Call of the board: Melbourne

More gory detail on the result of the May 18 federal election, this time focusing on Melbourne, where an anticipated election-winning swing to Labor crucially failed to materialise.

Time for part four in the series that reviews the result of the May 18 election seat by seat, one chunk at a time. As will be the routine in posts covering the capital cities, we start with a colour-coded map showing the two-party preferred swing at polling booth level, with each booth allocated a geographic catchment area by means explained in the first post in this series. Click for an enlarged image.

Now to compare actual election results to those predicted by a demographic linear regression model, to help identify where candidate or local factors might be needed to explain the result. I now offer a new-and-improved form of the model that includes interaction effects to account for the differences in demographic effects between the cities and the regions. The utility of the change, if any, will become more apparent when I apply it to regional seats, which confounded the original version of the model. The coefficients and what-have-you can be viewed here – the table below shows the modelled predictions and actual results for Labor two-party preferred, ranked in order of difference between the result and the prediction of the model.

The main eyebrow-raisers are that the model anticipates a stronger performance by Labor in nearly every Liberal-held seats, to the extent that blue-ribbon Higgins and Goldstein are both rated as naturally highly marginal. While this could prove a portent of things to come in these seats, it might equally reflect a model leaning too heavily on the “secular/no religion” variable to cancel out the association between income and Liberal support in the inner cities.

As in Sydney, the numbers provide strong indications of incumbency advantages, with both Labor and Liberal members tending to outperform the model and thus appear at opposite ends of the table. I suspect this reflects both the obvious explanation, namely personal votes for sitting members, and a lack of effort by the parties into each other’s safe seats. A tendency for parties to perform more modestly when a seat is being vacated is not so overwhelming as to prevent strong results relative to the model for Labor in Jagajaga and Liberal in Higgins.

With that out of the way:

Aston (Liberal 10.1%; 2.7% swing to Liberal): Aston attracted a lot of discussion after the 2004 election when the Liberals recorded a higher two-party vote than they did in their jewel-in-the-crown seat of Kooyong. Now, for the first time since then, it’s happened again, and by a fairly substantial margin (the Liberal-versus-Labor margin in Kooyong having been 6.7%). As illustrated in the above table, the swing places Alan Tudge’s margin well beyond what the seat’s demographic indicators would lead you to expect.

Bruce (Labor 14.2%; 0.1% swing to Labor): Located at the point of the outer suburbs where the Labor swing dries up, cancelling out any half-sophomore effect that may have been coming Julian Hill’s way after he came to the seat in 2016.

Calwell (Labor 18.8%; 0.9% swing to Liberal): Among the modest number of Melbourne seats to swing to the Liberals, reflecting its multiculturalism and location at the city’s edge. Maria Vamvakinou nonetheless retains the fifth biggest Labor margin in the country.

Chisholm (Liberal 0.6%; 2.3% swing to Labor): Labor’s failure to win Chisholm after it was vacated by Julia Banks was among their most disappointing results of the election, but the result was entirely within the normal range both for Melbourne’s middle suburbs and a seat of its particular demographic profile. The swing to Labor was concentrated at the northern end of the electorate, which may or may not have something to do with this being the slightly less Chinese end of the electorate.

Cooper (Labor 14.6% versus Greens; 13.4% swing to Labor): With David Feeney gone and Ged Kearney entrenched, the door seems to have slammed shut on the Greens in the seat formerly known as Batman. After recording high thirties primary votes at both the 2016 election and 2018 by-election, the Greens crashed to 21.1%, while Kearney was up from 43.1% at the by-election to 46.8%, despite the fact the Liberals were in the field this time and polling 19.5%. In Labor-versus-Liberal terms, a 4.2% swing to Labor boosted the margin to 25.9%, the highest in the country.

