Julia Gillard: time for a little context....

Ever since the news broke that Kevin Rudd had been removed as prime minister by the parliamentary wing of the Australian Labor Party there has been noise about him being the only PM to be deposed in a first term without being able to 'go to the people' and, about Julia Gillard rolling a first term leader, not being elected by the people, being unmarried, having no children, being a migrant. As well as constant chatter about how 'unique' this is.

Of course Abbott, Bishop, Joyce and the entire Coalition chorus are attempting to hammer many of these points as political negatives.

However, an Australian prime minister is always elected by the party not the people. Further to that - with the exception of her gender - little else is unique about Gillard. Or unique about Rudd for that matter.

According to the Australian Prime Ministers Centre at Old Parliament House of our twenty-seven prime ministers:

..... most have only served one term......

Indeed it seems that, if I have the count correct, at least 17 of the 27 Australian prime ministers to date were installed by their respective parties in periods between federal elections. So Gillard replacing Rudd is almost a mundane experience in an historical context.

A potted history garnered from the Internet shows that:
Bruce became Australia's first prime minister without a general election being called.
Page became prime minister due to the death of a sitting leader and so he too never faced a general election as leader to get there. He gave way to Menzies who became prime minister without facing the people as head of the party (although he did stand for election as leader of the opposition the second time around).
Forde took the same route as Page.
Deakin, Watson,Reid, Barton, Fisher, Hughes, Menzies all resigned rather than be pushed by either their party or the House.
McEwan came to the prime ministership on the death of Holt. He was unmarried during his brief term as prime minister and also childless. He gave way to Gorton without a general election being called.
When it came to party room coups - Bruce rolled Hughes in Billy's incarnation as a conservative, McMahon rolled Gorton (à la Gillard and Rudd but with more blood on the carpets) and Keating rolled Hawke, to become prime ministers without going to the electorate for ersatz approval.
Neither Watson, Reid, Page, Fadden, Forde or McEwen went to a general election while holding the office of prime minister. McMahon's government lost the only time he went to the polls as PM.
Of the many who did not last long heading a federal government, the record for brevity must go to Forde who gave way to Chifley after eight days.
Whitlam was unique in that he was removed by the Governor-General using the reserve powers of the Crown.

Oh, and by the way - a total of six prime ministers have been born overseas. One of our most well-known prime ministers William 'Billy' Hughes was born in Wales just like the 27th Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

** My apologies for this post seeming to appear and disappear in the early hours - a sudden power shortage left me with an unedited version out there in cyberspace which the software decided to publish. The text is now corrected.

Australian Federal Election 2010: the iffy seats confirmed

The Australian Electoral Commission has kindly listed the status of all 150 House of Representatives seats across the country which will be contested in this year's federal election in a handy PDF file:

How is status defined?

Seat status is based on the two-party preferred vote count (TPP). The two-party preferred vote

refers to the number of votes received by the Labor and Coalition candidates after a full distribution

of preferences.

The AEC classifies seats using the following business rules: when a party receives less than

56 per cent of the vote the seat is classified as ‘marginal’ (M); between 56-60 per cent it is

classified as ‘fairly safe’ (FS) and more than 60 per cent is classified ‘safe’ (S).

In New South Wales 48 seats will be on the ballot and 16 of these are currently held by very slim margins (post 2009 redistribution) and another 7 are only classified as fairly safe.

The marginal seats are Bennelong, Calare, Cowper, Dobell, Eden-Monaro, Gilmore, Greenway, Hughes, Hume, Macarthur, Macquarie, North Sydney, Page, Paterson, Robertson, and Wentworth.

Five of these marginal seats are held by the Coalition and seven by Labor. Two are on the NSW North Coast - Page held by Labor MP Janelle Saffin and Cowper held by National Party MP Luke Hartsuyker.

The fact that marginal and fairly safe seats make up almost half of all NSW seats will make for an interesting and possibly brutal federal election campaign in this state.

