Blair has covered a highly variable area around Ipswich since its creation in 1998, having been substantially redrawn at three redistributions since. Originally covering areas inland of Ipswich and the Sunshine Coast, the redistributions of 2004 and 2007 saw it progressively take over central Ipswich from Oxley. Prior to the 2010 election it lost 28,000 voters in territory south of Ipswich to the new seat of Wright, in exchange for 13,200 voters in rural areas around Lake Wivenhoe to the north (previously in Dickson and Fisher) and 5500 in the eastern Ipswich suburbs of Collingwood Park and Springfield Central (from Oxley). As the areas lost were rural and conservative, Labor’s margin was boosted from 4.5% to 7.0%. The seat further recorded what by Queensland standards was a mild swing of 2.7%, the resulting Labor margin of 4.2% making it their fourth safest seat in the state.
Ipswich had been an area of strength for Labor since the early days of the party’s history owing to its now defunct coal mining industry, but it has more recently been prone to rebellion against the party’s efforts to appeal to new middle-class constituencies. The most famous such occasion occurred when Pauline Hanson won Oxley in 1996, scoring 48.6% of the primary vote as an independent after the Liberals disendorsed her for advocating the abolition of government assistance for Aborigines. The creation of Blair in the next redistribution did Hanson a poor turn, dividing her home turf between two electorates. Rather than recontest Oxley or (more sensibly) run for the Senate, Hanson chanced her arm at the new seat, but the major parties’ decision to direct preferences to each other may have sealed her doom. Hanson led the primary vote count with 36.0% against 25.3% for Labor and 21.7% for Liberal, but Liberal candidate Cameron Thompson pulled ahead of Labor on minor party preferences and defeated Hanson by 3.3% on Labor preferences.
Thompson went on to absorb most of the disappearing One Nation vote in 2001, more than doubling his primary vote without improving his two-party margin over Labor. A redistribution ahead of the 2004 election clipped this by 1.8%, but he went on to handsomely consolidate his position with a 4.5% swing. In 2007 the Liberals targeted Blair as part of its “firewall” strategy, a key element of which was a risky decision to fund a $2.3 billion Ipswich Motorway bypass at Goodna in the neighbouring electorate of Ryan. This proved of little use, with Labor picking up a decisive swing of 10.2% which typified the shift of blue-collar voters back to Labor on the back of WorkChoices.
Labor’s winning candidate was Shayne Neumann, a family lawyer and partner in the Brisbane firm Neumann & Turnour and member of the state party’s Labor Unity/Old Guard faction. His LNP opponent at the coming election will be Teresa Harding, who is “director of the F-111 Disposal and Aerial Targets Office” at the RAAF Base Amberley.
guytaur
As a Greens member can you apply to attend State or National Conference as an observer?
Just askin’ 😆
GG
[Experts got us in to this current mess.
Remember, the Titanic was built by experts and The Ark by amateurs.]
There are certainly a lot more experts than good answers.
And even if there were good answers, implementing them might be a considerable challenge.
And even if you get those right, it might not be politically feasible.
It really is a hell of a problem.
Hopefully Houston has the wisdom of Solomon. I should add that I’m a big fan of Houston. Can’t say the same for Cosgrove.
Well, well, well, I knew that Bishop said Rabbott had a feminine side but wasn’t aware she told the party to get out there and spruik it and to go forth and tell voters who Rabbott is.
That is very odd!
Especially when you consider, not that long ago, party members,(if memory serves me well including Bishop)were telling us that with Rabbott, what you see is what you get.
guytaur,
You’re like the puppy running along the fence line barking at the mailman as he delivers the mail. You yap uncontrollably, stare menacingly, and proclaim triumph with a strut of the righteous when the mailman moves on to the next house.
Speaking of which, I’m off to the footy. Go Blues!
Psephos
The Committee could recommend (I hope they do) the reversal of the Howard established Migration zones and recognise that Australias borders are just that.
