From today’s Crikey email:
If you’d been paying careful attention to Crikey way back in March this year, you’d have noticed a couple of stories by Christian Kerr and me pointing to the danger Michael Johnson faced in retaining the blue ribbon Brisbane seat of Ryan from an ill-considered piece of road funding pork designed to shore up Liberal margins in Moreton and Blair.
The trouble for Johnson is that his constituents in the acreage blocks around Pullenvale and Brookfield can’t stand the thought of a bypass bringing additional city bound traffic across the river from Ipswich. And Johnson’s other problem is that state Liberal MP and leader, the embattled Bruce Flegg, has staunchly opposed the proposed bypass, leaving him dangling out on a limb defending Howard’s road.
Now the Libs have leaked internal polling showing that Ryan, held by a margin of 10.4%, has been re-classified for campaign purposes as “ultra marginal�.
Writing at his blog, Ambit Gambit, former Queensland Liberal vice-president Graham Young covers the toxic internal machinations which have helped shift Ryan over to the growing list of supposedly safe Coalition seats in real danger of falling to Labor.
But Young makes another crucial point:
Not all the blame should go to Johnson. Ryan is the “jewel in the Liberal crown” not just because of its margin, but because it is home to the smartest and richest people (on average of course) in Brisbane. A loss of Ryan would confirm the trend under John Howard for the Liberals to lose these seats to Labor as they have loosened their grip on the professional class. In effect Howard has traded seats like Ryan for working class seats like Blair by pitching so strongly for blue-collar conservatives (Blair now encompasses much of the territory once represented by Pauline Hanson). Except this election most of the seats like Blair appear to be heading back to Labor whence they originally came.
The evidence from internal party polling, the aggregate Newspoll numbers and the movements of campaign cash and the leaders around various seats all points in the direction of this conclusion. There’s been a lot of commentary on how Howard can win back the “Howard battlers� who’ve deserted him for Rudd. But there’s been very little on how he can stop the Ruddslide rolling down the leafy avenues of seats such as Ryan.
Electorate specific factors can’t be the only ones shifting votes in safe Liberal seats to Labor. There’s no doubt that authoritarian populism and social conservatism are big turn offs for many small l liberal voters. Seats like Ryan and North Sydney, which voted solidly for the republic in 1999, are now showing signs of shifting partisan allegiance. Such a shift is no doubt facilitated by Rudd’s fiscal conservatism.
It’s not just the Howard battlers. The real story of this campaign might be the Rudd wets.
“Seats like Ryan and North Sydney, which voted solidly for the republic in 1999, are now showing signs of shifting partisan allegiance.”
Exactly.
Rudd, who is cultured and polite, liberal(ish) but not radical, is their cup of tea, in ways that Latham, who had the demeanour of a professional wrestler on heat, never was.
As it happens, I live in Ryan. I’m enormously excited by the idea that my vote may actually count for once - I’ve lived in solid safe seats up until now in my voting life. Michael Johnson keeps sending me glossy mail with pictures of his smiling face and info about his “hard working heritage”. Unfortunately, even though I’m relatively interested in politics, so far I have no idea who the Labor candidate is. I’d like to see Labor get some info out in my area - I’m not sure if they’re waiting for the ‘real’ campaign, or letting Rudd be the focal point, or what.
Kezza
The Labor candidate is QUT academic Ross Daniels, and you will find an interview with him here:
http://www.youdecide2007.org/content/view/211/101/
So Liberal voters are tiring of witch-dunkings and cross-burnings.
That’s terrible news for the.most.conservative.PM.evah.
Following up Terry’s comment, Daniels has a pretty comprehensive website including a campaign blog:
http://www.labor4ryan.com/
It’s difficult to campaign across the whole of the electorate - because outside Toowong, St Lucia and Taringa it has a lower and lower population density as you move west. I was asked to be Labor campaign manager for Ryan many a long year ago, so have some idea of the task ahead. It was a challenge I declined!
Kezza: I’ve seen Daniels campaigning at The Gap shopping centre.
I’ve been saying this for ten years at least.
