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| Blue numbers indicate size of two-party Liberal polling booth majorities. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room. |
Menzies covers eastern Melbourne suburbs from Bulleen at the western end through Templestowe, Doncaster, Donvale and Warrandyte to Wonga Park and Croydon North at the eastern end. It was created with the expansion of parliament in 1984, prior to which the area had been divided between Diamond Valley in the west and Casey in the east. At the time of its creation it extended northwards to Eltham, but this area was exchanged for the Warrandyte end of the electorate in 1996. The entire area is solid or better for the Liberals, who have held the seat at all times by margins of no less than 5.4%. The present margin of 14.5% is the highest in the electorate’s history, following consecutive swings of 2.7% against the statewide trend in 2010 and 5.8% in 2013.
The inaugural member for Menzies was Neil Brown, who had held Diamond Valley from 1969 to 1972 and again from 1975 to 1983, having lost the seat with the defeats of Coalition governments on both occasions. Established in the safe new seat of Menzies from 1985, he served as the party’s deputy leader under John Howard from 1985 to 1987. Brown retired in February 1991 and was succeeded by Kevin Andrews, who won the by-election held the following May without opposition from the Labor Party.
Noted for his religious convictions and social conservatism, Andrews came to prominence when he spearheaded a successful push to overturn Northern Territory euthanasia laws in federal parliament. He was promoted to the outer ministry as Ageing Minister after the 2001 election and then to cabinet in October 2003, serving first as Workplace Relations Minister during the introduction of WorkChoices and then as Immigration Minister from January 2007 until the government’s defeat the following November, in which time he was dogged by the Muhamed Haneef affair.
Andrews was dropped from the Coalition front bench after the November 2007 election defeat, but returned as Shadow Families, Housing and Human Services Minister when Tony Abbott became leader in December 2009. He had played a key role in Abbott’s rise to the leadership, having made a tokenistic challenge to Turnbull’s leadership a week earlier in protest against his support for the Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme. Andrews was back in cabinet following the election of Abbott’s government in September 2013 in the role of Social Services Minister, a newly packaged portfolio encompassing aged care, multicultural affairs and settlement services.
Tell me this can’t be true!!
Sarah Palin on Flight Malaysian Flight 370:
[..but I don’t hear anyone talking about the God possibility. I mean what if they accidently flew too high and got stuck up there?]
Centre
I don’t think we should sit back and watch ISIS commit genocide either.
Dio:
2005 wasn’t that long ago.
Dio
Yes. It has all the subtlety of an ice pick.
To each according to his needs and from each according to his means.
The peculiar thing about human nature is that, despite all the socialist meddling by the AFL commisars, the rich clubs just get richer and the poor clubs just keep getting poorer.
It is a bit like Monopoly. Unless the person who is getting wealthier and wealthier subsidises his fellow players the game comes to an end.
Boer
I didn’t or don’t read Bolt.
I mean, we’re not there, the situation must be pretty urgent.
I’m with Obama (all the way) here!
Qanda is excellent tonight.
Diogs
Yes, unfortunately we must shoulder some responsibility and provide some assistance.
About 120,000 Iraqi civilians have died violently in the ten years of Iraq War.
About 800,000 Rwandans died violently in 3 months in the Rwandan Genocide.
Genocide can kill a lot faster than war.
Dio
The difficulty with the genocide proposition is this: in which bit of human-to-human global bastardry do we intervene, and why?
We ignored the biggest post WW2 bloodletting in the Congo entirely, for example.
If Iraq happens, for oil reasons, to be the focus of our national interest, why did we ignore the ‘genocide’ being committed by Al Maliki?
Further, if ‘genocide’ was our focus, why did we participate in the naval blocade that doomed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi kids?
The problem I have with the genocide proposition is that it has been packaged, parcelled and sold in complete isolation from ALL other relevant considerations.
Abbott’s genocide proposition belittles real genocides, BTW. Further, it is designed to cause a mental cave-in by those who understand western meddling and interferance as the prime cause for the conditions that make ‘genocide’ possible and probable in the middle east.
Sooner or later, we have to get of what might be called the Merry Go Round.
Centre
Posted Monday, September 1, 2014 at 9:53 pm | Permalink
[Boer
I didn’t or don’t read Bolt.
I mean, we’re not there, the situation must be pretty urgent.
I’m with Obama (all the way) here!]
You should read Bolt. It would save you having to think.
Well, must to bed. Am looking forward to grandson duty tomorrow.