This would reduce the distance traveled and related drowning.
True Independent experts such as we have here can come up with conclusions that surprise many. Just look at how many over the years have predicted the High Court would decide one way and it goes another.
I think the only prediction we can make is the following.
The committee will decide the best course of action in the national interest that saves lives.
Haven’t had the time to keep up with the conversation today. Can someone please tell me when the AS report is expected to be announced.
Bloody channel 9 news just did a hatchet BS job on the ‘huge impact of the carbon tax on council rates’. Also had Hunt on badmouthing the Government – in my opinion it was a very damaging report with very high ratings.
GG
You need to learn to stop projecting your own inadequacies on others.
BTW. Go swannies. Blues are my second team. Swans are my first.
Turnbull continues to speak out of his portfolio and contradicts his leader
Comment 403 ‘Ignore’
How come I couldn’t post my previous comment with the link?
It would not load and now I see it slotted in on the previous page with the link.
Comment 403 ‘Ignore’
How come I couldn’t post my previous comment with the link?
It would not load and now I see it slotted in on the previous page with the link.
Oh Geebus!
Now this comment won’t load.
I’m off to watch a movie.
[the Titanic was built by experts and The Ark by amateurs.]
And the hundreds of other ships, including Titanic’s sister ships, that didn’t sink and went on to have good use were built by experts too.
The Ark is a story and may not have existed at all, yet one does not have to look far to find disasters stemming from amateur engineering attempts.
In short, exceptions don’t necessarily disprove rules and I would still trust an expert over an amateur any day of the week.
I’m gone!
Something strange going on here!
Comments posting in halves.
@tom_watson: Will the ‘Jesus Christ of politics’ rise again? http://t.co/0Bw5jR11 A Berlusconi update.
Dee@354,
Which tends to suggest to me, if rates have jumped higher than would have been calculated/expected due to the Price on Carbon, that that particular Council will be getting a ‘ Please Explain’ phone call from the ACCC on Monday. As, how could a rate rise higher than expected when the carbon Price has been calculated to within an inch of it’s life for impact in all areas?
I suspect, without having seen the offending Ch9 attempt to breath life back into Abbott’s scare campaign, aided and abetted by Liberal Councils, that what we may find here is a Liberal Council jacking up the waste disposal component of their rates, more than necessary, and blaming it on the Carbon Price.
Darn
The report will be presented to cabinet on Monday
Which councils, what rates? If I remember correctly the Carbon Price is not payable on council landfill until 2013, is this an ACCC case or can Council lie to Journalist? Or are journalists makin shit up?
Carey
Unfortunately the public have been “trained” by the Oppn to dismiss experts as lefties. They want the real experts, like Alan Jones and Morrison 😛
I received rate notice in July. It actually rose less in percentage terms than previous years
Thanks Vic
Go Eels. 🙂
Darn
My pleasure
[Ezra Klein @ezraklein 1h
This election increasingly resembles the Obama campaign’s strategy rather than the Romney campaign’s strategy]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/11/paul-ryan-will-be-mitt-romneys-vice-presidential-pick-heres-seven-thoughts-on-what-that-means/
I have read that bit. It is not advocating capital punishment. It simply says that the person would be better off to be done in than hurt a child, not that it should be the punishment for the act once it is committed. Ditto with chopping off your own hands and feet.
No doubt some tea-party crazies use that line to support their capital punishment aka legalised serial killing, ideas but it is a distortion.
424 for Hamish Hiil
I think Redmond backs gay marriage as well. A conscience vote from both Labor and Libs could be interesting.
[PREMIER Jay Weatherill stood on the stairs of Parliament today to declare to a large crowd that he will vote in favour of a Bill to legalise gay marriage.
His pledge today to vote for the Greens’ Bill now before State Parliament’s Upper House adds significant weight to the campaign.
