 |
| Red and blue numbers respectively indicate size of two-party Labor and Liberal polling booth majorities. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room. |
Created when the Australian Capital Territory was first divided into two electorates in 1974, Fraser covers the northern half of Canberra, with Lake Burley Griffin and the Molonglo River forming its southern boundary. The southern half of Canberra, together with the non-residential remainder of the Australian Capital Territory, is accommodated by the electorate of Canberra. Whereas Canberra was held by the Liberals from 1975 to 1980 and again for a brief period after a 1995 by-election, Fraser has at all times been held by Labor. Andrew Leigh came to the seat at the 2010 election after the retirement of Bob McMullan, who had held it since a rearrangement caused when the ACT’s representation reverted back to two seats after briefly going to three between the elections of 1996 and 1998. This involved the displacement of Steve Darvagel, who had come to Fraser at a by-election in February 1997 caused by the retirement of John Langmore. McMullan’s vacancy in Canberra was filled by Annette Ellis, who had hitherto been the first and final member for the short-lived seat of Namadji.
When McMullan and Ellis both announced their impending retirements in early 2010, there were suggestions that they were pushed as much as jumped, in McMullan’s case because powerbrokers wished for his seat to go to Left faction nominee Nick Martin. However, the independence of the local branches was instead asserted during the complicated preselection struggles which followed in both seats. Suggestions of a factional arrangement were made to appear particularly distasteful by the strong fields of candidates which emerged, with Leigh joined in the race for Fraser by constitutional law maven George Williams, locally well-connected West Belconnen Health Co-operative chair Michael Pilbrow, and over half-a-dozen others. The Left membership voted down a deal to win backing for Martin by reciprocating support for Right candidate Mary Wood in Fraser, reportedly due to concern about that the Right was not united enough to make the deal stick, and also because it was felt the faction would be better off securing an arrangement with Gai Brodtmann, who had stitched together a cross-factional support base in pursuit of her own bid for Canberra. When the Right’s own candidates dropped out early in the counts, its support was thrown behind the ultimate winners, Leigh and Brodtmann, with Leigh prevailing in the final Fraser ballot by 144 votes to 96.
Leigh was professor of economics at the Australian National University immediately before entering politics, having earlier practised law in Sydney and London and gained a doctorate from Harvard University. A Julia Gillard loyalist, he gained the position of parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister in the shake-up that followed Kevin Rudd’s abortive leadership bid in March 2013, only to lose it when Rudd returned to the leadership at the end of June. Although factionally unaligned, he won promotion to the outer shadow ministry after the September 2013 election defeat as Assistant Shadow Treasurer.
Let the games begin Guytaur
Farry O’Barrell to make the ICAC run on side tomorrow…
jeffemu
The chances of seeing Peta Credlin in the witness box of ICAC just got greater 😀
“@NeilChenoweth: #ICAC Abbott COS Credlin wanted to use Brickworks MD for Question Time after Nicolaou referred him as “very good supporter of the party””
Kate McClymont @Kate_McClymont 1m
ICAC lifts suppression order on Peta Credlin and Paul Nicolaou emails http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/icac-lifts-suppression-order-on-peta-credlin-and-paul-nicolaou-emails-20140908-10dr7v.html … via @smh
Have the focus groups been telling the Libs somethingthety didn’t expect ? Today we Have Julie Boadicea Bishop saying “Wiping out Islamic State ‘impossible’ and Colonel Tony Blimp goes ” ‘We rightly shrink from reaching out to these conflicts.’
WWP
*laughs*
@NeilChenoweth: Why Abbott COS Peta Credlin’s emails are #ICAC bombshell http://t.co/ynURT7bybT #auspol
p
You got it.
On the japan’s economy, youth failing (and people wonder why they don’t have kids):
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/09/07/japan-young-outlook-bleak/14964463/
Sexism is rife in Japan:
http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-japans-bid-for-economy-driven-by-women-faces-big-hurdles-2014-9?IR=T
BW my daughter added popcherry fashion to my Instagram feed a couple of weeks ago – apparently to aid me in some way – until then I’d never heard of them. However they add a certain brightness between yoga and photography posts.
