As noted on a previous thread, there’s been movement at the Opposition station. Julie Bishop goes to foreign affairs, Joe Hockey gets Treasury, and Helen Coonan finance.
Just by the by, Malcolm Turnbull’s profuse praise of Bishop on the teev last night leaves me wondering whether this sort of thing – ritualised and required in the political game as it is – does anything for his cred with the public. If Bishop was so fantastic, why did she effectively demote herself?
Meanwhile, a bit of shuffling as well as reshuffling from leaders past and putative – Emo Man isn’t hanging around, and it’s claimed that Peter Costello was offered Shadow Treasurer. As Shaun observed, delusions run riot – Labor fears Peter Costello.
Really? The Great Pretender appearing on tv every night smirking and talking about himself and the past? Getting more attention than his leader?
Incidentally, I wonder why more isn’t being made of the fact that all these personnel changes happened so quickly after a completely disastrous political gambit by the Coalition – opposing the stimulus package.
Elsewhere: [dk.au] Peter Martin
I’m just wondering how long Peter Costello thinks he can sit on the backbench. Will the voters in his up-till-now safe seat still vote him in? Assuming he gets pre-selection of course.
I believe that on reflection, Peter Costello has decided that it will take two terms, minimum, for the Coalition to be re-elected, and that he intends to be the one leading them when it happens.
Disillusioned and bitter, he may well have intended to leave the Parliament in the wake of the 2007 election loss but circumstances changed his mind. For one thing, it appears the job market for former Treasurers wasn’t what he imagined it would be, he enjoyed the opportunity of writing a book that tarnished the Howard mystique amongst conservatives, and he’s already been shadow Treasurer, so he embraced the alternative of a well-paid, three year restorative holiday as a backbencher.
It has its advantages. Sane hours, an opportunity to see his wife and kids and to watch from a safe distance while the first wave goes over the top trying the storm the government’s ramparts. Brendan has fallen, Julie is wounded and Malcolm is out in front waving his sword and trying to rally the troops.
Should Malcolm fail at the next election, a rejuvenated Peter Costello will be able to step over his corpse, offering praise for his bravery and vision and then offering himself as a leader without any blood (in political or policy terms) on his hands who can lead a united Liberal Party to victory.
And he’ll have no trouble maintaining his pre-selection. As Judith Troeth noted, Costello and Kroger were very effective at remaking the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party in their own image.
Well, yeah. But all Rudd has to do a year before before 2013 is hand over to Gillard, and Costello’s knackered.As Rudd’s not the vainglorious power-hungry ego-maniac Howard was (I knows he’s a control freak, but that’s a bit different)that’s probably what he’ll do.
Can’t we think up a new expression – be a bit, how shall I say ? imaginative when it comes to headings – titanic and deckchairs really!
Bring it up to date – how about running upstairs on nine eleven? or throwing rocks into Mt St Helens or ….
PF @ 4,
But we need something heroic. Y’know. And the ship is sinking.
“There is no question that Costello is the most effective performer in the parliament.” said Terry McCrann.
What a damning assessment of our national legislature. A bloke sits on his bum, smirks lots, refuses all work except for writing his memoirs and is deemed the number one.
If it’s true, god help us, where rooned.
I really don’t think Costello has any genuine electoral appeal whatsoever. The proof of that was in his failure to tap Howard on the shoulder. That he is being spoken about as waiting in the wings is just another sign of the Liberal Party’s utter desperation and irelevance: Howard’s legacy. They are stranded out on the far right and don’t have either the personnel, the internal structure or the philosophical foundation to push back to the centre in anything other than a superficial way. Hockey is a glad-handing policy flake and media buffoon.
At this rate, the Greens will be Australia’s second political party within the next decade.
Mc Crann the economic wizard “today ..mid 2009″
Good Peter Martin piece in today’s Age on just how crap Bishop was. He identifies a basic inability to understand mathematical concepts as her chief economic liability.
It’s possible that Tip is actually self-reflective enough to be keenly aware of his own deficiencies. Perhaps he realises that Opposition back-bencher is the last job he’ll have.
Well, I would suggest that if Bishop had been replaced as Shadow Treasurer by Milton Friedman himself, the title of this blog entry would have been exactly the same.
I invite one poster on this site to list 5 things, no matter how small (but not satirical) that the opposition have said or done since the last election.
I’m not holding my breath.
“Good Peter Martin piece in today’s Age on just how crap Bishop was. He identifies a basic inability to understand mathematical concepts as her chief economic liability.”
Yet, the ABC saw fit to interrupt last nights “news” to pronouce that it had always been Labors wish to “destroy” Julie Bishop, when she seemed, from all the available evidence, to have done it all by her good self.
