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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. |
Wakefield extends from outer northern Adelaide to rural territory as far as Clare 100 kilometres to the north, with overwhelming Labor strength around Elizabeth and Salisbury partly balanced by support for the Liberals in the Clare Valley. It has existed in name since South Australia was first divided into electorates in 1903, but its complexion changed dramatically when its southern neighbour Bonython was abolished when the state’s representation was reduced from 12 seats to 11 in 2004. Previously a conservative rural and outskirts seat encompassing the Murray Valley and Yorke Peninsula, it came to absorb the outer suburban industrial centre of Elizabeth while retaining the satellite town of Gawler, the Clare Valley wine-growing district, and the Gulf St Vincent coast from Two Wells north to Port Wakefield.
Prior to 2004, Wakefield was won by the major conservative party of the day at every election except 1938 and 1943, when it was won by Labor, and 1928, when it was won by the Country Party. The Liberal member from 1983 to 2004 was Neil Andrew, who spent the last six years of his parliamentary career serving as Speaker. Andrew at first considered challenging Patrick Secker for preselection in Barker after the 2004 redistribution turned Wakefield’s 14.7% margin into a notional Labor margin of 1.5%, but instead opted to retire. Wakefield was nonetheless retained for the Liberals at the ensuing election by David Fawcett, who picked up a 2.2% swing off a subdued Labor vote around Elizabeth to unseat Martyn Evans, who had held Bonython for Labor since 1994. Fawcett’s slender margin was demolished by a 7.3% swing in 2007, but he would return to parliament as a Senator after the 2010 election.
Wakefield has since been held for Labor by Nick Champion, a former state party president, Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association official and staffer for state Industrial Relations Minister Michael Wright. The SDA link identifies him with the potentate of the South Australian Right, outgoing Senator Don Farrell. He nonetheless went against Farrell by coming out in support of Kevin Rudd in the days before his unsuccessful February 2012 leadership challenge, resigning as caucus secretary to do so. As with Labor’s other South Australian newcomers from the 2007 election, Champion had no trouble retaining his seat at the 2010 election, a 5.4% swing boosting his margin to 12.0%. However, the seat has since returned to the marginal zone following a redistribution in which it traded an area around Salisbury for Lydoch and Williamstown east of Gawler, reducing the margin to 10.3%, and a 7.1% swing to the Liberals at the 2013 election, which has left it at 3.4%.
Young Libs are all yobs since way back. Any person under 500 years old that thinks the current Liberal guvmint has the clues has to be nuts.
[“You put together some young passionate people, a little bit of the liquid amber and attractive ball gowns, and colourful incidents occur]
Yeah right.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/08/01/1122748579682.html
Tom
No i have never argued for the rich to have better anything but i do think its unfair for a wealthy government to take advantage of a working class family who have benefited from their postcode increasing in value.
Governments are not hard up for a dollar we already have a fair income tax system and for the most part workers are still able to come out ahead.
Many pensioners in now expensive suburbs didn’t work with compulsory super.
This situation will be different for your generation as it will have 30-50 years of work and i image the 9% will in time increase.
People don’t get paid a welfare payment “because they have worked and paid tax”.
The primary place of residence should always be exempt from pension asset tests.
Edwina St John: you shouldn’t go overboard on biblical truth: “He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD.” Deuteronomy 23:1
Libertarians are very similar to Tea Party nutters, especially USA-style Libertarians, who tie their bizzaro ideology to guns. Whinge whinge whinge about bureaucracy and “govt waste” (especially health and education services) but only too happy to accept govt handouts and use services/facilities provided by government. Even their hero Ayn Rand accepted welfare in the 6 years before her death.
2799
The pension is not a tax refund. It is a welfare payment to make sure that everyone, who reaches retirement age, can retire if they want to and not be impoverished.
Someone kicked me in the nads once.
I’m damned, it seems.
True the aged pension is not just for those that have paid tax which is why those with investment income of over a million dollars shouldn’t be receiving it.
Super will within a few generations remove the need for the aged pension but in the mean time we can’t just chuck out the current generation onto the scrap heap.
There seems to be some advantage from a biblical perspective, it seems, in keeping one’s pecker up, or at least on.
2802
Saying “use you house to get retirement income” is not punishment. Do you not know what a reverse mortgage is?
DSP is also means tested – includes all family assets/income except family home.
