Created with the expansion of parliament in 1984, Goldstein covers coastal southern Melbourne starting from Brighton, located about 10 kilometres from the city centre, and proceeding southwards through Hampton, Sandringham and Black Rock to Beamaris. The northern part of the electorate extends inland beyond the Nepean Highway to accommodate Caulfield South, Bentleigh and surrounding suburbs. The more inland areas are naturally marginal, but the affluence of the coastal suburbs has kept the seat in Liberal hands by stable margins ranging from 5.5% in 1993 to a new high of 11.0% in 2013.
 |
| Blue and red numbers respectively indicate size of two-party majorities for Liberal and Labor. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room. |
The area now covered by Goldstein was accommodated by the electorate of Balaclava in the years immediately after federation, and then by the new seat of Henty when Balaclava was pushed northwards by a redistribution in 1913. Brighton was put back into Balaclava after 1937, and the new seat of Higinbotham covered the remainder after parliament was expanded in 1949. When Higinbotham was abolished in 1969, the area was divided between Balaclava, Henty and the new seats of Hotham and Isaacs. Beaumaris and Black Rock remained in Isaacs after Goldstein was created in 1984, at which time the new electorate extended northwards to St Kilda East. It assumed a more familiar form when it absorbed Beaumaris in the redistribution of 1996, which greatly reduced the Liberals’ competitiveness in Isaacs.
The various electorates which dominated the modern area of Goldstein were at all times in conservative hands, with the partial exception of Labor’s win in Isaacs at the 1974 election. Don Chipp held Higinbotham for the Liberals from 1960 to 1969, at which time he moved to the new seat of Hotham. Balaclava and then Goldstein were held from 1974 to 1990 by Ian Macphee, who emerged as the figurehead of the party’s moderates. Macphee was ultimately defeated for preselection ahead of the 1990 election by David Kemp, an intellectual leader of the party’s rising neo-liberal tendency, an event that provided a catalyst for Andrew Peacock’s successful challenge to John Howard’s leadership in May 1989. Kemp went on to serve in the Howard cabinet from October 1997 until his retirement at the 2004 election, as Education Minister until 2001 and Environment Minister thereafter.
Goldstein has since been held by Andrew Robb, a former Liberal Party federal director who had long been spoken of as a potential candidate for safe seats in New South Wales, where he had lived for two decades. However, Robb had originally hailed from Victoria, having been raised in a working-class Catholic family that supported the Democratic Labor Party. He came to the Liberal Party via student politics and a job at the newly established National Farmers Federation, which was an assertive voice for labour market deregulation during his period as executive director after 1985. As federal director of the Liberal Party, Robb oversaw the 1990, 1993 and 1996 election campaigns, after which he set up the marketing company Acxiom for Kerry Packer. His first term in parliament was the last of the Howard government, in which he was promoted to parliamentary secretary in January 2006 and thence to the outer ministry as Vocational and Further Education Minister in January 2007.
Robb nominated for the deputy leadership after the 2007 election, but was defeated by Julie Bishop. He instead became Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister, and was briefly discussed as a leadership candidate when Malcolm Turnbull was embroiled in the “Utegate” affair in the middle of 2009. Shortly afterwards he made the surprise announcement that he was moving to the back bench owing to a depressive illness. He returned to the front bench in the finance portfolio in March 2010, from which he was resassigned to trade and investment after the 2013 election victory.
zoomster
Perception is everything. My hope is that Labor do handle this in an effective way. From what I gleaned yesterday, the Liberals intend on using this incident as a matter of trust of Daniel Andrews. Add to the ongoing rhetoric about Andrews being closely connected to the corrupt CFMEU, and you can see the direction the fibs will take the election campaign
[Joe rocked up, made all these promises, and the local community went off saying what a superstar he was.]