Here (I assume) is the Peter Martin article alluded to by Lefty E. It’s not very complimentary to Ms. Bishop.
It was clearly in the ALP’s interest to have her in the job for the foreseeable future. Why on earth would they want to swap her for the Libs’ most publically popular federal member?
Howard C @ 11,
5 things the Opposition did or said since the last election (Not satirical) :
1. Elected Brendan Nelson as Leader.
2. Had a leadership spill.
3. Elected Malcolm Turnbull as leader.
4. Allowed Julie Bishop to become Shadow Treasurer.
5. Replaced Julie Bishop as Shadow Treasurer with Joe Hockey.
(Well, I don’t think they’re satirical. Others may beg to differ.)
I’d add to that list:
1. Claimed that they’d offer the Government bipartisan support to deal with the GFC.
2. Opposed everything the Government proposed since.
3. Opposed the latest stimulus package outright.
4. Complained that the Government wouldn’t negotiate with them.
5. Turnbull claimed Julie Bishop had his unconditional support.
6. Less than 24 hours later she resigned her position.
Anyone spot a (non-satirical) pattern here?
I’ll have what you’re having, gianni.
Costello’s the most gutless sook in Australian political history. A yellow streak a mile wide. One giant yawn. Can’t lead. Can’t win.
Turnbull might have turned out to be not much chop as a politician, but he’s twice the leader Costello ever will be.
Gianni at 2 my response to you is my comment to Terry McCrann Terry – If Peter Costello is the obvious choice, then why is blustering Joe Hockey getting the job, particularly if Labor is known to fear Costello. And if Costello is so sure he is leadership material why isn’t he getting in there and mixing it with everyone else. If Swan is so weak, why hasn’t Costello been in there making mincemeat of him? Personally I wouldn’t have a bar of someone as my leader if they stood back and watched me take a hiding and did nothing to help. Costello has done nothing to assist his “team” in resisting what they call government irresponsibility. What would you think of a mate who waited until the fight was almost over before stepping in to take the glory, and only if glory was there to take? Come off it! The Coalition are a sorry mess and Costello is doing nothing to help. Brendan Nelson at least is moving over to make room for fresh talent, All that Costello is doing is wasting space!
What happened to the Liberal Party in which the likes of John Hewson, Fred Chaney and dare I say it, Malcolm Fraser, were proud to lead?
They are just conducting some internal culture wars. Howard has gone and none of them are sure what the party stands for anymore. It’s interesting to watch. Most of them don’t have the brains for political philosophy, so they are left with the little picture. I also think that most of them have no understanding of what it means to be in opposition, and so their internal expectations of what a leader will accomplish are mostly wishful thinking.
But, that’s to be expected. Ratty was never one for succession planning, and its a lot harder to drive a wedge from opposition
“Most of them don’t have the brains for political philosophy, so they are left with the little picture.”
And the “little picture”, they are reliant on, is largely drawn by some very ordinary opinion piece purveyors.
I think we should remember to give credit to John Howard for this state of afairs.
Funny. I look at Stephen Conroy and think ‘ Billy Zane ‘. There’s clearly no hope for the future in parliament. Now Natasha has gone, I mean.
My apologies. In my haste, I managed to spell “the” correctly, but not make the intention of my post abundantly clear, which was for someone to list five GOOD things the opposition had done. Five things that deserved praise. Five things that contained merit.
You won’t be able to do it. In part because they are performing so uselessly, but in part because you wouldn’t be able to recognise it if you saw it.
It’s all well and good to say that the Liberal Party is no longer the party of Cheney any more, but the ALP is also no longer the party of Cairns. All of the political parties have moved right, except the Greens. The Democrats have moved to the graveyard.
“It’s all well and good to say that the Liberal Party is no longer the party of Cheney any more…”
It’s moved from a Fred to a dick!
Elsewhere: Peter Martin – What if Joe Hockey is Julie Bishop in new clothes?
As TP says @ #21, the current state of the Liberal Party is John Howard’s legacy to it.
His election in 96 began the dominance by the NSW Right of the Australian Liberals, and the Sydney dominance continues. Like Menzies, he ruthlessly side-lined/ removed those he saw as rivals and those who argued with his opinion. On social-issue legislation, he took the party back to 1950s, only to watch the “Women’s revolt” roll Abbott on the so-called abortion drug and stem-cell research. An atrocious treasurer, as PM he surfed the economic boom, as did his treasurer, Costello. Together, they aligned Australia economically, in foreign affairs, and political strategy & tactics firmly with the Rove Right of Republican Bush’s USA.
