections-20120903-2593o.html#ixzz2qnqu27UB
bemused – I’ll give Sean one thing. He realised fairly quickly that what he’d said was way out of bounds.
He didn’t have to be hunted off.
I’ll give him one point for that.
No doubt this article will have the anti-do anything to save the environment crowd burning the letters off their keyboards as they tell us that we should be doing anything to slow global warming and this is the proof.
=================================
THE Suns activity has plummeted to a century low, baffling scientists and possibly heralding a new mini-Ice Age.
“I’ve been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, told the BBC.
“If you want to go back to see when the Sun was this inactive… you’ve got to go back about 100 years,” he said.
The lull is particularly surprising because the Sun has reached its solar maximum, the point in its 11-year cycle where activity is at its peak.
The lacklustre climax also follows a solar minimum – the period when the Sun’s activity troughs – that was longer and lower than had been anticipated.
leone
Fair dinkum, have a look at that drawing of Abbott
And we can’t call him a monkey 😆 especially given they called Julia a witch 😐
Give me a break!
Apologies to all monkeys, they’re beautiful creatures and don’t deserve the comparison 😎
I do not like Tony Abbott, and would agree the episode of his abandoning his pregnant partner said something very bad about the selfishness and cowardice that is at the core of his character (and that of most other bullies).
Nevertheless, Australian politics has for a long time wisely avoided the personal. If we do not, there are quite a few on the Labor side that would also be embarrassed. For example, it would be interesting to ask former wives of Bill Shorten and Craig Thomson for their opinions of those men.
Have a good day all. Well done fighting the fires BK. I hope you get a rest.
The prediction is that 29% of carbon dioxide produced before 2100 will still be in the atmosphere in 1,000 years.
AA, there is low solar maximum and we are still experiencing record breaking temperatures. Imagine what it will be like on the next maximum, which I assume is eleven years from now.
Rather than evidence that there is no global warming, it indicates that the globe is accumulating heat, even when the ‘heater’ has been turned down!
AussieAchmed@119
Do you have a link for that?
CO2 is quite soluble in water, of which there is a lot in the atmosphere at any given time.
Unless the sea reaches equilibrium with the atmosphere, that is, in which case we’ll be in salty soda water when we go swimming at Bondi.
Let’s stay above the Coalition tactics
Game theory says we should adopt them. Reward bad behavior with bad behavior.
But the story has to be true and provable (this is where we should depart from Coalition tactics). Public figures deserve the truth, nothing more, nothing less, good or bad.
[102
victoria
Steve777
Whilst LOTO, Abbott was out and about in full cry beating up on Labor. Now that the buck stops with him, he has to explain what is going on, and taking responsibility for it.]
Abbott & Co appear to be hoping that by taking daily political melodrama out of the news, the issues that shape sentiment will also recede. This is probably like hoping that analgesics will, by themselves, cure a toothache or heal a broken limb.
Deep down the LNP seem to long for the good old days – the Menzies era – when politics would disappear from public attention for months at a time. This is a different approach to usual contemporary attempts at media management which rely on planned intervention in the 24/7 news cycle.
It is not likely to work. The forces that propel formation and change in political sentiment have a life of their own that is completely separate from media drama. Economic issues (the cost of living, the jobs market, income stress/growth, the cost of housing, the environment) and socio-economic drivers such as education, the cost, availability and quality of healthcare, access to social income support all impact on household welfare and on the standing of any Government. These really register with households and voters at personal and inter-personal levels, rather than simply as the results of media-casting.
Political silence will eventually register with voters as the tacit absence of leadership and becomes an admission of ignorance and will inevitably translate into a loss of authority.
Doubtless, by adopting a strategy of silence, the LNP will be hoping to lessen the level of public expectations of Government in general. This would suit them very well. They are capable of very little other than chopping that which has already been created. If the LNP can train the public to expect very little of them, they will certainly be able to deliver on that.
The problem for the LNP is that the public generally do want Governments to be activist and to provide solutions to life-challenges that households cannot provide by themselves. In this sense, the public sector is an extension of and servant to household expectancy and demand. Any Government that ignores this will not last long in this democracy.
CTar1@115
He got several immediate adverse comments.
He is used to running off and probably thought he would just run off for a while and all would be forgiven.
More outstanding political reporting from MSNBC on the NJ Christie scandal
http://www.msnbc.com/up/watch/mayor-i-have-no-choice-but-to-come-forward-120484419563
briefly:
Agree with your remarks.
Gosh bludgers you are really getting stuck in to poor Tone this morning. And he hasn’t even done anything lately! But you all wake up and start bringing up his personal indiscretions of the past apropos of nothing just as a matter of course! And speculating that he has mental illnesses and degenerative physical diseases. Good grief.