Deakin (Liberal 4.8%; 1.7% swing to Labor): While Melburnian backers of the coup against Malcolm Turnbull did not suffer the retribution anticipated after the state election, it may at least be noted that Michael Sukkar’s seat swung the other way from its demographically similar neighbour, Aston. That said, Sukkar’s 4.8% margin strongly outperforms the prediction of the demographic model, which picks the seat for marginal Labor.

Dunkley (LABOR NOTIONAL GAIN 2.7%; 1.7% swing to Labor): Together with Corangamite, Dunkley was one of only two Victorian seats gained by Labor on any reckoning, and even they can be excluded if post-redistribution margins are counted as the starting point. With quite a few other outer urban seats going the other way, and a part-sophomore effect to be anticipated after he succeeded Bruce Billson in 2016, it might be thought an under-achievement on Chris Crewther’s part that he failed to hold out the tide, notwithstanding the near universal expectation he would lose. However, his performance was well beyond that predicted by the demographic model, which estimates the Labor margin at 6.6%.

Fraser (Labor 14.2%; 6.1% swing to Liberal): Newly created seat in safe Labor territory in western Melbourne, it seemed Labor felt the loss here of its sitting members: Bill Shorten in Maribyrnong, which provided 34% of the voters; Maria Vamvakinou in Calwell, providing 29%; Tim Watts in Gellibrand, providing 20%; and Brendan O’Connor in Gorton, providing 16%. The newly elected member, Daniel Mulino, copped the biggest swing against Labor in Victoria, reducing the seat from first to eleventh on the national list of safest Labor seats.

Gellibrand (Labor 14.8%; 0.3% swing to Liberal): The city end of Gellibrand followed the inner urban pattern in swinging to Labor, but the suburbia at the Point Cook end of the electorate tended to lean the other way, producing a stable result for third-term Labor member Tim Watts.

Goldstein (Liberal 7.8%; 4.9% swing to Labor): Tim Wilson met the full force of the inner urban swing against the Liberals, more than accounting for any sophomore effect he might have enjoyed in the seat where he succeeded Andrew Robb in 2016. Nonetheless, he maintained a primary vote majority in a seat which, since its creation in 1984, has only failed to do when David Kemp muscled Ian Macphee aside in 1990.

Gorton (Labor 15.4%; 3.0% swing to Liberal): The swing against Brendan O’Connor was fairly typical of the outer suburbs. An independent, Jarrod Bingham, managed 8.8%, with 59.2% of his preferences going to Labor.

Higgins (Liberal 3.9%; 6.1% swing to Labor): One of many blue-ribbon seats that swung hard against the Liberals without putting them in serious danger. Nonetheless, it is notable that the 3.9% debut margin for Katie Allen, who succeeds Kelly O’Dwyer, is the lowest the Liberals have recorded since the seat’s creation in 1949, surpassing Peter Costello’s 7.0% with the defeat of the Howard government in 2007. Labor returned to second place after falling to third in 2016, their primary up from 14.9% to 25.4%, while the Greens were down from 25.3% to 22.5%. This reflected a pattern through much of inner Melbourne, excepting Melbourne and Kooyong.

Holt (Labor 8.7%; 1.2% swing to Liberal): The populous, northern end of Holt formed part of a band of south-eastern suburbia that defied the Melbourne trend in swinging to Liberal, causing a manageable cut to Anthony Byrne’s margin.

Hotham (Labor 5.9%; 1.7% swing to Labor): The swing to third-term Labor member Clare O’Neil was concentrated at the northern end of the electorate, with the lower-income Vietnamese area around Springvale in the south went the other way.

Isaacs (Labor 12.7%; 3.4% swing to Labor): What I have frequently referred to as an inner urban effect actually extended all along the bayside, contributing to a healthy swing to Mark Dreyfus. The Liberal primary vote was down 7.4%, partly reflecting more minor party competition than in 2016. This was an interesting case where the map shows a clear change in temperature coinciding with the boundaries, with swings to Labor in Isaacs promptly giving way to Liberal swings across much of Hotham, Bruce and Holt.