Otherwise known as Safe Seat Syndrome. We had the same issues here until the Liberals lost the seat for the first time ever. There are signs the newly-elected Liberal MP is delivering, but it hasn’t been a year since he was elected, much less decades.
citizen
The European’s Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe ( OSCE )people have been on the ground almost from the start. They must have come to an agreement very early with the rebels.
Hilarious headline yesterday about Australians “discovering” a large piece of fuselage. Read the article and they ,amongst others , had merely been taken to see the recently discovered piece by OSCE people.
By transferring the 157 asylum seekers to the mainland and allowing the Indian government to assess them, Morrison has effectively destroyed his “Operation Borders”.
Indonesia under a new President will now be in a position to demand that the same happen to any asylum seekers arriving by boat from Indonesia. Their consular officials could then determine that the only Indonesians on board were the crew operating the boat and the rest would be the responsibility of Morrison.
Good luck to him then!
Slothy
Thanks for the reference to Ellen Levy-Coffman. I had not read her article before. Very good.
http://www.jogg.info/11/coffman.htm
Citizen
When the HC ruled Malaysia out, new legislation was drafted to include asylum seekers being able to be sent to any country. But was any country to include only a “signatory to the refugee convention”?
[Socrates
Posted Saturday, July 26, 2014 at 7:55 am | Permalink
“@MikeCarlton01: The inevitable barrage of Zionist abuse has begun. Best so far: “We are the Chosen People. Get over it !””
It is disturbing how many otherwise educated Jewish people have that delusion. So much for Zionism not being racism! They are a chosen race, with the rights to evict any other race from the land “god” chose for them. But they are not racists! Sure.]
This is bizarre and would be very funny if it weren’t an illustration of the power of Israel v the Palestinians to distort rationality.
The quote is, by happenstance, one of the tweets in a link provided by Dee last night. Dee’s link was to an article about Israel stealing water from Lebanon by means of secret tunnels dug to a Lebanese river. The article had, IMHO, extremely low levels of credibility. The home page of the link and various other articles at the site were anti-Israel.
The race-based ‘chosen people’ tweet was, therefore, posted by an anti-Israel person using sarcasm – always a risky business on the internet.
Bizarrely, the tweet has now been accepted as proof that Zionists are racists.
Well this is something at least.
[Former Treasurer Troy Buswell will pay for the damage he did to his ministerial car and other vehicles while on his way back from a wedding in February.
Government insurer RiskCover said in a statement released this evening they had received a response from Mr Buswell’s laywers regarding further information requested about what happened on February 22 and 23 when the damage occurred.]
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/24553410/buswell-to-pay-for-damaged-cars/
[One could take a contrary view to Hartcher’s assertion that Abbott has kept politics out it. Directly he has but indirectly it is being used to smother the politics and coverage of the budget mess.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbott-and-julie-bishop-keep-politics-out-of-mh17-issue-for-now-but-strife-with-russia-looms-20140725-zwsw8.html ]
Abbott’s problem isn’t so much with Putin, as with Obama.
He got the Daily Telegraph yesterday to print that he had “stiffened Obama’s spine” for him.
If Obama chooses to pick up on this – and I am in no doubt that the local embassy will be collecting clippings – no amount of Abbott protesting that it wasn’t him will help.
If anyone knows, Obama himself knows that Murdoch is his enemy, and works intimately in concert with his enemies, both feeding them lines and parroting their loopy logic.
It’s the same here in Australia. If Obama chooses to believe (with a lot of evidence and experience to back him up) that Abbott is insulting him through cheap, jingoistic Murdoch tabloid newspapers, Abbott will be toast as far as America is concerned, for as long as Obama is President.
Abbott makes a habit of this: insulting people through others, and from afar. It’s the mark of a classic coward. He’s a big tough guy until he has to front his target and then he goes to jelly.
We are NOT lucky to have Abbott as “our Prime Minister”. We are very, very unfortunate to have this bull in a china shop going around insulting other world leaders for a temporary lift in his local poll numbers (and that’s if the Australian people don’t wake up to the over-egged, embarrassing tripe that is being put out about him).
