Wayne Swan’s electorate of Lilley covers bayside Brisbane north-east of the city centre, between the Brisbane and Pine rivers – an area accounting for industrial Eagle Farm in the south and residential Brighton in the north – together with suburbs nearer the city from McDowall, Stafford Heights and Everton Park east through Kedron, Chermside and Zillmere to Nundah, Nudgee and Taigum. The redistribution before the 2010 election had a substantial impact on the electorate, adding 26,000 in Chermside West and Stafford Heights at the northern end (from Petrie) and removing a similar number of voters in an area from Clayfield and Hendra south to Hamilton on the river (to Brisbane), although the margin was little affected.
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| Red and teal numbers respectively indicate size of two-party majorities for Labor and the LNP. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room. |
Lilley was created in 1913, originally extending from its current base all the way north to Gympie. It did not become entirely urban until the enlargement of parliament in 1949, when Petrie was created to accommodate what were then Brisbane’s semi-rural outskirts. Labor won Lilley in 1943, 1946, 1961 and 1972 (by a margin of 35 votes on the latter occasion), but it was otherwise usually safe for the prevailing conservative forces of the day. A decisive shift came with the elections of 1980 and 1983, when Labor’s Elaine Darling won the seat and then consolidated her hold with respective swings of 5.2% and 8.4%. Wayne Swan succeeded Darling as Labor’s member in 1993, but was unseated together with all but two of his Queensland Labor colleagues at the 1996 election.
Swan returned to parliament at the following election in 1998, when he accounted for a 0.4% post-redistribution margin with a swing of 3.5%. He added further fat to his margin at the each of the next three elections, although his swing in 2007 was well below the statewide average (3.2% compared with 7.5%), consistent with a trend in inner urban seats across the country. The 2010 election delivered the LNP a swing of 4.8% that compared with a statewide result of 5.5%, bringing the seat well into the marginal zone at 3.2%. Labor’s dire polling throughout its second term in government, particularly in Queensland, led to grave fears about his capacity to retain the seat in 2013, but in the event Lilley provided the party with one of its pleasant election night surprises by swinging only 1.9%, enabling Swan to hang on with a margin of 1.3%.
Swan’s path to parliament began with a position as an adviser to Bill Hayden during his tenure as Opposition Leader and later to Hawke government ministers Mick Young and Kim Beazley, before he took on the position of Queensland party secretary in 1991. He was elevated to the shadow ministry after recovering his seat in 1998, taking on the family and community services portfolio, and remained close to his former boss Beazley. Mark Latham famously described Swan and his associates as “roosters” when Beazley conspired to recover the leadership in 2003, but nonetheless retained him in his existing position during his own tenure in the leadership. Swan was further promoted to Treasury after the 2004 election defeat, and retained it in government despite suggestions Rudd had promised the position to Lindsay Tanner in return for his support when he toppled Kim Beazley as leader in December 2006.
Although he went to high school with him in Nambour and shared a party background during the Wayne Goss years, a rivalry developed between Swan and Kevin Rudd with the former emerging as part of the AWU grouping of the Right and the latter forming part of the Right’s “old guard”. Swan was in the camp opposed Rudd at successive leadership challenges, including Rudd’s move against Beazley in December 2009, his toppling by Julia Gillard in June 2010, and the three leadership crises which transpired in 2012 and 2013. As Rudd marshalled forces for his first push in February 2012, Swan spoke of his “dysfunctional decision making and his deeply demeaning attitude towards other people including our caucus colleagues”. When Rudd finally succeeded in toppling Gillard in June 2013, Swan immediately resigned as deputy leader and Treasurer. Unlike many of his colleagues he resolved to continue his career in parliament, which he has continued to do in opposition on the back bench.
[Briefly I am in no doubt the next election will be ugly for the LNP.]
Yes and they deserve it they are incompetent, dishonest, and so destructive of norms of good governance as to be corrupt.
I fully expect a Joh like gerrymander to ensure they do win the next election.
[ Thousands of people have flown that route, what makes his daughters special? ]
Someone else paid for the flight?? 🙂
Bemused
[I have been wondering what the importance of the flight recorders is in the MH17 matter.
What significant information will they provide that we do not already know?]
Who has them in their posession might be instructive. Why would such a thing be taken from the scene?
imacca
😀
imacca
[without positive ID is still a crime though.]
Certainly.
I’m running out of ‘Surface-to-Air’ knowledge but whoever got it to fly needs to be caught.