Jagajaga (Labor 6.6%; 1.0% swing to Labor): Jenny Macklin’s retirement didn’t have any discernible impact on the result in Jagajaga, which recorded a modest swing to her Labor successor, Kate Thwaites.

Kooyong (Liberal 5.7% versus Greens): Julian Burnside defied a general Melburnian trend in adding 2.6% to the Greens primary vote, and did so in the face of competition for the environmental vote from independent Oliver Yates, whose high profile campaign yielded only 9.0%. Labor was down 3.7% to 16.8%, adrift of Burnside’s 21.2%. But with Josh Frydenberg still commanding 49.4% of the primary vote even after an 8.3% swing, the result was never in doubt. The Liberal-versus-Labor two-party margin was 6.7%, a 6.2% swing to Labor.

Lalor (Labor 12.4%; 1.8% swing to Liberal): The area around Werribee marks a Liberal swing hot spot in Melbourne’s west, showing up as a slight swing in Lalor against Labor’s Joanne Ryan.

Macnamara (Labor 6.2%; 5.0% swing to Labor): Talked up before the event as a three-horse race, this proved an easy win for Labor, who outpolled the Greens 31.8% to 24.2%, compared with 27.0% to 23.8% last time, then landed 6.2% clear after preferences of the Liberals, who were off 4.6% to 37.4%. The retirement of Michael Danby presumably explains the relatively weak 5.0% primary vote swing to Labor in the seven booths around Caulfield and Elsternwick at the southern end of the electorate, the focal point of its Jewish community. The result for the remainder of the election day booths was 9.7%.

Maribyrnong (Labor 11.2%; 0.8% swing to Liberal): Nothing out of the ordinary happened in the seat of Bill Shorten, who probably owes most of his 5.0% primary vote swing to the fact that there were fewer candidates this time. Typifying the overall result, the Liberals gained swings around Keilor at the electorate’s outer reaches, while Labor was up closer to the city.

Melbourne (Greens 21.8% versus Liberal; 2.8% swing to Greens): The Greens primary vote in Melbourne increased for the seventh successive election, having gone from 6.1% in 1998 to 22.8% when Adam Bandt first ran unsuccessfully in 2007, and now up from 43.7% to 49.3%. I await to be corrected, but I believed this brought Bandt to within an ace of becoming the first Green ever to win a primary vote majority. For the second election in a row, Bandt’s dominance of the left-of-centre vote reduced Labor to third place. On the Labor-versus-Liberal count, Labor gained a negligible 0.1% swing, unusually for a central city seat.

Menzies (Liberal 7.2%; 0.3% swing to Labor): Very little to report from Kevin Andrews’ seat, where the main parties were up slightly on the primary vote against a smaller field, and next to no swing on two-party preferred, with slight Liberal swings around Templestowe in the west of the electorate giving way to slight Labor ones around Warrandyte in the east.

Scullin (Labor 21.7%; 2.1% swing to Labor): Third-term Labor member Andrew Giles managed a swing that was rather against the outer urban trend in his northern Melbourne seat.

Wills (Labor 8.2% versus Greens; 3.2% swing to Labor): The Greens likely missed their opportunity in Wills when Kelvin Thomson retired in 2016, when Labor’s margin was reduced to 4.9%. Peter Khalil having established himself as member, he picked up 6.2% on the primary vote this time while the Greens fell 4.3%. Khalil also picked up a 4.2% swing on the Labor-versus-Liberal count, strong even by inner urban standards, leaving him with the biggest margin on that measure after Ged Kearney in Cooper.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,431 comments on “Call of the board: Melbourne”

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  1. Basically, if mundo wasn’t afraid of my shadow and hadn’t blocked me I would say to him, go back to 2007 when the Coalition lost government to Kevin Rudd. They went quiet for a while as they figured out a strategy and tactics. THEN they slowly but surely worked the game plan to success, almost in 2010 but definitely in 2013. So, I wouldn’t be so stupid as to write off Labor just yet.

