Seat of the week: Boothby

Another trip through a South Australian federal electorate to mark the looming state election – this time the southern coastal suburbs seat of Boothby, a nut Labor is never quite able to crack.

Blue and red 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 southern Adelaide electorate of Boothby covers coastal suburbs from Brighton south to Marino, extending inland to the edge of the coastal plain at Myrtle Bank and the hills at Belair, Eden Hills, Bellevue Heights and Flagstaff Hill. The seat’s Liberal lean is softened by the area around the defunct Tonsley Park Mitsubishi plant, the only part of the electorate with below average incomes and above average ethnic diversity. It has existed without interruption since South Australia was first divided into electorates in 1903, at which time it was landlocked and extended north into the eastern suburbs. Coastal areas were acquired when the neighbouring electorate of Hawker was abolished in 1993.

Boothby was held by Labor for the first eight years of its existence, and it remained a contested seat until the Menzies government came to power in 1949. This began a long-term trend to the Liberals which peaked in the 1970s, when margins were consistently in double digits. The seat’s member from 1981 until 1996 was Steele Hall, former Premier and figurehead of the early 1970s breakaway Liberal Movement. A trend to Labor became evident after the election of the Howard government in 1996, with successive swings recorded over the next five elections. The swing that occurred amid the otherwise poor result of the 2004 election was particularly encouraging for Labor, and raised their hopes at both the 2007 and 2010 elections. On the former occasion, Right powerbrokers recruited what they imagined to be a star candidate in Nicole Cornes, a minor Adelaide celebrity and wife of local football legend Graham Cornes. However, Cornes was damaged by a series of disastrous and heavily publicised media performances, and was only able to manage a swing of 2.4% compared with a statewide result of 6.8%. Perhaps reflecting a suppressed vote for Labor, the seat swung 2.2% in their favour at the 2010 election, compared with a statewide result of 0.8%. However, that still Labor 0.8% short of a win they had desperately hoped for to buttress losses in Queensland and New South Wales. With the seat off Labor’s target list in 2013, Southcott enjoyed a comfortable victory on the back of a 6.5% swing, which was 1.0% above the statewide par. Labor’s candidate in both 2010 and 2013 was Annabel Digance, who is now running in the seat of Elder for the March 15 state election.

Boothby has been held since 1996 by Andrew Southcott, who first won preselection at the age of 26 ahead of Robert Hill, the leading factional moderate in the Senate. The Right had reportedly built up strength in local branches with a view to unseating its bitter rival Steele Hall, and turned its guns on Hill as a “surrogate” when denied by Hall’s retirement. Unlike Hill, who went on to become government leader in the Senate, Southcott has led a fairly low-key parliamentary career, taking until after the 2007 election defeat to win promotion to Shadow Minister for Employment Participation, Apprenticeships and Training. After standing by Malcolm Turnbull in the December 2009 leadership vote, Southcott was demoted by a victorious Tony Abbott to parliamentary secretary, a position he has retained in government. Southcott’s preselection at the 2010 election was challenged by former state party president Chris Moriarty, following disquiet in the party over his fundraising record. However, Moriarty was heavily defeated, his challenge reported losing steam when Kevin Rudd’s first bid to return to the Labor leadership came to a head in February 2012.

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.

1,687 comments on “Seat of the week: Boothby”

Comments Page 28 of 34
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  1. Rummel – I am glad to hear you want more refugees,and I apologise if I have got you wrong. Your carping and point scoring on boat numbers and lack of compassion for the over 95% of boat arrivals who have been found to be genuine refugees may have led me to form the wrong impression.