[73
lizzie
John Falzon @JohnFalzon 6m
Federal welfare changes blamed for spike in suicides in Tasmania
https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/24915309/federal-welfare-changes-blamed-for-spike-in-suicides-in-tasmania/ … ]
See the UK over the last 2-3 years for where that is going.
[88
jeffemu
For a warmonger he is a gutless bastard.]
Most warmongers are just filthy cowards. Happy to demand from the safety of their armchair that others get sent off to die gloriously on their behalf, but they never sign up and put themselves at any risk of life and limb.
z
Yes, the perils of allowing big business, banks and government to become so interconnected that if one falls, all fall.
The result is a system where nothing is allowed to fail and which sucks up endless amounts of capital.
guytaur @108
Love the imagery of this comment about donations to the Libs.
[“Giving money to the Liberal Party was like giving a hot chip to a bunch of seagulls]
caf
[In a real shooting war, as unlikely as that is, they would be used to defend sea lanes / merchant shipping, which will always be vital given that we are so import-dependent. {my emphasis}]
Australia had beetter hope that there isn’t a real shooting war, because if there is no quantity of submarines that we could conceivably maintain while we were hoping for one to get our money’s worth out of them.
The whole thing is mad. $40bn on subs. Sheesh. That’s only marginally more stupid than $24bn on fighter aircarft which will also be no use.
Listening to Abbott I am guessing that the Japanese will build the hulls and the propulsion systems and that Australian workers will install the coffee machines and, I guess, Collins Class Mk2 sensors and, I imagine, the fitout for cruise missiles and the like.
So there will be plenty of scope for the unions and the Australian defence cartel to screw the taxpayers after all.
guytaur
As per the link
[The emails show Mr Abbott’s office working with Mr Partridge and Brickworks for Mr Abbott’s campaign against the carbon tax, at a time when senior federal Liberals including Ms Credlin’s husband, Brian Loughnane, would have been aware that Brickworks, a prohibited donor, had channelled funds to the NSW Liberals via the Free Enterprise Foundation.
Counsel assisting ICAC Geoffrey Watson, SC, said on Thursday “we’ve been threatened” with a Supreme Court action to suppress the emails after concerns were raised by Robert Newlinds, SC, the counsel for former assistant treasurer Arthur Sinodinos.
“I think it’s not coming from Senator Sinodinos, it was coming from the Liberal Party,” Mr Watson said.]
Can we officially say team Abbott has been icacd!
@Fran/115
It’s no different to spend $40 bill on Fraudband?
The timing of the Peta Credlin revelation could not be better for Labor. It means the Murdochracy will have to be restrained (by its standards I mean) in its attacks on Gillard at TURC.
guytaur
Seriously? They will go harder on TURC
Fran
[Australia had beetter hope that there isn’t a real shooting war, because if there is no quantity of submarines that we could conceivably maintain while we were hoping for one to get our money’s worth out of them.
The whole thing is mad. $40bn on subs. Sheesh. That’s only marginally more stupid than $24bn on fighter aircarft which will also be no use.]
This is a typical Greens response: let’s go naked on defence.
The two conceivable threats to Australia over the next half century are China, Indonesia and India.
All are very vulnerable to a strategic conventional submarine force operating in the Indian Ocean. All of Indian’s seaborne trade and around half of China’s POL go that way.
There is only one conventional strategic deterrent to China and that is submarines operating in the Indian Ocean.
BTW, you appear to have a WW2 of what submarines can do and what merchant shipping looks like. It would not take very many super tanker losses for war to become intolerable for economies like China’s or India’s, even during war time.
But I guess the Greens think that handing out AK-47s to the proles will do fine when people o/s realize that Greens’ defence policy is to do Naked Continent.
This, when any self-respecting Trot should know that in continental defence, an AK-47 is about as useful as an icepick to head…
…oh, wait.
[guytaur
Posted Monday, September 8, 2014 at 10:34 am | Permalink
The timing of the Peta Credlin revelation could not be better for Labor. It means the Murdochracy will have to be restrained (by its standards I mean) in its attacks on Gillard at TURC.]