Then USA elections 06 & 08, and the GFC, gutted the Republicans. Howard’s defeat, in his own seat as well as nationally, left a demoralised party with little political talent, the financial legacy of which was trashed by the GFC – and continuing “me tooing” of the GOP line on the Financial Stimulus Package. Particularly obvious when the Libs are compared to the ALP & Greens, is the dearth of capable women.
That’s some legacy.
BTW I’d take a small point of issue with Peter Martin. Most people don’t need uni maths or economics to avoid J Bishop’s glaring errors (as mentioned), just normal common sense. Given her plagiarist efforts, I’d say she was, quite simply, too lazy to “do her homework” on any topic on which an intelligent opinion, rather than mere repetition of slogans & other banalities, was required.
According to the Australian, Costello is only interested in one job
My guess is, as others have pointed out, he’s quite happy being the biggest sook in Australia, so he’s already got the only job he’s qualified for.
Stephen Smith is now on his third Shadow Minister (Robb, Coonan, now Bishop). See, it’s not true that his job is empty of any source of satisfaction.
Look at how Keating let Hewson monster Hawke and John Kerin.
‘All of the political parties have moved right, except the Greens.’
Is that really correct Howard C? I suppose it’s a bit hard to say who was the 1980s counterpart of the contemporary Greens but I would have thought they were considerably less mainstream in those days than now. However maybe I’m relying on public perceptions and not on actual Green policies.
“Really? The Great Pretender appearing on tv every night smirking and talking about himself and the past? Getting more attention than his leader?”
The Liberals have successfully cloned the smirk, and installed it on Mitch Fifield. Check out the video from last fridays Lateline!
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2491407.htm
Ken, I think Howard C is correct. The Greens are now the only party where I feel at home, and I’m pretty bolshie. I think the reason they seem more mainstream than they did 20 years ago is because while the major parties have both moved to the right, the mainstream has started to move back to the left. (And about time too.)
The Greens have discovered the necessary pragmatism to be a true third force electorally. And it looks like a force to be reckoned with from next election onwards. Neither of the majors will have anything remotely close to a Senate majority for a long time to come. Don’t know whether this is a good or bad thing. I suspect good.
At least it will (should) end the Harradine/Xen/Fielding abomination of them bargaining favours for their state instead of considering the wider national interest. Fair enough defend your state, as the constitution intended, but to use a fluke of the numbers to promote your state at the expense of all others – reprehensible.
Not sure whether Fielding exactly fits this description, but he bargained spending on Chaplains for all schools for god’s sake!
With bible bashing dickheads like him in Canberra god help our democracy.
You know how we like to talk about the 2PP, the ‘two party preferred’ vote right?
So in a opinion poll for example we look at the primary vote for the ALP, COALition, Greens and Others and then distribute Greens and Others to come up with an ALP/COAL 2PP.
Ever wonder how many people would give the Greens their second preference and thus end up with a Greeens/somebody else 2PP?
I did, cos I thought it would be a bit more informative than just telling us how many people give them the first preference, which basically has been about 8-10% in the polls since the election.
But I don’t know how we would find out how much the Greens would get as a 2pp cf somebody else.
At Mayo sans Downer and a ALP candidate the Greens got 40% plus didn’t they? I was away at the time.
Anyway just a bit of idle curiousity.
Bryce – Xenophon’s actions did not promote South Australia’s interest at the expense of all others. If he was lobbying for benefits that were exclusively going to be spent in SA you may have a point, but he wasn’t.
Regardless of that, the idea that the state of Lake Alexandrina, Lake Albert and The Coorong is only of interest to South Australians is bizarre to me…that they happen to be in South Australia should make those places no less significant to people in other states.
I’m concerned about the health of the Great barrier Reef.
And the forests in Tasmania.
And the land and the people of Victoria.
And so on.
“Ask not for whom the bell tolls …etc”
50$ reduction in the one-off payment towards each of them, Hannah’s Dad. Sounds good to me.
Turnbull might have turned out to be not much chop as a politician, but he’s twice the leader Costello ever will be.
.
Maybe. Costello doesn’t seem very voter friendly. But if he’s planning to lead some time he’s probably wise to hang back untainted until Turnbull falls over and Rudd stumbles.
Occasionally the RW troglodytes who’ve taken over the ABC get it right. Peter Costello = The Overshadow.
Lucky Phil@30: even worse, check out Tony Smith (MP for Casey, shadow something or other, was Costello’s press sec and dogsbody). Smith’s mannerisms, verbal and physical, are all Costello’s. Fifield might do Costello impersonations, but Tony Smith should just change his name to Tony Costello and be done with it.
hannah’s dad: the Greens/other thing. Exactly, i reckon your onto something. AS you say, it’s almost universal that it’s greens prefernces, not majors, preferences distributed, majors voters preferences are a somewhat unknown. Except in those sport 2-way elections, as you point out, like Mayo, where the greens went to 47% 2pp.
