Seat of the week: Petrie

Petrie covers a narrow strip of Brisbane’s northern suburbs from Carseldine north to Burpengary. This includes three distinct areas: at the centre, the Redcliffe Peninsula; further north along the coast, Deception Bay and the developing suburb of North Lakes; and, on the southern side of Pine River which separates the Moreton Bay local government area from Brisbane, the suburbs of Bracken Ridge, Fitzgibbon and Carseldine. The redistribution before the 2010 election added the Deception Bay area (previously in Longman) and transferred coastal suburbs at the southern end to Lilley, which boosted the Labor margin by 2.1%.

The electorate was created with the enlargement of parliament in 1949 and held consistently by the Liberals until 1983, barring a surprise defeat in 1961. It again changed hands from Labor to Liberal in 1984 and back again in 1987. Gary Johns held the seat for Labor for the next three terms, until the Queensland Labor wipeout of 1996 powered a 9.8% swing to Liberal candidate Teresa Gambaro. Gambaro’s margin was reduced to 0.8% when the elastic snapped back to Labor by 7.5% in 1998, but she was strengthened by successive swings of 2.7% in 2001 and 4.4% in 2004. Gambaro had a 7.9% buffer going into the 2007 election, but it was not enough to save her from a 9.5% swing to Labor’s Yvette D’Ath, who had previously been an official with the Right faction Australian Workers Union. Gambaro was back at the 2010 election, when she unseated Labor’s Arch Bevis in Brisbane.

A Liberal National Party preselection last weekend was won by Luke Howarth, managing director of Sandgate Pest Control and a past candidate for the state seat of Sandgate (which is actually located over the boundary in Lilley). Howarth prevailed out of a preselection field of 10, of whom the presumed front-runner had been John Connolly, former Wallabies coach and unsuccessful state candidate for Nicklin, who had the endorsement of John Howard.

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.

1,470 comments on “Seat of the week: Petrie”

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  1. Shorten gets plenty of credit here in Victoria for his contribution to the proposed NDIS. I suppose his ultimate reward will be as next Labor PM after Gillard retires around 2020.

  3. [Shorten gets plenty of credit here in Victoria for his contribution to the proposed NDIS. I suppose his ultimate reward will be as next Labor PM after Gillard retires around 2020.]

    I think Shorten is probably the likely next successful Labor leader after this government is over. Yes, he has flaws but he knows how to engage.

  6. Just dropped in so do not know if it has been discussed earlier.

    If the feds hold back the monies they give to the states each year for disability investment and put it directly into NDIS would there be much of a short fall to make up through the Federal budget ?

  7. fredn:

    [In my view a lot easier to sell it as an extension to MediCare. It is a national insurance scheme.]

    Probably, though I doubt many would call it an “insurance scheme”. It’s seen as “a levy”.

    I also think one should keep the portfolio of state revenues diverse and avoid regressive income transfers and with the levy there’s a danger that too little would be paid by the richest folk.

  9. My results for the quiz was:

    Jill Stein: 87%
    Gary Johnson: 80%
    Barack Obama: 74%
    Ron Paul: 61%
    Mitt Romney: 16%

    I suppose the reasoning for that is that even though the Democratic Party is viewed as left in America, it still has to be viewed as “BWARGH! SOCIALISM IS EVIL!!!” to stay competitive electorally, due to the cold war indoctrination of the USA.

  11. In my view a lot easier to sell it as an extension to MediCare. It is a national insurance scheme.

    Problem is the people who will whinge about paying for others, “why should I pay for something I do not use”.

    Governments have budgets, they allocate the billions they get in revenue to worthy schemes. The NDIS can easily be funded via general revenue.

  12. Romney would probably have gotten a few points higher with me if it was Romney, not Romney 2.0 (i.e. the version that had to be invented to be nominated by the GOP).

    If it was his father, the GOP may even have a chance to earn my imaginary vote 😉

  14. Apologies to all for my misplacement of the decimal point. It is indeed $16.346538, not $1.6346538.

    Centre

    Don’t feel too bad about scoring so well for the Greens on the I Side With survey. As I mentioned in a follow up post:
    [Given all the parties in the US are to the right of their traditional Australian contemparies, the Greens in the US are probably closer to the centre than they are here.

    The Democrats are probably the equivalent of a moderate LNP, and the Repulsivecans are even further to the right of our current LNP. ]
    Should make you feel better.

