Darwinian selection

Labor moves to save the Northern Territory’s second House of Representatives seat ahead of next month’s determination of state and territory seat entitlements.

The post below this one features Adrian Beaumont’s latest updates on the polling situation in the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Back on home turf, I have two updates to relate.

The first involves the calculation of the states’ and territories’ House of Representatives seat entitlements for the next parliament, which will be determined next month on the basis of yet-to-be published quarterly population figures from December. Barring a sudden change in population trends in the last quarter of last year, this will cause Victoria to gain a seat for the second term in a row, boosting it to 39 seats — a return to where it was when the parliament was enlarged in 1984, before a lean period for the state reduced it to 37 in 1996. It is even more clear that Western Australia will lose the sixteenth seat it has had for the past two terms, reflecting the waxing and waning of the mining and resources boom.

Relatedly — and to get to my main point — the Northern Territory is also set to lose a seat, unless something comes of Labor Senator Malarndirri McCarthy’s announcement last week that she will introduce a bill to guarantee the territory its existing two seats. The territory just scraped over the line with 1.502 population quotas at the last determination in 2017, rounding up to an entitlement of two seats, and has since experienced a continuation of relative decline since the resource boom halcyon days of 2009 — and even then its population only amounted to 1.54 quotas.

The Northern Territory was first divided into its current two seats of Solomon and Lingiari in 2001, but its claim to a second seat has been consistently precarious. It would have reverted to one seat in 2004 if not for a legislative fix to change definitions in a way that put it over the threshold, which received bipartisan support partly because both major parties imagined at that time that they could win both seats. This proved a forlorn hope in the Coalition’s case, with Lingiari having remained with Labor at all times and Solomon having fallen their way in both 2016 and 2019.

As a result, Solomon and Lingiari have consistently had the lowest enrolments in the country, at a shade below 70,000 at the time of the 2019 federal election, compared with an average of 110,755 in the mainland states, 98,644 in the Australian Capital Territory (which gained a third seat last year) and 77,215 in Tasmania (which maintains the constitutionally mandated minimum of five seats for the six original states). Conversely, a single Northern Territory seat would have an enrolment far greater than any other, with the unfortunate effect of under-representing its indigenous population, which accounts for more than a quarter of the total.

My other update relates to the July 4 Eden-Monaro by-election, for which nominations close on Tuesday. The Daily Telegraph ($) reports four candidates have nominated for the Nationals’ Eden-Monaro preselection, to be held on Sunday: Trevor Hicks, deputy mayor of Queanbeyan-Palerang; Fleur Flanery, owner of Australian Landscape Conference; Mareeta Grundy, a dietician; and Michael Green, a farmer from Nimmitabel. The Greens announced on the weekend that their candidate will be Cathy Griff, a Bega Valley Shire councillor.

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.

1,310 comments on “Darwinian selection”

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  2. How unfortunate that Johannes Leak‘s cartoon is unable to be displayed like all the other cartoons. Coincidence? Never.

  5. Lizzie

    You are a lovely, generous and kind woman. May you ever remain this way.

    I will enter into no correspondence regarding this matter.

    Weed spray time now. Au revoir. 🕊🕊🕊

  6. Indigenous people (in NSW) incarcerated at more than 10 times the rate of the general population: ABS

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/indigenous-people-incarcerated-at-more-than-10-times-the-rate-of-the-general-population-abs-20200604-p54zoa.html

    The over representation of Indigenous people in custody is a result of “discriminatory laws and discriminatory policing”, Ms Trevitt said.

    “Discriminatory laws like public drunkenness, incarceration for unpaid fines and other laws that target poverty and the social consequences of a colonial history impact [on Aboriginal people] disproportionately,” she said.

  7. lizzie,

    I’m interested to know what elements of the social fabric have been destroyed by by the LNP? The Annual Union Picnic? Church attendance? The P&F? Participation in sport? Throat Singing groups? Kids on their phones too much? Lower personal income tax rates?

  8. Taylormade:

    Friday, June 5, 2020 at 9:44 am

    [‘Have long thought BK gets his Dawn Patrol round up direct from Labor HQ.’]

    What a load of cobblers, designed to get responses.

