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| 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.
On that logic Abbott better get a move on and exterminate all asylum prisoners on Manus/Nauru, log the entire state of Tasmania and grant the states a 50% GST rate.
One outside the margin of error, BW.
[Must they suffer a living hell, without normal human interaction, simply because (mostly through no fault of their own) they are unable to crack on to a woman at a dance club for a one night stand?]
Well, if the workshop discussion was any indication, it’s not just about the sex or hooking up, but a way to reduce social isolation from the wider community by way of enabling an intimacy and companionship that a carer the person might have can’t provide.
Aluminium smelted by electricity generated by fossil fuel = congealed AGW.
Off course the climate wreckers want aluminium exempt.
@bemused/1048
Yes, because I actually post my “tanties”, on record, which is better than some on PB like yourself.
The difference between me and you bemused, is actually quiet alot, I speak up about problems facing Australia.
You may sound like it’s “tanties”, to you, the best thing you could do for others is to keep it to yourself.
William
Thank you.
You’re not covering yourself in glory right at the moment, Bemused.
Geoff Shaw on ACA tomorrow night. Worth a look.
Modern aluminium smelting is interruptible, it doesn’t need a constant source of power and can handle variations in voltage and frequency. It’s just a HVDC pulse through a molten bath of It’s ideal to use with renewables, it’s just the current plants in Australia are old-school baseload guzzlers.
BUT
Aluminium smelters also make use of carbon cathodes and anodes, which are consumed in the smelting process and let off precocious amounts of CO2…
William Bowe@1057
Thanks William. 😉
BTW, I looked up Sercombe and branch stacking and he really doesn’t to get much of a mention beyond Crikey. He was not a stand out like Seitz.
[Well, if the workshop discussion was any indication, it’s not just about the sex or hooking up, but a way to reduce social isolation from the wider community by way of enabling an intimacy and companionship that a carer the person might have can’t provide.]
Another way of saying “hooking up”. Forget all the “intimacy and companionship” crap. Some people just want to get laid, but can’t get to first base because they’re in a wheelchair. They have feelings too. Normal, human feelings. So they have to pay. There are sex workers out there who specialize in this area.
Highly commended film about therapeutic sex workers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sessions_(film)
My tip for Newspoll (if one is going to be released tonight)?
54/46
By the way, Farrrr Q around?
Dragons 24 – Storm 12 where you first read it 😛
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/treasury-chief-martin-parkinson-takes-veiled-swipe-at-labor-over-budget-attacks-20140630-3b3xd.html
“In a coded reference to Labor’s political attack on the inequity of the Abbott government’s budget, Dr Parkinson said it was unremarkable to say economic reform needed to be underpinned by fairness.”
So a top public servant doesn’t believe the budget should be about fairness?
Why will the government not admit that we have had two boat arrivals in the last few days?
Maybe Richard Marles will tell us on Q&A.
[The Treasury secretary, Martin Parkinson, says “vague notions of fairness” should not be invoked to oppose all contentious budgetary reform.
Parkinson used a conference at the Australian National University on Monday to send Labor a not very subtle message about its opposition to key Abbott government budget measures.]
This is why you don’t have academics in ivory castles making the decisions for a country.
If it were simply looked at in terms of maths and balancing budgets, then the solutions are simple. Cut all spending that exceeds tax income… and fuck the people.
Yeh, so we shouldn’t be referring to fairness…even though governments are of the people for the people and fairness is exactly what is demanded…the balance of sustainability and maximum fairness.
Businesses use the resources of a country that belong to each citizen, there is no free lunch at the expense of citizens, now if they don’t like it they can fuck off, and i guess there will be a line of many to replace them.
This American notion that the Corporates own the country and citizens there to service their needs, because of some make believe ‘trickle down’ fantasy as justification…
If fairness is not an underlying principle in the management and budget making of a country then wtf is govt for?
The Treasury secretary, Martin Parkinson, should STFU.
Centre @ 1065: The most likely answer to your question would seem to be that they didn’t anticipate that boats would start coming from India, and don’t quite know what to do about it.
BB:
Quite. And all a legitimate care package expense.
But wait until the wowsers in the media latch onto this. It’ll become another way the NDIS is undermined and hacked away at by the numpties.
[But wait until the wowsers in the media latch onto this.]
Ah yes, cripples should act like cripples, not like real people.
Real people take their sex lives and blast them all over the front pages of the same paper that condemns the disabled.
How much did you have on the Storm?
zoid
I read that as Parkinson saying that it goes without question that economic reform needs to be underpinned by fairness.
In other words, it’s a given.
Four Corners next week.
Cleaner, greener energy future & will Australia be left behind.
Gaol time for Rupert?
RM: “I remember when I first bought the News of the World, the first day I went to the office … and there was a big wall-safe … And I said, ‘What’s that for?’
“And they said, ‘We keep some cash in there.’
“And I said, ‘What for?’
“They said, ‘Well, sometimes the editor needs some on a Saturday night for powerful friends. And sometimes the chairman [the late Sir William Carr] is doing badly at the tables, (laughter) and he helps himself …’
“Now there was a law passed against this in 1906. That’s when it was first recognised as a problem … The idea that the cops then started coming after you, kick you out of bed, and your families, at six in the morning, is unbelievable.”
So Rupert admits to knowing there were payments & did WHAT?
[Real people take their sex lives and blast them all over the front pages of the same paper that condemns the disabled.]
Zactly.
Plus we can fritter away gazillions in taxpayer funds on corporate pursuits, but hot damn if even one measly taxpayer dollar is used to make the disadvantaged a mite more comfortable in their lives.
