The electorate of Canberra covers the southern half of the national capital together with the bulk of the Australian Capital Territory’s thinly populated remainder, with northern Canberra accommodated by the seat of Fraser. Both seats were created when the territory was first divided into two electorates in 1974. The Australian Capital Territory had been a single electorate since the expansion of parliament in 1949, but its member only obtained full voting rights in 1968. A third electorate of Namadgi was created for the 1996 election, accommodating Tuggeranong and its surrounds in Canberra’s far south and pushing the Canberra electorate north of the lake to include the city’s centre and inner north. However, the previous order was reinstated when the seat entitlement to slipped back to two at the 1998 election, in large part due to Howard government cutbacks to the federal public service. The two ACT electorates presently have enrolment of around 130,000 voters each, compared with a national average of around 96,000.
The Australian Capital Territory electorate was won by an independent at its first election in 1949, but was held by Labor after 1951. Kep Enderby came to the seat at a 1970 by-election and carried over to Canberra in 1974, serving as Lionel Murphy’s successor as Attorney-General in 1975. He was then dumped by a 10.4% swing to the Liberals at the December 1975 election, and for the next two terms the seat was held for the Liberals by John Haslem. The seat’s natural Labor inclination finally reasserted itself in 1980 with the election of Ros Kelly, who served in the Hawke-Keating ministries from 1987 until she fell victim to the still notorious “sports rorts” affair in 1994. Kelly’s indulgent departure from parliament a year later was followed by a disastrous by-election result for Labor, with Liberal candidate Brendan Smyth gaining the seat off a 16.2% swing.
Smyth unsuccessfully contested the new seat of Namadgi at the 1996 election, and Canberra was won easily for Labor by Bob McMullan, who had served the ACT as a Senator since 1988. The reassertion of the old boundaries in 1998 caused McMullan to move to Fraser, the Labor margin in the redrawn Canberra being 5.1% lower than the one he secured in 1996. Canberra went to Annette Ellis, who had entered parliament as the member for Namadgi in 1996, while Fraser MP Steve Darvagel agreed to go quietly after a brief parliamentary career which began when he succeeded John Langmore at a by-election in February 1997. Ellis added 7.2% to an existing 2.3% margin at the 1998 election, and held the seat safely thereafter.
In February 2010, both Ellis and McMullan announced they would not contest the election due later that year. Large fields of preselection contestants emerged for both seats, with the front-runner in Canberra initially thought to be Michael Cooney, chief-of-staff to ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr and a former adviser to opposition leaders Mark Latham and Kim Beazley. However, Cooney shortly withdrew amid suggestions Kevin Rudd was ready to use national executive intervention to block him. The eventual winner was Gai Brodtmann, a former DFAT public servant who had established a local communications consultancy with her husband, senior ABC reporter Chris Uhlmann. Together with Andrew Leigh’s win in Fraser, Brodtmann’s win was seen as a rebuff to local factional powerbrokers who had pursued a deal in which the Left would support Mary Wood, adviser to Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek and member of the Centre Coalition (Right), and the Right would back the Nick Martin, the party’s assistant national secretary and a member of the Left, in Fraser. However, Brodtmann was able to build a cross-factional support base of sufficient breadth to prevail over Wood by 123 votes to 109.
The Liberal candidate for the coming election is Tom Sefton, a Commonwealth public servant who has served in Afghanistan as a commando officer. Sefton polled a respectable 4.2% as a candidate for Molonglo at the October 2012 Australian Capital Territory election.
Any Fairfax Shareholders here? Are you happy with management driving away customers by trying to be News Ltd?
murdoch’s for rudd.
rudd, rudd, rudd.
every flamin’ where….
leadershit here. leadershit there.
acres of print. soundbites, soundbites…..
tell me something.
if rudd is the answer …..
if rudd is the one …. to save Labor
if rudd is the one …. to beat abbott
if rudd is the only one to do this.
why does murdoch give him so much space?
huh?
what’s murdoch pushing for rudd, when abbott is his boy.
cos, y’know …..
‘she won’t go away.’
‘she won’t go away ….. ‘
‘why won’t she just go away ?’
why won’t she just lie down …… ?’
….’and go away …. ?’
So.
rudd, rudd, rudd.
they CAN make HIM go away.
But.
Not.
Julia Gillard.
…. and you know.
Julia Gillard……
is going to debate
with Tony Abbott.
you want policy ?
Tony’s eyes will bleed.
have some policy …..
la de bloody dah.
Without the media protecting Abbott
Abbott popularity would be close to the worse in Australia’s political history
i have no doubt his popularity would be below 8%
Lets have a look at the liberal party leadership in the last 7 years
Nelson – if he was given the same media protection as Abbott would be higher
Turnbull – Given more media protection then nelson but still not like abbott , turnbull would be higher
I think what the Age fears is that after the election Abbott will allow Gina Rinehart to takeover the paper and guess what you will no decent papers matter of fact the Age will be totally stuffed because it will have no readers and what are you left with IPA run newspapers controlling the country.
Now lets look at Pm Gillard
if she was given the equal of abbott
PM Gillard would be out doing everyone
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rkur30
Gillard popularity would be close being the highest in Australia’s Political History
If the media applied the same to her as they are with Abbott
[guytaur
Posted Saturday, June 22, 2013 at 9:52 am | Permalink
Any Fairfax Shareholders here? Are you happy with management driving away customers by trying to be News Ltd?]
Anyone who still owns shares in fairfax is batshit crazy.
It reflect how incompetent and weak Abbott truly is , if he can not be that much popular then Gillard who is supposedly to have no one listening to her
Newsltd and pro coalition media are scared shitless when the campaigning of policies are in public
They will not want people to be listening to Abbott
Old media suggests people aren’t listening to politicians.