  2. 30 billion a year in road crashes!

    So, if everyone drove fully autonomous automatic (electric) cars, none of them would run into each other. They’d all stop before impact. Simples.

  3. ItzaDream says:
    Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 8:20 am

    30 billion a year in road crashes!

    So, if everyone drove fully autonomous automatic (electric) cars, none of them would run into each other. They’d all stop before impact. Simples.

    But what about the workers in the crash repair industry?

    Are there enough hail storms to keep them going?

  4. C@tmomma @ #1057 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:26 am

    ItzaDream @ #1056 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:24 am

    C@tmomma @ #1053 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:20 am

    I bet IA wants more toll roads for Liberal Mates.

    I reckon you’ll soon be able to hear the beeping from Sydney toll roads in space; some kind of Orchestra de Car Beep.

    I am of course assuming that IA has been stacked by the Coalition with their Donors and Mates by now.

    Norty c@t.

  5. ItzaDream @ #1056 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:24 am

    C@tmomma @ #1053 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:20 am

    I bet IA wants more toll roads for Liberal Mates.

    I reckon you’ll soon be able to hear the beeping from Sydney toll roads in space; some kind of Orchestra de Car Beep.

    Yeah, I can’t really see how you can bust congestion when you put people further and further out from the city and away from their jobs, so there are more people, in more cars, making criss-crossing journeys around the place to get to their jobs! Just sounds like a recipe for more congestion to me.

  6. Barney in Makassar @ #1058 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:27 am

    ItzaDream says:
    Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 8:20 am

    30 billion a year in road crashes!

    So, if everyone drove fully autonomous automatic (electric) cars, none of them would run into each other. They’d all stop before impact. Simples.

    But what about the workers in the crash repair industry?

    Are there enough hail storms to keep them going?

    They’ll be deployed into IA’s new IA programmes, just building things, everywhere.

  7. C@tmomma @ #1060 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:28 am

    ItzaDream @ #1056 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:24 am

    C@tmomma @ #1053 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:20 am

    I bet IA wants more toll roads for Liberal Mates.

    I reckon you’ll soon be able to hear the beeping from Sydney toll roads in space; some kind of Orchestra de Car Beep.

    Yeah, I can’t really see how you can bust congestion when you put people further and further out from the city and away from their jobs, so there are more people, in more cars, making criss-crossing journeys around the place to get to their jobs! Just sounds like a recipe for more congestion to me.

    Seriously, the Beeps are getting really frequent. OH did the new M$ (sorry, M4) thing the other day. Beep Beep Beep. New Beepers popping up around King Georges Rd. Here a Beep, there a …

    Some monthly Beep expenditures are wicked. Hundreds, easily.

  8. Easy fix for Sydney , increase population growth and build heaps of developments like this. Sydney “developers” and their clients the Liberal Party declare it a win win all round.

  9. Morrison is PM because Australians most often elect conservative-leaning governments. Labor face a permanent uphill run to stay in the game and slipped back down the slope at the last election. Labor’s enemies threw everything at them this time. The visceral hatred of Labor from the Right and the splitters of the pop-left was enough to bring about a Lib-Lib win. This is the usual state of play. Labor campaigned poorly, while their enemies campaigned very effectively and made the most of anti-Labor themes, especially in the more repressed parts of the economy. The Reactionaries win in Lib-kin Garden.

  10. briefly, the hate is truly visceral isn’t it. It’s part of their natural position. Self interest has to be harnessed to hate to fully propagate. And self interest is their only interest.

  11. Speaking of hate. Max Boot cops it after an entirely sensible appeal yesterday to Republicans to push back against Trump’s fanning racism and division.