Still OK on the ASM type. Getting to tell ‘people’ that Type 42’s where going missing was not a ‘highlight’ of past work.
lefty e@203
Beats me.
I see how vital they are if there is some sort of onboard failure or incident, but otherwise I am unaware of what assistance they could be.
It’s entirely possible Abbott’s bringing up of his daughters was just a personal reflection of how random chance can be at a time when he can’t really say anything substantive rather than a desire to make this story all about him.
I would say it’s fairly standard human behaviour to make such a reflection. People are so cynical of politicians – this may have been Abbott simply being human. There’s so much to criticise him for that it seems both unfair and also needlessly distracting to go after him for that.
teh_drewski
[People are so cynical of politicians ]
And goodness knows where that attitude came about.
Quite. Still, on this occasion, given the unthinkable difficulty of the situation, giving the benefit of the doubt is not unreasonable.
While I am no fan of our PM he mentioned he’s daughters in repsonse to a question on how the tragedy had effected him personally. Seeing he was responding to a question asking for personal reflection I don’t see what the big deal is about him bringing up he’s daughters.
AA – Yep, what a dick. It’s as if he has to keep bringing up his daughters to prove he’s human. It ain’t working.
teh_drewski
I disagree. The correct response was that fortunately, this affected him only as a fellow human being, who feels a sense of solidarity with those who really have been affected personally by this matter. Whatever was in his head, and we have little reason to think there’s much beyond some trolling catch-cries crafted by Credlin, there was little doubt that this would be seen as an attempt to harness some of the sympathy due to the actual bereaved for his personal advantage. Indeed, had he been honest (ha!), he’d had said that it was likely to help him personally, which would have been a gaffe.
His biology aside, Abbott is not like most other humans. He’s a kind of mannequin — an idealised form in which the aspirations and fantasies of a narrow tranche of the populace is embodied. His words resemble nothing so much as those folk who run seances and claim to channel the voices of the departed whose spirits are with them. The IPA, the big miners, the polluters and Murdoch speak through him. He channels their hatred and lust and vacuous cant. He’s not the only one doing that, but right now he’s the most highly elevated of them.
After nearly 2000 years, the Christian community of Mosul is no more.
http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/07/its-over-genocide-has-been-accomplished.html
It’s not the fact that he mentioned his daughters so much as the rather distant tone he was using this morning. I felt no real empathy – the words were “correct”, but the man himself did not seem engaged.
and also
http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/07/nun-sign-of-genocide.html
Fran – correct. Proof once again, that everything is all about Tony. What else can you think about a man who will use climate change denialism as a tool of his own political advancement. The whole world can fry, as long as Tony’s in power.
Interestingly, I would have been quite surprised if Rudd had mentioned his children in this way (correct me if I’m wrong).
Some people are very special to Abbott, particularly if they can enhance his image and his polls. They need not necessarily be alive either. Others are not special at all and are preferably forgotten somewhere on the sea.
CTar1
The Argentinian Type 42 had an embarrassing end. Retired then accidentally sunk at it’s mooring. It landed the first troops on the Falklands so perhaps some with long memories made it “accidentally” sink.
swamprat – Thank you, very sad. Reminds me that until about 800AD Christianity was much stronger in the East than the West.
Have the Russians and their puppets something against the number 7?
Korean Flight 007 that many years ago, now 017.
It is said there is luck under a 7 but obviously, and sadly, not on these two occasions.
The other missing Malaysian flight also had a 7 in it but this might just be the numbering system used by MAS?
swamprat
A pity more attention was not paid to our supposed rebel friends in Syria earlier when they were attacking and driving out some of the oldest Christian communities in the world.
poroti@221
The problem needs to be dealt with at its source.
And we all know where that is and we know it won’t be dealt with.
You guys are pathetic if you’re trying to find reasons to prove Abbott’s ineptness in him mentioning his daughters.
Get a grip.
I bet when you heard “plane shot down” the first thing you thought was “Gee I hope Abbott doesn’t get a poll bounce”.
bemused
Not until they run out of oil.
[ Tricot
Posted Sunday, July 20, 2014 at 2:16 pm | Permalink
Have the Russians and their puppets something against the number 7?
Korean Flight 007 that many years ago, now 017.
It is said there is luck under a 7 but obviously, and sadly, not on these two occasions.
The other missing Malaysian flight also had a 7 in it but this might just be the numbering system used by MAS?
]
———————————————————
Downing of MH17 marks number of weird coincidences
There have been twenty three major disasters involving airliners where in each case hundreds of people have died.