I thought the government should at least take the Kurds off the terrorist organisation list first before actually supplying weapons and aid to them.
[BB
So, a terrorist could strap a kilogram of plastic and a detonator onto one of those things, enter the GPS coordinates and then return to his day time job of Australian Post moto postal delivery person?]
I don’t have a clue what precautions they’d have for stopping a drone attack like this.
Shoot Down
You’d have to have some bloody crack marksmen on hand to do that. A drone that can carry a kilo (plus GPS and guidance paraphenalia) can fly at 100kph.
Send half a dozen drones to the same target at the same time and I doubt you’d get all of them.
RF Interference
By definition, an autonomous drone doesn’t need control signals from a base station, only GPS, so control channel jamming would be hit and miss. The only way you could nobble one by RF interference would be to do something highly sophisticated with the GPS signal itself. It *can* be done, and has been, but I doubt whether it could be arranged in the time allowed (and that’s if a drone which would have a small visual and radar footprint was detected with sufficient warning).
Other Means
Netting, protective canopies etc. might stop one from hitting its target, but that would be definitely a last resort measure. Every place the politician or other VIP visited would have to be set-up with such riggings. Doing so would make life very hard.
***********
The problem for law enforcement is that the things are so small and almost impossible to detect until they’re almost right on the destination/target. You’d need a lot of training to even realize what was happening before it was too late. Ever tried to figure out which way a plane is coming from when it’s flying fast? A lot of drill in anti-aircraft warfare is required for that. Now make that plane the size of a pizza box, camouflaged sky=blue (or whatever) making a lot less noise than a plane, flying low on auto pilot. A large public gathering, rally or sports arena would be a sitting duck. I’m not kidding: these things are almost impossible to see from more than 50 metres away. At 100kph, 50 metres is less than 2 seconds away.
Detecting the culprits afterwards would be easier, although for a fanatic, being caught is almost a badge of honour. Their lives are cheap, compared to the mission. Think of suicide bombers. They just don’t care if they caught or even killed.
The drones themselves are incredibly cheap. For $20,000 you could kit out half a dozen state of the art attack drones with all the trimmings, each carrying enough plastique to wipe out a company of soldiers, or demolish a building. You don’t even need to train the operators. Only one programmer is needed to program all the different routes. Mission security would also be a lot easier that way.
I have little doubt that a drone attack *will* happen (or at least be attempted), and sooner rather than later. These things could be set flying miles from their target. This is what’s probably informing the “5 kilometre” no-drone radius rule in force for the G20. But that might no be far enough. The technology improves monthly, and that’s just ones you can buy in shops. Custom made drones are easy for skilled people to put together than can fly faster and further than commercial models. All the guidance and other necessary auto-piloting stuff can be bought easily and openly on the net, from hundreds if not thousands of outlets.
To a terrorist, using a drone attack would have a certain attraction, as so many of their fellow crazies have been killed by drones themselves. Once upon a time the technology was top secret, highly sophisticated and extremely rare. Now it’subiquitous. Sure, cheap drones don’t have the range, ceiling, speed and payload of a full-on military drone, but they don’t need it. The overwhelming motivation of a terrorist is to cause damge, full stop, not to cause damage and then eat a sandwich or go home to the wife and kids like a military drone controlller does in Tampa (or wherever they control them from).
I seriously hope someone a lot smarter than I am – and on the *our* side – has figured out a way to bring those things down short of their targets before something tragic – tragic on perhaps a geopolitical level – happens.
BW
[The difficulty with the genocide proposition is this: in which bit of human-to-human global bastardry do we intervene, and why?]
The problem with answering that question is that there is no perfect answer and if we wait for one, genocides will continue to happen.
I support using the minimum amount of force to stop a likely genocide of more than 100,000 people. The problem is knowing what that minimum force is and what the blowback will be.
Shit like Rwanda should never be allowed to happen again.
Sorry for the bold above.
Boer
[You should read Bolt. It would save you having to think].
Maybe you should get someone else to do all your thinking for you!
You not doing a very good job at it yourself are you?
40 seats headstart in Scotland in a country with 600 seats is the equivalent of Labor having 10 safe seats in Australia not counted.
They could still win but it definitely tilts the odds against them.
Throws a cheap shot, then to bed in the very next minute.
Don’t worry we wont send you to do any fighting 😛
It makes it harder, yes, and will make a difference in close elections.
The evidence, however, is that most elections are not close enough for it to make a difference and talk of “permanent opposition” is ludicrous.