A thought experiment: imagine if Gillard had said about Putin, but especially about Obama what Abbott has said about them, and bragged about to the bogans in Western Sydney. There would be riots in the streets, calls for resignations, thundering editorials.
But Gillard is gone, out of politics. She doesn’t have poll numbers anymore to worry about.
Obama doesn’t need the Press Council to make a determination, or the defamation courts or solicitor’s letters back and forth. All he needs to do to decide whether Abbott is persona non gratis is to think it… and it will be so. He’s not worried about whether there’s a formal link between Abbott’s office and Simon Bensons keyboard. It’s a personal decision for Obama to make in his own mind.
If he finds against Abbott, or chooses to hold him accountable for that dreadful slur in yesterday’s newspaper, then Abbott can be shut out.
Abbott is a cheap, back-alley heckler, trying his cheap, back-alley tactics on the holder of the world’s most powerful office.
He had better hope that Obama gives him the benefit of the doubt, or chooses to ignore this disgraceful behaviour. Because f he does not, then Abbott is history, just another gnat, a pissant raver from the nether regions who got too big for his boots.
[But was any country to include only a “signatory to the refugee convention”?]
That was my understanding at the time.
Rebels wary of foreign force securing MH17 crash site in Ukraine
http://www.theage.com.au/world/rebels-wary-of-foreign-force-securing-mh17-crash-site-in-ukraine-20140726-zx3l1.html
confessions
I dont believe India is a signatory
victoria:
I don’t think so either, but can’t say for sure.
confessions
I find it all so confusing to be honest.
Abbott chose before the election to project calm and orderliness by boasting about not needing to change his shadow cabinet. Before the election Party discipline was excellent.
Immediately after the election there was a minor reshuffle occasioned by Bishop’s elevation to Madame Speaker and by Ms Mirabella’s rejection by Indi. Even that minor reshuffle cost the Party skin with Ian Mcdonald complaining bitterly at the time and subsequently making a serial habit of sniping at his own side.
Even before the election it was clear that there were some A-grade turkeys in the shadow ministry. There was also, IMHO, an assymetry in that power distribution in the Party which was not accurately reflected in the distribution of jobs.
Running throughout all this, has been the fear and loathing generated by Abbott’s wayward decision making processes and Credlin’s mania for micro-management.
And then we have Turnbull v Abbott v Hockey with Morrison pimping himself. Meanwhile, the only person to have shown considerable ability to grow into the job: Bishop is also a serial contender. Leadershit is alive and well.
Clearly, there has to be a reshuffle. Abbott will want to do only one such before the next election. IMHO, a lot of the posturing and MSM insertions are about the reshuffle.
Boerwar
Do you believe there are deep divisions within the coalition, or minor irritants?
kevjohnno @ 37
[It doesn’t say he actually rang the regulators]
Yes, it does:
[And I rang ASIC and APRA and the ACCC — all the regulators — and I said I want you to raid the NRMA publicly and I want it to have the enema it’s never had. I rang the Tax Office, too, and said you go through the joint.”]
An excellent comment left in response to Guy Rundle’s “in MH17, the death of meaning from the meaninglessness of death” . What happens when people do not watch our MSM.
Part of what she wrote.
[Every night between midnight and 4am, while waiting for my stroke-affected husband to fall into peaceful sleep, I watch the BBC news and catch up on the day’s reading — mostly Crikey and The Guardian.
From the BBC coverage I know that the Russian separatists and villagers on whose heads the bodies and debris from flight M17 fell suffered terrible trauma from the event. They immediately began the search for bodies, on the first day simply marking the locations with white flags. I saw more than one gun-toting militiaman weeping. Women and children came with flowers and candles, and within hours the small group of UN observers were being conducted around in deep discussion with the soldiers. Next night I saw a large group of women and children with their priest, who conducted a religious ceremony as many wept, and the promise was made to “come to this place every year to pray for those killed”. Genuine and touching. I have yet to hear or read a kind word about them. They will be living with the aftermath for years to come.
