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| Green and red numbers respectively indicate size of two-party Nationals and Labor polling booth majorities. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room. |
The electorate of Gippsland has covered the far east of Victoria since federation, and has been in National/Country Party hands since the party was founded in 1922. It currently extends as far westwards as the Latrobe Valley towns of Morwell and Traralgon, other major centres being Sale, Bairnsdale and Lakes Entrance. The Nationals’ hold appeared to be in serious jeopardy for the first time when the redistribution ahead of the 2004 election added Morwell and Traralgon, which had long been accommodated by the electorate’s western neighbour McMillan. However, Labor’s traditional strength in this area has been waning over the past two decades with the decline of its electricity industry, and a realignment among workers with a stake in coal mining resulting from climate change politics. Howard government minister Peter McGauran, who had held the since since 1983, increased his margin by 5.1% at the 2004 election, and the swing against him in 2007 was only 1.8%.
McGauran was the first member of the Howard government to leave parliament after the 2007 election defeat, resulting in a by-election held on 28 June 2008. This produced a three-way contest involving both the Nationals and Liberals as well as Labor, which at the time provided a spur to talk of a coalition merger. After a campaign dominated by the Rudd government’s “alcopops tax” and local concern over the prospect of an emissions trading scheme, the Nationals easily retained the seat, outpolling the Liberals 39.6% to 20.7% and gaining a 6.1% swing on two-party preferred – a surprisingly poor result for Labor given the strength of the Rudd government’s polling at the time. Labor’s primary vote fell 8.1%, and was down particularly heavily at the Latrobe Valley end of the electorate.
Gippsland has since been held for the Nationals by Darren Chester, who had previously been the chief-of-staff to state party leader Peter Ryan. Chester had earlier run unsuccessfully against Craig Ingram, then the independent member for the state seat of Gippsland East, at the 2002 state election, and sought Senate preselection at the 2004 federal election against Peter McGauran’s incumbent brother Julian, who went on to defect to the Liberal Party in January 2006. After his strong win at the by-election, Chester’s margin was little changed at the 2010 election, and he picked up a further 4.4% swing in 2013. Chester was promoted to shadow parliamentary secretary for roads and regional transport after the 2010 election, and became parliamentary secretary to the Defence Minister when the Abbott government came to power in 2013.
Very important and useful information for a conundrum that has had us all stumped for milenia
http://scienceblogs.com/lifelines/2014/10/16/ever-wonder-why-some-bugs-die-on-their-backs/
Re Spurr and Ergas
___________
The Ergas defence of Spurr seem like typical Murdoch reactionary stuff…they WOULD love Spurr wouldn’t they ?? …
the attack by Ergas on Prof Jake Lynch’s Peace studies centre at Sydney Uni is also typical of a Murdoch smear
Lynch has had several brushes with the virulent zionist lobby there which earns his that title of _anti-semitic_(next stage is to find he is a neo-Nazi !)
…,
Lynch was under attack from the zionists… and Libs ..in Sydney after he invited Palestinian Hannan Ashrawi to Sydney to get the Peace Prize…unthinkable to the zionists,who ,with the help on one occasions of Malcolm Turbull’s wife Lucy,made a major attack on Lynch…which Ergas recycles predictably…in line with his boss Murdoch’s passion for Israel
Rupert’s line on this is crystal clear….but on this as on other things …Murdoch …and his lackeys like Ergas…is one the wrong side of history
david, this is really not hard to understand.
It’s always possible to find some equivalence between two things at some level of abstraction, leaving out enough details.
From just the information provided for and referenced by William’s question, he is drawing a very broad equivalence between the two situations. Two government ministers. Two situations in private industry. That’s it.
Forget about just comparing the two situations, does this level of abstraction even contain enough information to decide if the ministers bear any responsibility? The answer is no, so why should we even think that we can draw a link between the two situations at this level of abstraction?
a *useful* link, that should be.
DN William was obviously, well obvious to me anyway, making the comparison about ministerial responsibility for events that happen, relating to their areas of responsibility, but for which the minister has no personal control over. Where does responsibility begin and end?
