Geelong has been the focal point of the electorate of Corio since it was created at federation, its name being derived from the bay on which the city is situated. However, it originally extended northwards to encompass areas beyond Melbourne’s limits including Sunbury, Melton and Bacchus Marsh, became more strongly focused on Geelong after the expansion of parliament in 1949. The continuing growth of Geelong has been such that the its south-western suburbs of Highton, Belmont and Grovedale are now accommodated by Corangamite, a once rurally oriented and safe Liberal seat that has more lately been highly marginal. Corio nonetheless extends south to cover the Bellarine Peninsula, and north to encompass Lara 20 kilometres to Geelong’s north.
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| 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. |
Now a safe seat for Labor, Corio was a litmus test electorate early in its life, having changed hands along with government in 1910 (to Labor), 1913 (to Liberal), 1914 (to Labor), 1917 (to the Nationalists), 1929 (to Labor) and 1931 (to the United Australia Party). It fell to Labor ahead of schedule at a 1940 by-election after Richard Casey was appointed ambassador to the United States (he would return to parliament in 1949 as member for La Trobe), a result that played a crucial role in Bob Menzies’ defeat on the floor of parliament the following year. Cycling hero Hubert Opperman recovered the seat for the Liberals with the 1949 election win, eventually serving as Immigration Minister before taking up a diplomatic post in 1967. Bob Hawke unsuccessfully contested the seat for Labor in 1963, and newly arrived Labor leader Gough Whitlam encouraged him to do so again when Opperman departed mid-term in 1967. Hawke preferred to pursue his designs on the ACTU presidency at that time, and the by-election was won for Labor by engine driver Gordon Scholes, in an early electoral success for Whitlam. Scholes consolidated his hold over time, managing to survive by just 20 votes in 1975, and the seat had become fairly safe for Labor by the time he retired in 1993.
The next member was Gavan O’Connor, who rose to the front bench in 1998 but became increasingly imperilled as local Labor branches fell under the control of the Right. This enabled ACTU assistant secretary Richard Marles to unseat him at a preselection vote held in March 2006, winning 57% of the local party vote. O’Connor registered his displeasure by running as an independent, complaining that Kevin Rudd – who had not in fact been leader at the time – had told him he lacked the power to prevent Marles’s union backers from rolling him. O’Connor managed only 12.7% of the vote, with the Labor vote falling only 1.2% and increasing by 3.3% on two-party preferred. Without the complication of O’Connor in 2010, and with Labor performing well across the state, Marles added 5.3% to his margin, before a 5.7% correction in 2013 reduced it to its present level of 7.7%.
Marles was quickly promoted to parliamentary secretary in June 2009, but took a further four years to attain ministerial rank. After remaining in the Julia Gillard camp during Kevin Rudd’s first leadership challenge in February 2012, Marles came out in support for Rudd during his abortive second bid a year later. He resigned as parliamentary secretary when the challenge failed to eventuate, joining an exodus that also included Chris Bowen, Martin Ferguson, Kim Carr and Simon Crean. When Rudd succeeded in toppling Gillard in June, he won promotion to cabinet as Trade Minister, a position that had been vacated by the resignation of Craig Emerson. Since the 2013 election defeat he has held the position of Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection.
Re Bemused @1600: agree. Regarding point 2, I don’t see why we are planning to rely on equipment we can’t build or replace and would have difficulty repairing. In a real defence emergency our trade routes are likely to be seriously disrupted. Are we assuming future conflicts would be very short? We don’t seem to have resiliance in the face of prolonged emergency as part of our defence planning.
From the article linked by poroti@1597
[nocausetoaddopt Happytobeasocialist
..I for one have a lot to thank neoliberalism for.
I have become increasingly radicalized.]
Sames. (but no ‘z’)
Steve777@1601
Indeed. And I was thinking of things that other countries do such as having sections of road that can be used as emergency landing strips.
And regarding point 1, I used to think about that when I was in the RAAF and recall reading about the Canadians putting a fair bit of work into Peaceful Use of Military Forces (PUMF). I was all for it and thought it would make a military career much more purposeful during peacetime.