Centre@927
And throw in a pink tutu. 😉
Obviously how Scotland MPs affect the balance of power in Westminster is neither here nor there as far as reasons for leaving or staying in the union.
And in the end the English have to make their democracy work with or without the Scots. No one gets to be in government forever. They’ll muddle along. And if they somehow worked up the courage to ditch FPTP …
bemused
make it purple 😀
*night
Martin
[The evidence, however, is that most elections are not close enough for it to make a difference and talk of “permanent opposition” is ludicrous.]
Since WWII 6 out of 18 elections have been won by 45 seats or less. If I was a Labour supporter in England, I’d be praying the Scots don’t break away.
[Executives of sharemarket-listed Brickworks will give evidence at a corruption inquiry this week about a $125,000 donation to the NSW Liberal Party in 2010, at a time when the company was redeveloping a multimillion-dollar industrial site near Blacktown.
The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption has called Brickworks managing director Lindsay Partridge and the company’s chairman and major shareholder, Robert Millner to give evidence on Thursday.
Korn/Ferry chairman and former state planning minister Robert Webster is also scheduled to give evidence on Thursday, as revealed in Monday’s Australian Financial Review .]
http://www.afr.com/p/national/brickworks_execs_to_front_icac_over_1QdBSogTSVIwtKJewvzzIM
Jackol
I personally don’t care one way or the other if Scotland separates.
The fact that Labor has won 192 seats and the Tories 3 in the last four elections in Scotland indicate there is something wrong in the UK and I wouldn’t blame the Scots for leaving.
BB
Maybe the defenders could use a growler to disrupt the drones GPS locators, or even transmit locations that would cause them to cluster at a secure spot where they could be detonated?
I just had the mental image of a flock of little drones flitting around some sort of beacon like moths in lamplight.
Taking Scotland seats away is not the same as taking 40 seats off the Labor pile, because you are taking 60 seats out of Parliament and thus reducing the number needed for majority by 30: the net effect is to reduce the ALP by 10. So the question is not how many elections were won by 40 or fewer, it is how many were won by 10 or fewer.
Diogenes
[I don’t think we should sit back and watch ISIS commit genocide either.]
The better term here is probably democide, since systematic ISIS killings target all non-Salafis rather than a specific national identity.
Realistically, ISIS murderous campaigns can’t wipe out all non-Salafis though smaller groups, like the Yazidi would be at risk.
I have no ethical objection, subject to the obvious technical, schedule and operational feasibility issues with equipping those keen to resist these contemporary Salafists with the means to defend themselves. Unsurprisingly, I’d like to see us play an active part in human resettlement of the people threatened.
Equally, an open debate in parliament about just these matters plus mechanisms for transparent oversight is obviously needed. It’s scandalous that the major parties resisted this.
It’s possible too Martin, that resources hitherto devoted to Scotland would be put into England and the heightened prospect of Tory governments might change the balance in England. You can’t assume ceteris paribus because the absence of Scotland might change English voting patterns.
The real problem of course is FPtP voting. Losing that in favour of PR would radically weaken the Tories.
Martin
It depends how the other 20 seats would vote. They are a mix of Libs and Scot Nationalists.
Even if they were going to be balanced Tory/Labour, an election that had Labour led the Tories by 40 seats including Scotland would become a loss without Scotland.
981
I do not think many Scottish seats will be electing LibDems after their participation in the current government.
FRan,
[BB
Maybe the defenders could use a growler to disrupt the drones GPS locators, or even transmit locations that would cause them to cluster at a secure spot where they could be detonated?]
I’m sure there’ll be a way, but it has to be a way that works every time.
I guess you could put out jamming signals that clobbered the GPS (just overwhelmed it, which isn’t too hard), but you’d have to either have them on all the time or cart them around everywhere with your security team.
Then there’s always the chance that legitimate GPS users – say commercial aircraft, car drivers, delivery vans, taxis etc. – would be disrupted if the jamming was permanent. No-one could possibly object if their disruption was temporary and used to stop a terrorist attack.
Then again, there’s always inertial navigation… can’t be jammed. http://vision.in.tum.de/research/quadcopter
Tom
[I do not think many Scottish seats will be electing LibDems after their participation in the current government]
True. I assume the referendum will fail and then all the 60 seats will be Labour or Scot Nats.
Then the Tories would barely even bother to campaign, let alone spend any money on Scotland as their return for investment would be very, very low.
[Even if they were going to be balanced Tory/Labour, an election that had Labour led the Tories by 40 seats including Scotland would become a loss without Scotland.]