I can assure old media that I AM listening to politicians but I AM NOT listening to old media. 😉
All it takes to lose the one and only reality poll is
for people to listen to Abbott , like they did with Hewson
Newspoll will be released either tomorrow night or Monday. Leadershit will no doubt be ramped up. If Rudd has the numbers and he genuinely wants another go, he should declare his bloody hand. This circus needs to stop.
Comical Ali and the Monty Python Black Knight had a love child and named it Meguire Bob…and Bob Ellis was the godfather…
Labor by 20 seats I tell yuz!
I fully expect Victoria to sign up to Gonski this week which will be a welcome policy distraction to all the old media noise re personalities.
My prediction is Mooseheads.
Went to Solstice Celebration last night. There were four people there who have probably never voted for anything other than conservative parties. They will do so again on Sept 14. But geez, they do not like Abbott at all.
Boerwar
Sadly Says a great deal about our political discourse.
BW – You don’t even have to be a local to predict that!
Media bias, what media bias?
Because Labor is behind in the polls it is now called Media Bias. I think their is media bias from Murdoch papers all has been from them but Fairfax i do not think so.
smh
The irony is killing me. The media don’t want to report on policy and the voters don’t want to hear it.
“@macleanbrendan: You’ve gotta hand it to The Age for personally hammering the last nail into their own coffin of irrelevance.”
marky marky@122
Really? An article advocating KR over JG in a paper that has consistently advocated KR over JG is not evidence to you of bias?
Liberal Policies
Budget – we’ll do what Labor is doing
Climate – We have Direct Action. Green Army and planting trees. For anything else you will have to wait until after the election when we consult with others, then we will tell you what is happening
Taxes – we will repeal the carbon price legislation and the revenue that pays for the tax cuts and compensation but keep the tax cuts etc. We will find the $4.5 billion per year to pay by cutting 12,000 public servants.
Asylum Seekers – we will make a difference from day one. Those pesky Indonesians will see it our way. We’ll open Manus and Nauru and allow asylum seekers to live and work in Australia by issuing TPV – that’ll show ’em we mean business.
Parental leave – we will impose a 1.5% levy on business to pay for PPL. This will cost business more than the current carbon price but it is for good cause. The tax cuts you are getting to keep will offset the banks interest rate rises and cost of living increases caused by this.
Industrial relations – we go hard against Unions. We will have the Productivity Commission do a report after the election and then we’ll tell you what changes we will make to the Fair Work Act
GST – we are to gutless to say we will increase the GST so we are getting the states to do that dirty work. That way its not our fault and we have the states to blame.
Note I didn’t say bias against Labor.
It’s on like Donkey Kong already.
Gillard has lost the Age – the bastion of left wing ideology in the ALP heartland.
The Caucus know the polling. They’ve known what it means for a long time.
The Rudd experience must have been excruciatingly terrible for them to soundly reject him even in the face of the size of the likely election defeat.
How abusive, arrogant, noxious, poisonous must Rudd have been to garner such hatred?
Today’s Age editorial absolutely nails the current position. Scream, abuse the messenger and cover your ears and pretend it’s not real all you want, but the position is dire and a change of leader is the only chance of making it less dire. Well done to The Age for calling it exactly as it is!
Crank
You really do live in the past. Age bastion of left wing advocacy is so last century
marky @105 – the Government, of either persuasion has no say over whether Rhinehart takes over Fairfax.
Does Meguire Bob know that the Age is not a News Limited publication?
Not really sure what penetrates his “reality”.
‘If the media applied the same to her as they are with Abbott’
..and if my uncle was a woman he’d be my aunty…..
Something for the more rabid conspiracy theorists to ponder:
“@MikeCarlton01: @sprocket___ @Thefinnigans @theage Oh for crying out loud. Rinehart has NO editorial control or influence at Fairfax. None, zero, zilch.”
“@timdunlop
She’s a witch! She has put a spell on us and won’t let us talk about policy! She must be banished!”
Meguire Bob and reality.
L.O.L.
guytaur @130 – list the Age’s well known Conservative Opinion writers.
In fact list implies more than one – name one well recognised conservative commentator.
Hey MSM saw Dreyfuss presser live. He wanted to talk policy. You wanted to talk Leadership. Stop it you will go blind
Rose – I always try to be nice to Bob.
Compact Crank
Posted Saturday, June 22, 2013 at 10:31 am | PERMALINK
Does Meguire Bob know that the Age is not a News Limited publication?
————–
Its pro coalition media though , same thing
JV @134
heh heh heh
compac crank
can you provide an reality poll
which has the coalition in front
and media opinion polls are not reality
And this one’s from Gay Alcorn, who’s article we were also reading last night:
“@timdunlop it is so disingenuous for media to moan about lack of policy debate – there’s nothing stopping them.”
matt31@129
They’re not just a “messenger” when they publish their own message.
Meguire Bob @140
If The Big Idea and Green Left Weekly called for Gillard’s head I bet you call them part of the pro-coalition media.
heh
Even Panellists on 24 are saying Age gone too far and if Age wants policy talk it can start policy talk.
Crank
Compare contrast with The Guardian
“@CatherineDeveny: For those disgusted with @theage this morning, feel free to come and join us all at @GuardianAus. It’s a grown up newspaper with standards.”
hehehe Probably gat a lot of new customers 🙂
An opinion labelled “Editorial” in a newspaper cannot be, by definition, ‘bias’. At least get that straight.
Right
Just for Meguire Bob
I am commissioning a REALITY POLL.
I have instructed the Australian Electoral Commission to conduct a REALITY POLL on Saturday 14th September, 2013. (Although that may change with REALITY).
I’ll get back to you with the results.