Wide Bay has covered a variable area around Maryborough about 300 kilometres north of Brisbane since its creation at federation. Maryborough is currently at the northern end of an electorate that extends south along the coast to Noosa, which was gained at the redistribution before the 2007 election as its southern neighbour Fairfax was drawn southwards by population growth on the Sunshine Coast (which Wide Bay accommodated in its entirety for most of the period prior to 1949). The electorate also extends inland through Gympie to Murgon and Cherbourg.
Now a secure seat for the Liberal National Party, Wide Bay was one of 15 seats across the country won by Labor at the first election in 1901. Its member from then until 1915 was Andrew Fisher, who served three terms as prime minister and won the party’s first parliamentary majority at the election of 1910. Labor was narrowly defeated at a by-election held after Fisher retired due to ill health, and for the next 13 years the seat was held by Edward Corser, first as a Liberal and then in the Nationalist Party that succeeded it in 1917. The seat passed to the Country Party upon Corser’s death in 1928, when his son Bernard Corser was elected as the party’s candidate without opposition.
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| Teal and red numbers respectively indicate size of two-party majorities for the LNP and Labor. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room. |
Brendan Hansen’s election in 1961 gave Labor its first win in Wide Bay in nearly half a century, and he retained the seat until defeated amid a statewide swing against the Whitlam government in 1974. The seat has has since had two National/Country Party members, the present incumbent Warren Truss succeeding Clarrie Millar in 1990. The general trend over this time has been for increasing Nationals margins, with Truss retaining the seat by 8.5% amid Labor’s strong statewide result in 2007 and boosting his margin to 15.6% in 2010, before a narrowing to 13.2% at the 2013 election.
Warren Truss emerged through local Nationals ranks as a councillor for the Shire of Kingaroy from 1976 to 1990, before winning the party’s endorsement to succeed Joh Bjelke-Petersen as member for Barambah at the by-election which followed his retirement in 1988. However, Truss suffered a shock defeat at the hands of Trevor Perrett, a candidate of the eccentric Citizens Electoral Council who joined the Nationals a year later. He was amply compensated with endorsement for Wide Bay at the federal election two years later, and was elected without incident despite a 3.9% swing to Labor.
Truss served as a junior shadow minister in the consumer affairs portfolio after November 1994, but was cut from the front bench when the Nationals’ reduced share of seats within the Coalition reduced its share of the spoils of the 1996 election victory. His opportunity came in October the following year when the travel rorts affair garnered three ministerial scalps including Nationals MP John Sharp, resulting in Truss’s return to the consumer affairs portfolio together with customs. After the 1998 election he was reassigned to community services, and he then attained cabinet rank in July 1999 with his promotion to Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Minister. In July 2005 he secured his party’s deputy leadership and traded his portfolios for transport and regional services, and was again reassigned to trade in September 2006.
Truss was elevated to the leadership of the National Party when Mark Vaile resigned in the wake of the 2007 election defeat, although it has often been noted that his profile is a good deal lower than that of Barnaby Joyce, who moved from a Queensland Senate seat to the New South Wales lower house seat of New England at the 2013 election. As well as being Deputy Prime Minister, Truss has served as Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development since the election of the Abbott government.
[Etymonline is a great resource, but it’s a collection of ideas, a little like wiki rather than the last word on everything.]
I’m going with the numerous references on the internet as being far more likely to be correct rather than folkish conjecture.
[Not fair.]
Yeah, I agree. At the end of the day on a forum such as this you can always vote with your scroll wheel or get the fuck out of dodge.
You subject yourself to stuff you don’t wanna read? Only one person’s to blame for that.
Assange?
S N O O Z E zzzz
Centre:
We’ve had 2 days which are more like autumn or late spring and it’s winter! Next two days are forecast in the low 20s FFS!
[ So where do you really stand re JG and KR and what do you think of Assange ? 😉
If you’re going to troll you may as well hit the ground hard!
😀 ]
We’ve already got the Israel-Palestine Pavlov Dog argument going strong at the moment. That leaves the Greens-Labor finger-pointing about the ETS as another option.
Or we could go way back to Obama v Hillary.
[Weather: Fine
Track: Good
Carbon Pollution: Sensational]
I think Centre is challenging Kent Brockman:
[ The Simpsons‘ news anchor Kent Brockman asks: “Could this record-breaking heat wave be the result of the dreaded greenhouse effect? Well, if 70-degree days in the middle of winter are the ‘price’ of car pollution, you’ll forgive me if I keep my old Pontiac.”]
Connie
Spring. I sneezed earlier today.
[challenging]
channeling, I meant
Dio
[Or we could go way back to Obama v Hillary.]
Or ‘did Turing win WWII by himself?’.
DL
Let’s be honest, we’re saving power and more importantly, money, from not using so much heating.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/04/india-never-agreed-to-accept-return-of-non-citizen-tamil-asylum-seekers?CMP=twt_gu
Doesn’t really matter who is being loose with the truth… the way these asylum seekers were treated was disgraceful.
[Or we could go way back to Obama v Hillary.]
Hillary is supposedly running as Dems candidate for Potus in 2016. Just sayin’!
