David Fraser is a recognised expert in Queensland elections and electoral boundaries, having been involved in most Liberal Party redistribution submissions since the 1970s. This is his take on the Queensland redistribution. Thanks to David for preparing it for the blog.
With the release of the proposed Queensland electoral boundaries it might be useful to summarise what has occurred.
There will continue to be 89 seats in the Legislative Assembly. Four seats have been abolished – Cunningham (Stuart Copeland, NP), Darling Downs (Ray Hopper, NP), Fitzroy (Jim Pearce, ALP) and Tablelands (Rosa Lee Long, One Nation). Four new seats have been created – Buderim (Sunshine Coast), Coomera (Gold Coast), Dalby (Darling Downs) and Morayfield (to the immediate north of Brisbane).
Four seats have been renamed following extensive boundary changes. These are Charters Towers (Shane Knuth, NP) to be renamed Macrossan after the inclusion of parts of Tablelands, Kurwongbah (Linda Lavarch, ALP) to be renamed Samsonvale as Lake Kurwongbah will no longer be included in the electorate, Mount Gravatt (Judy Spence, ALP) to be renamed Sunnybank as it has been moved westwards, and Robina (Ray Stephens, Lib) to be renamed Mermaid Beach as much of the suburb of Robina will be removed from the electorate.
No changes are proposed to two electorates – Gladstone (Liz Cunningham, Ind) and Moggill (Bruce Flegg, Lib).
With Labor holding 59 seats to the Coalition’s 25 and five by independents or One Nation the impact on the ALP is greatest.
The abolition of Fitzroy was followed by an announcement that the current member, Jim Pearce (elected in 1989), would retire. His is the only announced retirement from the ranks of ALP members despite Premier Anna Bligh’s calls last week for renewal in parliamentary ranks. Police Minister Judy Spence (also first elected in 1989) will seek election for the new seat of Sunnybank after her Mount Gravatt seat disappeared.
The inclusion of a number of mining towns from the abolished Fitzroy in the National Party electorate of Mirani (Ted Malone on 56.5 percent) may give some comfort to the ALP.
The removal of Bowen from the marginal Labor seat of Whitsunday (held by Jan Jarrett with 54.4 percent of the vote after preferences) weaken Labor’s hold. However, its inclusion in the marginal National Party seat of Burdekin (Rosemary Menkens on 52.4 percent) will enhance Labor’s chances there.
It has been suggested Caroline Male (ALP) will leave her seat of Glass House and seek election for the new seat of Morayfield, a suburban seat to the south of Caboolture, which represents a better propspect for Labor.
On the rapidly expanding Gold Coast Gaven (Phil Grey on 53.1 percent) and Broadwater (Peta-Kaye Croft on 55.2 percent) have been improved for Labor though the marginal Mudgeeraba (Di Reilly on 52.9 percent) has seen the Liberal Party’s prospects improved. The character of the ALP seat of Albert has changed significantly while the adjacent new seat of Coomera extends from the strong Labor area of Eagleby (transferred from Albert) in the north to the Liberal voting Hope Island (transferred from Broadwater) in the south
In suburban Brisbane two marginal Labor seats have been improved for the Liberal Party – Aspley (Bonny Barry on 54.6 percent) and Chatsworth (Chris Bombolas on 50.8 percent) – by the removal of Labor voting areas.
The Liberal Party will probably gain the new seat of Buderim on the Sunshine Coast with the announcement that the current member for Kawana, Steve Dickson (Lib), will seek to transfer to the new seat. The Liberal Party would expect to retain Kawana.
A major problem confronts the National Party with the proposed abolition of two safe seats – Cunningham and Darling Downs to the south and west of Toowoomba – and the creation of only one new seat in the same area – Dalby. Assuming neither National member decides to retire, three alternatives face the Nationals – the sitting members, Stuart Copeland and Ray Hopper, face off in Dalby with the loser exiting politics; Copeland runs in Dalby with Hopper contesting Nanango against independent Dorothy Pratt; or the veteran National, Mike Horan, retires from Toowoomba South with Copeland taking that seat and Hopper running in Dalby. Whatever the outcome, this has the potential to cause major problems in the Nationals’ heartland.