But of course, over the last 30 years or so, the military has been kept busy with a lot of overseas deployments, mostly of the stupid variety.
[
CTar1
Posted Monday, September 29, 2014 at 2:48 pm | Permalink
imacca
And were in fact the weapons system that doomed the Bismark.
The ‘Harrier’ of their day. Always considered too slow, too this and too that.
But the job got done.
]
Apparently because the automatic systems didn’t allow for something that slow.
[ We don’t seem to have resiliance in the face of prolonged emergency as part of our defence planning. ]
No country that does not have a big enough economy to support a broad base of manufacturing actually does.
[
guytaur
Posted Monday, September 29, 2014 at 7:15 pm | Permalink
Another one :sigh:
@7NewsMelbourne: A muslim woman has been bashed and pushed from a moving train. @Jacquifelgate is live at the scene in #7NewsMelb at 6 http://t.co/0ruJRs8LM7
]
When people get pushed of trains and has to say, it would seem that there are Australians being terrorized. And it would seem that ASIO is too stupid to work out who the terrorizers are.
Re Defence and policy
_______________
In all the talk ,who exactly do we fear might attack us ?
)
We live in one of the most isolated places on the planet(Paul Keating once spoke of the ” ar##Ho## of the world “)… so who threatens us? NZ.,,,well in a way they are constant invaders albeit peaceful( …and welcome ?
)
New Guinea mnay be a problem when it implodes under the weight of incompentent politicians and widespread corruption…and Indonease ??? ..well they would have trouble mounting any sort of invasion I suspect ,and it may be a long while before they have any desire or need to attack anyone…so we must be one of the lest treatened nations on the planet
so our defence is no real concern,and certainly we should keep i;s costs t to a minimum
Our long history as a kind of mercenary for other Imperial powers…the UK and the USA… has bred a kind of militaristic culture among some here ,and we would be better to NEVER send any forces overseas for any rerasons at all…not even peacekeepers
Interesting too this debate is now very big in the USA ,where some conservatives around Pat Buchanan’s AMCON mag and some Democrats too are calling for a withdrawal from the vast costs of the American Empire of bases…now obviously seewn as a part of US decline
Jackol
Seriously, we’ve made a machine land on a moving comet that are some light-minutes away. This means an instruction sent now won’t be received until minutes later and that requires it to be able to follow programmed instruction on its own accord.
I’m sure automated drones can do the job with delays of only a few seconds. Plus if they are compromised in any way, they will be blown up instantly to prevent it from falling in the wrong hands. These drones will probably have single or dual missions at most, but most attack bombers don’t go beyond two missions anyway.
lizzie
[Obama : we messed up.]
While the world was occupied with Israel and Gaza bombing each other, IS was already making a big mess in Iraq. Few seemed to care at that point.
Raara and others
I agree that the public policy debate on the strategic acquisition of drones has been very poor.
Deblonay
In broad terms, which defence hardware would you (a) keep and (b) acquire?
bemused/S777
How much would the industrial complex required to meet your defence readiness needs cost to (a) build and (b) maintain?
I don’t often so much as look at the Herald Sun, but there was a discarded copy on a train I was on today so I thought it would be interesting to see what they were saying.
It proved to be interesting indeed and shed some new light on the incident at Endeavour Hills.
[It comes as the former girlfriend of terrorism suspect Numan Haider is reeling after his shock death.
—
Haider’s friends, who knew him as Norman, have described how he went off the rails after the couple’s split.
The Herald Sun has been in contact with Haider’s 18-year-old former girlfriend, but she and her family have asked for privacy. The newspaper has chosen not to name her. The girl’s friends have said she was absolutely shocked by his attack on police and subsequent death.
It is understood she attended Haider’s funeral at the Afghan Mosque in Doveton on Friday. The family were said to have then left home for a few days to clear their heads.
The girl’s well-respected family live in Endeavour Hills, the same suburb Haider grew up in and where he was fatally shot by police last Tuesday after he stabbed two policemen with a knife.
Police and Muslim leaders have called for calm.
The girl and Haider both attended the same high school, Lyndale Secondary College, where it is believed they began dating.]