When beattie finally pissed off before being found out, the tories didn’t stand anyone at the bye election so it it ended up green (small business type – hardware store proprieter)/ labor ( union uber-droid parachuted in by head office, against wishes of local branch) split 42% green/ 58% evil 2pp.
(The green was robbed- a full third of eligible voters simply didn’t bother, presumably tories too stupid or selfish to see the chance to get rid of labor in favor of a 4 ft nothing shopkeeper green, how threatening, not. So that 42% is unreliable and an underestimate)
Who knows what level of preferences flow from libs/alp to greens on the actual day the cards get marked? Voodoo exit pollsters? I dunno what happens to the cards after voting day, if someone in the electoral commission has a squiz, but once I was scrutineering and I kept a loose tally of majors greens=2 cards. Labor up here plays hard ball, scaring folks into just voting one, so they weren’t worth counting. But over 50% of Lib voters preferenced green 2. This is a very verdant seat, solar PV capital of the nation, so I wouldn’t say its representative. It would be of the labor latte belt but.
I say the greens vote in those seats has got up so high that the watermelon greens ( left more than environmental) will always keep the tories out, so if the tories want labor gone in those seats, they should start strategically voting and preferencing greens, they’ve got nothing to lose but their tormentors. They are pretty heavy hitters’ home seats often, like tanner. Up here in the coming state election it would be the treasurer and premier’s scalps up for the taking. Tasty.
“The green was robbed- a full third of eligible voters simply didn’t bother, presumably tories too stupid or selfish to see the chance to get rid of labor”
You know that’s why people think lefties are up themselves? Everybody else is too stupid to understand what they should be voting for?
The election for his seat simply didn’t matter in the day to day running of the state. It wasn’t close enough to a general election to matter, he wasn’t a child molester, it wasn’t going to kill the govt one way or another.
If you think you can convince LNP supporters to vote Green as part of a state wide strategy, go for it. I can’t see it happening.
Howard C @ 23
I assume you’re referring to Sir Fred Chaney, Sr. Or maybe Fred Chaney, Jr., from the time before he became senate pointman for Fightback!
Hannah’s Dad @ 33
You mean “how many people would give the Greens their first preference” if they were given the choice, right? The polls say no more than 10%…
Oohh, Lateline is on, and Tony-the-Supercilious is going to raise more questions about Costello’s defensiveness.
What does this mean? Is this a play on Bertolt Brecht’s line about the need to dissolve the people because they’ve lost the confidence of the regime?
Tanner isn’t going anywhere. The only Labor MHR the Greens might roll would be Plibersek, and only if she can be forced down into the gutter against a strong Green candidate (possibly a strong pro-Israel Green candidate? That would make sense if the Greens know how to strategize for elections, and they’re as anti-Left as darin implies they’re capable of being…)
Nickws at # 42
“You mean “how many people would give the Greens their first preference” if they were given the choice, right? The polls say no more than 10%…”
No,I mean their second preference.
I said in my comment that ” …first preference, which basically has been about 8-10% in the polls since the election.”
If one of the majors were eliminated earlier than the Greens in standard poll I wonder how many of them would preference the Greens before the other major.
The non standing of the ALP in Mayo and the subsequent vote gained by the Greens at 47% apparently, suggests that many/most ALP supporters preference the Greens ordinarily but we don’t find that out because they are usually not revealed. The Greens usually having been excuded in the count earlier.
We are so used to seeing 2PP results like ALP:COALition of 60:40 that it may be instructive and informative to see what the nos would be if ALP and COALition voters were asked who they would give their second preference to.
Maybe poll questions like:
-”If you gave your primary to the ALP, who would you prefer of the other parties COALition, Greens Other?
-”If you gave your primary to the COALition, who would you prefer of the other parties ALP, Greens Other?
Or:
To simulate our preferential voting system better ask those polled to place i,2,3,etc in a full list of parties [well most anyway].
Just a bit of curiousity, wondering what the deeper level of support out there for the Greens really is.
After all the polls ask that question of the Greens/Other respondents, resulting in a 2PP that actually inflates the numbers of the 2 major parties.
Dazza (41): you wouldn’t be mistaking me for a “leftie” would you with your “You know that’s why people think lefties are up themselves”? If my fairly obvious wish to take “the chance to get rid of labor” suggests to you my leaning is on the sinister side, I’m curious what you think I would be going for, to the left of labor? A socialist alternative candidate? And if the “watermelon green” reference didn’t give you a clue what I think of that particular stance, let me just say I wasn’t referring to their gardening abilities.