The boundaries are subject to public objection and Labor at least has already heralded its concerns over changes to Whitsunday. With objections closing on 23 June the Commission then has until 22 August to make its final determination.
This redistribution follows the pattern established in 1991 and 1999 with seats moving from rural and regional areas to the south east. There is little to suggest that the pattern will not be repeated when the boundaries are next redrawn.
May 26, 2008 | Graham
Queensland Redistribution
May 25, 2008 | Graham
Putting a vorpal blade to the Neo-Calvinists
Censorship laws in Australia seem to have reverted to something pre-Don Chip. Although in the bad old days it was Queensland that had problems with naked women’s breasts, including a visiting islander troop that had to dance wearing bras! Not New South Wales.
The Age bravely reproduces the image that has got Bill Henson into trouble with the police, and the federal government. I’d do the same if I wasn’t unsure of the copyright situation. If you voted for Kevin Rudd last election, is this what you thought you were voting for?
Let’s put this in perspective. Here is a photo taken by Charles Dodson, mathematician, logician, amateur photographer, author and Anglican clergyman. I can’t find any of his nude photos online, but he did take photos of 11 year old Alice Lidell, who also was the model for Alice, in the book he wrote under his pen name of Lewis Carroll. I’d argue that this photo is far more erotic than the Henson one.
Photos of naked girls were apparently quite common in Victorian England, even appearing on Christmas cards.
Clive Hamilton, Oliver Cromwell of the Neo-Calvinistsappears to argue that it doesn’t matter whether the photos are pornographic or not, but whether some perverted individuals might use them for sexual gratification. We know that these sorts of people can get quite excited by photographs of full-clothed young girls at school sports days. What are we supposed to do as a society? Treat everything as though the whole society is sexually perverted and parade our girls, and boys, around in burkhas?
Or use our common sense and apply an objective test to questions of juvenile sexual expoitation?
May 23, 2008 | Graham
Another Young in print
And blowing things up as well. Little sister Helene made the Cairns Post. She’s been short-listed along with seven others for the USA Golden Hearts Award for Romance writing.
SHE has blown up Circular Quay and even had a romance along the way – all in the name of fiction.
Pilot Helene Young, from Trinity Beach, is one of eight finalists for her novel, Beyond the Borders, in the Romance Writers of America’s 2008 Golden Heart awards for Romantic Suspense category.
“Romance tends to get overlooked,” Ms Young said.
“It’s more than just Mills and Boon, it’s an industry that I’m excited to be a small part of.”
But it wasn’t until Mrs (sic) Young’s husband, Graham Wade, read her unpublished novel in a dusty drawer that she thought of getting her writing published 11 years ago.
And isn’t it nice that she has a husband who picks her up, doesn’t weigh her down.
This makes a full house of writers in the family. Bigger (to Helene) sister Bronwyn writes speeches in the public service and used to be an ABC and SBS journo after starting her career stringing for the Canberra Times at Uni. Dad wrote fairy stories for us kids which we received in long letters sent to us while he was working on ships in the Arctic Ocean, and Mum used to write-up and deliver the odd sermon as a Methodist deaconess.
P.S. If you know Helene’s husband Graham (we’re economical with names in my family to the extent that my ex is called Helen) there’s no way you’d believe that any drawer in the house was “dusty”!
May 23, 2008 | Graham
Q&A and the Kevinator
I couldn’t help thinking watching Q&A that as a Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes a good Opposition Leader, and that whatever his Mandarin speaking skills, he’s a creditable Mandarin.
