Comments on: It’s back to the future with western Sydney

By: Ed

Ed — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:32:39 +0000

I’m not an Australian, but in pure policy terms Gillard is correct. There are real environmental limitations on how large a population Australian can support, due among othe factors to most of the place being a desert. I’m not sure if this should be a partisan issue, a party being in favor of a “big Australia” is sort of like coming out against reality, in the same category as planning to build suburban housing in Antartica or to come out against the Indian Ocean. Though in the U.S. we do have a party that often seems to take positions against objective reality, this is not healthy for a political system.

In political terms, Peter is correct in that, except for really close elections, if you get a majority of the vote the seats should take care of themselves, and any combination of 76 seats will produce a majority. I think the western Sydney fixation is due to journalists tending not to be very bright or original and to parrot what other journalists say.

By: Peter Brent

Peter Brent — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 05:32:50 +0000

Matthew, not in the same breath I witnessed, a different one.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 02:21:05 +0000

Really, Peter, you need to tone your polemics down a tad. I seem to recall she mentioned the Gold Coast and Western Melbourne as well—in the same breath.

By: MDMConnell

MDMConnell — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 01:00:08 +0000

I think the main reason the whole Western Sydney narrative took hold was that Labor had pretty strong results in NSW under Hawke and Keating (esp 1993). The margin in traditionally swinging seats like Lindsay, Parramatta and Macarthur built up to “safe” levels, and journalists with short memories simply looked at these inflated margins and declared the areas “Labor heartland”.

We saw a smaller version of this in 2007 with journalists noting “shock wins” in seats where the Libs had built up artificially big margins.

By: J-D

J-D — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:35:51 +0000

john, you were asking about ‘Howard’s battlers’?

Our esteemed host has gone through the evidence here:

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/apsa/docs_papers/Aust%20Pol/Brent.pdf

By: Neil

Neil — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 14:02:19 +0000

The fascination for Western Sydney seemed to being in 1996 with the results in Lindsay. Jackie Kelly achieved a double digit swing to defeat Ross Free in the general election, then the High Court annulled the result on appeal from the ALP.

In the subsequent by-election several months later Kelly received a further substantial swing and the term “Howard’s battlers” became a media label that stuck for the geographic area of Western Sydney.

When Kelly hung on to the seat by small margins in subsequent general elections the media reinforced the narrative of the phenomenon of blue collar workers voting Liberal. However it was never reported that the median income for the area was substantially higher than the national average.

The whole thing appeared nothing more than an exaggerated yarn, especially when Western Sydney elects very few Liberal MPs.

Please correct me if my memory is at fault.

By: Pat Hills

Pat Hills — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 10:38:07 +0000

Well with a primary vote of 30-32 in NSW (State Labor) there is a real argument that the last Rudd polls were simply coming into alignment with the State vote. Therefore the Federal polls will come back into equilibrium – JG simply needs to go to an election before that equilibrium is restored.

By: Graeme

Graeme — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 10:00:18 +0000

Well if you live in Sussex St everything pretty much is west of you and dominates state NSW thinking. Oz politics has always had parochial roots. Is the problem that they hew to their ‘base’, or conversely that they swallow the tabloid line that this is not actually their base but the great battleground?

I thought Gillard was using it as a metaphor for suburbia. She’s not quite in the Dr Burchill school yet.

By: lw

lw — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 09:55:22 +0000

Pat,

Labor has been managing the media like this for 15 years in NSW with great success. Look what happened there Why wouldnt they roll out that same strategy federally, and if they get away with it the media has much to answer for.

By: Pat Hills

Pat Hills — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 08:59:49 +0000

Yes Western Sydney, yada, yada yada.

What I have found amazing is how many self-interested “commentators” have been passing off expert commentary about how great Gillard is. I guess if I had a vested interest I’d be doing the same thing – but how pathetic is our media not to see it for what it is or collude in it.

If Gillardine loses similar people will come out talking about Abbott’s strategic genius.