……..The local media, it seemed to me, was only prepared to print what read like government press releases that putting our Prime Minister at the head of an army of the righteous — interested only in allotting blame and seeking retribution………..The Daily Telegraph told its readers that the bodies of the victims had been “defiled” by the Russians. It should be forced to retract such a claim………….]
http://www.crikey.com.au/2014/07/25/why-we-shouldnt-side-with-palestinians/?wpmp_switcher=mobile
Reposted from previous thread. Slothy’s #4 in this thread refers to this post. Sorry it’s out of order ….. slept in!
Posted Friday, July 25, 2014 at 11:26 pm | PERMALINK
Guytaur
Snap.
I was going to comment about Richard Flanagan but thought I’d wait till tomorrow. But since you started it now, here goes!
Flanagan’s book, Narrow Road to the North (aprox words) is about the Burma railroad, inspired by his dad’s involvement. He recently went to Japan and met one of the cruelest guards, “The Lizard”, now an old man. His conclusion was that the man was not evil; he was a product of evil.
Flanagan then said that particular public figures in Japan had poisoned the society for decades before the war, and created the soldiers and their cruelty.
Although the interview was about Flanagan’s book, he then totally changed the subject to contemporary Australia, and spoke passionately about the poisoning of our society by the public figures who are defining ASs as non-people.
He says that this is poisoning our society, just as happened in preWW2 Japan, and that such a poisoned society will pay some huge cost a little further down the line.
It seemed to me that he was referring to both major parties, but clearly he was moved by the current happenings orchestrated by Morriscum.
One must be very apprehensive as to what actions Morriscum can conjure up and implement, to further elevate the level of antagonism he promotes …… actually torture ASs perhaps (legal torture of course).
I fantasise about a future RC which crucifies Abbott, Morriscum, and the 3 Star Whatever for their Operation Sovereign Borders travesties
BW
Wrong. The link was provided by Mr Mike Carlton as a response today to his article.
Sorry tweet not link.
Victoria.
But why use the tape at all. They did not need to. No one really interested in what Baillieu thinks anymore, and would be common knowledge he would bear a few grudges.
But Andrews now has both the Herald Sun and The Age lined up against him 4 months from an election.
Socrates @ 55
[Thanks for the reference to Ellen Levy-Coffman. I had not read her article before.]
To their great credit, most Jews scientists in the relevant disciplines are honest to a fault when it comes to establishing the truths of the past even though their findings often do not go down well in Israel. People like Paul Wexler and Shlomo Sand on the racial mix, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, among others, on the real history of the area, rather than the crap ‘history’ of the Torah/Old Testament, etc.
taylormade
You have just made a case for why Labor is not involved.
taylormade
Question should be why a journo records a private conversation with Ballieu, and why he would bother saying such things to a journo
@SteveCannane: My #lateline interview with Richard Flanagan #manbookerprize http://t.co/uArNicKNkT
Geraldine Doogue is certainly a good interviewer, and as well she (or her producer) are adept at choosing excellent interviewees.
This morning was an interview with Maxxim ????? (A Russian journo in the USA) and Andrew Roxburgh, a BBC journo who works(ed) in Russia and who knows Putin very well.
The gist of the I/V was that the West is naive in their understanding of the Putin dynamics, his extremely strong home popularity, and anything but adept at dealing with him. But that’s not the purpose of this post.
In her intro Doogue referred to the excess of emotion and outrage about MH17 which “does not promote rationality”.
Naturally my thoughts turned to Abbott. I pose these questions about his responses in the context of Doogue’s observation.
1. Are Abbott’s outrage and over the top responses, fair enough from a leader whose country lost 38 victims?
2. Are his responses symptoms of an inept leader?
3. Are his responses cynically planful, for the domestic “market”?
4. Are his responses a manifestation of his deep pug personality?
5. Are his responses related to his love of fluoro vest circumstances and are we lucky that he has not (yet) donned a military uniform?