Pedant
What happened to turn back the boat?
They got through the defence, reserve grade for 6 star Bingamton next week 😆
Are Farcue, 😉
Bell Bay is probably the only smelter in Australia with a future.
Portland is an economic and environmental disaster and should be closed.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/25/-sp-phone-hacking-trial-rebekah-brooks-rupert-murdoch
*must read*
zoomster@1071
That’s my take on it too, but seemingly not the MSM or zoid.
Martin B @ 1076
“Portland is an economic and environmental disaster and should be closed ”
Why economic ??
@bemsed/1078
Sure, it’s all I my head 😉
If i remember correctly, it is the Coalition Party in power?
Let’s see, we have Joe Hockey recently going on about inequity, Kevin Andrews going all out on welfare report, Patrick McClure interim report is out, and now treasury head sticks his head out.
All attacking the low income earners.
If Mr Abbott declines to extend and fully fund the child abuse Royal Commission, the reference he wrote for a certain priest back in the 1990s is likely to be thrown back in his face in the nastiest possible way, and fair enough too.
[Why economic ??]
Victorian taxpayers have been subsidising the electricity ever since it was built to the tune of something like $100M per year.
[I read that as Parkinson saying that it goes without question that economic reform needs to be underpinned by fairness.
In other words, it’s a given.
That’s my take on it too, but seemingly not the MSM]
But he’s also saying that doing nothing is not an option, and the Libs were elected and are cutting spending and that will impact most on the bottom half.
He could be on the side of Hockey’s notion of fairness, which is that rich is the new poor.
Or he could be suggesting the alternative means of reform – which is that spending should be cut for those that don’t actually need it.
So we shouldn’t be funding wealthy pensioners.
And we shouldn’t be funding wealthy mining corporations.
And we shouldn’t be funding wealthy companies.
And we shouldn’t be giving tax-free status to corporate shills.
And we shouldn’t be funding wealthy parents, and wealthy schools, and wealthy families.
It could be a thinly veiled swipe, or it could just be James M Assola
And ABC runs another piece on Disability Pension:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-30/dsp-provides-incentive-for-unemployed-to-claim-disability/5561148
Geelong is close to one of the windiest coastlines in the world. Number of wind farms: zero.
News from a less windy coastline in Europe:
http://www.greenbang.com/airtricity-orders-80-turbines-for-north-sea-wind-farm_9662.html
I initially read the article like Zoid – with his references “vague notions of fairness”, etc. But then I realised that all of the measure of fairness that Labor have brought up aren’t vague at all, e.g. income inequality, tax expenditures for high income earners superannuation and investment houses, etc.
Vague is saying that it’s not “right” to use taxes on wealthy individuals to fund pensions, or the recently unemployed, or students, or health care, or disabilities, or communications infrastructure… and so on.
Didn’t treasury keep getting its forecasts wrong under Parkinson? Why should anyone listen to him?
zoidlord@1080
So your answer is to not vote against the only effective opposition to them. Uh huh…
Patrick McClure thinks that people who have episodic mental illnesses should be on the dole rather than the DSP. And when they lose their job because of an episodic mental illness, and end up on the dole (but let’s face it, most of them will never get a job anyway) and they can’t complete the onerous unemployment requirements of applying for 40 jobs a month and attending all interviews and answering all calls and so on, because, you know, they’re “having an episode”, we can chuck the poor fuckers off the dole as well.
But the system’s not sustainable don’t you know. It’s not sustainable because a hundred thousand mentally ill people get $400 a week instead of the $280 dole. That’s about 600 million a year or a month’s worth of Tony’s PPL.
bemused@1088
Whoa there..
Should be:
So your answer is to not vote for the only effective opposition to them. Uh huh…
Patrick McClure reckons he’s spent most of his life working with low-income people. He’s actually spent most of his working life with organisations that work with low-income people, which ain’t the same thing. Not many low-income people sit around the board table discussing what to do with a $300 million portfolio.
He’s been great at attracting money for his organisations. How much that has benefitted the low-income people we actually don’t know. He’s a classic “welfare industry elite”, but since he says many things the conservatives want to hear, that’s all right.
When I think of barriers to people with episodic mental illness gaining meaningful work I think ‘clearly it is the fault of the social security system and the way payments are structured’.
@bemused/1090
Define effective opposition?
Good people in this QandA crowd
“@Gordeauz: Did Sarah Henderson jut try and claim NDIS as theirs #qanda?”
Labor and Greens should make that a slogan.
Mr Abbott when did you get a mandate to attack the disabled the aged the unemployed?
Well Sarah Henderson had to get the last say didn’t she with her reckless Labor spending?
Disgusting!
“@forthleft: “When did your party perceive the need to attack these people in this way” is replied with sputum & second-hand vomit from Henderson #qanda”
It is not misandry to point out that wars are and always have been instigated, carried out and financed by men. Men plan the wars, make the armies, take the resources to fund armaments, and destroy people, animals, habitats and thousands of years of infrustructure in their wars. Women and kids are involved but that is all. In addition men use wars to steal goods, rape women and kids and torture non-combatants. Additionally or maybe purposely wars allow men to relate to each other in ways considered as a sign of homosexuality in civil life.
Now if misandry is the abuse i have to cop every time I make a criticism of any male or males as a group, this sociologist is going to leave this site for somewhere else. I already cut back my visits here because I find every time I mention Julia Gillard I am targeted.
If you want an nice little boy’s club where women don’t rock the boat you can have it. I notice a few of the ‘weaker sex’ not being here as often as before.
Stiglitz should be good on Lateline.
BTW Where’s Newspoll tonight?