Yes, but very few elections are that close. Since 74 the closest gap between the two parties has been 48 in the current parliament.
I repeat: of course it makes Labour’s task *harder* but the evidence suggests *not that much* harder since very few elections are in the close enough to matter category. (And then there are Fran’s points.)
confessions:
I’m not sure – I linked to the Microsoft removal tool, if that did the trick then great!
The Tories tried to re-enter the game in Northern Ireland at the last election by reigniting the ties with the Ulster Unionist which were extinguished in 1973. The result was a disaster with the once great UUP eliminated from parliament.
The Tories have only 5 seats in Wales – it really is an English party and Southern English at that.
987
Once great UUP?
They were once the dominant party but their mismanagement and bias was a main factor that caused the Troubles.
Some inconvenient truths about our Ukrain1an allies for Abbott to digest
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/03/04/a-monster-reawakens-the-rise-of-ukrainian-fascism/
Great in the sense that it governed NI throughout the period of Stormont and usually won >80% and occasionally all the Westminster Seats. It was unable to give a sustainable and reasonable response to the Civil Rights Movement and subsequently split when O’Neill and Chichester-Clark were unable to get support for reform.
As with the republicans side the moderates have been side lined and the hard men of Paisley’s DUP are the dominant loyalists.
Deblonay now resorting to recycling ooga-booga “they once had a swastika-like symbol!” internet stories from March.
Hasn’t Putin authorised a fresh batch of propaganda for you to recycle?
@Jackol/991
Is it any difference that Abbott & Media resorting to ooga-booga on Terrorism?
If Scotland disolves the Union, the Parliament of Great Britain will cease to exist. Westminster will have to return to being the Parliament of England, which was abolished in 1707 when the Parliament of Great Britain and the Uniyted Kingdom was establisheed by the Act of Union.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain is a legal and political entity formed by the Union of two and only two countries – the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England (incorporating Wales). It was created by a bilateral internationally recognised treaty.
It is the case that upon dissolution of the Treaty of Union, its associated enabling acts of parliaments, and any subsequent contingent intra-state treaties and agreements derived therefrom, the United Kingdom of Great Britain will cease to be.
As you might expect, two and only two successor states will emerge from its discarded husk – the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England. There can be no continuing state of an extinguished voluntary union of two nations. It is on its face a daft proposition.
Consider the tautology: When the Union is dissolved, the Union ceases to be.
Scotland as a successor state, just like England, would retain EU membership, though there would have to be negotations with both successor states and the EU to regularise their new status.
Each will inherit the rights and responsibilities of any inter-state treaties entered into collectively on their behalf by the defunct United Kingdom.
The current United Kingdom was actually formed in 1801 when the Irish parliament was dissolved and the Kingdom of Ireland was united with the already united kingdoms of Scotland and England formed in 1707. It was thus the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which in 1922 became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Presumably if Scotland leaves it will be the UK of England and Northern Ireland at least until 2060 when nationalists will have a majority in NI.
[893
Fran Barlow
Briefly
I am very much better.]
I’m glad to hear it, Fran. For mine, a spring day passed in the sun, convalescing after the flu should be time well-spent.
994
In any renaming, that involved reintroducing England into the name, Wales would presumably want into the name or possibly out of the Union.
swamprat:
[As you might expect, two and only two successor states will emerge from its discarded husk – the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England.]
There is also the matter of a *continuator state*. For example, when the USSR dissolved, the Russian Federation was internationally recognised as the continuator state. This was based on the fact that it represented a majority of the population and territory of the USSR, a fact that would also apply to the non-Scotland portion of the UK. The remainder of the UK should have no problem being recognised as the continuator state, and for example inherit the permanent seat on the UN Security Council held by the current UK.
Presumably an independent Scotland doesn’t want nuclear weapons.
[846
Nicholas
Shame on the parliamentary Labor party for conspiring with the Coalition to prevent parliamentary debate of….the decision to funnel weapons to fighters in a civil war – fighters who include PKK, an organization deemed a terrorist organization by our own government.]
Such a debate would doubtless soon deteriorate into a Labor-bashing session, so it should come as no surprise that Labor would not welcome it. The LNP simply want to be seen to be able to act as they like, supreme, assured, powerful…and therefore indifferent to the Parliament. That is the entire purpose of the venture as far as the LNP is concerned. For Labor, the less attention given to Abbott’s parade, the better.
@briefly/999
Or worse.