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/stabbed-officers-worked-for-three-months-on-counterterrorism-operation/story-fni0fit3-1227073324331
So maybe this will turn out to be a case of a young guy going off the rails after his girl friend dropped him, and committing suicide by cop.
But that wouldn’t be politically convenient would it?
deblonay@1607
The same thinking was around before WWII.
And look what happened then?
You have truly been drinking the Green cool-aid.
Boerwar@1609
No idea.
I raised it as being something that should be taken into consideration in defence planning. It is up to the planners to work it out.
It means things like keeping control of Qantas so it can be pressed into service to provide a lift capability and to have its heavy maintenance facilities in Australia.
bemused
[So maybe this will turn out to be a case of a young guy going off the rails after his girl friend dropped him, and committing suicide by cop.]
I said that was what it looked like to me a couple of days ago. He desperately needed to attach himself to something after going downhill.
Steve777
With any project, there are going to be sunken costs. Cutting the project at this point may waste a few hundred million but save billions in the long run, even considering any economic benefit this link may bring (which by current scant evidence shows that it will run at a loss in comparison to any other projects).
Earlier in the term, Ballieu seemed to have waste millions of dollars in reviews, and these too are sunken cost that has gone nowhere.
bemused
While I believe this is a sensationalised headline which later has shown that the women was in fact bashed against the train’s inside wall (which in itself is a horrible act), there has been evidence a couple years back of a Metro train running with a door open and it was at considerable speed too.
On defence spending (a topic I know nothing about) looking at it one way, you could look at our defence spending as a % of GDP and compare it.
We are 1.7% and the world average is 2.4%. 1.7% seems about in the median.
NZ is a lot less (1.1%) but they have much smaller borders and only us as a neighbour. There really aren’t any comparable countries but 1.7% looks about right, unless you argue that all countries overspend on defence which is an altogether different argument.
Interesting 4 Corners on the Tobacco industry – knowingly peddling addictive poison to children for half a century and bullshit to everyone else.
Plain packaging works. How do we know? The tobacco industry are sqealing like stuck pigs.
Diogenes@1613
Something like that played a large part in the death of my eldest son. 😥
Young blokes can be incredibly vulnerable.
Reading deblonay and his need to be heard makes me understand why the government wants to introduce the gp co-payment to discourage excessive “your paid to listen to me” visits. Sensible policy decision really.
steve
I think France might be the next to bring in plain packaging laws. UK, NZ and Ireland are pretty close as well.
Raaraa@1614
bemused
While I believe this is a sensationalised headline which later has shown that the women was in fact bashed against the train’s inside wall (which in itself is a horrible act), there has been evidence a couple years back of a Metro train running with a door open and it was at considerable speed too.
So you think an incredible co-incidence occurred with that assault just happening to coincide with a very rare door closing fault?
Not all that many years ago, doors were opened and closed manually by passengers and trains often ran with many doors open, particularly in hot weather.
Dio
I believe that the Abbott Government is targetting a 2% spend.
Cigarettes – one of the rare good things that happened under Rudd/Gillard but the lack of,proper food packaging laws is an absolute scandal.
The tobacco industry does demonstrate one thing beyond question: H. sapiens is a peculiar species.
This is a tough one. Imagine if you named your kid Isis after the Egyptian goddess of beauty and now every time it’s used, there is an instinctive visceral reaction to the name. Bit like if you called your kid Adolf before before Hitler died.
[People would admire the name the parents had borrowed from an ancient Egyptian goddess and given their daughter: Isis.
But in recent months, instead of commenting how “unique” and “beautiful” the name is, Isis’ introductions are met with shock and fear.]
One issue that did not come up in four corners was the way in which the tobacco industry is using trade agreements as a basis for legal actions against governments.
Australian plain packaging might yet be knocked out by… …the Ukraine which has launched some process or other against Australian plain packaging.
Is it not nice to think that we have boots on the ground in the Ukraine, occasioned by a mere handful of non-tobacco related deaths, in a country which intends to use trade frameworks to try and ensure that more of our citizens die of tobacco deaths?
3 biggest corporate rogues:
1. Tobacco
2. Overseas transfer pricers
3. FMCG
bemused
Please excuse my code error in 1627
Raaraa@1627
Such incidents are very rare as far as I am aware.
