Seat of the week: Maribyrnong

Bill Shorten’s electoral home in Melbourne’s inner north-west extends from marginal Essendon and Moonee Ponds in the east to rock-solid Labor St Albans in the west.

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

Bill Shorten’s electorate of Maribyrnong has covered a shifting area around Essendon in Melbourne’s inner north-west since its creation in 1906. It presently extends westwards from Essendon through Niddrie and Avondale Heights to St Albans. Labor has held the seat without interruption since 1969, prior to which it was held for the Liberals for 14 years by Philip Stokes. Stokes had emerged a beneficiary of the Labor split ahead of the 1955 election, at which preferences from the ALP (Anti-Communist) candidate enabled him to unseat Labor’s Arthur Drakeford by 114 votes, in what was only Labor’s second defeat since 1910. The seat finally returned to the Labor fold at the 1969 election when it was won by Moss Cass, who secured enough of a buffer through successive swings in 1972 and 1974 to survive Labor’s electoral winter of 1975 and 1977. In 1983 he bequeathed a double-digit margin to his successor Alan Griffiths, who enjoyed a 7.4% boost when the 1990 redistribution added St Albans, which remains a particularly strong area for Labor. Griffiths was succeeded in 1996 by Bob Sercombe, who chose to bow out at the 2007 election rather than face preselection defeat at the hands of Australian Workers Union national secretary Bill Shorten.

Shorten came to parliament with a national reputation after positioning himself as the public face of the Beaconsfield mine disaster rescue effort in April-May 2006, and wielded great influence in the Victorian party factional system as a chieftain of the Right. However, Shorten was known to be hostile to Kevin Rudd, and rose no higher than parliamentary secretary for disabilities and children’s services during Rudd’s first term as Prime Minister. Shorten then emerged as one of the initiators of the June 2010 leadership coup, together with Victorian Right colleague David Feeney, and interstate factional allies Mark Arbib in New South Wales and Don Farrell in South Australia. After the 2010 election he was promoted to the outer ministry as Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation, and he then won promotion to an expanded cabinet by further taking on the employment and workplace relations portfolio in December 2011. Nonetheless, Shorten’s political stocks were generally thought to have been depleted by the political travails of Julia Gillard, whom he crucially abandoned in June 2013 to facilitate Kevin Rudd’s return. For this he was rewarded with a portfolio swap of financial services and superannuation for education.

After the 2013 election defeat, Shorten and Anthony Albanese of the Left emerged as the two candidates for the first leadership ballot held under the party’s new rules, in which the vote was divided evenly between the party membership and caucus. Albanese proved the clear favourite of the membership, in part reflecting the taint Shorten was perceived as carrying from his involvement in successive leadership coups against sitting prime ministers. However, Shorten’s 55-31 victory in the caucus vote was just sufficient to outweigh his 59.92%-40.08% deficit in the ballot of approximately 30,000 party members, the combined result being 52.02% for Shorten and 47.98% for Albanese.

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.

1,141 comments on “Seat of the week: Maribyrnong”

Comments Page 17 of 23
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  1. LAURA TINGLE piece from a couple of days ago

    The National Press Club rung with an echoey emptiness when Bernie Fraser rose to speak there in March this year.

    The former Reserve Bank governor and now Climate Change Authority chairman was talking about the authority’s call for an increase in Australia’s emission reduction target.

    There weren’t a lot of journalists there, and even Fraser seemed a little apologetic in his opening remarks. “I wanted it clear at the outset that this is not a plea, as such, for the Climate Change Authority”, he said.

    http://www.afr.com/p/opinion/climate_policy_roulette_wheel_is_oD6kPd1OnPeO3HFxG2kuiK

  3. BK@770

    Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
    I have bad news. It appears that Fairfax has closed the back door through incognito/private browsing which now limits one to 30 article reads per month. I have just reached mine with the SMH.

    BK there is one more thing you can try.

    Turn off cookies for SMH.

    I am OS at the moment, I can’t test whether they have closed that back door somehow as well.

  6. Raaraa

    [But a poll is a snap shot of voter intentions regardless of what their party membership is, and who they would vote prior to and after this poll.]

    PUP is currently attracting a protest vote from traditional LNP voters. Once the real election is called, those voters will come back to the LNP, like a dog to its vomit.

  10. About Fairfax

    I noticed that when someone posted the SMH and Age hits, online, SMH outnumbered the Age. However, there could be a distortion as frequently if I follow an Age link, it takes me to SMH. Just saying.

  13. Qanda

    Tonight’s Panel
    Sarah Henderson – Liberal Member for Corangamite
    Richard Marles – Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection
    Darryn Lyons – Mayor of Geelong
    Elaine Carbines – CEO, G21 – The Geelong Region Alliance
    Richard Di Natale – Greens Senator and Health spokesperson

  14. @Lizzie/786

    It’s not a matter of what the report says, it what Andrew will do, from the article:

    “Andrews endorsed moving young unemployed people onto income management schemes, giving them welfare in the form of debit cards that could only be used in certain places.”