To make it clear, in that particular seat and candidate setup, with no conservative candidate that had a chance of getting up, I reckoned the green candidate was preferable to the labor one. I don’t happen to agree with you that “the day to day running of the state” and “killing the gov’t” is what matters re: electing a seats representative. And BTW, neither of the candidates were a “he”. Who’s talking about influencing statewide lnp vote strategies? Not me. However I reckon it’d be tops if the pineapple party people of South Brisbane and Mt Cootha and Brisbane Central could wake up to the fact their candidates will never get in there, because a significant section of Greens voters (the watermelons) will never vote for a pineapple, no matter that the Greens and LNP share policies now ( 44c solar feedin tariff, anti-traveston) and no matter if the parties had done a preference swap, like Morningside. It’s not so impossible, Greens Ronan Lee and LNPs David Gibson jointly did a book launch here in Greenstown.
With overall greens vote in those latte labor electorates probably in the high 20′s this time, that section who refuse to preference LNP, the watermelons who preference labor, stops the LNP getting over the line. Likewise refusal of pineapples to vote/preference greens, as in that bye election where they just didn’t vote, stops the greens getting over. Which just leaves Labor to just pick up the prize. It’s about being strategic instead of reactionary. I’m kinda hoping pineapples can be more strategic thinkers than watermelons, with the great cause of jettisoning the treasurer and premier in mind. Yeh Yeh I know, fat chance. But whether you like it or not, desparate thinking tho it is, it’s the only way it’s gonna happen. Repeat, IMO, the tories will never take Mt Cootha, South Brisbane or Brisbane Central. The greens can, if not this time then next they will be the second past the post and harvesting lnp preferences instaed of the other way round. There’s the start of the new coalition, with the greens picking up metropolitan seats with LNP’s support. Maybe not in my lifetime, but it will happen.
False comparison, Andrew E. Keating skulked on the backbench (and for not very long, either) *after* challenging for the leadership, and failing the first time, something Costello never had the guts to do. And Keating achieved his ambition of leading after coveting it for only, oooh, ten years. Costello is 13 years (generously, arguably 16 years) and counting.
Loyalty is one thing, but Costello owed no loyalty to Howard after the repeated betrayals that Howard dished out to him. In that case, Costello is hiding behing “loyalty” for not having the courage to do what he’s always loudly insisted he wants to do.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a great fan of Keating’s actions back then, and I thought it was skulduggery at the time and still do. But none of that expulcates Costello’s sheer gutlessness in all the years he’s been coveting the prize.
Nick: Would that I could channel Bertolt.
I’m not that knowledgeable about Victorian electoralia. But I won’t let that stop me. I seem to remember things getting a bit nervous in Lindsay’s electorate, that’s why they had to get Garrett to sink so low with an innacurate letter to constituents about Greens preferncing Libs, or worse. Personally I’d like to see Lindsay in the big chair, and emerson deputy/treasurer, and soon. I’d like to think individual ability and integrity can transcend partisan conditioning, even in the labor party.
And HD, in case it got lost in the noise: from what I privately tallied when scrutineering in an inner city greenish seat, on an optional preferential card, more than 50% of lib voters preferenced the greens candidate. That says to me bridges can be built, and it’s happening here in qld of all places: the lnp and the greens share gross feed-in solar tariff policy, and an anti-Dam stance. The LNP climate guy has even been known to say he’s agin coal mining on agricultural land, lnp party financing by a coal magnate notwithstanding.
“when scrutineering in an inner city greenish seat, on an optional preferential card, more than 50% of lib voters preferenced the greens candidate.”
Ta for that Danny.
Interesting.
That number, particularly from the Libs, surprises me.
It seems that the only way we will get a handle on the numbers is via the scrutineering process.
I suspect that in the next election there may be places where if the Greens can get ahead of one of the majors, which I would expect to be a rare event if at all, then surprising things mught happen.
I am not familiar with the voting system in Qld..
Ooh Aye, Danny, Lindsay did face challenge from your salt’t'earth Liberal/Green popular peoples’ front:
Rightwing (or even Leftwing) Greens should take pause, however, for if the Greens suffer a swing of just 4% in Melbourne next time ’round the Jewel in the Victorian crown would then merely be as winnable as Bass, regardless of how many anti-establishment Liberal voters decide to stick-it to the ofay Labor man by preferencing their brother Greens:
13.5% of voters in Curtin went Green? Against Julie Bishop? Don’t they realise the edgy Libs are on their side against the man?!
Not Bass, but rather Denison is the Tassie ALP stronghold on the brink of being liberated by the Liberal/Green Popular Peoples’ Front…
Deckchairs, Titanic. The descent of the leaky Liberal Party ship is indeed a pleasing thing to watch. I can’t wait till the credits start rolling, prefaced with the words “The End”.