    Max BootVerified account@MaxBoot
    2h2 hours ago
    Wow. I’ve been accused by white supremacists of being a “self-loathing white” who is “stoking the flames of race hatred” by denouncing racism. But did not expect to be so attacked in @NRO. A sad indication of what’s happened to mainstream conservatism.

  12. poroti says:
    Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 8:34 am

    Easy fix for Sydney , increase population growth and build heaps of developments like this. Sydney “developers” and their clients the Liberal Party declare it a win win all round.

    The good thing with that is shoddy workmanship and design wouldn’t matter as there’d always be extra support from a neighbour. 🙂

  13. What a shonky dealer is Salesman Scott!

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison is seeking to head off criticisms of Australia’s climate change policies by promising hundreds of millions of dollars to tackle the issue ahead of his arrival at a meeting of Pacific leaders in Tuvalu on Wednesday.

    He outlined $500 million over five years, starting in 2020, to help Pacific nations invest in renewable energy and ‘climate and disaster resilience’.

    But the money will be re-directed from existing aid programs, and is not additional support for the region.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-13/pif-pacific-islands-forum-tuvalu-morrison-fiji-climate-change/11406868

  14. Confessions @ #1068 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:43 am

    Speaking of hate. Max Boot cops it after an entirely sensible appeal yesterday to Republicans to push back against Trump’s fanning racism and division.

    Max BootVerified account@MaxBoot
    2h2 hours ago
    Wow. I’ve been accused by white supremacists of being a “self-loathing white” who is “stoking the flames of race hatred” by denouncing racism. But did not expect to be so attacked in @NRO. A sad indication of what’s happened to mainstream conservatism.

    Self-loathing is projection. It’s an easy card to pull from the hate pack, an inversion of ‘they hate us’ (Trump’s latest) into they hate themselves. Another example is criticise Israel: self-loathing Jew.

    It’s one step on from Howard’s UnAustralian, a term I utterly despise for all the obvious reasons.

  15. Max Boot, Rick Wilson and The Mooch are smart guys, Jennifer Rubin is a smart lady, they won’t give up now that they have set their sights on Trump. Plus others. So I reckon they will probably be there for the eventual Democratic Party candidate with good advice. At least until they help get rid of Trump.

  16. citizen:

    And what’s the point of getting Pacific nations onto renewable energy when all their larger, wealthier neighbours aren’t doing jack to address their own GHGEs!

    Shonky indeed.

  17. Confessions

    Hong Kong. A vision of hell in my opinion but I am sure some people would love it.

    Barney in Makassar
    Bonus for the Seedknee Developers’ community! Emergency evacuation stairs optional. Just tell the tenants to jump over to the next building from their balcony .

  18. citizen @ #1072 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:52 am

    What a shonky dealer is Salesman Scott!

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison is seeking to head off criticisms of Australia’s climate change policies by promising hundreds of millions of dollars to tackle the issue ahead of his arrival at a meeting of Pacific leaders in Tuvalu on Wednesday.

    He outlined $500 million over five years, starting in 2020, to help Pacific nations invest in renewable energy and ‘climate and disaster resilience’.

    But the money will be re-directed from existing aid programs, and is not additional support for the region.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-13/pif-pacific-islands-forum-tuvalu-morrison-fiji-climate-change/11406868

    A technique they have perfected, along with slashing budgets before a small token restoration trumpeted as increased funding just before the next election.

    As for 100 million a year – enough for some sand bags and wellies I suppose.

  19. C@t:

    Don’t forget Tom Nichols!

    Tom NicholsVerified account@RadioFreeTom
    4h4 hours ago
    My conservative pals like @baseballcrank think I’m giving a pass to Warren and others. I’m not. I’m saying: Because Warren or other likely Dem nominees are (a) not emotionally unstable and (b) not colluding with enemy foreign powers, I will vote for her or any of them. /1

    https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1160989711755808769

  20. citizen @ #1069 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:44 am

    This ABC article exposes the massive inequality in infrastructure funding of individual schools across Australia based on previously unavailable data for 2013-2017.