This is innovative and at least it keeps the workers in employment. 😆
[Workers building the world’s biggest ships could soon don robotic exoskeletons to lug around 100-kilogram hunks of metal as if they’re nothing
AT A sprawling shipyard in South Korea, workers dressed in wearable robotics were hefting large hunks of metal, pipes and other objects as if they were nothing.]
fess
[We’ve had 2 days which are more like autumn or late spring and it’s winter! Next two days are forecast in the low 20s FFS!]
Off topic? The weather?
A friend was given a kitten for Xmas by his neighbours. I asked: Don’t your neighbours like you?
Anyway, after doing everything you have to do for kittens, speying, etc, including giving it a ‘tree’, he recently decided to buy some new furniture.
Wrong. The kitten decided the new furniture was the best place to sharpen her claws.
Kitten’s been despatched.
What’s my point? Early Spring here in Victoria. Sparrows are going crazy; nesting early, and the reason why his neighbours gave him the kitten in the first place.
To stop him complaining about the birds nesting in his ceiling.
If only he’d given it one more month.
Centre:
Yeah, spring. My asthma has been playing up today. A sure sign of the weather.
poroti – fair questions. I have commented before on JG and KR (years ago), but have avoided it lately due to … one or two sensitive souls. On Assange, I’ve said nothing (that I remember, which, as I said to Dee the other day, is a struggle for me).
JG and KR – I consider them both to have had great strengths and weaknesses. They both changed the country for the good as PM, but as very different leaders. I do not consider one above the other.
My view is that the faults in their leadership lay the party structures (both main parties) that encourages party leadership through competition and factionalism rather than true, measurable leadership qualities. I think Greg Combet could be a very good leader of the Labor Party, but circumstances do not, apparently, allow. I think Tony Abbott is the worst kind of leader – there by default and bullying, and not a true leader in an organisational psychology sense.
On Assange – in terms of the leaking documents etc – I think it’s important to expose the stupidities of our governing bodies and coroporations. In terms of the rape thing – not sure, there’s something not right in the information I see in the media, so that remains open.
I am a consultant, so my answers will always have two options – it’s the way I think. Some may say that’s sitting on the fence. I just see it as options and part of the discussion – there’s always several sides, and none are perfect….sadly.
Does that help? 😉
I just wish there was a fishing emoticon to put at the end of my comments above 🙂
Fran Barlow:
Hmm, an interesting theory, but is there evidence that the ancients knew of the sulphur content of flatus (which is in the form of hydrogen sulphide, a compound not discovered until the Enlightenment)?
Nappin
[Does that help?]
Not really but consultants rarely do.
kezza:
A Facebook friend had the same problem with a new cat and happened upon a hideously expensive, designer sheepskin throw rug for dogs that she sourced from some designer Subiaco boutique. Thinking the new cat would love to luxuriate in sleep on the sheepskin, she bought it. Cat loved it, but only to claw at it.
Friend was happy though, as it saved her furniture from being clawed to death, and the sheepskin was a lot cheaper than buying a whole new couch!
[Or ‘did Turing win WWII by himself?’.]
I read a book that said Patrick Blackett, the physicist who developed Operational Research, did more to win WWII than Turing.
nappin
[ just wish there was a fishing emoticon ]
There’s also a ‘Banging head on the desk’ emoticon available. I wish Crikey would add that one.
CTar1 – political and management consultants – I’d agree. I ain’t one of them.
If kezza has the guts to talk about being raped no one should use it against her. FFS.
Darren Laver @ 806 Kent Brockman made that comment in 1992.
Good thing we did all that stuff to stop the Dreaded Greenhouse Effect in the meantime. Dunno how banning a smokin’ reggae band helped prevent climate change tho.
Dio
[I read a book that said Patrick Blackett, the physicist who developed Operational Research, did more to win WWII than Turing.]
Don’t start it! 😀
[The value of Australia’s Future Fund has surpassed $100 billion for the first time since it was set up by then-Treasurer Peter Costello in 2006.
In releasing its provisional results for the 2013-14 financial year, the fund said on Monday it was worth $101 billion at the end of June, after investment returns for the period totalled $12 billion]
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/future-fund-tops-100-billion-20140804-100d0k.html#ixzz39Q5bVw1A
CT
[ I read a book that said Patrick Blackett, the physicist who developed Operational Research, did more to win WWII than Turing.
Don’t start it! 😀 ]
Everyone knows it was really the Poles who broke Enigma. Turing stood on the shoulders of giants.
[I actually told people on here not long ago that I was sorry for boring them to tears about my story, but getting some sordid shit off my chest actually did help to vent somewhere, anywhere.]
There are people you can pay to be your friend, Kezza. Look them up in the Yellow Pages.
CT
Seriously
Kozaczuk, Władysław; Straszak, Jerzy (2004), Enigma: How the Poles Broke the Nazi Code, New York: Hippocrene Books,
Dio – I’ve never heard of Patrick Blackett. I’ll have to look him up.
Patrick Dean I know about. Wikipedia is silent about what he did with his time prior to 1960. Perhaps that he was Chairman of the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee later might hint.