It is the other way round. The attacks on Gillard have been orchestrated because of the Liberals’ Ashby, Budget, ICAC smash ups.
I’m not sure if people outside SA realise how bad this submarine news is for the state. More than other capitals Adelaide has been gutted by the death of manufacturing in Australia. Successive governments have merrily exposed us to uncontrolled forces of free trade and the effects of the mining boom with no plan of any kind to help places like SA and Tasmania transition to this new economy.
Adelaide’s north in particular is already in a dire state, with very high unemployment. This is where the submarine work is critical, many people there rely directly or indirectly on ASC for their livelihood. Most people in Adelaide would know someone with some connection to it. And there will be flow on effects right through the economy.
Our state government has already spent what it reasonably can on infrastructure projects to keep the state ticking over (hospital etc), but there is no more give in the budget for anything more.
The Libs have effectively condemned SA to become another Tasmania in every sense, or even an Australian version of Detroit. And the Commonwealth has decided that it is ok for the mining boom to cause massive, potentially permanent disparities between the states.
victoria
They were always going to go with extreme prejudice on Gillard at TURC. Its what was set up to do.
However they will have to back off a bit. We have seen the form in the UK.
Remember I did say by their standards.
[The two conceivable threats to Australia over the next half century are China, Indonesia and India.]
Hopefully our military can at least count when this mythical war starts.
How the hell is India a threat to us, or anyone other than Pakistan?
The emails reveal that, in March 2011, while in Opposition, Ms Credlin was advised by Mr Nicolaou that the managing director of Brickworks, Lindsay Partridge, was “a very good supporter to the party”.
Brickworks was one of the largest corporate donors to the Liberal Party, giving a massive $384,000 in a nine-month period from July 2010 to April 2011.
As well as its brand Austral Bricks, Brickworks also lists property development as a core business. The ICAC has heard that Brickworks used the Free Enterprise Foundation, a shadowy Canberra-based organisation, to channel $125,000 in illicit donations to the NSW Liberals for the March 2011 state election.
Since 2009, property developers have been banned from donating to NSW political parties, but it is legal for such donations to go to federal parties.
One of the previously suppressed emails reveals that on March 1, 2011, Mr Nicolaou sent Ms Credlin an email titled “Re Carbon Tax”.
“Dear Peta,
Please note below from Lindsay Partridge the MD of Brickworks the largest producer of bricks in Australia and a very good supporter of the Party.”
Mr Nicolaou attached an earlier message from Mr Partridge which read:
“Paul, Tell Tony to stick to his guns on no carbon tax.
I am running an internal fight with the BCA [Business Council of Australia] who seem to be driven by a few companies who will make bundles out of the tax.”
Mr Partridge concluded by saying: “We want certainty that there is no new tax.”
Ms Credlin replied enthusiastically to Mr Nicolaou’s request.
“Lindsay provided a great line for Question Time. Do you have a number that I might be able to contact him on and see if he was happy for us to use it…”
Mr Partridge, who was in France, copied Ms Credlin into an email he sent to Mr Nicolaou in reply. “In Australia most building and construction materials are made locally due to the weight; they [are] expensive to import. Under a carbon tax regime many products including cement production will move offshore.”
He went on to say that the tax would drive up the price of bricks.
Two months later, on May 3, 2011, the then Opposition Leader Tony Abbott visited the Austral Bricks factory in Melbourne which he proclaimed was “one of the most efficient plants in the world”. He claimed a carbon tax would cause a 10 per cent rise in costs at Brickworks which would be passed on to consumers.
On September 1, 2011, Mr Abbott was photographed with Mr Partridge, this time at the Austral Bricks site at Horsley Park in western Sydney, again protesting how much the tax would affect the cost of bricks.
A fortnight later, Paul Fletcher, the member for the northern Sydney seat of Bradfield, invoked Mr Partridge’s name in federal parliament.