    You can check the data for your own school. Want your own school barista? The article tells you where to enrol (hint: it’s not a public school).

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-13/rich-school-poor-school-australias-great-education-divide/11383384

    Thanks citizen.
    School funding in Australia is indicative of the complete failure of the political system to distribute scarce funds even remotely equitably.

    Is there any other country in the world that puts up with such an outrageous allocation of resources?

  21. ItzaDream says:
    Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 8:57 am

    citizen @ #1072 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:52 am

    What a shonky dealer is Salesman Scott!

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison is seeking to head off criticisms of Australia’s climate change policies by promising hundreds of millions of dollars to tackle the issue ahead of his arrival at a meeting of Pacific leaders in Tuvalu on Wednesday.

    He outlined $500 million over five years, starting in 2020, to help Pacific nations invest in renewable energy and ‘climate and disaster resilience’.

    But the money will be re-directed from existing aid programs, and is not additional support for the region.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-13/pif-pacific-islands-forum-tuvalu-morrison-fiji-climate-change/11406868

    A technique they have perfected, along with slashing budgets before a small token restoration trumpeted as increased funding just before the next election.

    As for 100 million a year – enough for some sand bags and wellies I suppose.

    Whatever happened to those lifeboats to return asylum seekers?

    Maybe we can start donating them to the Pacific nations.

  22. This morning scores of military vehicles began rolling toward Hong Kong from Shenzen City.

    A large crowd of anti-government demonstrators shut down Hong Kong’s airport and stranded thousands of passengers yesterday, as officials in Beijing responded to the weekend’s violent clashes by saying they saw signs of terrorism emerging in the protests.

    Hong Kong’s airport authority cancelled all departing flights Monday afternoon as well as some arrivals after thousands of demonstrators thronged the arrival and departure halls, joining a sit-in at the terminal that has run since Friday. They gathered to protest what they say was police brutality over a bloody weekend that saw some of the worst clashes between police and protesters in more than two months of demonstrations.

    Amid an apparent military build-up in the city of Shenzen on the border with Hong Kong, Chinese officials focused on what they called “deranged acts” by those protesters, including throwing gasoline bombs, saying they marked the emergence of terrorism in the partly autonomous Chinese city.

    “Radical Hong Kong protesters have repeatedly used extremely dangerous tools to attack police officers,” Yang Guang, a spokesman for the Chinese government’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office said in a news briefing yesterday, according to Chinese state media. “The first signs of terrorism are starting to appear.”

    Mr Yang said such violence must be severely punished, “without leniency, without mercy.”

  23. Latham had school funding right with his hit-list but that was a factor in his defeat.
    After the last election I am beginning to think that downward envy in a stronger emotion than upward envy in the Australian electorate. I guess this makes sense among the aspirational

  24. Confessions @ #1081 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 9:03 am

    Is there any other country in the world that puts up with such an outrageous allocation of resources?

    America.
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/lindadarlinghammond/2019/08/05/americas-school-funding-struggle-how-were-robbing-our-future-by-under-investing-in-our-children/#7152a1bf5eaf

    Yes, I thought of the good old US of A, but I’m not sure that they give such a large amount of public money to so called ‘private’ schools.

  25. “Where are those buildings located? I couldn’t imagine living in such a concrete nightmare.”

    I think that’s Hong Kong.

    The picture would have likely been taken with a telescopic lens, which would exaggerate the crowding, so it’s probably not as packed as it looks, but still very high density living.

  26. briefly @ #1063 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:36 am

    Morrison is PM because Australians most often elect conservative-leaning governments. Labor face a permanent uphill run to stay in the game and slipped back down the slope at the last election. Labor’s enemies threw everything at them this time. The visceral hatred of Labor from the Right and the splitters of the pop-left was enough to bring about a Lib-Lib win. This is the usual state of play. Labor campaigned poorly, while their enemies campaigned very effectively and made the most of anti-
    Labor themes, especially in the more repressed parts of the economy. The Reactionaries win in Lib-kin Garden.