From the Kelly’s Bush campaigners to the Not Happy John Subaru drivers railed against in the Oz last week, it was always a mistake to assume that moderate liberals were dead as a political force. Disorganised definitely, but not dead. Labor are smart to hide Mar’n Fer’son and push Julia Gillard into a latter-day Eliza Doolittle. I think
theywe will only stand up once ALP activists decide they’ve been ignored for too long and start pulling Labor away from the centre, and the Liberals finally realise that the end of the Howard government was not some technical error, not something peculiar to Howard himself, and not something that can be remedied by holding the line.One person who should be campaigning hard in Ryan is Andrew Bartlett. Given what you said Mark, he should be doorknocking the joint with “vote for whomever in the House but put me [1] in the Senate”. He does not have anything better to do and anyone who advises him against such a course has not got his best interests at heart.
There are 29 seats in Queensland. Assuming they’re pretty even in population, that means 3.45% of Queenslanders live in any one seat. Were Bartlett to doorknock a seat like Ryan, he might sufficiently impress a number of voters to vote for him who wouldn’t otherwise have done so, which could make a material difference on polling day. Everyone’s a critic - but better to offer a suggestion before the event than afterwards. Not only could he do worse, he has. They say that you should do one thing every day that scares you, and with doorknocking you can do this every few minutes.
The emergence of the Rudd Wets foreshadows what could be the great dividing feature of Australian politics in the future, social liberals versus social conservatives. This will be made possible by what is now a more-or-less agreed economic paradigm across all but the outer edges of the political spectrum, and that is more-or-less free markets with regulatory intervention here and there. Rhetoric aside, there really isn’t a lot of difference between the Labor Party and the Liberal Party on the economy. In fact there is probably more difference within the parties (especially once you include the National Party in the Liberal side) than between them.
But on matters of individual liberty, there could well significant differences, with one party emerging as the liberal party and the other as the illiberal party. It’s not at all obvious how this will pan out. The Labor Party in the future could attract the Liberal party’s social right, and the Liberal Party could attract the Labor party’s social left. Or vice versa.
Well, Andrew, apropos of our earlier disagreement, what’s occurring here is not moderate liberals flexing political muscles, but moderate liberal voters turning to the ALP.
On the broader point, another Howard era myth that may be about to be put to bed is that only suburban mortgage belt voters swing elections. People tend to forget that Hawke Labor (and Whitlam back in his day) successfully detached many professional and university educated voters from their Liberal partisan allegiance.
Terry and Mark, thanks for the links. I had been meaning to go looking, but I guess my point was that most punters won’t bother. Best of luck to whoever has taken on the challenge this year :-).
Same thing is happening at the Young Labor/Liberal level.
Your average small ‘l’ liberal student (say, fiscal conservative, social liberal) stands no chance of going anywhere in the Young Liberals. You’re either a hardcore libertarian or a Hillsongite (usually depending on which state you’re from) - in contrast, Young Labor is majority small ‘l’ liberals, with some arch-lefties (though they dont hold any power outside the Uni campuses).
Doorknocking isn’t scary, Andrew E. If it is, you’re not doing it right.
Mark, I don’t know about Ryan, but one of features of the North Sydney electorate is its high proportion of voters-in-transit. It turns over a very large number of its population between each election, which doesn’t necessarily reduce the margin for the Liberal Party but certainly reduces the benefit of incumbency for the holder, and makes it easier for right-wing Independents to poll well.
I heard an apocryphal story somewhere that a couple of businesses have offered to sponsor Joe Hockey’s “community newsletters”, that’s how frequently he has to issue them.
Sal, funny thing is when I was in Young Labor back in the late 80s and early 90s the really right wing Young Libs were all “Gordon Gekko” wannabes wearing suits to uni and dreaming about Margaret Thatcher. “Social issues” and religion weren’t really on anyone’s radar - except for the odd NCC operative in the Young Nats…
Liam, yes and no. Around Qld Uni, there’s a large “in transit” population. Fewer now would be domestic students and more international students as rentals have gone through the roof and the student share house has declined, and developers have redesigned large parts of the area to suit the international student market. One big challenge used to be the 2000 plus college students at UQ - how many would be enrolled in Ryan as opposed to their “home” electorate and was it a good idea to try to get them to enrol? A lot of the seat is pretty “established” as they say…
Hi,
perhaps this 40th anniversary of Che Guevara’s death is an opportune day to ask a question of folk a bit more accusomed to political blogging than I have been. My usual is poetry.
I have had my mind in this upcoming election. Specifically oriented towards the climate change spectrum of mass public concern.