Remember when Reith marched the storm troopers onto the docks? What has happened to the Liberal party since then? Turned into a bunch of big girls that’s what.
Where are the storm troopers and the brownshirts now eh? A merchant wanker,a smirker wanker and a jolly boy gimp that’s what we get. Is that all you got you pathetiic bunch of wusses?
Only a total drivelling moron would seriously vote for these wimps.
Bring back Menzies I say.
Huggy
Huggybunny @ 52,
Yeah, bring back Menzies. Pig Iron to Japan while under threat of war,praised Adolf Hitler – thought he was good for Germany, appeasement of Nazi Germany and a militaristic imperial Japan, the Brisbane Line (for which, in fact he was wrongly blamed), lack of defence preparedness inn the face of looming war, banning the Communist Party only to be defeated by the good sense and essential decency of the Australian people in a referendum, putting us into the war on Vietnam,re-introducing conscription,and that’s just off the top of my head.
I do realise you were joking.
Ta Nic (49), I love actual numbers, especially when I don’t have to do the work. You could have cut the snark and put the link to adam-carr but no matter, what a gold mine.
“Count for Notional Purposes only”? WTF? How often does that happen? When? Who makes the call? Best investigate.
Talk about a nail biter. Classic, should go down in the B.Gov. textbooks. For those who didn’t pick up the narrative from Nic’s numbers, the Lib went in with more first preference votes than the Green, but the swing was on, tanner down 2.5%, greens up 4%, to the nearest half-percent. It took until the 4th count for the green to harvest enough of the many ultra minor party preferences to be ahead of the Lib.
It ended up ALP 54.5, green 45.5, to the nearest half percent, less than a 10 percent 2pp margin, way down from the previous 21% margin, and with a cast change. That’s in play in my book, if that happens again, he’s gone, which I hasten to add would be a pity, he should shift seats.
I would have loved to have been scrutineering there. Or maybe not, the beligerence of Labor scrutineers arguing the toss about what votes are clear and what are spoiled if it might get in the way of the desired result is unpleasant. These are after all the creatures that gave us Fielding on 1.9% carried in on Labor’s “preference swap with Family First .. a gamble to elect a third Labor Senator…a gamble that failed, electing a Family First Senator when the preferred choice of the majority of Labor voters would have been a Greens Senator. It is fair to say that the will of the electorate was subverted by the wheeling and dealing ” as Antony Green notes for posterity. Pure Evil in Party form.
To correct my mis-apprehension of the situation vis a vis Garrett doing the dirty with misleading letters in Lindsay Tanner’s electorate: Right geography, wrong election. It was the Victorian state election, and the state seat of melbourne, not lindsay’s fed seat of melbourne. Same voters though? I’ll leave it to the poll bludger : ” figures would be viewed nervously by Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, who last November watched a Greens candidate take second place for the first time at a general election in his seat of Melbourne. This continued a trend of ominously mounting Greens support in Melbourne going back three elections: 6.1 per cent in 1998, 15.7 per cent in 2001, 19.0 per cent in 2004, 22.8 per cent in 2007. Tanner’s primary vote of 49.5 per cent kept him out of danger, but this was achieved at the peak of Labor’s electoral cycle. It’s not hard to conceive a scenario where the Rudd government pursues votes in the electorally decisive outer suburbs at the expense of the values held dear in the inner-city, which could place Tanner in serious jeopardy.
Oh piffle, the lot of you – all the evidence (polls again!) suggests that Labor’s vote will improve at the next Federal election, so Tanner will be more secure, not less.
Also his personal vote should improve given his greater public profile.
A 54.5% seat only barely sneaks in as a marginal. A 5% swing is relatively rare in marginals nowadays – swings of those proportions usually happen in safer seats, where the incumbent is usually a little less attentive (in Victoria at the last Federal election, the biggest swings against sitting members were about 8%, both in ultra safe Lib seats). They also tend to happen when the incumbent is on the nose for some reason and the general consensus here seems to be that Tanner isn’t.
HD: Re: the high rate of Lib prefs-> green. It was a strange election in a strange setting, brisbane local govt, a strangely popular liberal mayor on his own in hte chamber, with a dysfunctional labor majority council. A huge anti-labor swing was on to re-align things.
There were local perturbences: the ward councillor vote here had the Libs first past the post, but minor party and green prefs saved the long standing labor councillor’s ( who is pretty green any way) ass. The local mayoral vote, as everywhere, was a shoe in for the encumbent lib. Those votes were never at risk of being counted for prefs, so folks could be safely aspirational, they were the ones I was interested in as a measure of tory green goodwill. As i say it went >50% green.