    Your belief in some form of ‘queue’ is naive and misinformed – name a safe haven between Australia and the sources of most of the refugees? Most refugee camps are not safe and you can be stuck there for 5-10 years. I would not waste my life or my kid’s life stuck in such a camp. Name a nation between Australia and Syria where refugees could be safe from persecution on the basis of race or religion or have any chance of permanent resettlement (in fact, you now have to go to NZ to find such a nation, which is an indictment on austalians). If australia was humane about this they would help set up regional safe havens for refugees in relatively safe nations – boat trips would not be needed if we set up such sites for regional processing (not detention/concentration camps) and accepted more refugees even for temporary resettlement. Labor was trying to get this in place. name a nation that will now have anything to do with abbott in setting up regional processing centres (& not concentration camps). Manus and Naru camps are a blight on this nation – we are deliberately brutalising people as a deterrent, without funding better alternatives for regional processing of refugees. these peope are so desperate we have to make conditions increasingly less humane and condone PNG police and militia payback raids and murders of refugees inside their camp (remember Morrison was (crocodile) tearfully ‘concerned’ about ratan canings of people in malaysia?). You support this. Would you support this treatment of a group of white, english-speaking, christians? A lack of empathy or compassion for people based on race/religion is racism in my book.

    At the end of the day, the numbers of boat people are not great and we can afford to treat those arriving humanely and reject the 5% or so who are not genuine refugees. We have done so for decades and it has improved our nation – even when we were much more materially less well off than we are now.

  2. If you asked someone if they consider themselves racist I can almost guarantee they would say no.

    By that deduction there are no racist at all.

    That is so obviously untrue & so is the assumption that racism doesn’t play a part in the boats issue.

  6. [I wonder if he feels the same way about the action against Scott Driscoll who was landed with a $90k fine?]

    Do you know why Shorten called it a pathetic stunt? Here’s why.

    [However, a spokesman for Mr Shorten today slammed the Government’s tactics as a “pathetic stunt”.

    “If Christopher Pyne had bothered to check, Craig Thomson has already been referred to the privileges committee – with the support of Labor,” he said.

    “This referral, which remains live, was put on hold by the committee while judicial proceedings were underway.

    “This just highlights the pathetic stunts that Christopher Pyne will play rather than actually getting on with the job of Education Minister that taxpayers pay him to do.”]

  8. Psephos,

    [There is of course a small racist fringe in Australia which opposes all non-white immigration, but very few Australians now have any problem at all with living in multi-racial society.]

    A small racist “fringe”..!! Are you sure about that? Where’s your evidence?

  9. I’m finding the reporting – or lack of it – of the Morwell coal fire very interesting.

    While it’s reasonably easy to find reports about the health risks, the cause – carbon monoxide emissions – is usually skated over.

    For example, this article (picked fairly much at random) only mentions carbon monoxide thus –

    [He said the fire was clearly serious, but 31 people had been tested for carbon monoxide and all were ”below levels of concern”.]

    – with the rest of the article using terms like ‘smoke and air pollution’, ‘air quality’, ‘smoke’ etc.

    Well, most areas which experienced bushfires have had issues with smoke for weeks afterwards. Not pleasant, but there weren’t calls for evacuations, special assessment centres, etc.

    And all the articles in the msm appear to be like that — a clear avoidance of the elephant in the room.

    I mean, if carbon monoxide isn’t an invisible, weightless, harmless gas, then think of how bad carbon dioxide must be!
    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/minister-rejects-fire-health-risk-20140223-33amd.html#ixzz2uDxxWZsN

  11. [Bill Shorten says the privileges committee inquiry into whether Craig Thomson misled Parliament is a ‘pathetic stunt’]

    Kind of makes you wonder why Labor voted in favour of it then.

    Twice.

  12. ru

    [Driscoll was fined for deliberately lying the Parliamentary Committees. Oh and not bothering to turn up for work.]

    Can you get fined for that?

  13. [The pretense that this is all about race is one of main pillars of the self-righteousness of the Greens/Left on this issue. There is of course a small racist fringe in Australia which opposes all non-white immigration, but very few Australians now have any problem at all with living in multi-racial society. As I pointed out to some idiot here last night, we take 190,000 migrants a year, and the two biggest source countries are now China and India. No-one cares a straw about this. As for religion, there is some disquiet about Muslim immigration (thanks Sheikh Hilally etc), but even that is a minority view. It is simply not possible to explain away the fact that a large majority of the population oppose allowing people to come here by boat by saying that they’re all racists. It’s just not true. But I quite understand why the Green/Lefts cling so hard to this comforting myth, which reinforces their own sense of moral superiority so comfortingly.]