    Income Management.

  20. Here is how you can get around the Fairfax paywall to look at a particular article after using up your free views without clearing cookies. All their articles are loaded on one server, across all sites, so even when its not obvious or easy to navigate to, the same articles are (or almost always are) on each. Even the state based ones in the other states are on sites such as WA Today, just not signposted.

    Just change one little bit of the URL from “smh” or “theage” to “watoday” or “canberratimes” or “brisbanetimes” or even (I think) “dailylife” or “essentialbaby” – there may be other fairfax domains as well. I use the Canberra Times mostly. Note, only SMH & The Age are paywalled.

    http://www.smh.com.au/business/search-to-unearth-google-australia-directors-returns-0-20140629-3b21m.html

    http://www.theage.com.au/business/search-to-unearth-google-australia-directors-returns-0-20140629-3b21m.html

    http://www.watoday.com.au/business/search-to-unearth-google-australia-directors-returns-0-20140629-3b21m.html

    http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/search-to-unearth-google-australia-directors-returns-0-20140629-3b21m.html

    http://www.dailylife.com.au/business/search-to-unearth-google-australia-directors-returns-0-20140629-3b21m.html

    Problem solved!

    Note, you need to start with the basic URL, delete anything after a ? (you sometimes get longer URL strings off social media).

    This works with News Corp tabloids too. E.g. “heraldsun” to “news”

  22. Bk – From about 12 hours ago:

    [This is why Tod Carney got sacked. What a dill! Warning – penis exposed]

    ‘TwitPic’ 😆

  23. Headline from TheOz:

    [The Abbott government is hoping to win support for individual budget measures opposed by Clive Palmer by approaching all of his party’s senators individually, according to The Australian Financial Review.]

    Imagine how Abbott and Pyne will flip if other parties try to do the same to the Libs.

  25. While Liberals/tea party/right wing types prattle about the savings they refuse and deliberately avoid what is the true dollar cost of this policy? The cost claims are deceptively ignoring the true costs

    First there is the cost of leasing ships to assist the Navy and Customs ships. Then there is the cost of running the Navy and Customs ships 24/7 non-stop 12 months of the year. The cost of increased maintenance for those ships. Then there will in the future the replacement cost of the ships. Ships previously estimated to have a 20 year “life” based on their function when they were purchased, is being massively reduced and replacement, costing billions, will have to happen sooner.

    Millions already spent on life rafts….how many more millions will be spent this way?

  27. The Coalition has taken to “personal responsibility” as a mantra can’t see how this fits in to that idea.

    [“Andrews endorsed moving young unemployed people onto income management schemes, giving them welfare in the form of debit cards that could only be used in certain places.”]

  30. Good link, Fran!

    I especially like this bit:

    [“In 2009, it was generally agreed that the poles and wires were in a parlous state, especially in NSW and Queensland, and needed significant upgrades. The networks also claimed to need billions to build new infrastructure, to meet soaring demand. The trouble is, the networks’ data was wildly exaggerated, and the demand they predicted has not materialised; it probably never will. The regulator approved a staggering $45 billion of spending.

    “Why would networks exaggerate demand? Because the system rewards them for spending as much as possible. The more they build, the more they get paid.“]

    Absolute institutional failure. Any half-decent analysis would show this as ripe for exploitation — the bodies undertaking the forecasting had a huge incentive to overstate expected future demand, and no penalties if they got it wrong.

    Disgraceful!

  31. poroti
    Posted Monday, June 30, 2014 at 12:30 pm

    The Coalition has taken to “personal responsibility” as a mantra can’t see how this fits in to that idea.

    [“Andrews endorsed moving young unemployed people onto income management schemes, giving them welfare in the form of debit cards that could only be used in certain places.”]

    Probably following the LNP guide to newspeak.

    ‘we decide what the words we say mean and the circumstances in which they are interpreted.’

  34. The coalition sees commonwealth benefits as the money of the taxpayer, not of the individual receiving it. It fits their world-view perfectly.

  35. Will Kevin Andrews take personal responsibility for the adverse consequences of his policies?

    Will this government guarantee that they will not try to suppress or misrepresent the poverty and suicide stats resulting from their policies?

  36. just me

    Or homicides. There is that report out from Melbourne today about the man sleeping rough.

    Under new LNP regime there will be many more sleeping rough,

  37. More from Fran’s link

    [In 2009, the AER ruled that the NSW distribution networks could claim an astonishingly high cost of capital of 8.78% per annum, which it said was equal to the borrowing costs of a private company at that time. The catch is, NSW network companies don’t borrow from banks, says Mountain; they borrow from a triple A–rated state treasury at rates of around 4–5%.]

    Grrrr…

  38. In my experience, only the Age and SMH have a 30 article limit each month. All five Fairfax sites seem to carry identical articles in the “Federal Politics” section.