Large numbers gushed in answer to every question, and at one point he even referred to the Opposition as the Government. So it was billions of dollars into this or that, and then a swipe at his opponents. I am very impressed that he can remember the details of so much policy, but will the electors be so impressed if the economy starts to slow down? For Kevin it seems to be all too easy to sound like a “feral abacus”. His advisors need to school him on what $20 billion of tax cuts mean to the average taxpayer. How many extra litres of fuel, or haircuts, or school shoes does it add up to. That’s what working families want to know.
He also needs to work on his personal conviction. If John Black is right that Rudd won on the evangelical Christian vote, then saying that your Christianity won’t play a part in your cabinet deliberations is not a good tactic. Next time he should stop and ask himself “What would Dietrich Boenhoffer say?” And he compounded it by saying he was only a “common garden variety Christian”. I can hear a shuffling in the pews and the sound of three cock crows.
He also needs to work on his empathy. Looking and sounding like a good public servant and laying out the 7 year plans and saying you can’t do any better is not what voters want from Prime Ministers. It didn’t take him long to say the equivalent of “this is as good as it gets”, and he’s only been in the job for not quite 6 months.
I think his media advisors will keep him away from live audiences for a while. Full marks to the ABC for getting the “interns” into the office to ask the hard questions. They might do well to introduce the format to Lateline and the 7.30 Report as well.
May 22, 2008 | Graham
So you thought George Bush was an idiot
Maybe he’s smarter than Congress. According to Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices, but the White House threatened to veto the measure.
The bill would subject OPEC oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela, to the same antitrust laws that U.S. companies must follow.
The measure passed in a 324-84 vote, a big enough margin to override a presidential veto.
The legislation also creates a Justice Department task force to aggressively investigate gasoline price gouging and energy market manipulation.
Makes less sense than invading Iraq to me, and that didn’t make a lot of sense at the time. The Whitehouse thinks that the law would lead to less oil being available in the US rather than more, which seems to be the only conclusion any sane person could come to.
Brendan Nelson’s petrol excise cut looks positively saintly and sane compared to this!
May 22, 2008 | Graham
A Schneid look at Aitkin
Robyn Williams carried on his campaign to politicise ABC science last Sunday by broadcasting a response to Don Aitken’s Ockham’s Razor piece from Professor Stephen Schneider. He has never felt the need before to broadcast rebuttals of global warming enthusiasts.
One thing in Schneider’s talk caught my eye:
“We’ve seen intensification of hurricanes and the destruction of New Orleans, the latter of which is not specifically due to global warming, but rather due to insufficient levees.”
If it wasn’t due to global warming, why is it in there? And why does he so confidently assert that the strength of hurricanes is going to get very much stronger when so many studies show little anticipated change?
The whole piece is full of straw arguments and misstatements like this. Like John Quiggin, he even throws in a reference to “tobacco lobbyists”. (Talking of Quiggin, some of his brown-shirt friends have been visiting earlier threads on this blog).
Schneider also dwells heavily on the “consensus”. Bad luck for him that the Global Warming Petition Project has gathered 31,072 signatures on a petition that says in part “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” To sign the petition you have to have a science degree at least, and live in the USA.
The petition also attaches a peer reviewed article by Robinson, Robinson and Soon. It takes a different approach to the science in that it looks at trends over 100 or so years and their relationship to emissions of CO2, the argument being generally that trends were well established before significant emissions of CO2, and show no change after, or that they are well within natural variability. Well worth a look.
It’s a pity that science is being argued on the basis of popular support, but that does demonstrate the silliness of the proposition in the first place. And before anyone does an “Ah ha”, yes I know that the article was peer reviewed in The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons which is not a generally acknowledged source of climate science. They would have been better not to do that, but it doesn’t invalidate any of the arguments that they put.
BTW, Robyns did let one heretic slip through in In Conversation, a sister program to Ockham’s Razor. Chris Turney lets slip that the Little Ice Age probably wasn’t limited to the Northern Hemisphere and that we don’t have enough proxy data to know about the Medieval Warm period in the Southern Hemisphere. Both of these observations were effectively denied by the Hockey Stick graph. If you argued it couldn’t be right because it didn’t show these events as significant, you were told that it was because they were localised. Overall Turney is a global warming alarmist, but it’s well worth a read.