A truly appalling display.
[127…..Leisure Suit Larry]
Abbott may or may not be ill. Either way, he makes most of the population feel like throwing up.
good morning, confessions. How is it on the South coast?
AA
“THE Suns activity has plummeted to a century low, baffling scientists and possibly heralding a new mini-Ice Age.
“I’ve been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, told the BBC.
“If you want to go back to see when the Sun was this inactive… you’ve got to go back about 100 years,” he said.
The lull is particularly surprising because the Sun has reached its solar maximum, the point in its 11-year cycle where activity is at its peak.
The lacklustre climax also follows a solar minimum – the period when the Sun’s activity troughs – that was longer and lower than had been anticipated.”
They have been saying this since the solar min in 2008, when we had the longest period of no sun spot activity since the Maunder Minimum (I think in the 17th Century). But as yet, no ice age :). Not going to happen… Too much CO2 now, the World is a different place.
Socrates
Posted Sunday, January 19, 2014 at 12:29 pm | Permalink
I do not like Tony Abbott, and would agree the episode of his abandoning his pregnant partner said something very bad about the selfishness and cowardice that is at the core of his character (and that of most other bullies).
Nevertheless, Australian politics has for a long time wisely avoided the personal.
—————————————–
Excuse me!! “avoided the personal”???
Calling Gillard “deliberately barren ” was not personal?
Questioning the sexuality of Gillard’s parner was not personal?
“Ditch the witch” was not personal?
“Put her in a chaff bag and throw in the ocean” was not personal?
“target on her forehead”..not personal?
It got personal when Abbott became Liberal leader and his supporters needed every mean spirited personal attack to try and make Abbott look something close to human.
Leisure Suit Larry@127
A medical condition might evoke some sympathy.
But if you want to rule that out then fine.
The alternative is that it is just Tone’s inherent nature. Fair enough. 👿
LSL 127
Hate is the only thing some people know around here.
LSL
Your side cannot point fingers on behaviour. Your side set the standard which is way lower than what any here are saying about Abbott.
Abbott set the new standard he now has to live by.
[Leisure Suit Larry
Posted Sunday, January 19, 2014 at 12:49 pm | Permalink
….
A truly appalling display.
]
As bad as standing near a sign that says “ditch the witch” or the “convoy of no consequence” nope.
A serious discussion; how do you explain Abbott’s seriously deranged behaviour. Your welcome to contribute, offer some excuse.
LSL
“. And he hasn’t even done anything lately! ”
Key phrase here… With all the goings on you’d think he’d have stuck his head up from behind the parapet.
Geoff
“Hate is the only thing some people know around here.”
Hi, my name is Geoff and I am a robot. I like to make wide sweeping claims that do not actually make any sense.
[133
Geoff
LSL 127
Hate is the only thing some people know around here.]
Those of us who detest Abbott cannot be blamed. He has degraded public life in this country and defiled all of us in the process. He really is beneath contempt.
PB does slide a bit low at times and generally when it does quotes from Ellis and IA are involved.
LSL
I don’t think Bob Ellis invented anything in that article that Leone linked at 113 do you?
So you support double standards of indiscretions from the past of politicians do you? I seem to recall Çredlin as the one tightly embracing a dirt file!
Maybe you support pollies missing in action (Abbott) but criticise it when it may occur on the Labor side (Latham)?
Lsl is sean you nongs
Dont feed him
dwh
The standards William keeps PB at are higher than those used by a lot of public comments by LNP members and supporters in the last six years.
If you cannot take it don’t dish it out.
I don’t think there is anything medically wrong with Tone, but what i did notice particularly with his speech when hosting the Australian and English cricket team was a very robotic and slow speech.
A few people have picked up on the speech delivery so it isn’t just me picking.
I did wonder who wrote the speech or how the media people came up with the idea that speaking slow is the right way to speak, Gillard would sometimes employ a similar robotic style and now Tone has taken it up so where are these pollies getting their media advisers from.
Astro
So what are you saying @ 130, that emitting the CO2 has been a blessing in disguise?
Oh the Greens are going good 😆
[How is it on the South coast?]
A bit chilly this morning. The usual. 🙂
KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN@141
No way.
LSL is much smarter than Sean.
It is just a pity he is on the dark side.
Sean is merely an idiot.
LSL is not Sean.
Everyone the discussion was what is the strategy behind the secrecy and will it work?
I too agree with briefly.
If I ever did it out Guytaur then I expect William will deal with me. Until then I’m free to express an opinion 😉