What I am thinking is that there are is now a significantly large quantity of younger Australians, many of whom are teritary graduates nowadays, whom are looking down the tube of a far more difficult prospect in taking up, and paying off mortgages. It is also a group less likely to be attuned with the Whitlam era, and so less wanting of mass social welfare spending. Therefore, is it not a group whom are very likely to anticipate that a labour spending of that phantom “budget surplus”, might be well done to be used to prevent our farmers who have made the effort to be ecologically sustainable, from having to foreclose on their mortgages.
Consider also the following: our farmers are less subsidised than in any other industrialised nation; our ecological science is more advanced that in most other nations, especially where it had not been well funded recently and so is little known about; there are already farm subsidies for farmers who might otherwise go under, and which are enabling of financing the fencing and other sorts of immediate needs in conditions where soil erosion is sever, and those farmers who have taken up such offers, under peer pressure from other farmers not to, have reported well about the positive effect.
I can’t help wondering why I myself haven’t thought of it sooner, that the government’s major effort in carbon trading schemes has to address the needs of the farmers.
It is the obvious election winning card from my perspective. The farmers have just got to bloody hate Howard, since life on the land is such a very hard working effort daily, and for almost no return in money or social credibility. My education from people on the land came from those who grew up with a strong AWU family background. But we all know that not all the cockies are rolling it in. The poor farmers really are doing it bloody tough and tougher than anybody, even the homeless, here in the city.
What are others thinking in this vein?
Thanks for reading my comment
Hey hey. Door knocking isn’t scary, it’s the best fun! If you aren’t talking to the punters, you aren’t campaiging!
Kezza,
I and many others were ALP letterboxing for Ross Daniels in Ryan last weekend. If you have a ‘No Junk mail’ notice on your letterbox you may not have been stuffed
and may not get stuffed, or, the letterboxer for your street just hasn’t got to you yet.
Johnson tends to use Australia Post for his letterboxing - thus avoiding the junk mail courtesy observance. Oh well. Electors in Ryan are typically much more socially aware than average, so I think they know the issues very well.
Very encouraging to hear confirmation of the panic of Johnson. I’d also caution against taking too much notice of Young’s spin on the Johnson / Santoro relationship. Young has one interest and one interest only - that is the advancement of his particular faction in the Liberal party.
Mark and all you who believe voting can change things in today’s Australia:
Wouldn’t it be funny if the Member for Ryan, Michael Johnson, was the only Liberal MP from Queensland who made it into the next federal parliament? Where would he sit? on the Opposition side? On the cross-benches?
My next [perennial] question is which party or group would replace the almost defunct Liberals in the Australian political spectrum?
Ryan did make it onto this list.
“From the Kelly’s Bush campaigners”
Kelly’s Bush is not the only site the Green Bans protected. There are two small parks in Erskineville they also stopped from being deveolped that have now been renamed ‘Green Bans Park’.
Sorry, off topic but an interesting tidbit (I hope)
Looks like it is going to be an interesting couple of weeks with Howard in Tonga, the Liberals stuck in an unnecessary mudslinging match in Canberra while other candidates are out doorknocking in electorates like Ryan.
Pure genius!
Sal
In other words, the Young Liberals of the 1980s and 1990s now run the Labor Party! Wonderful. NOT!
“The poor farmers really are doing it bloody tough and tougher than anybody, even the homeless, here in the city.”
I agree the farmers are doing it tough but to claim they are doing it tougher than the homeless is pure hyperbole, IMO.
How can you justify claiming someone who has no home, no job, is quite likely mentally ill and suffering substance addictions are doing it less tough than farmers who have a roof over their heads, a job and assets?
Since January, anyway
Michael Johnson - well, he’s invisible, but I don’t really have any animosity against the man. [*] He’s a benchwarmer, plain and simple. He had his chance to distinguish himself by opposing the Goodna bypass - like Flegg and Newman did. He didn’t take it. He may get in, but visible opposition would almost assure his victory. That chance is gone.
* I guess it’s because he helped keep Matthew Boland from getting the Liberal candidacy. That is one man that I never wanted to run for Ryan.
Graham: there are quite a few Liberal seats that would stay Liberal even up to a 10% swing. Groom is the safest (18.8 %), with the others on the Gold and Sunshine coasts. I don’t believe there are many Rudd wets in those areas.
Reading the section on Australia in Jared Diamond’s book ‘Collapse’ really got me thinking about the farmers.