I guess I can live with “yes”s to the first three, but If the last two are “yes”s then I think we have a far more serious problem.
His aggro outrage about MH17 especially earlier on, his send in the troops responses, his “Operation this and that” vocab, his very unusual choice of bunking down in Canberra with “the boys” who carry arms in their day to day work (is there really a dearth of appropriate apartments in Canberra for him!), his preference to second 3 star Whatever military types to his political causes all support a view that we should be just a little concerned.
The experts don’t seem to be onboard Rambo’s proposal . I guess we should revive “In your guts you know he’s nuts”.
[Armed MH17 mission: ‘They must be nuts’]
“They must be nuts,” Joerg Forbrig, a senior program officer for central and eastern Europe at the Berlin bureau of the German Marshall Fund….. “It’s a very dangerous proposal and will be seen as a provocation by the separatists and the Russians.”]
http://www.smh.com.au/world/australia-risks-inflaming-ukraine-conflict-by-sending-armed-police-to-mh17-site-analysts-20140726-zx3mo.html#ixzz38WoNNwvj
psyclaw
As boerwar sums up neatly. Abbott is a warmonger
Doing a little digging —
The conversation between Tomazin and Ballieu seems to have taken place in February (although ‘The Age’ is strangely silent on this, the only interview I can find between Ballieu and Tomazin is dated February 2, 2014, and refers to Ballieu’s ‘long silence’. The references in the article seem to match some of those from the recording).
It seems to me to be very strange that Tomazin did not download such sensitive information earlier – (my son, who regularly uses his dictaphone to record lectures etc, always downloads them to his personal computer and deletes the original recording the same day. That’s fairly standard practice).
Her dictaphone was reported by ‘The Age’ to have been stolen in May, just after the State Budget – so around May 6. (There are numerous references to ‘early May’ in other Age articles).
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/stolen-recording-of-baillieu-and-reporter-farrah-tomazin-sent-to-liberal-mps-20140624-zsjv9.html
Now the claim is that the dictaphone was in fact ‘lost’ at State Conference, two weeks later.
So Tomazin apparently had no idea when she’d lost the dictaphone.
Victoria
Abbott, like howard before him is indeed a warmonger.
It is in the Tory DNA
They grew at the knee of the old RSL types and see the flag as an essential tool in electioneering.
Zoomster
Putting my tinfoil hat on.
Perhaps the dictaphone was deliberately and carelessly misplaced at the conference 😀
victoria
He loves it , from earlier this year.
[Tony Abbott compares stopping asylum-seeker boats to war]
“@NicholasDole: NSW Asst Labor Sec John Graham says there’s too much power in Sussex St. Says it feels like the Communist party. #nswpol #nswlaborconf”
NSW Labor today reforming leader selection. Ratio of members to Caucus improved towards members from Federal one.
Now that Julie Bishop is so happy and confident of support of the rebels does that mean they are Abbott’s new best friends. I wonder how the rebels failed to notice that Mr Abbott said some quite nasty things about them and their Russian homeland. if I was them I’d be quite unhappy.
“@Antibolt: Except they weren’t “tapes” and nothing was stolen. A slack journo lost a digital recorder. This isn’t Watergate. @BarnsGreg @LennaLeprena”
[“They must be nuts,” Joerg Forbrig, a senior program officer for central and eastern Europe at the Berlin bureau of the German Marshall Fund….. “It’s a very dangerous proposal and will be seen as a provocation by the separatists and the Russians.”]