The qld electoral system? Get rid of the upper house to minimise the chance for the forces for diversity get any oxygen, allowing 20 year+ electorol cycles due to the raw power of encumbency. First Joh, now this mob. The last very brief change was a bit of an accident, the tories haven’t really won an election since 1986, with Joh. Who needs tyrrany and despots when you have parliamentary democracy, queensland style?
RE: the borbidge interregnum. Goss got a majority of 1 in 1995, but a seat had to go to disputed returns on basis of incorrectly disqualified votes ( see ‘labor party scrutineers’ belligerence in tally room’ note, previous post), the recount gave it to the tories, the independent then held the balance and declared support for the tories, and Goss had to vacate the chair. Thus I say the last tory government in qld didn’t actually get there on a straightforward election result, it was an accident. Beattie scraped in next with an independent’s support, and from there to here is a long flat road through a desolate landscape of despoiled democracy, sacrificed to patronage to and from hugely monied vested interests).
We need a green Dunstan.
Just out of curiosity, Mr Paul Burns, what university did you attend?
Danny, I think you’ll find mehatible is right and Melbourne 2007 wasn’t close, whatever the hopes of the Greens and the dread of the ALP. It wasn’t Florida 2000.
Instead it was the highwater mark, made possible because all the micro candidates preferenced the Green, as did the Liberal, most importantly–and within that Lib vote 82% of those conservative supporters followed the party ticket and directed their preferences accordingly–also a highwater mark.
Next time round the Green in Melbourne will be down in the teens, despite the fact 2010 will also be a state election year.
(And the notional preference count is because Dr Carr also doesn’t like the Left that much, although unlike you it’s the Greens he’s sees as Left…)
Just out of curiousity Howard C is that a genuine question or an attempt at a snide remark?
Because if it is the latter it reveals more of the shortcomings of its originator than its target.
Howard C, I don’t know where he was an undergraduate or where he did his post-grad work, but Paul has made it clear he was long associated with UNE–that’s the institution built by Joe Cahill which inspired Ming to build the other first generation non-sandstone universities.
That said I don’t have much time for Menzies hatred. The old bastard didn’t make Labor blow its brains out (no conspiracy theories, please.)
Howard C,
University of New England, where I doubled majored in history as an undergraduate,(Colonial and modern Australia, Chinese, Japanese and Korean history, Medieval history, Philosophy of history, two years Archaeology, some ancient history) did BA Honours Thesis on Jack Lang in Federal Parliament, did an MA by thesis on The Brisbane Line Contoversy. This was later published by Allen and Unwin in 1998. Now out of print, but, I believe is still available for purchase through some booksellers on line.(Amazon has run out of stock.)
Re Menzies – I’m not a Menzies hater – in some ways I’ve come to admire him, and in the instance of the Brisbane Line Controversy, he was certainly unfairly maligned by the ALP and the CPA. His second Prime Ministership was, I believe more questionable – though I have to say re the Petrov Royal Commission, pulling it on just before an election was a trick he learnt from Curtin with the Brisbane Line Royal Commission.
I am currently researching a book on the First and Second Fleeters involved in the American Revolution. That enough information?
Oh, and the English Civil War.
Hannah’s Dad, thanks for leaping to my defence if it is necessary. I took it as a genuine question, and answered it as such.
btw Howard C, my book got excellent reviews, bar one reviewer, who wasn’t an historian and thought I was having a go at the ALP. It is regularly cited in works on WW2.
I checked up the book on bookfinder. Price range is from $23 to$160 odd dollars, so it is available, Howard C, if you’d like to buy it. Its also in many public and university libraries.
It may have been Paul, but it looked a little suss to me and if so I dislike the implied academic and elitist snobbery behind it. People can have opinions and knowledge that is credible without having the privelige of having attended university. And conversely having uni quals doesn’t necessarily validate an opinion.
If the question was suss, that is.
There is not much you wrote that my mum and dad would have disagreed with and they were ‘ignorant’ ‘uneducated’ ‘non uni trained’ types.
Didn’t mean they were stupid and/or uninformed.
hannah’s dad @ 64,
Yeah, I know. But I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. My old man utterly hated Menzies. I guess I haven’t entirely shaken off my Labor childhood.
If it was a snide remark, he’ll come to his senses when he reads my book (if he does).
Anyway, thanks heaps, I really appreciated it. Off to watch the Movie Shoe.
Paul, hannah’s dad, I think Howard C was having a go not because he doesn’t believe people without tertiary educations don’t deserve listening to, but rather because he wanted Paul to say, “I went to a university built by Ming.”