“What have people in the manufacturing sector to say about this carbon tax? Mr Lindsay Partridge, the managing director of Brickworks, had this to say:
‘The end result will be an exodus of manufacturing industries and investment offshore, jobs will be lost, the cost of housing will increase and there will be no change to carbon emissions’.”
The emails, which were briefly made public last week, were quickly removed after Arnold Bloch, the law firm acting for Senator Arthur Sinodinos, raised concerns that pages 150-151 of a volume of documents about the Free Enterprise Foundation should not be made public until Mrs Bishop ruled on whether they were made for parliamentary business, and therefore could be ruled to be privileged documents.
Coincidentally, Mrs Bishop was also referred to in the same 338-page volume of exhibits.
She was a director of the Dame Pattie Menzies Foundation Trust which received $11,000 from the Free Enterprise Foundation on December 9, 2010, which it then directed to the NSW branch of the party for use in the 2011 state election.
The previous day, Mr Partridge has sent a cheque for $125,000 to the Free Enterprise Foundation with a note which read: “We trust this donation will provide assistance with the 2011 NSW State election campaign.”
A $2000 donation to the Dame Pattie foundation from Australian Corporate Holdings, a company connected to Sydney property developer and sailor Syd Fischer, was also passed on to the NSW Liberals.
In July 2010, Mr Nicolaou, who was getting a six per cent cut of all donations he collected, emailed Simon McInnes, the finance director of the NSW Liberal Party boasting:
“Please note! Another $50k for us via Free Enterprise Foundation from Brickworks.
Only a minute earlier Mr Partridge had sent an email saying:
“Paul, via the diversionary organisation there is $50k for NSW
$250k in total.”
Three days earlier Mr Nicolaou had invited Mr Partridge to a “very private dinner” with Tony Abbott and 10 senior business leaders at the Hunters Hill home of Dick Honan, the chairman of the Manildra Group.
The cost was $5000 per person.
Mr Partridge replied, “send me the details, will I get a photo with Tony like I got from John Howard?”.
The Brickworks managing director also said, “I will be wanting to talk about my employees on AWAs [Australian Workplace Agreements] who are now stuck an (sic) and don’t want to be re-unionised.”
Although the event was cancelled, it didn’t stop Mr Partridge from sending off his $250,000 donation to the party.
Mr Nicolaou also shared the good news of Brickworks’ donation with Peta Credlin’s husband Mr Loughnane, as well as then treasurer of the NSW Liberal Party, Arthur Sinodinos, who will give evidence on Tuesday along with former premier Barry O’Farrell.
Another Brickworks director, Robert Webster, was on the NSW Liberals’ finance committee.
He has told the ICAC he was not involved in the company making the $125,000 donation to the state branch of the party before the last election.
Wow to the above – what ever happened to trivia nights and cake stalls!
The Brickworks-Credlin stuff we have just seen released is a far more serious problem for the Libs that Ashbygate.
Whether or not Brickworks was strictly a “developer” (not totally clear to me), it shows the Federal Libs accepting donations on behalf of the NSW Libs in order to avoid any possible trouble with Nathan Rees’ donations law.
Worse still, in combination with last week’s evidence re O’Farrell, it demonstrates a “donations=influence” culture in the Liberal Party and even a bit of a “cash for questions” tendency a la the UK.
The best defence for the Libs against this stuff is to drag up as much as possible about the trade unions and their pernicious influence on Labor: ie, demonstrating how both sides are as bad as each other And let’s face it, there’s tons of bad stuff about the unions that’s going to come out.
Still, it’s not great news for the Libs. And it’s even worse news for democracy.
guytaur
See boerwar’s comments at 122.
So long as our military ‘might’ can deter PNG and give New Zealand second thoughts it will be doing about as much as we can rationally hope it will do.
I guess as a military vassal state of the US we also have to have enough capability to keep them happy, the rest is just toys for the boys. Much the way they treat their female colleagues now that I think about it.
Meher baba
Labor is not in govt. The Libs are. Pressure ought to be brought to bear on them right now
Cant help but notice that the Scottish polling swung dramatically in favour of YES right after Tones’ bizarre and annoying intervention in favour of NO.