Ironically 3 of those have occurred on July 17, including the latest, the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Eastern Ukraine on Thursday.
Previously, seven years ago, on July 17, 2007, at Congonhas-Sao Paulo Airport, TAM Airlines Flight 3054, an Airbus A320, crashed after landing too fast and missing the end of the runway causing it to crash into a warehouse. 199 people died in the crash.
Earlier again, 18 years ago, on July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 exploded in mid-air and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, in New York, just twelve minutes after departing JFK International Airport. All 230 people on board the aircraft were killed.
Ukraine too has been the scene of a number of high profile airline crashes, beginning on May 18 1972 when Aeroflot Flight 1491, an Antonov An-10, experienced an in-flight structural problem as it approached Ukraine’s Kharkov Airport. All 122 passengers and crew on board were killed.
On May 3 1985 Aeroflot Flight 8381, a Tupolev Tu-134, collided with a Soviet Air Force Antonov An-26. The two aircraft both crashed near Zolochev, Ukraine. All 94 on board the two aircraft died.
On August 22 2006 Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise Flight 612, a Tupolev Tu-154, crashed near Donetsk, Ukraine. All 170 people on board were killed.
On July 17 2014 the latest disaster occurred with the crash of MH17 which killed 298 people. Another weird coincidence is with the 7 and 17 numbers, in which the Malaysia Airlines flight that crashed on Thursday was a Boeing 777 with the registration number 9M-MRD, which ironically had its first flight 17 years ago on July 17, 1997. And to touch it off the flight name was MH17.
And the biggest irony of all is that of all the planes in the air at the time of Thursday’s crash/downing, of all the thousands of flights in transit, the plane targeted had to be a Malaysia Airlines plane. The odds of that happening after the disappearance of MH370 in March would probably have been a million to one.
The deliberate downing of a civilian airliner is not a usual occurrence but it has happened, and believe it or not it has happened in Ukraine – thirteen years ago.
In 2001, the Ukrainian military accidentally shot down a Russian civilian plane when they were carrying our a training exercise on the Crimean Peninsula, which has since been taken over by Russia earlier this year, the cause of the current crisis in Ukraine.
The United States which is closing in on Russia for its support to the Russian rebels, which may have led to the rebels having the capability of downing the Malaysia Airlines flight, itself downed an Iranian civilian plane in 1988. The Iran Air Airbus A300, flying over Iran’s territorial waters on its regular route from Tehran to Dubai was hit by a surface-to-air missile from the USS Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser, that destroyed the plane, killing all 290 on board. [Under a 1996 agreement at the International Court of Justice, the U.S. agreed to pay Iran $61.8 million]. –
See more at: http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/sid/223906773/scat/b8de8e630faf3631/ht/Downing-of-MH17-marks-number-of-weird-coincidences#sthash.omiCrH0B.dpuf
gloryconsequence
Get a grip.
Commenting on my disappointment with Abbott’s response to some carefully scripted questions on Insiders has nothing to do with my first reaction to the news of the plane crash.
poroti@224
Have you not heard of ‘regime change’?
I believe it is something of an American speciality.
Abbott has his slogans so successfully bored into his brain that he even used ‘calmly, purposefully, methodically’ wrt the investigation of the disaster.
lizzie@228
Actually, hardly descriptive of his or his government’s approach and performance.
poroti
[The Argentinian Type 42 had an embarrassing end.]
Unfortunately it also provided a ‘exercise vehicle’ for their AF to try out.
More than 2 A/C, and also some land covering so they could appear quickly, was too much for Sea Dart and some ‘not to smart’ drivers.
bemused
Not in this case. There is a bit of mutually assured destruction in place. When the US was in the shit and forced to go off the gold standard they entered into a deal with the house of Saud. The Sauds would only sell oil for US dollars and in return the US assured protection and arms for the Sauds. Come on down the “Petrodollar” .
bemused
Anything but! I can’t remember the precise phrase Abbott used about the Labor minority government, but my feeling is that it would be appropriately applied to him now.
I don’t know what Abbott has to do to convince people he doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt ever. If they can’t see his consistent course of behavior they are either incurably stupid or suffering from partisan blindness.
[”Twenty countries … now allow cannabis to be used as a prescribed and restricted medicine: but not Australia, where it is against the law to even see if medicinal cannabis, used as a last resort, might help.”]