    Morrison knows better than you Psephos http://www.smh.com.au/national/morrison-sees-votes-in-antimuslim-strategy-20110216-1awmo.html

    explain to me why people on boats upsets people when over 95% are found to be genuine refugees. You have shown your own bigotries here on numerous occasions, so your sneering at ‘moral superiority’ don’t carry much weight. Most people say “I’m not a racist, but….” – the fact is, the basis of people’s disquiet about boat arriving refugees is xenophobia. There is no credible alternative explanation. people fear being ‘over run’ by people who are different. they can’t see that our refugee history is of integration and contribution – sneering at those taking an ethical position must make you feel politically superior.

  14. [Kind of makes you wonder why Labor voted in favour of it then]

    Are you on dumbo patrol diog. Poodle spraying in the Reps was the stunt.

  15. Just heard on ABC radio 7pm news that the bloke in charge on Manus is a member of the Sri Lankan army.

    All I can remember didn’t make the ABC 2 news as it appears to be a breaking story.

    Do your best!

  19. Dio,

    [Kind of makes you wonder why Labor voted in favour of it then.]

    Yes, and as you and I both know, they voted for it because the whole sorry saga is no longer at all defensible.

    I often wonder about the tactics of The ALP. I would’ve thought they now have the room to say “Y’know what? We think this guy’s a grub, who cost us dearly, who betrayed our trust, and who now deserves everything he gets.”

    What would be wrong with that?

  21. Thomson’s sentencing will be interesting.

    No doubt he is assembling a list of his union and parliamentary achievements, whatever they may be, to offset the inability to express contrition since he denied guilt at every opportunity.

  23. [the basis of people’s disquiet about boat arriving refugees is xenophobia. There is no credible alternative explanation. people fear being ‘over run’ by people who are different. they can’t see that our refugee history is of integration and contribution – sneering at those taking an ethical position must make you feel politically superior.]

    That is just complete crap.

  24. [1367
    zoidlord
    Posted Monday, February 24, 2014 at 7:11 pm | PERMALINK
    So I get no response as to how much money has been wasted on this whole exercise of trying to “detain” “illegals”?]

    Don’t know, but a hell of a lot more after labor had to re open all the centres plus some.

  25. Psephos

    [It is simply not possible to explain away the fact that a large majority of the population oppose allowing people to come here by boat by saying that they’re all racists.]

    It certainly is possible, though probably inaccurate in the sense one usually understands the term. A large chunk of that oppose it because the LNP do, and another tranche because the ALP do. They are loyal to their parties. If their parties abandoned this position perhaps 15-20% would oppose people coming here on boats but they wouldn’t change their effective preference over it.

    So it’s hard to say exactly how much of this is in the particularly ugly racist category, how much is a creeping existential disquiet about people who are different coming here and “taking our jobs” or “our welfare” and how much is merely parroting of official propaganda.

    The reality is though that racism and xenophobia are longstanding features of Australian cultural life. I personally experienced it for about a decade from 1964 to about 1975, and I was, at least nominally, from a major religious grouping that had not been demonised in recent times.

    In 1975 of course, Italians were shunted out of the way as Vietnamese, then Greeks (about 1978) then Chinese “Triads” and later Arabs/Muslims all stepped up for their share of Australian culture.

    Nobody here has yet persuasively argued that if refugees looked like extras from an Australian consumer goods or home mortgage commercial that the discussion on boats would be much the same, and even above, it’s clear that you don’t need to be a Green to get this.

  27. G4S employs 620,000 people, many are ex military or police, some were very high ranking before they left.

    Morrison is on a hiding to nothing if he wants to take these folk on, as it seems he tried last week.