Labor will allow MPs a conscience vote in a party where the conservative Catholic Right wing dominates and key members are in seats with voters opposed to the idea.]
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/weatherill-staunches-labor-opposition-to-back-gay-marriage-bill/story-e6frea83-1226448200859
george has just given us a telegram from Tony Abbott.
http://tinyurl.com/9g2g4xq
CO@407,
The Brothers-In-Arms attack on the Carbon Price of the Liberals and their Liberal mates on Councils, has been a well-co-ordinated one since just before July 1st.
Greg Combet has already pointed out the BS behind their claims, and will no doubt be onto it again like a fly on the crap put out by these clowns, which should be consigned to one of their dumps where it belongs.
I hope he gets Channel 9 to run an unreserved apology for misleading their audience too, as they & the Opposition have obviously exploited the lead-in to the Olympics that their news has been benefiting from and the audience that came with it.
This smells of a well-planned and long in the making(but not particularly well thought through) attack on the government over Carbon Pricing on the weekend before parliament resumes. Obviously the Opposition thought the Carbon Pricing issue would have been causing more angst than it has. Or, alternatively, they want to take the wind out of the sails that the government has got from it since July 1.
If I were Psephos, I’d give Greg a ring just to check he is onto this attempted sliming of the government by Channel 9 and the Opposition. It’s not news it’s propaganda. The retraction should be as prominent on tomorrow’s news.
If Channel 9 want to retain their broadcast license.
[Which tends to suggest to me, if rates have jumped higher than would have been calculated/expected due to the Price on Carbon, that that particular Council will be getting a ‘ Please Explain’ phone call from the ACCC on Monday.]
No they won’t. The ACCC only investigates commercial operations and councils are not included as they are non commercial, which is absolute rubbish, pun intended. Queensland Councils are collecting Carbon fees now although they are exempt until next year, on the grounds that they have to forward the payments for this year in the next FY.
I just went through this nonsense as the local dump – sorry, recycling centre, fee for a domestic trailer load of rubbish has gone from free 2 1/2 years ago, to $7.00 to $9.00 to $13.00 since July 1st, with $2.60 being ‘Carbon Tax’ – their words, not mine.
If anyone wants to take this further, I’ll hold their coat, ‘cos I’ve wasted enough time on it.
[I think Redmond backs gay marriage as well. A conscience vote from both Labor and Libs could be interesting.]
I was talking to Tammy Franks about this a while ago and she is very confident they have the numbers in the Legislative Council. As for the House of Assembly, she is less sure (they’re not her colleagues) but she is quietly confident.
GIRL POWER
(Just had an argument with a muso about the musicians on this Katie Noonan clip; he reckons there’s a lot of back-up music we don’t hear – and I say bullshit, it’s the all girl classical guitarist plus celloist)
But, NB. Emmo in the background 😆
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/25004 @ 58.41
click on continue
Whaddyareckon?
Bishop is just channeling Miranda Devine’s gush over Tones from 3 years back
[It was a softer, gentler version, praised and loved by women, with his devoted wife, Margie, and three willowy daughters further evidence of his female-friendly persona – a must in any election, since opinion polls show the Coalition is faring worse with female voters than with male…………, he has leaned down into an ascetic surfing/cycling type you could almost suspect as a vegetarian.
Of course to his family, which includes three sisters, and friends, he has never been the sexist bovver-boy zealot of his media caricature. But his plain-speaking boyishness and old-fashioned lack of artifice made him an unusual target in politics]
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-remaking-of-the-mad-monk-20090729-e1ip.html#ixzz23E1LZs00
[The Ark is a story and may not have existed at all]
May not have existed?
Puffy
Lots of theologians say Jesus supported the death penalty. Even more say he didn’t.
Funnily enough, Bill O’Reilly once castigated George W for supporting the death penalty, saying Jesus wouldn’t have. Bush actually agreed that Jesus wouldn’t have supported it.