  12. How unfortunate that Johannes Leak‘s cartoon is unable to be displayed like all the other cartoons. Coincidence? Never.
    ______
    Buce
    Then YOU tell me how to extract a jpg for his cartoons.

  13. The claim is constantly made that media bias against the ALP and Democrats and UK Labour causes election losses. Yet whenever I read through BK’s extensive and excellent round ups of Australian and International News and Opinion it almost always a torrent of criticism of the LNP, Republicans and UK Conservatives- especially the cartoons.

  15. “How unfortunate that Johannes Leak‘s cartoon is unable to be displayed like all the other cartoons. Coincidence? Never.”

    ***

    Please learn the internet before you make a fool of yourself like this again. It has nothing to do with Leak being a far-right disgrace and everything to do with the way the links to images hosted by News Corp are formatted.

    https ://content.api. news/v3/images/bin/8a6eb2498688356128a9a070e4107fd6?width=1024 #image.jpg

    Add #image.jpg to the end of the image link to trick it into displaying like I have above (without the spaces in the link obviously).

  17. “ Just my luck. I rarely comment and I do it at the end of the previous thread. Here it is again.Re the Reno Rorts. In my neighbourhood, there is a couple who just sold their home a month ago and are moving down south to the Murray River. They have plans to build a new home. They were just ready to sign a contract to start building their new home. Along comes, Reno Rorts and all they have to do is delay by a day in signing the contract and they qualify for a $25,000 grant. I say good luck to them.
    However, there will be no stimulation with this grant, no extra tradesmen used, no new construction, no jobs saved. Just someone who has the money to build a new home at the place and the right time to receive a $25,000 gift. How many are there in the same situation or near the same situation, how lucky are they?”

    This is a very astute observation.

    A minimum $150K renovation, let alone a complete new build, is a significant undertaking.

    Take my example. My wife and I have been contemplating a $150K to $250K renovation for the past 5 years. Two years ago we were still in the ideas phase: we had engaged a design and project management company, but had not finalised initial plans with their architect. 18 months ago we had submitted plans to council, but were negotiating with the regulatory authorities to make our plans compliant with the 2012 wgaultiins relating to pool fencing and soft paving ratios. We signed a contract after a tender process in late December 2018 once all that was ironed out. The builder could not start until June and we didn’t get back into our house until the week before Xmas.

    Long story short, you can’t just pull a home building project that meeting the criteria of ‘HomeBuilder’ out of your arse. It only applies to folk who are 90 to 99% (but not 100%) committed to something tha is likely to have been many months, if not years, in the planning. The stimulus value of ‘HomeBuilder’ is limited only to those people who were already committed to the project before covid19 but who might have otherwise have gotten cold feet about committing to the actual build given the economic depression that has now emerged. Therefore it has some – very limited – value.

    Obviously , grants of up to $25K for small jobs, especially for pensioners, disabled home owners and low income folk would have a much bigger stimulus impact AND a much greater social utility.

    Similarly, if the government wanted to stimulate big residential projects, it didn’t have to look any further than the massive backlog of social and welfare public housing.

  18. I think BK does a good job of putting together a cross section of media sources each morning. I don’t notice any bias but then i do think claims of media bias is exaggerated by both the left and right.

  20. lizzie,

    I do respect the manner in which you engage with me and my opinions.

    I am interested to know how you think that the LNP is responsible for destroying the social fabric of Australia.

  22. Sorry, I forgot. When did BK inherit the ethical responsibility to share right wing cartoons? Last time I checked, he was a regular poster who can post with whatever ideological bias he wants.

    Nobody’s stopping you from doing the same, if you feel you’re not represented.

    Drop the persecution complex and harden up, you snowflake babies.

  23. How is the blog enhanced by Johannes Leak’s vile body of work, exactly?

    Instead, how about Incitatus and Co simply fuck off to Breitbart, or “Tanks Today”?

  24. “Thanks Firefox and Kayjay.”

    ***

    No worries mate. Thanks for the effort you put in each morning to bring us the dawn patrol 🙂

  25. Bucephalus @ #52 Friday, June 5th, 2020 – 7:42 am

    How unfortunate that Johannes Leak‘s cartoon is unable to be displayed like all the other cartoons. Coincidence? Never.