  29. Zoomster

    Feck the carbon monoxide. It is the release of aromatic hydrocarbons that should be the real focus. Especially the release of polycyclic ones ( PAH’s). Known carcinogens last weekend’s The Science Show on RN shows another very really danger.
    [Crude oil affects cellular function in tuna, with implications for life-threatening arrhythmias in humans

    ..studying the effects of oil components, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) on heart cells of tuna. These fish have hearts similar to human hearts. They found the oil affected the normal function of cardiac muscles, with implications for life-threatening arrhythmias in vertebrates, such as humans]
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/crude-oil-affects-cellular-function-in-fish2c-with-implication/5275684

  30. [ the basis of people’s disquiet about boat arriving refugees is xenophobia. There is no credible alternative explanation. people fear being ‘over run’ by people who are different. they can’t see that our refugee history is of integration and contribution – sneering at those taking an ethical position must make you feel politically superior.]

    The comment is incorrect because the same people are saying we should take multicultural refugees from other places but in the same total numbers.

  31. @rummel/1374

    I said both, not selective posting.

    It’s probably roughly $15-$20 billion, including construction costs, over the last 15 years, which represent over a billion per year.

    Which would have wiped out Coalitions so called Surplus.

  32. [@abcnews: Bill Shorten says the privileges committee inquiry into whether Craig Thomson misled Parliament is a ‘pathetic stunt’

    I wonder if he feels the same way about the action against Scott Driscoll who was landed with a $90k ]

    Well regardless of whether or not he does, he’s a fool for coming out and saying that because it doesn’t look like he’s opposing an abuse of power or anything like that, but rather that he’s opposing finding the truth and trying to protect the ALP.

    Thomson has been found guilty. To defend him is to associate with him.

  33. I think Thomson’s only hope of avoiding forming close personal relationships with men in showers is to very suddenly and very rapidly find deep remorse about his actions

  35. [New Zealanders are not part of our migrant intake, they come and go as they please.]

    Nice try, Pacific Islanders go to NZ, from say Samoa. They get NZ residency, then lob on a plane to Brisbane. The 27,000 figure is not skilled migration its Polynesian.

    In fact the number of skilled migrants from NZ in the last reporting period was 8.

  36. Dio,

    [Do you think Thomson will ever fess up and apologise to the HSU and all the people he’s lied to?]

    Honestly? No. Never. He’s in way too deep.

    But Dio, here’s a question for you (because I’m interested to know). Do you think he would have gone as far with the denials and defiance if he wasn’t in a position where his departure from parliament might have brought down a government?

    It’s not a rhetorical question. It’s something I often ask myself.

  37. Retweeted by sortius
    Paul Davis ‏@davispg 1h

    @ppsmythe Does this answer the question? Draft estimate vs reality. #MyBroadbandvReality @yathinkn @ipixel_au pic.twitter.com/dk8KZ2fXHB

  38. shellbell and OC

    As always, the best advice is from The Simpsons. The video game is Escape from Death Row.

    You try hitting the Plead Insanity button, then the Change of Venue button and finally hit the Remorse button as many times as possible.

    http://www.complex.com/video-games/2011/06/simpsons-video-game-history/escape-from-death-row

    Jake

    [Do you think he would have gone as far with the denials and defiance if he wasn’t in a position where his departure from parliament might have brought down a government?]

    I doubt it, partly because the ALP wouldn’t have been paying his legal fees. He probably would have plead guilty early like Williamson and saved a lot of grief and money.

  39. [Fraser said he believed that in the late 1970s and 1980s politicians were very conscious of the need to put the days of the White Australia policy behind them and to avoid the bitter sectarian tensions that had divided society.]

    [He said many politicians were conscious of the divisiveness of racism and worked to break down barriers.]

    [He remembered in earlier years telling Harold Holt of letters he had received complaining about the increasing number of Asian students being educated in Australia. Holt told him to write very strong letters back.]

    [“We’ve got to knock these rednecks back into their burrows with a baseball bat!” Holt said. “If you let them get above ground, you’ll never put them back underground.”]