Dear Red: an open letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard

Dear Red,

I voted for Labor at the last federal election:
1. To get rid of Howard and his rightwing gang of idiots - PASS
2. In the belief that Labor would address climate change - FAIL
3. Hoping that pensioners would get a fairer go - PASS
4. Sure that public hospitals, community health services and dental care for the poor would improve - FAIL, CONDITIONAL PASS, FAIL
5. Confident that a Labor Government would get rid of those stupid sedition laws and be fairer to asylum seekers arriving unannounced by boat - FAIL, CONDITIONAL PASS
6. Certain that the Australian Labor Party would not become so right wing that it would introduce a national identity data base on the sly or try to censor free speech on the Internet - FAIL, FAIL
7. Knowing that Labor would do it's best to save the whales - PASS
8. Wishing that a Labor Government would stand up to big business bullies and self-righteous religious leaders - FAIL and FAIL again.
As you can see my hopes & dreams are largely unmet.
I'm not a happy camper.
What are you going to do for those like me who felt betrayed by the Rudd Government and are of two minds about where you fit in the great policy scheme of things?
Do our votes matter more to you than they did to Rudd?

Maudie's Ex
Yamba

Guest Speak is a North Coast Voices segment allowing serious or satirical comment from NSW Northern Rivers residents. Email ncvguestpeak at live dot com dot au to submit comment for consideration.

Make the biotech industry part of the Australian federal election debate in 2010

With little likelihood of the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council handing on its final report of the Review of Food Labelling Law and Policy before the federal election this year, I imagine that the biotech industry in Australia is feeling confident that it will not come under real scrutiny during the election campaign.

Because this is an important issue which already sees genetically modified foods (such as certain potato varieties) capable of being sold to the general public without any requirement that it be labelled such, it is important that all candidates standing for a federal seat in 2010 be asked to state their position on the labelling of genetically modified of produce/products/ingredients/foods and the makeup of any future review committee.

How members of the new parliament view issues surrounding genetic modification will be reflected in how they vote on any proposed changes to food labelling law. The forthcoming election campaign is one more chance for Australian consumers to get their own points of view across to those wishing to represent them.

This is what the ANZFRC review website has to say about the one member of the Independent Review Panel with a glaring conflict of interest as Executive Director of the Australian Oilseeds Federation briefed to promote GM technology:

Nicholas Clive Goddard Mr Nick Goddard is a communications and marketing professional with over 25 years experience in the food industry. He has solid track record in bringing new and innovative food products to market, and in doing so has developed a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities the existing food labelling laws present to both businesses and consumers. Mr. Goddard has a Bachelor of Commerce and an MBA, and brings a pragmatic business and solutions oriented approach to the Panel. He is currently Executive Director of an agri-food industry association.
(Conflict of Interest declaration (PDF 190 KB))



















The final report of the Review Committee will be provided to the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council in December 2010 and to COAG in early 2011.
The review process began in late 2009.

The reactions are coming thick and fast to Gillard's ascension

The reactions are coming thick and fast to Julia Gillard's elevation to the position of Australia's Prime Minister.
Predictably many are focussed on gender, marital status, religion, family and hair colour while some think of the political impications for one Anthony Abbott.
Running the gamut from the pig ignorant and inaccurate Red Barren tag (turning up in The Punch comments section slinging off at her childless state in fairly obvious code) and the wilfully mischevious though to the witty and acute.
Here's a scatter of these in no particular order:

Cartoon by Bill Leak

‎
zineshop‎: Just realized Julia Gillard is our first PM that doesn't have children. Cool. Thanks 4 filling me in Rachel Musings of an Inappropriate Woman‎ - tumblr.com
‎
thewetmale‎: @jason_a_w Oh, Gillard looks like a cat with a new mouse. #aus2010 has the potential to be very, very entertaining. - Twitter

Gillard said through a spokeswoman that she was a "non-practising Baptist" and "not religious". And you know the best thing? Australians (apart from the loony fringe - like Fagsnadh and Stephen Fielding) will not give a damn. {Google Groups}

By the looks of Facebook, Aussie rangas are taking great pride in one of their own grabbing the top job. So imagine how I’m feeling. As an unmarried, childless heathen it looks like someone who reflects my personal values has finally become Prime Minister. {Carrie Miller writing in The Punch on 28th June 2010}

* This last letter by Tom McIndoe is actually incorrect in saying that Gillard is the first "unmarried" prime minister. It's more correct to say 'never married' perhaps. John McEwan during his very short term as prime minister between 19th December 1967 to 10th January 1968 did not have a wife (he was widowed in February 1967 and remarried in mid-1968) and he was also officially childless at the time.{Thanks to Clarencegirl for pointing that out.}

Over at 'Pollytics' Possum poses a political puzzle. At 'The Sydney Morning Herald' Hartcher supplies one explanation.