Basically, Australia is not an environment that is suited for farming. The huge subsidies that go to propping up their unprofitable, unsustainable, water-wasting, soil-exhausting lifestyle-choice are costing a fortune environmentally and economically. As the climate is expected to only get hotter and drier, with maybe a couple of productive years per decade at best, it is time to seriously consider whether the cost is worth it.
“Basically, Australia is not an environment that is suited for farming…”
That brush stroke is a wee bit too broad I think.
Marginal land may be returned to less intensive uses or used for forestry and tree plantations , water may not be left in private reservoirs for licence holders to use and the types of enterprises engaged in may need to be changed but large parts of Australia can sustain healthy rural enterprises.
We need to consider encouraging these changes.
I dont expect Labor in power will last long as popular, or the excuses of power that Howard is exhibiting.So the question about Ryan is what are the rental values like for those not yet gray nomads or the homeless of Sydney versus the tough times of farmers!?The candidate mention here doesnt seem that sparkling,given how much they are able to charge the electorate for their honest to goodness services then being wet Labor, for those who have lived with similar description on the other party means simply cheat.Having had Griener stuff up my life,my fists will be action,if, it happens again, with this bloody party.A holiday inside will obviously be the reward.
Mark attempts a little gratuitous spin doctorinig:
Dream on. This sounds alot like the Doctors Wives myth that was doing the rounds before the ALP bit the dust in the 2004 election. I daresay that this rehashed spin is heading for the same dustbin of history.
If mark is interested in political science rather than political activism he will know that any social strata-specific ideological movements will be evidenced by disproportionate electorate-specific swings. The “Rudd’s Luvvies” theory does not provide any solid evidence that the pro-ALP swing is stronger in the leafy-sandy electorates.
Even if it did, that would not be evidence of a swing away from the “corporal”-Right to the liberal-Left amongst the well-off members of the community. This is because Rudd’s cultural policies are indistinguishable from Howards.
The only political metric that would substantiate a revival of the Wets political fortunes is a revival of the liberal-Left minor political parties vote ie GREEN & DEM. I dont see much evidence of that.
It is more likely that the improvement in the ALP’s vote amongst urban professionals in formerly blue-ribbon LN/P electorates is being driven by the same ideological dynamic that is driving an improvement of the ALP vote amongst formerly blue-ribbon ALP electorates: class anxiety about Work Choices and associated trends in master-servant relations.
The capitalist owning class is continually driving non-owners into more subservient social positions, especially on issues such as work-family balance. Work Choices is an instrument of the capitalist ownership class.
It is being used against wage earners and now professional salary men in order to get them to toe the line in the 24/7 work world. So it is not surprising that professional salarymen are indulging in a little UTC menshevikism ie voting ALP just to stick it to the bosses. Pr Quiggin nailed it quite nicely a year or so ago:
As Orwell once wrote: “if there is hope, it lies in the proles”.
Re the blog entry above on farmers …
I think a lot of people on the land, and not only the owners, have it tough. The rain in the middle of the year really lifted spirits in the bush, but lack of follow-up rain has left them dangling, again.
This will be very bad for the mental health of many.
When I was out-back in September 2005, some corporation or farmer was still using open channel irrigation at Bourke, perhaps for cotton [On the Cobar-Bourke road].
In an April trip this year, I was shocked to see wheat has also been extensively planted well past Nyngan, on the Cobar road. Nyngan has been the edge of agriculture for a long time.
Whilst many on the land seem to be doing their best to adapt to the circumstances of climate, others have been after the main chance, and bugger the rest.
There is also quite a bit of tension in the bush between irrigated and non-irrigated land users.
A socially conservative ‘bush’ has been shafted [Not shifted!] by Howard on climate change, but has no where to go. Desperate times!
Keep an eye on Mcpherson on the Gold Coast, though Down and Out. Labor will win it or come close despite the 14% margin. Oh, and Forde.
No, but the Newspoll aggregate does. As does the Liberal internal polling which is determining where they allocate their scarce resources.
That’s not the point. Spiros put it well:
The whole thrust of the argument is that in the absence of a better political home to go, the vote becomes a pure protest vote towards a plausible Opposition leader.
And anyway the claim of identity between Rudd and Howard is untrue, unless you take Paul Kelly’s word for it.