    [“He wouldn’t stand racism,” Mr Fraser said. “People weren’t trying to play politics with the issue in my time. I felt we had an ethical obligation to take as many refugees from Indochina as we could.”]

    [Many people were leaving Vietnam in riverboats totally unsuitable for survival at sea.]

    [A big regional centre was located in Malaysia, which was willing to co-operate because other countries, including Australia, the US and Canada, had agreed to take large numbers of refugees from there.]

  40. Dio,

    [I doubt it, partly because the ALP wouldn’t have been paying his legal fees. He probably would have plead guilty early like Williamson and saved a lot of grief and money.]

    A snapshot of the last parliament, really… 🙁

  41. [In 2006, Fraser launched a “scathing attack” on the Howard Liberal government, attacking their policies on areas such as refugees, terrorism and civil liberties, and that “if Australia continues to follow United States policies, it runs the risk of being embroiled in the conflict in Iraq for decades, and a fear of Islam in the Australian community will take years to eradicate”.]

    And this little pearler!

    [After the defeat of the Howard government at the 2007 federal election, Fraser claimed Howard approached him in a corridor, following a cabinet meeting in May 1977 regarding Vietnamese refugees, and said: “We don’t want too many of these people. We’re doing this just for show, aren’t we?” The claims were made by Fraser in an interview to mark the release of the 1977 cabinet papers. Howard, through a spokesman, denied making the comment]

  43. On twitter

    [For the most complete account of what happened on #Manus Island on Feb 17, watch my story on #ABC 7.30 tonight. #PNG #auspol #asylumseekers]

  44. To deny there is not some element of racism, fear and just plain “we don’t want that lot here” in the opposition to some/all immigrants or some/all AS, defies what one sees in day to day dealings with all and sundry.

    My observation is that some of the most vocal in their opposition/compassion are those who have come here the “tough” way and resent what they feel, is the cushion ride for the 30,000 odd who have come via the boats.

    It’s as if having reached good old Oz, they don’t want anyone else to spoil it for them.

    How many times do we hear the chant?..”Oh when I came here 20, 30 50 years ago…..no cheap houses, social service benefits for me…..blah, blah….and they shouldn’t get any either….blah, blah….”

    Sure as hell no compassion and understanding among this lot.

    This is aside from the “shoot them on sight on the beach” crew who of course, are just plain good old, god-fearing, law-abiding, compassionate Aussies ready with the fair go for others.

    The group that get up my nose is the ‘My father fought in the Sudan/Gallipoli/on the Western Front/Korea/Vietnam/Iraq under the Oz flag to make this place what it is today. He would turn in his grave if he came back today…….” and the, “Look at all those homeless people who are kept out of a home because they are given to refugees….” line.

    Of course, the fact that many of this latter group have been recipients of social security and have brought some of the misfortune on themselves, is rarely mentioned.

  45. I think Thompson has the option to appeal,the magistrate found him guilty on charges that don’t exist,meanwhile Jackson who stole far more money than Thomson is accused of swans around.
    I don’t know how much any of you people have had with the Police but to me it smells of a fit up,which VICPOL are very good at not as good as NSW cops but good

  46. [A big regional centre was located in Malaysia, which was willing to co-operate because other countries, including Australia, the US and Canada, had agreed to take large numbers of refugees from there.]

    At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Labor tried to implement a similar arrangement, but was blocked at every step of the way by the coalition and the Greens for nothing more than naked political opportunism.

    I can’t recall if Fraser was one of those opposed to the then Malaysia Solution at the time, but if he was, then he deserves some kind of kudos for finally seeing sense on the matter now, only a few years later.

    It appears we are inching closer and closer to a regional solution to boat arrivals. This is a good thing, even if it’s looking like being a coalition govt which ultimately delivers it. We could’ve been much further down that track by now, but alas, some prefer opposition for the sake of opposition.

  49. zoomster:

    There is a windfarm in the community in which I live, as well as the community in which I work.

    I can happily report that neither impact me in any way shape or form, other than occasional glimpses if I travel near the coastline.

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