I have to admit that I wasn't exactly crying tears as Kevin Rudd was taken down by his own party.

The best thing about his prime ministership was his Apology to the Stolen Generation and his leadership during the global financial crisis.
As well as his earlier support (during the 2007 election campaign) of Northern Rivers communities in their fight against that mindless water grab attempt by Howard and Turnbull and, his determination to lift pensioners out of the poverty trap in which the far right of the Liberal and National parties had kept them.

However, that silly 2020 Summit clearly showed a man out of touch with the ordinary voters who had backed him at the polls and one who really had no idea why he had been elected.
While his failure to sell a national emissions trading scheme to the Australian electorate was the real tragedy of his federal political career and his support of the Howard Government sedition and certain anti-terrorism laws his constant disgrace.

Possum Comitatus addresses that strange political puzzle within the leadership change in his Spill post on 24 June 2020:

the first PM to ever be removed from office while having a strong election winning lead, and possibly the first in any western democracy for decades

NewsPoll pdf showing three month comparisons.

This was Peter Hartcher in The Sydney Morning Herald on 26 June 2010 - two days after Gillard ousted Rudd as Australia's prime minister - with an alternative explanation of the puzzle:

Each word is printed in a typesize to reflect how commonly it came up. The dominant word glaring from the "cloud" was ''arrogant'', followed by ''weak''. Never mind that these seem to convey wildly different conceptions of the man. The Labor powerbrokers who commissioned the poll were only concerned that both are bad qualities for a prime minister.
But asked the word that best described Julia Gillard, the dominant word in her cloud was strong, followed by capable. This was the poll on which factional bosses based their case for replacing Rudd with Gillard.
The poll was commissioned by Sussex Street, shorthand for the head office of the NSW branch of the Labor Party, to test the validity of the Herald's Nielsen poll published on June 7.

Surely this wasn't the internal Labor Party polling the media was talking about in the days before leadership change?

However, if it was then Sussex Street has a problem or three.
Firstly, simple Internet access across the country carries no demographic weight suitable for use in polling. Patchy doesn't begin to describe it.
Secondly, if one were to post a comment which stated "I don't believe that Kevin Rudd is arrogant and weak" the cloud would show "arrogant" and "weak" without the qualifier.
Depending on cloud parameters the results probably said more about how original polling data were collated or, if the cloud was generated from Internet items, more about the mainstream media and blogosphere than it did about voter opinion/intentions.

The cloud is in fact worthless as an opinion poll and, reliance on it is a measure of the level of panic among Labpor Party powerbrokers.

Gillard will naturally have an opinion poll honeymoon period which will see the Labor lead in the polls lengthen. However, neither Federal Labor nor Sussex Street should rely on this surge being either a strong or long one.

UPDATE:

Labor now leading the Coalition on primary votes by two percentage points as of 25-27 June 2010.


Published in
The Australian
on 28 June 2010

Click on images to enlarge

YET ANOTHER POLL.

This time from the Essential Report published on 28 June 2010 with a 1,803 sample size:

Q. If there was a Federal election held today, to which party would you probably give your first preference? Q. If you ‘don’t know’ on the above question, which party are you currently leaning to?












An additional question Do you approve or disapprove of Julia Gillard replacing Kevin Rudd as leader of the Labor Party and Prime Minister? resulted in:
47% approved the change from Kevin Rudd to Julia Gillard as Prime Minister and 40% disapproved. Opinions reflected political party preferences.
Labor voters strongly approved the change by 68% to 23% while 60% of Liberal/National voters disapproved and 36% approved.
There were no significant differences by gender.
However, older respondents were more likely to approve than younger respondents – 55% of those aged 55+ approved and 37% disapproved.

Art on the coast: singing the blues

Frances Belle Parker
The Identity Of My
Homeland Ulgandahi

Bronwyn Bancroft
Timeless Land II





Alison Williams
Untitled