May 22, 2008 | Ronda Jambe
Get ready to put your money where your mouth is
Australia has been a cornucopia, a near paradise of abundant food for most as long as most of us can recall. Droughts notwithstanding, our access to beautiful produce, fine meat and wonderful fish (not to mention great wine) has been something we can happily take for granted.
The rest of the world struggles to feed itself, and more so than previously it seems. There are concerns that the development of the entire African continent could be threatened by food shortages; ASEAN calls for more cooperation on food security for south east Asia, and Russia is planning to buy extra grain, just in case.
In Australia, a Victorian report om Secure and Sustainable Food Systems says we are a decade behind other countries in planning for food security. But could serious shortages ever hit us? Stories abound: a baker says flour has doubled, and the price has to be passed on. We don’t even shudder at these stories. They are part of the new normal, a world of less certainty and more upheavals.
One of the many definitions of food security is the availability, affordability, accessibility and quality of food. Tick all those boxes for most of us. But a key agricultural zone in South Australia will get no water from the Murray Darling this year. How will that affect the price of stone fruit? We can perhaps accept that the days of cheap food are over, as many are saying.
In a little chat with an ACT Minister last week, I was pleased to hear that even they are starting to pay attention to food security. I had asked if the ACT has a population policy, but no. Apparently Barry Jones did some work a few decades ago, calling for a population policy for Australia. But no, that hasn’t progressed.
The ACT is ‘looking into’ extending the various community gardens that are scattered around. That will no doubt become a sop to a certain sector of home gardeners, people keen enough to trudge (in their cars probably) to a plot where they can putter about and produce a few veggies to take home. A few dedicated individuals will appreciate this, and the gov will be able to point to it as an initiative with a tick in that box.
Certainly, the strategic document on climate, Weathering the Change, makes no mention of food security. What isn’t yet on the agenda is a more business-like, but holistic approach to feeding a city state like Canberra. Common sense indicates that food is part of wider social and economic activities, and sustainable food needs to be incorporated into sustainable practices that fit in with people’s lives.
Reorienting ourselves away from good and products into services is part of the change we might believe in (but don’t expect to hear Obama spouting forth on local gardens just yet). Since underemployment is also a challenge, and obesity, why not bring it all together and have places where the less wealthy can grow the food and the richer or more busy can buy it? The term ‘sweat equity’ still applies, and those who weed the veggies get some for free. We could move towards edible landscapes, where fruit trees and berry bushes are watered and kept free of pests. I’d gladly participate, picking berries to get a discount. All this is possible, some new model for both engaging each other in local action and promoting local food is long overdue.
Until the penny drops, be prepared to pay more for inefficiently produced food hauled in from afar. And enjoy it while it lasts. All of this would be purely academic, but it hasn’t rained properly in Canberra for many months, and I miss it.
May 21, 2008 | Graham
Better information on the Liberal National Party
I have received better information on the Liberal National Party, so I’ve uploaded a few files. Make of them what you will.
The major difference between what I was told, and what appears to be the case is that there will be four regions in the south-east, not two. I’m not sure that it will make much difference to which of the former parties will control them. While the National Party is weak in Brisbane, so those two regions should remain in ex-Liberal hands, outside Brisbane the membership is fairly weak. I wouldn’t be surprised if the National Party had more members on the Gold and Sunshine Coasts than the Libs, as well as in the rest of the state, despite the fact that the Libs have many more elected members at a federal level.
The proposed structure also appears to reflect the Nationals’ structure more than the Liberals’ and at one level is unwieldy, and at another confers power on a smaller group of people than the current Liberals’ structure. It proposes an executive of 22, half the size of the current Liberal Party State Council, which is the group that meets every two months to run the party, but slightly larger than the Management Committee, which meets monthly.