So? It often takes more than one issue to switch a vote. Except when you’ve got some theory about “cultural dries” that you will try to stretch to fit the evidence… And actually it’s a different dynamic as a “cultural” analyst like yourself should realise, Jack. I don’t think you’ll find too many among the Liberal voting salariat in Ryan who feel personally threatened about WorkChoices. “Class anxiety” is quite wrong, unless you’re a Marxist, dude…
Hedley Thomas sets the record straight on the shreddergate believers attempts to smear Rudd.
I drive a Subaru and I’m not happy with John but I’m not Not Happy John.
Australia@work author writes here.
Rudd’s Wets is a nice term, but I have personally been thinking of this group as the
ABC Liberals for a while now . The rightwing Howard supporters hate the ABC with a passion, but the socially progressive Liberals love it. They watch it much more than the general population and generally get very upset when some Howard minister tries to mess with it. You can tell where abouts on the spectrum a Liberal party supporter is simply by asking them “do you like the ABC?” So the term ABC Liberal works quite well.
I wonder how the Rob McClelland capital punishment row is going to play in this?
The Oz is trumpeting in one direction, the Age in the other, the Hearld Sun has run with it but the Tele and the Courier Mail haven’t. So, it could have been worse but it’s still not great for Rudd. Today’s, brittle, inconsistent and harsh boss angle might hurt Rudd more than the core issue, especially in the leafy areas. The original flap yesterday will have cost some votes amongst The John Laws listeners in the Young’s “blue collar conservative” electorates.
All in all not well handled. It may cost Rudd 1-2%. If it forms part of a longer, larger story about a brittle leader in charge of a cabinet with hidden agendas it could get worse.
Latest pdf trends in Australian politics document
The ’subsidise farmers’ post kind of threw this, but I should note that there is a growing movement to pay farmers for ‘environmental stewardship’. That is, if they are to be subsidised, let it be to retain the environmental values on their land.
I think it has solid foundations, and will grow as an idea.
“I wonder how the Rob McClelland capital punishment row is going to play in this?”
A storm in a teacup.
Rudd has adopted the extremely successful Beattie dmage control tactics for situations like this, which is mea culpa ad nauseum, jump all over the offender and hang him out to dry, promise to learn your lesson, and move on.
The last thing you do, which is what Latham would have done, is try to tough it out. All that does is keep issue alive in the news cycle. This way, it will all be forgotten very soon.
As for thr hapless McClelland, his political future appears unpromising. Of course there was nothing wrong with what he said, as such, but Holy Mother of God, his judgment has been shown to be appalling. That is not what you want in a Foreign Minister.
Mind you, it was McClelland who cast the deciding vote that delivered the leaderhip to Latham, based on some football coach reasoning, so his judgment has been known to be not the greatest, for some time.
Mark,
I have to say that I sincerely believe that neither Forde, nor McPherson nor Ryan will fall to the ALP. The Liberal candidates in Forde and McPherson are quite strong.
Ryan has problems with the MP and the Goodna bypass but on the ground I haven’t seen the kind of swing that cost Bob Tucker in 2001.
I also have to strongly oppose your characterisation of the UQ Liberals as “Gordon Gecko” types. THe UQ Liberal Club of the 21st century is the most stylish and progressive in the country - even if I do say so myself.
I had to laugh about the reference to Matty Boland. His political career has completely imploded. Now even Santo won’t touch him. That’s what happens when the Golden Child loses its gloss.
Finally, I am sceptical that progressive liberals will vote for Rudd en masse. Rudd has branded himself as Howard-lite and a Christian conservative. With economic luddites like Kim il-Carr reviving talk about tariffs, this is hardly encouraging for a moderate liberal. I will be throwing a 2nd preference Andrew Bartlett’s way.
Couldn’t agree more Mark. It beats the hell out of the notion that the weats had died and dissipated as a political force. If it’s good enough for HB Higgins and John Wheeldon, it’s good enough for the rest of us - but I can’t see it lasting.
Into the second or third term of Rudd, I predict the left will try to sieze the wheel, in a similar way to Peter Costello making the odd vague pronouncement on Teh Future as a way of demonstrating his Prime Ministerial Credentials. At about that time I predict the moderates will start getting up, if not to their feet then certainly their knees, shaking their heads groggily and start making pronouncements about the nature of our Commonwealth going forward. Please resist the urge to bleat et tu and watch a few seats start to swing, with a few underprepared Liberals girning like they can’t believe their luck.
But, that’s all a way ahead of us yet.
Uh, I think that was Whitlam-era mythology. A lot of those seats that Labor won in 1969 and ‘72 was bush and/or farming country when Menzies won in 1949. Howard merely turned this around.