Yes, Tom, a passport to future misery.
Jackol
You prove the point about Libertarians…. they get paid from funds ( taxes) contributed during their working life.
Taxes pay for the support of society, including infrastructure .
My grand parents taxes payed for the roads you drive on, did they get a chance to ask for a refund or liquidise their (tax ) investment when they needed support at the end of a hard working life.
As they benefited from the hard work & contributions of those that went before them.
That’s what builds a society!
If Liberians had any compassion they would concentrate on ensuring that welfare payments were covered by sustainable investments.
Does anyone know whether Senator “Bigots R’ Us” Brandeis and his little appointee Mr Wilson have yet condemned the appalling (from their perspective) attack by the US National Basketball Association on the God-given freedom of speech of the now banned-for-life owner of the LA Clippers?
Well well well: mucho rumours of a spill against Abbott coming post-budget.
Hockey PM by June?
Tom
Yes i do and it should be an option where the circumstances suit.
As Sir Pudding points out DSP also doesn’t include the family home in the asset test.
Peak Abbott #289?
The crap some people are going on with about PPL has brought me out of lurkerdom for just this one post.
Some basic principles:
1. PPL is a workplace entitlement, not welfare. Therefore:
Every worker should have access to PPL.
The employer should pay for it
It should be paid at the worker’s usual level of wage/salary, i.e. no means test and no cap on payments or eligibility
I am gobsmacked and more than a little irritated to read ALP and Green posters argue against this as it is precisely what the union and women’s movement have been asking for for decades. Tony’s scheme is a dud because its trying to be both a work entitlement and a welfare benefit. However, if you accept that he cared more about winning the election than about good policy, you may also accept that by setting out to wedge the ALP, he’s somehow managed to adopt the core principles of a genuinely progressive policy, which of course he then proceeds to bastardise.
2. The scheme should meet the need, therefore:
For each child, the primary carer should be entitled to reasonable period of paid leave e.g. 3 months, with access to a further lengthy period of unpaid leave e.g. 9 months. Other carers should get a few weeks at most.
There should be no cap on the number of times a person can access the entitlement.
The scheme should be structured so that it dovetails with childcare on the person’s return to work.
3. The scheme should be flexible, therefore:
It can be accessed at half pay
The primary carer can return as a part-timer if they wish
Etc.
4. The role of government should be minimal, therefore:
It should legislate for PPL and either step away, except to enforce the law, or act as a kind of banker or insurance company to collect the levy and pay it back out when a person accesses their entitlement. This would allow the goverment to assist smaller enterprises as they would not need to have the cash on hand and would have no further liability than to pay the levy each period.
If the government wishes to add to this scheme, such as an extra payment to low income earners, then it can do so, but the benefit should be means tested.
Over and out.
PICTURES OF RIGHT-WING DEMONSTRATORS IN LIVIV IN UKRAINE A FEW DAYS AGO
CELEBRATING THE FORMATION IN 1943 OF THE UKR.SS TO SUPPORT THE NAZIS
___________________
http://rt.com/news/155364-ukraine-nazi-division-march/
Back in my day all the politically aware joined green peace or direct action. They had the best parties + chance of sex. At the risk of total social exclusion no one touched the young libs.
What is more frightening now is the lack of political concern that young people have & how ready they are to perhaps vote for the Lib agenda. The Libs have money on the ‘its all about me’ stuff so you can hardly blame them.
I could blame the parents for not engendering more socialist ideals but then again my bunch are all Lib voters & I came out the wrong way. Well at least in their eyes.
Sir Pajama Pudding of Lake Disappointment
No Libertarians are just self indulgent w***ers, acolytes of the Aspergers suffering Ayn Rand.
Bob Hoskins dead apparently…
2809
Superannuation will not remove the need for the aged pension. On current forecasts it will not even significantly reduce the proportion of the population on the pension (tightening up the means-test would help change that though). It will only switch a few percent from the full pension to the part pension. The tax concessions are biggest for those who get no pension at all and non-existent for the other end of the spectrum. Also a significant number of people who get their super do not use it for retirement income but spend it up in a few years.
Better targeted tax concessions (more tax concessions for the poorer workers, less for the rich), a tighter means-test and a ban on lump some withdrawal (probably with an exemption for mortgage repayment) would help reduce the proportion of the population on the pension but there will always be people on the pension.