Rossmore,
Thank you for the compliment. 😳
Might I just add that if Mr Abbott has a feminine side, it is Ms Bishop who wears the pants in the federal parliamentary Liberal Party. 🙂
poroti
Did you have to quote the divine one? I’m eating. That is revolting bootlicking.
Well, we I say we don’t hear, I mean we don’t see.
And george has something to say about Mesma’s comments about Abbott’s caring attitude to women.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64041833@N04/7757567564/in/photostream
Boerwar,
Thank you to you too. 🙂
I just know there’s a George Photoshop effort just waiting to be created with the monkey and his organ grinder. 😀
Dio @ 363
I don’t for one minute a,ccept that she picked people who will report as she wishes, despite the Sir Humph allegory.pi
Those three wise men will come up with a composite view of the information they gather, and who could predict that.
IMHO the PM selctd these three= (and not just uone of them) to load her committee uwith unimpeachable characters.
At the time she selected them, if you recall, nobody at all offered% any criticism of her choices, so fine were they. The very reason the committee was set up was to resolve the impasse atbthe time, primarily, not necessarily to find solutions, although that will occur. I think JG will follow their advice, even if it is the Nauru package, not that I think they’ll recommend that.
I think you as a G are setting up an excuse why your mob won’t accept their advice regardless of what he says.
O
Your mob are anti-action, even regarding a trial with a sunset clause.
Sorry mate, youse are on the way down and out, all of your own doing.
Regarding Asylum seeker policy, has anyone here actually sat down and worked it out what the end game should or could be? Leaving alone the politics of how to get there.
I would have thought that there is actually no “solution” if solution means having no-one arrive by boat.
Why don’t we try some thought experiments?
Ok, what about we set up a processing center in Indonesia and Malaysia. We offer anyone asylum who meets the refugee standard. What’s your best, most informed estimate of how many people would take up refuge in Australia, and how would that evolve over time?
My best estimate puts it in the order of 100,000 people initially (first year), tailing off after that with perhaps 300,000 people over a decade. I could be out by a factor of two either way. Obviously, not everyone would want to come to Australia even if handed a ticket.
Now, given that kind of figure as a baseline, is there a problem? I’ve no doubt that initially it would be expensive. But as history proves, these people go on to contribute to GDP just like anyone born here. Its not like we aren’t familiar with these sorts of numbers given our immigration program is actually larger than this now.
And I’ve no doubt that we’d also have to have a more progressive and logical approach to infrastructure too.
But, once you’ve started to think about the end game, the real question is how you get there.
For me the biggest problem is how this has been politicized. Were it not for Howard we just wouldn’t be having this debate. People would still be arriving by boat, perhaps. But it just wouldn’t be an issue – even if it grew to tens of thousands of people per year.
Now, whatever policy you seek you have to first answer for yourself, to what extent are you comfortable with what essentially amounts to an open border and do you have a clear idea of the real numbers involved. Forget about being invaded by millions – that sort of scenario isn’t going to happen until Bangladesh starts drowning from sea level rise. And then the question you have to ask yourself is this. To what extent do you wish as a public policy to do things that amount to punishment of individuals in the name of deterrence.
Because every single policy we have right now, ultimately amounts to harming individuals in the name of deterrence. Whether that amounts to the threat of losing the lottery and being sent to Malaysia, or the threat of being stuck inside detention for years, or the threat of living life in limbo under a TPV. Every single thing you can think of that deters people from coming amounts to threats of harm of some form or another. So, ask yourself is it really necessary in the first place, and if so, what level of harm are you willing to inflict on individuals in order to convince others not to come.
Personally, I don’t adopt an absolute stance on this. I just feel that unless the climate/food/water wars come, the numbers of people that might want to come here are manageable. But, there are limits of course.
Now, I don’t like the Malaysia “solution” because its fundamentally a lottery and its about deterrence by threat. Even if it is sweetened with an increased refugee intake. I don’t like it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t the least worst option we have.