I think about people like my parents, both tertiary-educated and suburban dwellers at that time, who voted Whitlam in and then out. There’s less of a dichotomy there than you might imagine.
The other consideration is that the Liberal Party is well aware that, for all their gloating about winning Labor seats on the city fringes, it is no longer true that gentrification equals greater propensity to vote Liberal. In Sydney, property prices in Balmain are among the highest in the city yet the Liberal vote there has barely changed.
I agree Liam, I quite enjoyed the few occasions on which I did it - but in major parties there is a real ethic of control of situations in which leaders/candidates appear, and for every relaxed-looking pollie you see working a crowd, there is a nervy staffer with a mobile phone and a clipboard worried that some punter is going to leap out and make their charge swear, fumble or look otherwise Out Of Control.
Didn’t say it was, polly. The fact that protecting Kelly’s Bush was an initiative of North Shore housewives, so-called “doctors’ wives” and small-l liberals, is the point you’ve missed - along with the fact that it was the unions who followed the community campaign, whereas some try to give them credit for leading it.
It wasn’t a myth - these people wanted to vote against Howard but when Latham started foaming at the mouth about private schools, the vote evaporated.
Like the British guns at Singapore pointing away from the advancing Japanese, if you’re determined to look in the wrong place then you won’t find what you need to see. In 2007 moderate liberals will vote Labor. This will change over subsequent elections, but this is the case today and over the next few weeks.
Leaving 1890s rhetoric behind, there is less difference than you might imagine between these two families: both on about $150k, but Family A have bought a cheap house in an outer suburb while Family B have bought a nicer house in a suburb with cachet. The Bs are working harder but the As are commuting further, both have different ideas of fun and the Joneses with whom they are keeping up look different - yet if we have to look through the sepia-toned prism Jack looks through, it won’t help us understand that A and B are a similar demographic with similar concerns and likely to vote similarly.
Mark, being the campaign manager in what would have been unwinnable Ryan would have been a thankless task, and it would no doubt have been on a completely voluntary basis! Even being a campaign manager in a marginal small urban federal electorate is challenging enough, let along one with a geographically large liberal voting western section such as Ryan.
(I remember reading at one stage that the Brisbane City Council Ward of Pullenvale was the safest Liberal seat/ward in the country in the 80s, a completely plausible possibility.)
This is a relatively recent development Rebecca. The reverse was true for most of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In 1996 Howard was very clever in embracing “brown” issues, i.e. applying environmentalism to landcare and river systems. I think things would have been very different had he stuck by that - appointed a Nat/rural Lib as environment minister and got some well-considered and widely-negotiated solutions in place.
Some farms are just not sustainable and any further subsidies are a waste for givers and receivers alike. I read recently of one farmer who’s had one good year in the past nine - I am under no obligation to pay this guy to live the lifestyle to which he’s become accustomed, nor am I obliged to suffer the price of my food going up by 900% (whether directly in paying retail or indirectly through the tax system funding subsidies) to avoid hurting this guy’s feelings. Load up the ute and close the gate behind you, my friend.
Any farmer that declines a subsidy out of peer pressure is a mug. The fact is those subsidies ought not be paid at all. Businesses, large and small, city and country, go to the wall every day. Weep not for the panelbeater in a bad location with poor people and financial management skills. Pay no subsidy to the mortgage broker who just can’t make a go of it.
I think, Rebecca, that your post really is the most sentimental nonsense I have ever seen on this site, and that your instincts in integrating environmental sustainability with considerations of viability for farmers is sound and not to be overridden with misplaced sympathy and mythologising.
Antonio, I was talking about Young Libs I knew in the late 80s and early 90s.
Labor may not win Forde, Mcpherson, or Ryan. But I think they’ll run the Libs close.
Mark, I can’t believe that you are critiquing Gordon Gecko for not being stylish! Michael Douglas at his best!
I don’t think the ALP will be close in any of those 3 seats. They will get a swing and maybe some of those seats will be marginal next time round (eg. McPherson), but it won’t be close.
I think Bonner and (probably) Moreton will fall. Bowman will be quite close but I think the Libs will squeak back. Blair may well fall to the ALP. Apart from that, I don’t think there will be much movement in the other seats.
And I really don’t think you will see a big swing of moderate libs to the ALP. To the greens and the indies maybe, but I think the 2nd preference will swing back to the Liberal column. Maybe I am talking to a totally different group of moderate liberals to everyone else though.