Maybe he won WWII …
Qanda tonight is apparently from Garma.
[ ABC Q&A @QandA · 3h
Join us for #QandA tonight w/ Noel Pearson @NovaPeris @KenWyattMP Djawa Yunupingu Joe Morrison Dhanggal Gurruwiwi ]
[If kezza has the guts to talk about being raped no one should use it against her. FFS.]
You must be new here, Jules. Kezza talks about little else.
Which is fair enough, except she seems to blame all males for her misfortune. Whether they’ve ever met her (or want to meet her), or not.
You get to a point where you’ve heard it all before, and much more eloquently.
When this is pointed out to her – basically “Please STFU” – she gets snarky and then runs off at the mouth. Takes no prisoners, does Kezza.
Bottom line: she trades on it. There IS a difference between that and the alternative method, which is to get some therapy and move on without blaming everybody else for her troubles.
[Everyone knows it was really the Poles who broke Enigma. Turing stood on the shoulders of giants.]
I thought it was the Dutch. Perhaps I was wrong.
And for those who bother to engage with the show via twitter:
[ ABC Q&A @QandA · 3m
If you’re new to our #QandA tweeting community, here are some helpful hints for cutting through for onscreen http://bit.ly/PPr40G ]
fess
I’m glad it worked for your friend, albeit expensively.
Since my son and his girlfriend (now wife) moved overseas, I became the reluctant owner of their cat. He’s really lovely but . . . demanding, and a bird (and bat) hunter and catcher. If I hear him yowl it means he’s caught something and I have to be quick to let it free.
Freaks me out.
But he’s a bloody bed scratcher! Not the living room stuff. Drives me spare. Have to keep the bedroom doors shut during the day
Find myself yelling “Nein!” (he only reacts to German) lots, at night.
My friend resorted to getting the kitten’s claws trimmed. Didn’t stop it. I won’t do that to this cat though.
You’re a piece of work BB.
There are always options. Sometimes they’re all bad and you have to choose the least worst.
Bushfire
That’s mean.
William:
Can we please have a separate kezza thread for those who want to keep workshopping her life, despite vehemently insisting (despite somewhat hypocritically I might add) that they are over hearing about it?
kezza:
Apparently there are sprays you can get to repel cats to stop the destruction you describe. I have no idea whether they work though. I’ve tried similar dog repellants for the garden and they are useless, so I’m assuming cat repellents would be similarly ineffective.
‘fess
[Apparently there are sprays you can get to repel cats …]
Does it work on other posters?
Catty ones, CTar1
I blame the encouragers, and they were numerous.
CTar:
It did, bet William’d pay money for it.
Speaking of UN veto powers, I wish UN veto powers by permanent members only mean that wielding one requires an absolute supermajority by the other members.
[Bushfire Bill
Posted Monday, August 4, 2014 at 9:04 pm | PERMALINK
If kezza has the guts to talk about being raped no one should use it against her. FFS.
You must be new here, Jules. Kezza talks about little else.]
That’s not true. I make thousands of posts on any number of political situations. Provide commentary, links, etc.
[Which is fair enough, except she seems to blame all males for her misfortune. Whether they’ve ever met her (or want to meet her), or not.]
I don’t blame all males. I blame the males in my family for what happened to me. But I don’t trust men, as a consequence.
[You get to a point where you’ve heard it all before, and much more eloquently.]
Oh really. There’s some eloquence that’s required before you find it authentic?
[When this is pointed out to her – basically “Please STFU” – she gets snarky and then runs off at the mouth.]
Oh dearie me, Bushfire Bill has had e-bloody-nough of hearing about what happens to some women. Maybe they deserved it, in his mind.
[Takes no prisoners, does Kezza.]
Suffer.
[Bottom line: she trades on it.]
Yeah, Jules, watch out. I want your sympathy.
[There IS a difference between that and the alternative method, which is to get some therapy and move on without blaming everybody else for her troubles.]
BB seems very upset that I’ve come to some acceptance of what happened to me.
Maybe I’m just as good as BB now, and he can’t handle it.
Maybe he just needs someone to put down. To make himself feel better.
Aluminium ammonium sulphate is used to deter dogs cats etc..
Here are some suggestions for discouraging cat scatching.
http://www.allourpets.com/feline/stop-scratching.shtml
[3. Cover the furniture with something your cat does not like: double sided tape, some plastic or aluminium foil. Some cats dislike the feeling and sound of foil, and most cats hate things that stick to their fur. Double-sided sticky tape used in carpet installation works well, but be sure the tape won’t harm your cat or furniture.]
I do not know much about cats but using negative reinforcement (foil on the furniture or an alarm on curtains) on the unwanted behaviour and positive reinforcement for desired behaviour (giving the cat a treat when it uses the scratch post) should work.
Obama putting Russia down –
[“I do think it’s important to keep perspective: Russia doesn’t make anything,” he told the Economist.
“Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow for opportunities. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking.]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/president-obama-russia-doesnt-make-anything-9645955.html
Glad Qanda is coming from Garma, and glad the ABC is doing an indigenous only focus.
Well done.