Onya Tibor! 🙂
Things are bad for Abbott. Lateline has Kennett on to give him a kicking
“@abcnews: #BREAKING: British actor Bob Hoskins has died age 71, his publicist says.”
Tom
That may be true but one of the reasons for Super originally at least was to do away with the aged pension.
Agree about the need to do more for the super of lower income workers.
2817
Non-aged pensions are different. They are, mostly, not inheritance subsidies. Disability pensioners should be able to own homes.
So who leaked the debt levy? Is Cabinet split?
There is clearly a power play within the Cabinet in Confidence Expenditure Review Committee. There are just five members of ERC – Abbott, Truss, Hockey, Dutton and Cormann.
I suspect it’s the economic dries who leaked, (Hockey and Cormann). They’d been rolled on Graincorp and Qantas. I suspect they wanted the Diesel Fuel Rebate on the table as a weak form of Industry Welfare. Truss bitterly opposed this as a National. I suspect it was Abbott who grabbed at the debt levy as ameans of retaining his PPL and appeasing the Nats. He was even prepared to water down his beloved PPL in the hope it would survive the party room.
Hockey and Corman were horrified. They had to get the levy off the table, but how? They could read the politics wouldnt go down well – so they arranged for the leak so that maximum pressure could be exerted before the final Budget decisions are signed off.
I suspect the upshot of all this will be a watered down debt levy to save abbott’s face, a watered down reduction in the diesel fuel rebate and as we already know a watered down and compromised PPL. All presented in terms of all will suffer pain.
A classic ERC compromise and a sign that the Cabinet is bitterly at odds with itself. Shows too that though Hockey is weak, he’s prepared to use all the levers at his disposal, including the strategic leak.
All pure speculation of course ….
2828
It is true.
Getting rid of the pension was always a pipe dream.
Tom
so a worker doesn’t deserve to benefit from his home but a disabled person can keep his/her home.
Wonder where that leaves the disabled person who works without ever going on DSP.
Who is Bob Hoskins?
@guardian: US intercepts Moscow’s calls to spies in Ukraine, Kerry says in leaked remarks http://t.co/6R1rt0JINH
Some basic principles:
1. PPL is a workplace entitlement, not welfare. Therefore:
Every worker should have access to PPL.
The employer should pay for it
The last line is the problem, yes?
Once it is a payment from Govt, it IS welfare.
Therefore the eligibility criteria should be no different from other welfare. Completely different scenario if employer pays. But that isnt the case with Abbott’s PPL.
[Onya Tibor!]
Such accolade.
Really, a progressive policy? I always thought inequality was regressive.
Watched Sky channel earlier. Janet Albrechtsen was on panel with Paul Murray. It dies indeed apoear tgat Abbott has burnt hus bridges with the party. His leadership is precarious
confessions
Been in lots of movies. He was the human in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”
Apologies for the typos
Kennett on kicking Abbott now. Starting with debt tax
fess
[Who is Bob Hoskins?]
Actor who did some good films in his time, like Mona Lisa.
Even if it is a workplace entitlement, Hockey said the Age of Entitlement must end, isn’t this a conflict?
PPL. Deja vu. No new points made from anyone. Will sit this one out.
2832
Retired workers can benefit from their home, with a reverse mortgage or downsizing or other such scheme, disability pensioners over retirement age should also have their family home included in the means-test.
Rossmore
Speaking of the diesel fuel rebate. Word is the mining industry have already said that if this is tampered with, it will be more costly to them than the mining tax, and they will fight the govt on this.
A lot of older people have only their own home as their only asset. They are cash poor yet perhaps asset rich.
You want to include their home in the asset test for the pension? You are consigning them to further poverty.
And really, who the hell wants to be 75 years old and renting FFS?
Tom, my mother is a pensioner and the thought of a reverse mortgage or anything that hints of debt puts her into a permanent state of panicked stress…..and of course effects her health…and she’s not alone – I just want her and others like her to be left in peace in their own home- and yes I know she would be OK with a reverse mortgage but try explaining that to her..
An inheritance tax would be a preferable solution..I’m happy to pay that if necessary..
Is this a Jeff for Canberra pitch?
Kennett is absolutely mad.
Just abolish penalty rates! So easy!
victoria got rid of Kennett just in time. He was going to abolish penalty rates