It is clear to me both situations are comparable.
david
I just said they’re comparable.
The question is whether the comparison drawn is sufficient.
They’re very comparable. Both were due to slack regulations and shoddy operators and in both cases there were warnings that were ignored.
Dio, right, and you provided extra information to make that comparison.
Sometimes the equivalence is so obvious it is redundant to have to travel on the round-a-bout just to get to where you started in the first place 🙂
DavidWH
[Sometimes the equivalence is so obvious it is redundant to have to travel on the round-a-bout just to get to where you started in the first place]
If you don’t like redundancy you could lose the last four words 🙂
Good point Jolyon 🙂
[They’re very comparable. Both were due to slack regulations and shoddy operators and in both cases there were warnings that were ignored.]
Only if you ignore that one minister was responsible for regulating the relevant industry and one minister was not responsible for regulating the industry. I don’t get how you’d ignore that.
The ridiculous thing that Bishop did with the kero baths was to call in the Federal Police.
WWP
Garrett did put in place specifications for how the installations could be carried out.
david @ 210
That’s mostly a fair comment – those cases outside of mostly are where people don’t agree on what’s obvious :P.
However, in this case William predicated a statement (question) about BB directly on a given statement about PG. Perhaps he just phrased it poorly. If he had instead asked “how are they the same/different” and if I had still responded with “it depends on the details” he could have said “I’m asking you what the details are, you dope”.
[WWP
Garrett did put in place specifications for how the installations could be carried out.]
So he went well beyond his responsibilities to try and overcome regulatory failure of others. Doesn’t make him the responsible minister at any time.
[“I’m asking you what the details are, you dope”.]
William would never be that impolite.
And I wrote that with a big smile on my dial 🙂
Actually Garrett and Bishop were both subsequently demoted as well.
[Actually Garrett and Bishop were both subsequently demoted as well.]
Seems fair both times.
Let me draw a diagram
Incorrect Correct
PG ----> BB Principles -+---> PG
+---> BB
Where the arrows roughly mean “implies something about”.
Even in the correct diagram there is a relationship between the situations of PG and BB, but it’s not so direct as might be inferred from William’s question.
I stated my comment just fine. To some here, if the shoes had been on the other feet, Bishop would be the victim of a vicious media beat-up, and Garrett little better than a murderer. The correctness of this fact is too obvious to warrant further elucidation.
William
[I stated my comment just fine.]
Whether or not BB committed an offence has nothing to do with what PG did, the validity of the rest of 222 not withstanding.
William
Fully agree
However there was a little more to the “kero” story for “our Bronny.” As Minister she had so comprehensively alienated the aged care sector that they were in unity against her. Amazingly enough thanks to Bronwyn an organsation was formed called NACA which included private and NFP aged care providers, senors peak bodies (pensioners and COTA), the Unions, academics, Geriatricians, Alzheimers Australia and everyone else. There was only one person excluded from this body – Bronwyn. I am not entrely sure what she did to u
By the way, that some people might judge each differently due to their political biases has little to do with whether a conclusion of same or different is correct or not. You may as well have said the sky is blue, it would be about as relevant.
That “some people might judge each differently due to their political biases” is the entire substance of the point I was making. Of course there are differences between the two things. There’s the one pointed out by WWP at #213. There’s also the fact that kerosene baths didn’t arise from a specific initiative of the government, and nobody got killed.
William
[That “some people might judge each differently due to their political biases” is the entire substance of the point I was making.]
Right, and you did so through a question that was questionable.
You could have just said it directly, without the faulty if-then.
Let’s put it this way.
A broken clock is right twice a day. If another clock happens to agree with the broken one at those two times, what does that tell us about this other clock?
Nothing.
WWP
[Actually Garrett and Bishop were both subsequently demoted as well.
Seems fair both times.]
Maybe. People die all the time from system errors in hospitals which the state governments are aware of but I can’t remember a state health minister resigning over any of those errors.
[Let’s put it this way.
A broken clock is right twice a day. If another clock happens to agree with the broken one at those two times, what does that tell us about this other clock?
Nothing.]
Better not to put it that way I think, since you’re talking complete gibberish.