    ‘Labor campaigned poorly, while their enemies campaigned very effectively’
    Nuff said.

  27. adrian
    says:
    Yes, I thought of the good old US of A, but I’m not sure that they give such a large amount of public money to so called ‘private’ schools.
    ______________________________________
    In a lot of states in the USA local school funding is provided by local government rather than state governments as they are here. Therefore very wealthy ‘local councils’, i.e counties, provide excellent schools while poorer areas have substandard schools. In a lot of states there is less ‘evening’ going on which state governments do here.

  28. Barney in Makassar @ #1080 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 9:03 am

    ItzaDream says:
    Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 8:57 am

    citizen @ #1072 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 8:52 am

    What a shonky dealer is Salesman Scott!

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison is seeking to head off criticisms of Australia’s climate change policies by promising hundreds of millions of dollars to tackle the issue ahead of his arrival at a meeting of Pacific leaders in Tuvalu on Wednesday.

    He outlined $500 million over five years, starting in 2020, to help Pacific nations invest in renewable energy and ‘climate and disaster resilience’.

    But the money will be re-directed from existing aid programs, and is not additional support for the region.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-13/pif-pacific-islands-forum-tuvalu-morrison-fiji-climate-change/11406868

    A technique they have perfected, along with slashing budgets before a small token restoration trumpeted as increased funding just before the next election.

    As for 100 million a year – enough for some sand bags and wellies I suppose.

    Whatever happened to those lifeboats to return asylum seekers?

    Maybe we can start donating them to the Pacific nations.

    I’d like to hear someone from Labor give a spirited defence of Labor’s policy during their last brief period in office and tell the voters where we could have been now had the LNP not scrapped the carbon price. Don’t make the same mistake Kimbo did.

  29. “So, if everyone drove fully autonomous automatic (electric) cars, none of them would run into each other. They’d all stop before impact. Simples.”

    Not even the makers of autonomous vehicles (AVs) claim that any more.

    AVs will increase freeway capacity about 30% once everyone is driving one, and arterial road capacity not at all. That will make very little difference. If people then drive more, AVs may make congestion worse. Trials in San Francisco have recently suggested exactly that.

  30. Currently something like 7% of car accidents are caused by mechanical issues, so I would expect autonomous vehicles would see something similar.

    (Sorry can’t remember the source for 7%, might have been Vicroads)

  31. Socrates @ #1092 Tuesday, August 13th, 2019 – 9:27 am

    “So, if everyone drove fully autonomous automatic (electric) cars, none of them would run into each other. They’d all stop before impact. Simples.”

    Not even the makers of autonomous vehicles (AVs) claim that any more.

    AVs will increase freeway capacity about 30% once everyone is driving one, and arterial road capacity not at all. That will make very little difference. If people then drive more, AVs may make congestion worse. Trials in San Francisco have recently suggested exactly that.

    Mine was tongue in cheek (need an emoji).

  32. I read a line in the mid 1960s that’s stayed with me.
    WTTE that no country on earth can build roads faster than car companies can build cars.

  33. I am sure we will get AI right, but I would bet it will not be done with von neumann architecture or any of it variations. And basically that is where we are at.

    There is research but it is not mainstream. AI is an mush a dream as it was when when turing came up his test. And lets be frank what dam use is a computer locked in a room pretending to be human.

    autonomous automatic vehicles pffft. Dream on folks, dream on.

    The really sad thing about Intelligence is emotion is part of it. Jealousy, depression, joy, love, curiosity, it is all part of it. Intelligence needs a reason to solve the problem.

  34. Jane Caro @JaneCaro
    1h

    When I was at uni in the 70s many of my friends thought I was on the right, now most consider me on the left, if not far left, but it’s not me who has changed – it’s the world. It’s moved radically to the right.

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