Admittedly the Patronising BT lady was at the same time, but Ive seen him also cited several times on Scottish tweets.
Wouldnt that be hilarious if Tones’ was one minor factor tipping Scotland narrowly into independence. LOL.
[Patrick Bateman
Posted Monday, September 8, 2014 at 10:41 am | Permalink
I’m not sure if people outside SA realise how bad this submarine news is for the state.
…
The Libs have effectively condemned SA to become another Tasmania in every sense, or even an Australian version of Detroit. And the Commonwealth has decided that it is ok for the mining boom to cause massive, potentially permanent disparities between the states.]
I don’t know how many people inside South Australia realize just how much more vulnerable we are in defence terms because of the cost overruns, the inefficiences and the shockingly bad record of defence construction generally.
The Collins alone are costing us around $1 billion a year on maintenance to keep just two vessals at sea. Their latest (reported) peccadillo is that they catch fire at sea.
In essence, Australian taxpayers were subsidising South Australia to make us more, not less, militarily vulnerable.
Well done, the Liberals for coming to their senses on the woeful cost-effectiveness of defence constuction in Australia.
Boerwar
[The two conceivable threats to Australia over the next half century are China, Indonesia and India.]
Aside from the obvious error in there. How on earth do you figure any of those three countries are a threat??
I suppose if you had to invent threats, they’d suffice, but seriously how do you come to the conclusion they’re a threat?
victoria
The planning for TURC happened while Julia Gillard was still PM.
The Libs would have had no idea that Peta Credlin would come up in a state corruption body at this particular point in time
Patrick Bateman@123 The Tasmanian and South Australian people (and perhaps other regional areas – should get together and create their own political party – calling it the “Southern League or some such – and seek to gain the balance of power in “one or both houses and then gouge out as much Federal assistance for their economies as they can.
If I didn’t have better things to do with my time, I’d try to set this up myself. It would actually be in the national interest: far better that the benefits of the resources boom be spent on ensuring a reasonable spread of population across all areas of the continent rather than continuing to fuel an unsustainable house price boom along the eastern seaboard and around Perth.
BW
There is no threat from China, India or Indonesia, and if one develops then the time to work out what to do about it would be then? In 1964 we’d have had a different sense of what defence assets than we have now. In 2064 I daresay it will be different again.
Working out what defence assets we will need to parry an unknowable threat in the indeterminate future seems an odd way to go abiout stuff.
[rather than continuing to fuel an unsustainable house price boom along the eastern seaboard and around Perth.]
Unfortunately we get the unsustainable house prices in Adelaide too, and the increased cost of exports, and all that, just not much of the wealth.
[Environment Minister Greg Hunt says that claim is counter to an affidavit Mr Ashby presented in court proceedings against Mr Slipper.
“I can’t imagine someone would say one thing to the court and another thing privately,” Mr Hunt told ABC radio on Monday.
“I back Christopher’s view of this 100 per cent.”
Mr Pyne confirmed in 2012 he had met with Mr Ashby, but insisted he was not told of the pending court action.
“I had no specific knowledge of the allegations made by Mr Ashby]
This specific knowledge thingy is a favourite of the Libs.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/cabinet-colleague-backs-pyne-over-ashby-20140908-3f1y6.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
[Patrick Bateman@123 The Tasmanian and South Australian people (and perhaps other regional areas – should get together and create their own political party – calling it the “Southern League or some such – and seek to gain the balance of power in “one or both houses and then gouge out as much Federal assistance for their economies as they can.]
This is not a terrible idea, but it would take Palmer-esque levels of wealth to pull it off given the pro-Liberal media across the nation.
[poroti
Posted Monday, September 8, 2014 at 10:18 am | PERMALINK
Have the focus groups been telling the Libs somethingthety didn’t expect ? Today we Have Julie Boadicea Bishop saying “Wiping out Islamic State ‘impossible’ and Colonel Tony Blimp goes ” ‘We rightly shrink from reaching out to these conflicts.’]
For what its worth, Neil Mitchell opined on 3aw last week that the Australian people were not showing any support for a renewal of Australian involvement in Iraq. He also (typically) said that they should be.