William
[Better not to put it that way I think, since you’re talking complete gibberish.]
I’m sure you think everything you don’t understand is gibberish.
Morgan 52-48 by both respondent and last election prefs
LNP 39.5 (-.5) ALP 35.5 (+.5) Grn 12 PUP 3.5 rest 9.5
My aggregate has gone from 51.0 to 50.7 for ALP based on this.
William
Do you ever feel you are ‘moderating’ a group of argumentative teenagers?
(No need to respond. 😀 )
An argument takes two people, lizzie, and I’m not sure what’s wrong with them anyway, since they occur naturally whenever people have and try to resolve differences of opinion.
I retract my unreasonable statement at 231.
DisplayName
It amuses me that every opinion has an opposite opinion, complicated by various levels of comprehension and bias.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy it here.
The economic outlook for Australia is anything but rosy:
[Falling real incomes in Australia and global growth concerns are undermining corporate and consumer confidence and put at risk the government’s fiscal objectives, a conference heard on Monday.
A panel of experts told delegates to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s annual Australasian Conference that the economy had been slow to recover from the end of the mining infrastructure boom and lacked any clear drivers of future growth, aside from bigger volumes of resource exports and housing construction.
Sluggish domestic consumption and investments meant the export sector would have to do more of the heavy lifting if Australia was to sustain current growth rates of around 3 per cent.
However, weaker commodity prices and oversupply meant exporters would have to ramp up volumes to maintain income, which could put further downward pressure on prices.
This would further undermine the country’s terms of trade, while weak consumer spending would undermine company profits. The two combined meant lower government revenue.]
http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/not-just-chocolate-biscuits-deep-corporate-cost-cutting-tells-tale-of-waning-confidence-20141020-118u60.html#ixzz3Gf8bsVD3%5D
Kevin Bonham
http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/5881-morgan-poll-federal-voting-intention-october-20-2014-201410200517
I’m not understanding how they came to that 52-48 TPP when the primary votes for LNP has gone down 0.5pp while ALP has gone up 0.5pp.
citizen
We are running out of lotus for the lotus eaters.
These are respondent-allocated preferences, so evidently they’ve had more minor party voters picking the Coalition over Labor this time. On the fixed previous-election preference allocation, Labor’s lead is up from 51.5-48.5 to 52-58.
William Bowe@240
Fair enough. I got a bit confused thinking the TPP based on last election’s preferences have gone towards LNP. So rather there is less contrast in results between the two methods now.
Raaraa@238
Morgan form their headline rate (which I typically ignore) by asking respondents how they would distribute their preferences. So even though the ALP’s primary has improved at the L-NP’s expense, there must have been enough shift in how PUP/Grn/Ind/Others voters answered the preferencing question to reduce the respondent-based 2PP from 53 to 52.
However the last-election based 2PP (the one I pay attention to) rose from 51.5 to 52, which is exactly to be expected for a half-point primary shift.
“@Simon_Cullen: Parliament House security chief says the #burqa ban was the result of a TV cameraman mentioning the possibility of burqa-wearing protestors”
Well well. There you have it. The mistake was to believe the media
One elderly patient died due to being bathed in a kerosene solution.
Dee@244
Really?
What was it, a teaspoon of kero in a bath of water?
Wouldn’t even kill you if you drank it. I suspect other causes.
[Maybe. People die all the time from system errors in hospitals which the state governments are aware of but I can’t remember a state health minister resigning over any of those errors.]
I agree it should have been more specific their failures were largely political in both cases and politics isn’t fair so how much they deserved or put into the outcome is largely irrelevant.
The breakdown in ministerial responsibility that is all but complete has a down side for ministers in that the harsh yardstick of being responsible for every idiot in your department/s is effectively replaced by how stupid you look in the media.
guytaur@243
WOW!
What if he had idly speculated about a horde of jihadist zombies descending on Parliament House?
Transcript of interview on PM, re: Bronnie and nursing home abuse.
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s108761.htm
Dee@248
“A dying resident was bathed in the kerosene solution.”
So the dying resident died? 😮
So Joe the Cameraman is now in charge of national security.