  17. Further to my last comment, my internet friends in the USA were absolutely amazed when I told them about the ALP and what they achieved for Australia.

    I felt terrible hearing their stories about what they’re going through, since they all pretty much come from lower class families and are students. One even broke her toe and didn’t go to the hospital, since she knew that her family couldn’t afford it. It was just luck that she recovered in the end.

    Another two of them badly need glasses, but they can’t afford them, so they go without and try to get by.

    It’s things like that that remind me why it’s vital to have programs in place so that people with disadvantages get the support they need to have a good chance at improving their standards of living.

  19. Fb

    Apart from leaving Australia defenceless against, for example, the Indonesians who are to receive delivery of 120 Su30s, the Greens have already spent all their savings and extra revenues by many tens of billions over forward estimates. In other words, there is no room for an extra $24 billion in Commonwealth budget over forward estimates under a Greens government. The Greens will promise full support for the NDIS but this promise lacks funding integrity.

    The era of mining super profits and the best terms of trade we ever had, are gone, IMHO. Mineral export profits will depend on volume, not price. As a trade-exposed nation we are unlikely to benefit from rapid growth in either Europe or the US any time soon.

    We are also entering an era of increasing demand for social spending on on the noble cohort of retiring Boomers. In other words, on our current trajectory, we are entering a more demanding and more constrained world. The NDIS, as an extra expenditure, necessarily has to fit into this world somehow.

    Our very extended family has been extraordinarily fortunate. As far as I know less than 1% of us has a disability requiring some small degree of state support. The reality is that if that state support was not freely available the rest of the family would be in a position to assist and would do so. Luck, as they say, is a fortune.

    Despite our personal circumstances, I support paying extra tax to fund the NDIS. IMHO, a good society gives disabled people a fair go at life, love and work. I would prefer not to cut any of our current programs. (OK, a few, but they would not cover the NDIS extra cost).

    (A levy in this context is a tax). The NDIS is a national self-insurance scheme with the nation paying the premium. That premium will be paid out of tax revenues. The only question for us is whether it comes out of the GST, company tax, an additional mining tax, or income tax.

  21. VK,

    [It’s things like that that remind me why it’s vital to have programs in place so that people with disadvantages get the support they need to have a good chance at improving their standards of living.]

    I still remember, on my first visit to America, my shock and near disbelief at the number of homeless people sleeping outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

    Not any more, of course, since 9/11…

  23. bemused@92,

    Quite an interesting mixture there.

    I’m no ordinary ALP c@t. My Labor hero is Peter Walsh, less so in his latter years when he appears to have had a little too much to do with the HR Nicholls Society, I believe. However, what that man could do with a tight Budget but still be equitable with it, I found cause for much applause. I wouldn’t be surprised if Swannie didn’t think he was one of Labor’s best Finance Ministers too.

  26. Von Kirsdarke,
    I heard a story the other day which said that some of the victims of the Colorado mass shooting would be going home with $2 million hospital bills!!!

  27. William @ 113

    I would love to know how this kind of ins and outs fit over forward estimates.

    I assume months can be lumpy. But if those sorts of figures hang in there, the Gubbies have their budget surplus in the bag.

  30. The articles on Club Troppo are the only in depth ones I’ve seen on the NT election campaign.

    http://clubtroppo.com.au/2012/07/25/stopping-debt-and-deficit-in-the-territory/

    [Posted on July 25, 2012 by Ken Parish
    Stopping debt and deficit in the Territory?

    Like Tony Abbott at a federal level, NT Country Liberals leader Terry Mills has been trying to fan the flames of a shock-horror theme on government debt, deficit and waste. Unlike Abbott, he hasn’t been notably successful at least in the mainstream media.

    Mills even organised for the unfortunately named (for a financial guru) Dr Neil Conn to give a speech about it last week, but it received almost no media coverage. Conn is a former Under-Treasurer under successive CLP governments, and was later appointed by the CLP as NT Administrator. Conn’s speech/paper has not been published online by the CLP as far as I can see, but as far as one can tell from a brochure I received it merely echoed this material on the CLP website.]
    Longer article is worth a read.

  31. C@tmomma

    We have had friends who from time to time have been caught in the toils of the US medical system. Ruinous stuff, literally.

  33. C@tmomma @ 123

    bemused@92,

    Quite an interesting mixture there.