I’m glad you find it funny, but it wasn’t so amusing a couple of years ago. I knew Boland from UQ. I was living in The Gap at the time, and there was a chance that he could have grabbed Ryan when Moore retired. Having him as my local MP would not have been pleasant. Fortunately, he’d built up a lot of enemies by then.
Alex Hawke is the new Golden Child. He reminds me a little of Boland: arrogantly branch-stacking his way through the young Libs to power. Unlike Boland, it looks like he’ll get a seat out of it - Mitchell. But as long as he’s not my MP, he can implode in opposition as much as I care.
Spiros “Storm in a teacup”.
I hope and expect that you are right but there is still some danger for Rudd in the “brittle/opportunistic” narrative if it gets more fuel from somewhere.
Yes, a party in search of a Foreigns affairs minister. Get your applications in now folks.
Antonio, current polling has Labor getting a 9% swing in Queensland. If uniform, theis means they would win:
Bonner (0.5%), Moreton (2.8%), Blair (5.7%), Herbert (6.2%), Longman (6.7%), Petrie (7.4%), Flynn (7.7%), Hinkler (8.3%), Bowman (8.9%), Dickson (8.9%).
That’s 11 seats.
Of course, swings are never uniform, which is why they might not get all of those, but they might get Leichardt (10.3%) and Ryan (10.4%) which are currently just outside the uniform swing range.
Matty Bobo actually has way more charisma and style than Alex Hawke. I never liked his politics much but he was a very clever machinist. He’s now married and concentrating on his career as an Industrial lawyer with Thiess. He hasn’t done too bad for a Young National defect from a pretty working class background. His fall from grace has a lot to do with the great fallout of Boland, Muller and Malcolmson from the Santoro inner sanctum. All this occurred a few months after Muller’s wife Ms Penelope Behan ran third for the Moggill presection to Russell Galt and Bruce Flegg (who ended up losing by one vote). When Galt launched a Supreme Court appeal, it was funded by the Santoro people which shitted Muller, Boland etc no end. Hence the fallout…
Alex Hawke by contrast is a devious extremist sycophantic weasel with zero public speaking skills. So his prognosis for political survival is good.
Well the UQ Young Liberals were pretty freaky when I was there. Is Jemma McGinley still kicking around saying refugees should be murdered and eaten upon arrival?
Yeti, I know Jemma MacGinley very well and she never said any such thing. She did however have a cynical, satirical song on her door about Iraq, the Tampa and the 2001 Federal election. It isn’t her fault if you have no sense of humour.
Interestingly Mark, Jemma MacGinley (who was the Liberal UQ Union Treasurer in 2003) is the daughter of Madonna MacGinley whom you would remember from your own UQ Union Treasurer days as the Missos Rep and Biol Refec supervisor.
“Didn’t say it was, polly. The fact that protecting Kelly’s Bush was an initiative of North Shore housewives, so-called “doctors’ wivesâ€? and small-l liberals, is the point you’ve missed - along with the fact that it was the unions who followed the community campaign, whereas some try to give them credit for leading it”
Sorry, if you misunderstood - wasn’t suggesting it was the only site saved and didn’t intend to imply it was only the work of unions.
Was only providing a tidbit of information that the parks have been named in honour of the green ban campaigns.
Well she did say it, of course I’m sure it wasn’t a serious policy proposal, just UQ Young Liberal style ‘humour’.
Pollbludger has more on Queensland seats here
Yeti, at the risk of sounding banal and repititive, I have personally never heard Jemma MacGinley advocating murder or cannabalism. I know that many people think that Liberals hate life and eat babies - but really this is quite a ridiculous suggestion.
Meanwhile, Jack Strocchi, I have to totally disagree with your analysis. In 2004, by and large the only marginal seats that swung TO the ALP were inner city seats populated by significant populations wealthy social liberals. Examples include the seats of Brisbane and Adelaide. When I campaigned in the seat of Brisbane in 2004, I DEFINITELY got feedback that social liberals voted specifically against Howard because they were disgusted with the War in Iraq, treatment of refugees and legal equality for queer people. These were the very same people who I know voted for Howard in 1996. The Doctor’s wife phenomenon is real but I personally don’t think it will be a factor this time. My feeling is that the social liberals will not be as anti-Howard and pro-ALP as they were last time.