I know Paul has written much about Armidale here, that’s why I mentioned UNE becoming a full university prior to the Menzies Liberal government deciding to expand the tertiary sector. (BTW, according to what I assume are Howard C’s priorities vis a vis campus building, then Whitlam and Beazley senior must be superior to Pig Iron on policy, while John Dawkins is veritably teh emperor of Australian edumacation…)
I think that can be read several ways in our glorious language, but for the record I think Howard C is probably cool with opinions from people who didn’t go to uni.
As long as the theory I advance @ 66 is right.
Well if you are right Nickws I’ll retract my inference in #59 and since.
I’ve been caught out before as having inferred something in a post that was not in my mind.
e-messages, sans tone and body language can be deceptive.
BTW Paul Menzies was always Pig Iron Bob to me as a little kid cos of the attitudes of people around me. Some of my rellies were among those who fought to have the iron not sent to Japan when they were invading China and when it was pretty obvious that the iron would return to Australia in the form of bullets shells and bombs.
On reflection there may have been an element of racism involved in that.
Any comment?
Geeze: Am I writing stuff onto a site that has university educated types on it?
Faaark, the only time I ever went to a university was when I realised that the university shelias came across easier than the factory girls. Oh and to fight coppers and stuff during the Vietnam war. Oh and once to hear some prick called Knopfelmacher rant on about how we need to fight commos and stuff. Oh and once to an Ingmar Bergmann film festival at Melbourne Uni because the shelia who invited me was really hot but the films were totally the most boring shit I have ever seen but they really turned her on especially the one where the knight played chess against death on the beach. I understand that the films were never shown any-where else on the planet.
So sorry if I have offended any gentry. I would tug me foreskin but its gone.
When I get into the factory tomorrow I will tell all the other workers about my mistake and we will all fall about. “Fancy you mixing it with those hairy palmed woofers at the uni”, they will say.
Geeze I am amazed.
Huggy
I did go to a university built by Ming, and freely acknowledge his contribution to the development of tertiary education in the 50s and early 60s. However, I got my university education because of Gough Whitlam. Coming from a financially disadvantaged background, and progressively disabled by the side effects of cerebral palsy as I got older, especially after the age of 25, I would NEVER have been able to get a uni education as a mature age student if Gough hadn’t made unis free in the early 70s and provided what was then reasonably adequate student support. A situation, btw, we should go back to. Nobody who has the ability to go to uni should be denied it because of economic reasons, something the crew on the Titanic currently denying the reality of the GFC definitely do not believe in. Hell, you can’t have too many people educated to uni level, they think. They might question the validity of the socio-economic system we live under. Worse, they might even start to think critically. I also freely acknowledge non-university educated people think critically, but a uni education certainly does have a beneficial, though subtle effect on the way you see things.
Sorry, I correct it. I didn’t go to a university built by Ming.
nickws @ 66 … hmmm … Dawkins started the process of the destruction of education in this country that Howard more-or-less completed. In my view, he makes out an excellent case for post-natal abortion.
Kim, people understand that he is really saying – “Look, I’m not going to bag her in public – but yes, I’ve seen to it that she’ll fall on her sword very soon. So lay off.”
There’s no other way to say it that is better.
David Irving, my higher education was post-Dawkins, in the Howard years.
I don’t understand how it’s possible for any goverment of this era to ‘destroy’ a system that is so big and permanent.
Starve it of sufficient funds and personnel, perhaps, but not destroy. BTW, the Right claims Dawkins ran-down tertiary education for the benefit of teachers unions and political correctness. See that godawful Quadrant ‘gonzo satire’ that Kim linked to last month, the one with the poorly written female character doing a performing arts doctorate online…
Well, I caused a little thing there, didn’t I? The “Ming built your university” angle was what I was going for, and it was admittedly flippant.
I have so many books waiting for me to read them at the moment at home (subjects include US and Australian politics, language, football and cricket) that I many not get around to yours, but all the best anyway.
Interestingly, Peter Brent @ Mumble has a different take on Turnbull’s politics, all the while insisting he may not be around to enjoy any benefits. If the poll numbers go south before the go north, then the titanic analogy may begin to take real shape.
Nickws, I also completed my tertiary education post-Dawkins (but pre-Howard) in 1996. Although I concede I exaggerated Dawkins’ effect somewhat, I still reckon he did enormous damage. (I have some basis for comparison, as I started my tertiary education in 1968. As an aside, I think I hold the world record for time taken to complete an ordinary degree.)
As to the Right claiming Dawkins did this for the benefit of the Teachers’ unions they are, as always, delusional. Dawkins (whatever he claims) was of the right.
Howard C @ 75,
All in good fun, old boy.
At least it gave me an opportunity to point that it was Whitlam who provided us all with genuine equality of access to university before Hawke/Keating/Dawkins and that anti-intellectual pillock, Howard took it all away.