[Patrick Bateman
Posted Monday, September 8, 2014 at 10:42 am | Permalink
The two conceivable threats to Australia over the next half century are China, Indonesia and India.
Hopefully our military can at least count when this mythical war starts.
How the hell is India a threat to us, or anyone other than Pakistan?]
You do need to use your imagination a bit, look back a bit, look around a bit, and then look forward a bit.
One of the useful ways of looking at our neck of the woods is that the West is a temporary interruption in a millenia long conflict between India and China.
Here is just one scenario to answer your question:
Indonesia, for historical reasons, is basically in the anti-Chinese camp.
Faced with a basically unsustainable approach to population and natural resources, both India and Indonesia reckon they need a bit of lebensraum.
Their eyes turn south…
So they get together. India builds its own jets, etc, etc, etc. Indonesia has the proximity.
Let’s say half of Oz each, with Indonesia picking up PNG by way of a side dish.
Sometime in next fifty to a hundred years this possibility is real.
Anyone who thinks that our status quo will survive intact the next 100 years is utterly blind to how things operate in our neck of the woods.
If we were in a shooting war we’d be fighting with hugely expensive planes, tanks, submarines and other equipment that we do not have the ability to produce or replace and only limited ability to repair, at least not without a lead time of years or decades. We had better hope the war only lasts a month or so.
You could just about add VIC once the car industry goes – at least SA has renewables industry. Not here, thanks you you-know-what-bozos.
Rust belt.
[Aside from the obvious error in there. How on earth do you figure any of those three countries are a threat??]
India I agree is no threat.
Indonesia was pretty close to electing a militarist president who styled himself on the 1930s Nazi party, so there’s that.
And anyone with a grasp of what is going on in Asia would agree that tensions between China and various third parties (US, Japan, and various smaller Asian nations) is the biggest threat to regional security. While I was in Japan last year Chinese and Japanese military vehicles were playing chicken over the Senkakus, with some very real Cold War-style risks of someone doing something stupid.
[at least SA has renewables industry]
Not for much longer thanks to the fossil fuel shills currently in power in Canberra dismantling the first new industry to grow in Australia in a generation.
In Murdoch’s Oz today:
[Batts inquiry ‘hampered’ by Coalition
THE Abbott government “hampered” the insulation royal commission with a last-minute dump of 100,000 official documents, while “extraordinarily” failing to suggest how the Rudd government’s insulation scheme’s four deaths could have been avoided. Royal commissioner Ian Hanger has delivered a damning assessment of the federal government’s performance during the nine-month, $20 million investigation it ordered to uncover — and avoid repeating — the mistakes of the Home Insulation Program.]
The RC commissioner’s “damning assessment” of the Abbott government’s performance doesn’t seem to have been mentioned before now. Was it in his official report? Why would Murdoch want to highlight this now?
[Fran Barlow
Posted Monday, September 8, 2014 at 10:57 am | Permalink
BW
There is no threat from China, India or Indonesia, and if one develops then the time to work out what to do about it would be then? In 1964 we’d have had a different sense of what defence assets than we have now. In 2064 I daresay it will be different again.
Working out what defence assets we will need to parry an unknowable threat in the indeterminate future seems an odd way to go abiout stuff.]
I see that the Greens believe that the status quo will last a thousand years.
Good luck with that.
Submarine purchase decisions have a lead time of decades and the new subs will be in operation in 2050 and 2060. It is absolutely useless acting as if things are going to be same in thirty or forty years.
They will not be and it is disingenous of the Greens to pretend that they will be the same.
Boerwar
[You do need to use your imagination a bit, look back a bit, look around a bit, and then look forward a bit.]
So it’s just a bit of arm waving… And an opportunity to trash-talk the Greens… Amazing that you think you’re ‘arm wavy’ scenarios means the Greens are somehow inferior to you thought-bubbles… Weird.
“@MikeCarlton01: Very much looking forward to Murdoch’s Inspector Clouseau,Hedley Thomas, going after Pyne,Credlin and Abbott the way he did Gillard.”