    The main purpose of the paywall seems to be to restrict Internet access to State based news, thereby protecting the circulation of the Age and SMH paper editions. (I don’t know why this doesn’t also apply to the Canberra Times).

  39. There has been a significant move the renewable energy. More and more people are putting solar panels on their roof. Just through the CFC over $1.3 billion is being invested in renewable energy by companies.

    So knowing all this why would any company being looking to buy the coal fired power system from a government?

    The only answer can be because the government has guaranteed that “x” amount will be purchased from the new owner. And that if that amount is not purchased the government will use taxpayers money to pay the corporation any shortfall. Remembering that it is a known fact that the reliance will fall due to renewable energy growing.

    The government sells to the private corporation knowing that the so-called billions it gets for the sale, will be returned to the corporation through subsidies, and that the taxpayer will still have pay. The taxpayer/consumer is the loser, they pay higher costs to provide profit to the corporation and if that fails then pay higher taxes so the government can ensure the corporation profits.

  42. From the Monthly article:

    [It was the first time energy demand had fallen in Australia in more than a century. According to Hugh Saddler, demand was falling for three key reasons: the impact of energy-efficiency schemes and appliances; the decline of electricity-intensive industry, like aluminium smelters; and, from 2010 onwards, a response to rising prices. This last factor, Saddler says, was a reaction to the Coalition’s doomsday preaching about the carbon tax, and its insinuation that the tax was driving prices up even before it was introduced. “People suddenly stopped thinking about the price of petrol or milk, and started thinking about the price of electricity and how they could actually save a bit,” says Saddler. In other words, was Tony Abbott the best friend energy efficiency had ever had? “Yes indeed.” ]

    I’ve posted this fact often: highly ironic, isn’t it?

    By running a scare campaign on the Carbon Tax, Abbott probably contributed more to falling electricity demand than the Gillard government, as Labor was too scared to admit that the whole idea of Carbon Pricing was to increase prices.

    They waffled away what could have been a clear advantage on the issue of Carbon Oricing by arguing the minutae of compensation, which triggered every whingeing pensioner in the country to phone Alan Jones, Chris Smith and Ray Hadley in contradiction, weeping over how they couldn’t afford a Sunday roast anymore, and how they had to use a single bar heater to keep warm (only sort-of warm, too).

    In the meantime electricity consumption has plummeted, yet this simple fact is just not known. Denial is everywhere. The Abbott government outright lies that it hasn’t dropped at all; that Carbon Pricing has failed miserably.

    And tomorrow we will see that final outcome of all that: the beginning of the dismantling of Carbon Pricing – a policy solution in place for two years, in which time it should have been concreted into place – at the hands of a major polluter leading a rag-tag gaggle of nonentities in the Senate, and a cynical Tony Abbott trying desperately to keep at least one promise… one that a majority don’t even want him to keep anymore, or don’t care if he breaks it anyway.

    We have gone from the premier nation to pariah state on Carbon Pricing. And it’ll happen overnight.

    Literally.

    Tonight at midnight the rot officially starts to set in.

    It’s been one of the most shockingly mismanaged no-brainers in political history: how a nation turned from nearly 90% support of Carbon Pricing, to a miserable minority, and then how public opinion recovered quite substantially, but far, far too late to stop the Abbott wrecking crew at their destructive and misguided best.

  44. [836
    guytaur

    just me

    Or homicides. There is that report out from Melbourne today about the man sleeping rough.]

    Indeed. The poverty, suicide, and crime stats.

  45. Global Warming doesn’t exist. It’s actually getting colder.

    So this…

    [Two powerful cold fronts in the past week have not been enough to halt Sydney’s exceptionally warm and dry start to 2014.

    June will be at least the city’s third warmest in 155 years of records based on the average of minimum and maximum temperatures, with the mean likely to be about 15.3C, said Brett Dutschke, senior meteorologist at Weatherzone.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/record-warm-start-to-year-for-sydney-driest-in-a-decade-20140630-zsqh2.html#ixzz365ZJkKoO ]

    … can’t be because of it.

  48. My car radio this morning had 2GB/2CC with Morrison giving non-answers on the latest boat arrivals. It seems not all listeners are happy with Morrison’s non-answers and the shock jock read out a couple of such emails. His only reply was wtte “Morrison doesn’t want to tell people smugglers what is happening and I’m happy to be kept in the dark”. No mention of the utter absurdity of the world knowing there were two boats, one from India and the other from Indonesia.

    Times are changing when the shock jocks’ listeners are questioning Morrison’s refusal to provide information and are refusing to be treated like mushrooms any more.

  50. [Just mentioned under 35 in relation to changes to disability.]

    They will start with the younger cohort, those who might ostensibly have a slightly better chance at re-entering the workforce, and then move onto the rest of us. It is a softening up process to further savage this section of society, to the point where we don’t exist, at least not officially.

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