    I’m no ordinary ALP c@t. My Labor hero is Peter Walsh, less so in his latter years when he appears to have had a little too much to do with the HR Nicholls Society, I believe. However, what that man could do with a tight Budget but still be equitable with it, I found cause for much applause. I wouldn’t be surprised if Swannie didn’t think he was one of Labor’s best Finance Ministers too.

    Lax controls on spending should never be condoned.
    Someone here disparaged the notion of ‘opportunity cost’ recently, but it is very real. Waste a dollar and then you don’t have it to put to good use.

    At work and elsewhere, when I spend money then I am as tight as if it was my own.

  34. [I heard a story the other day which said that some of the victims of the Colorado mass shooting would be going home with $2 million hospital bills!!!]
    Sen Mitch McConnell – “Well it was their friggin’ fault they were there wasn’t it!”

  35. @126

    Ye gods. That’s horrifying. If there’s anything that convinces Americans that every person living in a so-called civilized democracy deserves the right to have their lives saved by the medical system without a debilitating financial burden, that should be it.

  36. First post for a while!

    Looking at today’s Jakarta Globe, there is a report on 66 asylum seekers stranded on an island in Indonesian waters. Indonesian police are on their way to the island to arrest the asylum seekers.

    This follows the arrests of 53 people by the Indonesian coast guard at sea on Friday, and another 102 asylum seekers were also arrested in raids around Bogor and Sukubumi earlier this month.

    A few tangible signs of progress from the Indonesian side following the Darwin meeting between Julia Gillard and SBY.

  38. [The 23-year-old is uninsured, and, according to his family, faces medical expenses that could surmount $2 million.]
    Let’s face it. America is a s**t of a place!

  39. BW,

    [We have had friends who from time to time have been caught in the toils of the US medical system.]

    During the last presidential campaign I well remember hearing a self-proclaimed Repug voter – who had been bankrupted twice because of medical bills – declare that Obama’s proposals regarding health insurance were “socialism”.

    Mad, completely mad.

  41. BK,

    I suspect the movie theatre, the movie studios and everyone associated with the film are likely to have their arses sued.

    It is the American way.

    I suppose it has to be if you don’t have a decent Health Insurance system.

  43. Cat momma and Bemused. Once heard Kevin Foley say that a Labor premier has two key objectives: to avoid wasteful spending and to avoid giving selective financial support to rent seekers. In his view, both common failings of the Liberals, but quite at odds with public perceptions of Labor v Conservative economic management credentials.

  44. General Question on Private Health Care:

    I am wondering whether it is at all relevant to have Private Health Care and would welcome some advice.

    I am widowed with no kids at home anymore so I pay $82 a month to Medibank Private.

    I was admitted to hospital by a doctor exactly a month ago suffering from pneumonia. I was well cared for and am now required to see two specialists one of whom I saw yesterday and to date I have not had to pay a penny except for prescriptions.

    I have received excellent care and my question is what does my Private Health Care pay for and is it necessary?

  45. Medical bills are one of the most common causes of bankruptcy in the US.

    It’s like a third world country over there for many.

  47. Russian men apparently take a different approach to national health stats: they drink and smoke their way to a life expectancy of 64.

  48. [Medical bills are one of the most common causes of bankruptcy in the US.

    It’s like a third world country over there for many.]

    It was amusing, after Obamacare was upheld by the USSC and RW Americans were threatening to emigrate to Australia, UK etc., when it was pointed out that if they wanted to move to a country that shared their healthcare values, they would have to move to Western/Central Africa or other 3rd world nations.

  49. MTBW @ 144

    I think it is really extortion that relies on the ‘fear factor’ of what if I ever need it?

    My eldest son needs some elective surgery and could get it sooner as a private patient but, even though he has private health insurance, he will wait to go public as it will cost him zero then.

    This is an industry that just bleeds off funds that would be much better going into running an improved public health system.

    Too many people, including me, do not declare their private insurance when in a public hospital because to do so means nothing changes except you are out of pocket.

    Hospitals should stop doing this and simply get you to sign over any benefits from your private insurance. That would get more funds into the public system.

  50. [I have received excellent care and my question is what does my Private Health Care pay for and is it necessary?]

    I find no reason to have private health care, I have complex health issues and see 3 specialists regularly and my GP every 28 days.

    The GP bulk bills, the specialist do not but I get a Medicare rebate.

    Unless you expect to need elective surgery, I doubt most people need private insurance. You may be better putting the ~$900 pa in a term deposit.

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