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/mps-call-for-compassion-in-case-of-mother-who-used-cannabis-oil-to-help-sick-son-20140719-3c7vf.html#ixzz37yrhWJsU
Gloryconsequence
[You guys are pathetic if you’re trying to find reasons to prove Abbott’s ineptness in him mentioning his daughters.]
The reasons don’t have to be ‘found’. They are on open and lascivious display in this interview. Walk past. Look. Gape that such a thing is not hidden for the shame it is. We live in such a world.
CTa1
[provided a ‘exercise vehicle’ ]
Did not think of that obvious angle. They would have been well practiced indeed.
You guys are pathetic if you’re trying to find reasons to prove Abbott’s ineptness in him mentioning his daughters.
I saw it yet again as a pathetic attempt to link himself to the tragedy. To imply he fully understands the pain the families are going through.
Remember this when spoke to Suu Kyi;
“I was an opposition leader myself for four years. I know that that position has some exhilarations and some frustrations and let’s hope as time goes by the exhilarations are greater and the frustrations are lesser,” he said.
Implying he understood how she felt after be held a prisoner for years.
The man’s got no empathy, I doubt he could spell the word
Over some time I’ve come to be amused by Bill Maher’s more or less secular left-liberal take on most issues. He’s often a very funny man. And yet he has managed to disappoint me seriously with an attempt at making light of the Palestinian occupation.
Speaking of Hamas he said that dealing with Hamas was like holding the wrists of a crazy woman who was trying to kill you. Sooner or later, you had to slap them.
This is dreadful on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to start, and having started, to know where to stop. So I’m going to buck form and be brief. As someone else aptly asked:
Bill Maher! What’s wrong with you?
Another airliner shot down, by Ukraine (and admitted) but dont see the same care Concern or MSM making a big deal of this one.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/1359353/Ukraine-admits-it-shot-down-Russian-airliner.html
[”Twenty countries … now allow cannabis to be used as a prescribed and restricted medicine: but not Australia,]
The ABC’s Landline program has just run a story about the potential of hemp seed and oil from non/low THC plants as an agricultural crop. Both the federal and state governments are refusing to allow this, despite a huge international demand.
We are the only country that doesn’t allow such hemp to be grown. Even the ‘war on drugs’ America has no problem with it. America is a $500 million dollar market for Canadian grown hemp seed and oil, and growing rapidly.
We actually have the world’s leading expert in hemp genetics. He’s thinking of immigrating and taking his plants and patents with him to enrich farmers somewhere else, probably the U.S.
According the the NSW ag minister it’s because Australians are too stupid to understand the difference between cannabis the drug, and hemp the non drug plant and so might become confused about the legality of dope if hemp was grown commercially (not quite the way she phrased it, but that is what she meant).
BK,
[RexD We just watched Milne blaming JG (in particular) and Labor while Benson and Kelly salivated. Their smiles hinted at what little Milne gems were being filed away for future columns.
Bigger smiles when Milne declared she would be taking a 40-60% by 2030 policy to the next election. Hell and damnation for the Greens will be breaking out at Murdochia unless the ROW moves unitedly on CC in 2015.]
and
[WWP I actually agree that the moment JG said wtte ‘call it what you like … carbon tax, whatever’ was, in hindsight, the catalyst for Abbott. Milne went further saying all JG wanted was to be in Govt and PM and wasn’t sufficiently across CC detail. That too may be true. We’ll find out in October when Julia’s book is released.]
A curious position for her to take. I guess I can see the strategy, cast Labor as only acting because they were forced to. It does anger me, because it is quite dishonest as they are essentially taking all the credit and none of the risk. Adding to that by basically accusing Gillard, and by extension her entire Cabinet, including Wong, Butler, etc, of not being across it when they, and notably not Milne, were daily wearing the political fallout and had far greater contact with Treasury than the Greens did, is quite simply pathetic.
I understand many Greens believe that they may/will end up on the Government benches one day as the senior Coalition partner or in their own right, but surely the Parliamentary team would have a more realistic view. The only way they can get environmental protections and serious policy to deal with renewable energy and policies to deal with Climate Change is through the ALP. Forcing the ALP’s hands in such ways to make them undetectable or pissing them off so that they have no will to work with them is going to be un(or counter-)productive in the short, medium and long term both in policy terms and in their own electoral terms.
What’s more, how do they intend to do this while the ALP is openly taking Carbon Pricing to the next election and Shorten has openly decried the repeal of the existing legislation? They’re really just being silly.