WWI is a textbook example of how easily small terrorist incidents can *blow up in everyones’ faces. Those who don’t/won’t learn from history often end up repeating it
*yes, I know there was much more to it that the Sarajevo assassinations
rossmcg/poroti
A fascist comes to mind
86
guytaur
Posted Saturday, July 26, 2014 at 10:18 am | PERMALINK
“@Antibolt: Except they weren’t “tapes” and nothing was stolen. A slack journo lost a digital recorder. This isn’t Watergate. @BarnsGreg @LennaLeprena”
[As i said earlier, perception is everything]
WWP
Abbott on Thursday said he won’t deal with them and only recognises it as Ukraine land. All very noble and stupid as everyone else deals with them and make real progress the Dutch , Malays , UN and OSCE.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/mh17-fallout-vladimir-putins-daughter-forced-to-leave-home-in-netherlands-20140726-zx3op.html
Apologies if already posted!
@Bowenchris: Pleased to move the resolution that future leaders of NSW Labor will be elected by 50/50 caucus/membership #alpconf14 http://t.co/Lz3HbE1OrL
Oh dear, the troops may get a bit bolshie with our Strong Man leader when they hear this. Government back down coming in 10,9,8,7,6,5……..
[Soldiers, sailors and Air Force members’ pay in the firing line
Australian soldiers, sailors and Air Force personnel may be facing the same below-inflation wage offer as their civilian Defence Department counterparts.
The leaked pay position, signed off by the department’s powerful Defence Committee, also calls for its workers to give up two paid days off each year and give up pay and career progressions and other benefits]
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/soldiers-sailors-and-air-force-members-pay-in-the-firing-line-20140725-zwz32.html#ixzz38Wufl5sG
[WWP
Abbott on Thursday said he won’t deal with them and only recognises it as Ukraine land. All very noble and stupid as everyone else deals with them and make real progress the Dutch , Malays , UN and OSCE.]
Yet there is a whole range of people I normally consider intelligent on the whole ‘Abbott is just doing what any other PM would do bandwagon.’
I don’t know how they manage to come to that conclusion, I don’t think it is a sound conclusion. I also do not consider the whole ‘oh look Labor isn’t criticizing him’ argument to have any weight at all. Labor is always cowardly and the risk of blow back if they did criticize him is massive, so their quiet support is hardly surprising but no sign they think he is doing a good job.
When Russian troops mass on the border something usually happens.
Liberal fears on secret donor business, revealed in a secret recording of a meeting the Oz received http://buff.ly/1uoKHm8 #springst #auslaw
10:11 AM – 26 Jul 2014
As per above link
[The recording is highly embarrassing for Mr Mantach and the party, has outraged him and is the second time in 17 months that he has been exposed on tape discussing internal matters.
In the latest recording, he was critical of what he said had been the historical misuse of funds at Liberal Party headquarters for reasons other than for which the cash was raised.]
Poroti #68
“From the BBC coverage I know that the Russian separatists and villagers on whose heads the bodies and debris from flight M17 fell suffered terrible trauma from the event. They immediately began the search for bodies, on the first day simply marking the locations with white flags. I saw more than one gun-toting militiaman weeping. Women and children came with flowers and candles, and within hours the small group of UN observers were being conducted around in deep discussion with the soldiers. Next night I saw a large group of women and children with their priest, who conducted a religious ceremony as many wept, and the promise was made to “come to this place every year to pray for those killed”. Genuine and touching. I have yet to hear or read a kind word about them. They will be living with the aftermath for years to come.”
Thanks for this Poroti.
It exquisitely demonstrates the nature of jingoism, racism, stereotyping, prejudice, closed-mindedness, intolerance, lack of insight, manipulation by media, media laziness, vested interest, ignorance of human and political complexities, pathological distrust, wilful blindness and perhaps one or two other human foibles.
A revealing comment from Houston. It says to me the rebels have already said yes and backs up earlier rebel claims that Kiev had been the cause of the delay.
[ Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, who a short time ago issued a downbeat statement saying he hoped Ukraine could ratify the agreement so foreign investigators could get to the site.]
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/mh17/mh17-crash-forensics-team-sorts-bodies-with-227-coffins-sent-home/story-fno88it0-1227002275127
poroti
Isn’t Angus Houston a class act!