Antonio it was just a stupid joke she made - if I remember correctly - during the JOLT campaign, and I’m just using it as an example of Young Lib wackiness (why did you guys change your name to JOLT by the way? MOJO was a proven winner! Anyway, you’re right about what many people believe about the Liberals, and supporting the Iraq War is pretty much supporting murder in my opinion, but I digress…)
The funny thing is I remember a conversation I had with an archetypal ‘doctor’s wife’ after the 2004 election. At the time Iraq was quite a hot issue and the Tampa/Children Overboard thing was still a vivid memory. She said she thought Howard was a good economic manager but was ruining Australia’s reputation overseas, and the country would be better off without him. But she couldn’t bring herself to vote for Latham - she said “Why can’t someone like Kevin Rudd be the leader?”
To which my housemate replied “Kevin Rudd?? As if!!” We later got into a discussion about how he would be an excellent foreign minister, but the ‘battlers’ would never vote for somebody so ‘poncy’.
Funny how things have panned out 3 years since.
Oh Dear, Piers backpedals again.
Antonio, thats all well and good, but if “moderate” Liberals cannot see what’s happening to the Liberal Party then they’re walking blind. I for one can and it terrifies me. I’ve never voted Labor in my life, but Alex Hawke frightens the living daylights out of me. I’m going to vote elsewhere, in the vain hope that he does not become my representative. And I thought Abbott was bad…
Also, Antonio, I have a feeling that it’s small l liberal seats in NSW rather than other states that will swing heavily. I rue the day I decided to live in Mitchell, rather than North Sydney.
Goodna bypass cannot have helped Ryan. What a terrible waste. Something that nobody wants and will make problems worse further upstream on Ipswich Road. Over $2 billion. Opportunity cost.
Antonio on 10 October 2007 at 3:46 pm
That is irrelevant to Mark’s “Rudd’s Luvvies” theory. He is talking about leafyish blue-ribbon LN/P seats becoming marginal LN/P because a largish share of silver-tails voted against their class interest (wedge politics!). Not latteish marginal ALP seats becoming blue-ribbbon ALP because a larger share of hipsters voted with their cult interests.
Antonio says:
The Decline of the Wets cuts has decimated both the Wet minor parties and the Wet factions in the major parties.
The minor “social liberalism” parties are the GREENs and DEMs. Their share of the vote has been in secular decline for a decade, declining from 13% in 1996 to 9% in 2004.
And the Wet factions in both major parties are on the bones of their arses (Theophanous jailed, Costello turned). Meanwhile the major party leaders (HOward and Rudd) are more conservative than ever.
I have been pointing this out early since the early noughties. But apparently people like Mark and yourself are unwilling to face facts.
Antonio says:
If the Doctors Wives phenomenon was a real political force then Wet constitutencies in the leafy suburbs would have been pushing GREENs and DEM candidates in the Senate and urging an overturn of the LP’s Dry policies through their branches in the HoR. This has not happened ergo the Doctors Wives are an urban myth.
Geez Jack, write your bloody POD book already.
That way the blogosphere can deride your grand unified theory of wetness in one hit rather than in piecemeal fragments. It’d save a lot of your time and energy too.
This gets my vote for phrase of the week.
Now the Ryan Pork Barrel has produced two new parks to go with the unwanted more expensive road.
Strocchi, you belong on catallaxy: never mind the reality, it doesn’t work in theory.
They can see it all too clearly. The only ones who are blind are those punched in the face so often that their swollen eyelids won’t open.
He’s all piss and wind. Stand up to him and you should be right.
Why not both? Labor needs 16 seats and not all of them will come from NSW.
http://www.aph.gov.au/Library/pubs/RP/2007-08/08RP12.pdf?source=cmailer
Executive summary
This paper provides an analysis by Commonwealth electoral division of socio-demographic data from the first release of the 2006 Census of Population and Housing. The electoral boundaries used in this paper are those applicable to the next federal election.
Crikey comments:
During the Howard years, there has been a realignment in progress.
Although Labor’s vote is still heavily based in the working class, there is another pattern at work: the better-educated voters are moving towards Labor, and the less educated are moving away. It is the same pattern seen in the “Yes� vote in the republic referendum of 1999. (Incidentally, there’s nothing unique about Australia in this respect - the same realignment is going on even more clearly in the United States.)
…and Ryan is #1 in Internet connectivity at 81.5%. Yowza.