    Of course BK is under no compulsion to even provide a link, without which you might be unaware of Leak’s ongoing existence.

    Yet you cast snide insinuations about him.

  26. There’s a sad lack of throat-singing groups in my area. It can hardly be a coincidence that local Federal and State MP’s have been nearly all Liberal.

  27. a r says:
    Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:13 am

    Straight News programs are the highest rating shows. The only opinion programs in the top 20 are The Project (which is mercilessly anti-LNP and a haven of wokeness) and then 7.30 in Eleventh place – which I am advised is unbiased. I’m not seeing any pro-LNP bias on Free to Air.

  28. BK, thank you for the round up.
    I blame Murdoch and his The OZ sewer rats for Leak not being worth putting up.

    That said, I must admit to a bit of bias confirmation in today’s Leak.
    Snap Back is all about yesterday’s mental furniture. There is not enough intellectual grunt in this Government to say no to the various crony capitalists they have engaged at taxpayer expense to provide national policy ‘advice’. Stockholm Syndicate.

    HomeBuilder is RenoRorts: A morally corrupt scam for robbing taxpayers to gift capital gains to a tiny minority who, by definition of the requirements, do not need it.

    HomeBuilder is designed to make climate change worse.

    RenoRorts was launched in Queanbeyan just in time to try to buy the Eden Monaro election. The moral corruption in this Government is habitual.

    What is refreshing is that for once large sections of the MSM are not buying the flimflam from Scotty from Marketing and FrytheEconomy.

  29. Of course cartoons critique the right (at the moment)…they are in power in Australia, the US, UK, NSW (for starters). Cartoonists tend to critique those in power obviously. Not much point criticizing the Opposition who are not in a position to implement anything.

  30. We are all free to link our own preferred articles and cartoons. I appreciate it that BK spends the time each morning to present his. I don’t know how he does it.

  31. I’ve noticed that people who agree with me are good honest people who are just telling it as it is but people who disagree with me or say things I don’t want to hear are just dishonest and blinded by their own biases.

  32. ”Not much point criticizing the Opposition who are not in a position to implement anything.“

    Greens please note.

  33. Latest presidential race polls from USA. Of particular interest are Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, Texas and North Carolina. Trump is in deep shit.

  35. The endless preoccupation with a police killing in one failed northern hemisphere state (USA) and the almost total disinterest in a far worse case of police killings in another failed northern hemisphere state (Philippines) is surely a sign of a strange, but totally expected, selectivity.

    Surely it’s not a matter of racism?

    “Tens of thousands of people may have been killed during Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines, according to a damning UN report that warns of “impunity” and calls for an independent investigation into abuses.“

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/04/philippines-police-may-have-killed-tens-of-thousands-with-near-impunity-in-drug-war-un

  37. 38 food packages for $9.3 million?

    Scotty from Marketing and FrytheEconomy have excelled themselves here. That comes to a quarter of a million dollars for a packet of food.

    Let’s hope that the lucky 38 copped some high end luxe!

  38. “ Latest presidential race polls from USA. Of particular interest are Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, Texas and North Carolina. Trump is in deep shit.”

    On the contrary, Trump’s numbers are beautiful. He is – at least – polling above 40% in each of those listed battleground states. All his vile antics will energise his base – and reinforce what they already do habitually: come out and vote Republican, no matter what.

    Biden’s support on the other hand, whilst looking OK on paper, is largely febrile and reliant on folk turning out to vote that have a very sad history of not doing that essential activity when it counts.

  40. Homefront policies[edit]

    In terms of social policy, the Curtin Government enacted a wide range of progressive social reforms during its time in office. Pensions were introduced for deserted wives and widows, while the establishment of the Women’s Employment Board led to increased wages for some women during the war.

    Aboriginal Australians were provided with significantly increased entitlement to welfare benefits, while maternity allowances were extended. In addition, pensions for the elderly and infirm were increased.

    “Asiatics” who were British subjects became eligible for a pension in 1941, and eligibility was extended the following year to Pacific Islanders known as “Kanakas”, and from that July that year “Aboriginal natives” of Australia became eligible for pensions if they were not subject to a state law “relating to the control of Aboriginal natives” or if they lived in a state where they could not be exempt from such laws but were of eligible for pension on the grounds of “character, standard of intelligence and development”. …….