… now for the argument that it’s all a certain former PMs fault because they refused to spend countless interviews bogged down in petty semantic arguments with recalcitrant and lazy journalists might wish to remember that Abbott has explicitly labelled any carbon price as a “Carbon tax”, and much of the media has simply run with it. Twas always thus and will continue to be, best to accept the inevitable and move on.
Thomas. Paine.
Posted Sunday, July 20, 2014 at 3:00 pm | Permalink
Another airliner shot down, by Ukraine (and admitted) but dont see the same care Concern or MSM making a big deal of this one.
MSM in Australia couldn’t find a way to link Abbott’s daughters to the tragedy
Badcat@225
That is truly surprising.
I know, if you look at a set of circumstances long enough, one can find a common theme as it were, but the “7” thing and corresponding dates are uncanny.
A bit like the difference in the scores of the two Centenary Tests being the same as I seem to remember.
As you say, what are the odds.
I am sure those with time on their hands will point out that there are other seemingly, uncanny similarities all over the place.
[ Another airliner shot down, by Ukraine (and admitted) but dont see the same care Concern or MSM making a big deal of this one. ]
Maybe because it happened in 2001, and was an accident not a deliberate shoot down.
[Thomas. Paine.
Posted Sunday, July 20, 2014 at 3:00 pm | Permalink
Another airliner shot down, by Ukraine (and admitted) but dont see the same care Concern or MSM making a big deal of this one.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/1359353/Ukraine-admits-it-shot-down-Russian-airliner.html%5D
There certainly is some irony in the reports of that earlier incident. The Us military quickly and correctly identified that it was caused by a missile fired by the Ukraine but this was initially denied by both the Ukraine & Russia.
From one of the earlier articles in your link –
The Kremlin backed the theory that the plane could have been brought down by sabotage. Russian officials said that the accusation against the Ukrainian military was “unworthy of attention”.
President Putin ruled out the idea that the airliner could have been shot down by the Ukrainian military. Speaking at a news conference in the Kremlin, he did not rule out terrorism.
But he stressed that the cause of the crash was not known and he appealed to the media not to be sensational. He said: “It is true that in the immediate vicinity of the area where the crash took place some exercises were being conducted.”
“But the weapons used in those exercises had such characteristics that make it impossible for them to reach the air corridor through which the plane was moving.” He said that although the Russian military did not take part in the exercises, they had observers on the ground.
Asked whether terrorism might be a cause, he said: “The final judgement of that and the cause of the tragedy can only be made by the experts after very careful study.”
Re Lizzie @232: I can’t remember the precise phrase Abbott used about the Labor minority government…
Tony Abbott frequently described the government as ‘illegitimate’ – I am sure he often used that exact word. He also frequently said that the Government won office through lies and dodgy deals.
Now, the Gillard government was of course legitimate as the current administration. It had at all times a majority on the floor of the House of Representatives, which is what makes an Australian government legitimate.
But maybe we should push the meme that the current Government is illegitimate. That’s crap of course, as much as it was when Abbott said it about Gillard. But hey, Abbott and his cheer squad aren’t bound by matters of truth, evidence, convention, legality or objective reality, so maybe his opponents could take a relaxed attitude to these when it suits.
Let’s unpack this. Abbott lied his way into office. Broken promises, most of which he had no intention of keeping, litter the political landscape like confetti. Abbott hid his true agenda from he voters before the election. He seems to be paying off supporters in spades – think FOFA, eduction ‘reforms’. And he’ll only get his program through by way of ‘dodgy deals’ with the PUP and micro parties.
By the standards that Abbott applied to Gillard, his government is illegitimate.
[and was an accident not a deliberate shoot down.]
I don’t know how you infer intent in relation the current tragedy?
[ What’s more, how do they intend to do this while the ALP is openly taking Carbon Pricing to the next election and Shorten has openly decried the repeal of the existing legislation? They’re really just being silly. ]
Well, they may being silly, but it could set Shorten up firmly in the “middle ground” as regards Carbon Pricing come the next election. That’s generally a good place to aim to be in Australian politics.
paroti
[They would have been well practiced indeed.]
Type 22’s and 21’s made the backbone in the end.
(The Type 42 (called a ‘heavy destroyer’ but it’s the same parlance that ended up with ‘Through Deck Carrier’). Really ‘Cruiser’s’. Big things. And in the end not well armed.
I’ve no idea of the total cost but I know that to get one in the water, before fit-out, was 600,000 pounds.
[This has been Exactly my take on it…]
Wherein TP establishes that he’s too stupid even to understand his own opinions.