Certainly Naura is a fraud. And TPVs are cruel and inhuman. So, what are we left with?
Not a lot. I’ve no idea what the realpolitik is that the Greens have in mind. They can’t directly achieve a situation where people are processed in Indonesia. All they’re doing really is encouraging an Abbott victory and shooting themselves in the foot.
The attraction to me in the Malaysia idea is not that its a particularly good idea in itself but that it does have the potential to neutralize the issue. To get it off the papers, to get the Liberals to accept they can’t make any more political gains out of the issue and go quiet on it. In other words I see it as a means to an end.
Now, 3 years from now what’s most likely to happen is that the Malaysia “solution” telescopes into an ongoing “refugee swap”. We end up taking quite a few more people. Concurrently it leads naturally to the situation where we set up shop in Indonesia itself and encourage would-be boat arrivals to camp there. Yes, this does increase the flow, but that’s not the problem. The problem is the perception. Once the Liberals give up on this, the papers will forget about it and so will the yobbos down the street. They’ll find something else to get mad about.
Eventually it has to evolve into an end game where we simply do what the Greens actually want, and that is to have a fair minded attitude to refugees and to actually go to places like Malaysia and Indonesia and process them there. So in that sense I agree with the Greens. I just think their politics is naive to the point of dangerous (so too was their approach to the ETS).
Now, given that the Greens are a democratic party. How do you then influence them to doing something unpalatable in the interest of a political outcome that gets them where they want to be later. And I guess this is where Julia is going to have to pull off her best performance yet, and actually convince the rank and file Greens that its better to have a somewhat inhumane “solution” in order to get the issue into the background than it is to end up with an Abbott victory and all that will come with that – perhaps another decade of the Liberals being even more extreme and inhumane – and getting their mates in the media to propagate their lies.
[with his devoted wife, Margie, and three willowy daughters further evidence of his female-friendly persona ]
Most heterosexual men have wives, and probably also daughters. That doesn’t make them feminists. Ibn Saud had 30 daughters, which didn’t make Saudi Arabia any more pleasant a place for women to live.
[Lots of theologians say Jesus supported the death penalty. Even more say he didn’t.]
If ever there is a contentious social issue, there will always be a theological debate over whether or not Jesus, God etc. were for it.
Go back a few centuries and there was a similar debate over slavery.
Anything Can-Do can do Fatty can do better!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-11/nsw-plans-to-cut-public-servant-entitlements/4192494
muttleymcgee,
Interesting. Maybe that’s why the Fiberals have decided to exploit this chink in the Carbon Pricing scheme?
psyclaw
I’m not a Green.
Puffy, ever thought of becoming a roman priest?
There is a certain inexorable logic about to kick in, imo:
1 Rudd cannot get the numbers to take on Gillard
2 Therefore Rudd’s supporters in caucus now have to get behind Gillard, even if they don’t like it
3 The narrative from the Government will become more positive….Gillard is a proud Labor fighter, a true-believer, a good person who is becoming a great Labor PM….the Government has a genuinely good record of achievement and ….Abbott and the Liberals are untrustworthy and incompetent liars who have tried to trick their way into office
4 Labor have a fight on their hands, but should not be written off at the next election
5 The Liberals have no policies other a few cliches and an unworthy, cringe-worthy populism
6 The media do not really care much about the actual content of Government – only whether they can use politics to drum up stories and drive sales. Since the media cannot tear Gillard to pieces – no matter how much they try – they will tear Abbott to pieces instead. This will be entertaining, because he is such an easy target: he is angry, bungle-prone, thin-skinned, erratic and vain.
Abbott, like Rudd, is a creature of the media. They made him. Now they will unmake him for fun and profit.
Dio
Copious apologies. My mistake.
kezza2
I reckon there is no other backing music, apart from the musicians playing. Emmo appeared to appreciate it very much. 😀