It also proposes a State Council to meet bi-annually that could have as many as 200 entitled to attend, including all members of parliament, federal, state and local, and all chairmen of state and federal electorate committees. This group wouldn’t be capable of a management function as much as a general oversight one, so it looks like 22 people will run the new party for all practical intents and purposes.
There will also be a state convention, which assuming the parties are telling us the truth about their memberships, will comprise around 1700 people! One delegate for every 10 branch members plus the State Council.
So far the concentration has been on the actual question of whether the parties ought to amalgamate, but it’s about time that the parties looked at the practicality of what is proposed.
The documents that I have uploaded are:
- Table of proposed regions and voters per region
- Springborg’s version of the Liberal National Party
May 20, 2008 | Graham
More flummery from Flannery
Every country has ’em, but only in Australia would we make them Australian of the Year. We know how to celebrate our ratbags:
Professor Flannery, who has written extensively on environmental issues, spoke at a business and sustainability conference in Parliament House today and suggested a plan to pump sulphur into the atmosphere in order to repel the sun’s rays….
He says radical action has to be taken because of the extremely high speed with which climate change is happening.
“The current burden of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is in fact more than sufficient to cause catastrophic climate change,” he said.
“Everything’s going in the wrong direction at the moment, timelines are getting shorter, the amount of pollution in the atmosphere is growing.”
ABC Online
And then on the other hand we have:
If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon enough and on a large enough scale.
For example: we could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun.
We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits.
Phil Chapment in On Line Opinion
The clear danger of the climate alarmism and its disregard for due diligence is that its critics are getting just as hysterical in the other direction. As a result of all this hype some large country, or bloc, might take it into its head that it needs to do one of these two things, and then the neighbourhood really will be gone.
Of course, if they were done simultaneously they’d tend to cancel each other out. But who’d want to live here then?
May 16, 2008 | Graham
Some Queensland Libs still having trouble with democracy
According to The Courier Mail, and confirmed from sources, the Queensland Liberal State Council decided last night to bring their plebiscite on the amalgamation forward, and to reject calls to postpone thier convention. However, according to the Courier Mail, the convention won’t be taking a vote on the merger proposal, although it will discuss it. Sources disagree that this is the case, saying this just refers to the fact that there is no motion on the agenda because the merger wasn’t an issue when the agenda was put together. They say that the urgency provisions of the standing orders will allow a motion to be put forward. but it got into the Courier somehow! Which means that some on State Council think that they can prevent Convention voting on the issue.
This is an extraordinary situation. The Liberals were obliged to hold their convention last year, and didn’t. That means that any members of the State Council who are elected by Convention have at best a tenuous right to be in their positions. That includes President and Vice-Presidents. It’s hard to think of another democratic organisation where this could be allowed to happen. Even Robert Mugabe has only managed to defer his second-round election by a few months!
Some of these same people are not only shy of going to the membership for a fresh mandate, but on this issue they appear to want to deny them the right to vote on an issue which is of primary importance – the very existence of the Liberal Party.
The Liberal Party State Convention is the supreme body of the party, and it can decide what it debates and how. As the plebiscite will be held by a postal ballot which does not close until some time in June, after the Convention, that body has a duty not only to debate the issue, but to express an opinion on it.
I am told that the plebiscite package will include the proposed constitution, but it will not include any submisisons from proponents and opponents. This has got to be unacceptable. Consent on these matters has to be informed, and how can it be informed if your major source of information is the Courier Mail or snippets on TV and radio? Espcially as the document that party members receive is likely to be complex and of the variety that, were this a consumer transaction, you would be advised to get professional advice on.
In fact, to make a plebiscite fair, the proposed constitution ought to go to a convention to be decided, and only after that process should it be put to the membership. The document that they will receive will be the work of very few people, which increases the likelihood that it will be flawed, or only partially understood.
I hope that State Convention takes matters into its own hands and deals with this matter in an open, transparent and democratic manner. What is proposed will have momentous consequences for Queensland and for Australia.