    From June 1942, Widows’ Pension Class B was paid to widows without dependent children who were aged 50 and over. The term “widow” included de facto widows who had lived with the deceased spouse for at least three years prior to his death and had been maintained by him. Eligibility was also extended to deserted de jure wives who had been deserted for at least six months, divorced women who had not remarried and women whose husbands were in hospitals for those considered to be insane. From July that year, Widows’ Pension Class B (WPb) was exempted from income tax.[62]

    In 1942, eligibility for maternity allowances was extended to Aboriginal women who were exempted from State laws relating to the control of Aboriginal natives and who were considered suitable to receive the benefits. From 1943, the income test for maternity allowances was abolished and the rate of the allowance was increased to 15 pounds where there were no other children under the age of 14 years, 16 pounds where there were one or two other children, and 17 pounds 10 shillings in cases of three or more children.

    These amounts included an additional allowance of 25 shillings per week in respect of the period four weeks before and four weeks after the birth, to be paid after the birth of the child.[63] That same year, eligibility for Child Endowment was extended to children in Government institutions, to Aboriginal children who lived for six months per year on a mission station, and to children who were maintained from a deceased estate….

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Curtin

    Curtin made sure social security support was extended for the first time to aboriginal Australians, including, in particular to aboriginal service personnel and their widows, reflecting the erosion of the White Australia assumptions that had been present in social policy from Federation. Curtin implemented reforms in social policy that removed the racial basis for eligibility for pensions and other support, which was in general very greatly expanded by his government.

  41. Rational Leftist says:
    Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:25 am
    “Sorry, I forgot. When did BK inherit the ethical responsibility to share right wing cartoons? Last time I checked, he was a regular poster who can post with whatever ideological bias he wants.”

    I don’t think BK shows any bias – he provides an excellent round up. His unbiased roundup shows claims of anti-ALP/pro-LNP media bias to be a load of bunkem.

    It did appear rather strange that Leak’s cartoon was not displayed the same as the others. We now know why and a solution has been provided. Good effort people.

  42. I am not the Overlord here, but if I was, anyone who criticised BK’s Morning Patrol would be chucked out on their ungrateful arske, never to return.

    Flogging in the town Square is too kind.

  43. Rakali

    Indeed.

    However, Duterte’s murders have received rather more publicity in Australia than Xi’s judicial murder of thousands of his political opponents.

    The way it works there is this. If the victim accepts his fate (nearly always a man) then the family gets to keep most or all of its wealth.
    If he fights his fate, then the family goes down with him.
    The result is win win. Virtual silence for Xi and an enemy eliminated. The victim can console himself with the thought that it was not all for nowt.

    I am not saying that the execution victims were innocent of corruption.
    Merely that Xi uses the justice system to prioritize the executions.

  45. Rational Leftist @ 10:37
    ”I’ve noticed that people who agree with me are good honest people who are just telling it as it is but people who disagree with me or say things I don’t want to hear are just dishonest and blinded by their own biases.“

    Funny, I’ve often noticed that too.

  47. Incitatus is free to subscribe to the rupeverse to satisfy his Leak fetishes if he so chooses. Can we leave it at that please. Same goes for Zanetti as well.

  48. Thanks BK for the Dawn Patrol.

    Them that don’t like it can make their own arrangements. Depending on the state of my aches and pains – I mostly look through the offerings from “The Australian”, “The SMH” and occasionally “The Daily Telegraph.”

    Plenty of good “stuff” to be had from “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post” as well. If you can’t read them then you haven’t been paying attention.

  50. When I have (rather inadequately) stood in for BK, I have simply taken a selection of items which might be of interest and perhaps lead to conversation. And I suspect that BK, like me, doesn’t bother to post stuff that is simply a press release from the gov.

    (I started to write this and was interrupted by a phone call from a friend whose son has had his car vandalised – they were going to steal it but were interrupted – by a group of men wearing, guess what, covid masks. I had wondered when they were going to be put to use as disguises. Pretty obvious…)

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