[Interesting 4 Corners on the Tobacco industry – knowingly peddling addictive poison to children for half a century and bullshit to everyone else.]
I don’t think this is news. We’ve known this for many decades.
Raaraa@1628
Fixed in my reply. 😉
The swordfish wasn’t the Harrier of its day.
I suspect it was closer to the IED of its day.
The Harrier was a ground breaking design that changed the paradigm* of air to air combat for a period in the late 20th century. The Swordfish is … well its actually a great example of why the JSF could be a monumental and pointless waste of money.
*Perhaps its more accurate to say it was a demonstration of what was sposed to be a changing paradigm…
bemused
It has happened often enough according to different searches on youtube and in the news, and at one stage it was mentioned that with brute force, a door can be made to remain open in motion, but I believe Metro has taken steps to rectify this issue at this stage.
Thanks for fixing in 1631 🙂
[One issue that did not come up in four corners was the way in which the tobacco industry is using trade agreements as a basis for legal actions against governments.]
When I was doing my PhD I had the pleasure of meeting Richard Doll, one of the first scientists to link smoking with lung cancer. This was 10 years ago, and in an eerily prescient speech he gave to we students he said that even 50 years ago when he was reporting his initial findings, he could see the industry was always going to go down this route.
Raaraa @ 1608, and Jackol @ whenever
You are both right on. Obviously drones are the future of air warfare, at least for the next decade or two.
Manned aerial weapons platforms are a romantic hangover from the Battle of Britain, but could end up being an incredibly expensive mistake in a real war against a competent opponent with an effective airforce.
Is it just me or is the Coalition, when not hyping up the threat of terrorism by IS, rather not talk about the budget but prefer to trumpet their success in repealing the CT and MT?
Just switched on Qanda and surprise, surprise, Pyne is prattling on. Everyone else sat silent listening.
Now watching Media Watch. Apparently a lot of what is reported as ‘News’ is bullshit. Who’d have known?
A mixture of the serious (Murdoch beatups of prison unrest in NSW Goulburn Prison and conflating them with Jihadi extremists) and the trivial.
Really, Murdoch media have no more ethics than the tobacco companies.
[
Posted Monday, September 29, 2014 at 9:16 pm | PERMALINK
Reading deblonay and his need to be heard makes me understand why the government wants to introduce the gp co-payment to discourage excessive “your paid to listen to me” visits. Sensible policy decision really.]
I agree that “old dears” going to the GP to be heard and bulk-billed is a problem, but I am not convinced the copayment will necessarily stop it. $7 only gets you less than 2 minutes with a 1900 psychic, so the copayment will remain relative good value for “being heard”!
Steve777@1638
And their products are just as toxic!
Swan and Pyne talking over each other over that lady.
Well DL the oldies are usually very tight with the moolah and respond to the price signals, hence the cheap sherry in deblonay’s case.
Raaraa:
That other lady being a former Liberal chief minister of the ACT.
confessions
Ah, TIL. I thought she seemed familiar. Sounds like a Thatcherite or a big believer in Reaganomics.
[Just switched on Qanda and surprise, surprise, Pyne is prattling on. Everyone else sat silent listening]
I guess my contention that “shrill” is sexist since it is only applied to females (cf. Senator Cash) was not necessarily correct since Pyne is very shrill and male!
Raaraa:
Twas her govt which felled the old Canberra Hospital building at which a young child died after being hit by resultant shrapnel, and completely politicised the fall out.
DL:
Men can totally be shrill. I give you Rupert Murdoch and his hysterical tweets.
confessions
Yeah I read about the demolition scandal. Funny QandA seems to emphasis her failure more on the stadium (according to the writeup on the website).
The phrase “vested interest” was used against Swan!
Swan had to defend himself there.
[
Posted Monday, September 29, 2014 at 9:54 pm | PERMALINK
confessions
Ah, TIL. I thought she seemed familiar. Sounds like a Thatcherite or a big believer in Reaganomics.
]
Isn’t Kate Carnell head of ACCI now? I think before that she was head of a food lobby group, some sort of “grocery council”, if there is such a thing!