Pandering to the outer suburbs didn’t work
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Both parties spent most of the last two months pandering to a relatively small number of voters in outer-suburban Sydney and Queensland regional electorates. It was smart politics, because according to the numbers, that was where the election was to be won or lost. Both sides ramped up the middle-class welfare, targeted at Family Tax Benefit A recipients. Both sides played on poor infrastructure provision by state governments and spoke of cutting immigration and punishing asylum seekers. Both sides pitched messages about cost of living pressures, even as we were presented with evidence that inflation had fallen. And Labor caved in to the Opposition’s asinine insistence that any debt is a monumental evil. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the weekend results was that the rest of the electorate refused to play along with this game of “follow the swinging voter.” There’s certainly substance to the view that State Labor Governments played a role in Labor’s woes, but it doesn’t get us that far in explaining the result. The only state where that applies strongly is Queensland. Queensland swung, if not uniformly, then consistently hard against Labor, everywhere. Bush, regional centres, Brisbane — Labor candidates all copped big swings, over 6% and often over 10%. The only ones who didn’t were Labor’s candidate in Fisher, where the appalling Peter Slipper, got virtually no primary vote swing at all and actually had a 2PP swing against him, Chris Trevor in Flynn, who kept his swing below 5%, and Tony Mooney in Herbert, who despite pre-election criticism was surprisingly competitive with a swing of only -3%. But the main beneficiaries of the anti-Labor swing were the Greens, whose swing in Queensland, 5.11% on current figures, was just under twice that of the LNP. But in NSW, there was no uniform swing at all despite the universal contempt in which the NSW Government is held. The hard swing against Labor was in Sydney, and much of it went straight to the Liberals, rather than to the Greens. Outside Sydney, there was a swing to incumbents. Janelle Saffin in Page, who was tipped to be one of the first to go in NSW, picked up nearly 5% on her primary vote, and the Nationals actually went backwards there. Robertson, too, had been tipped to fall, but Deborah O’Neill scored a small 2PP swing. Mike Kelly consolidated his position in Eden-Monaro, belting local Liberal luminary David Gazard with a 2% swing. But it wasn’t just Labor. In Cowper, National Luke Hartsuyker pulled off a big swing. Liberal Bob Baldwin did too in Paterson. In larger regional centres like Wollongong and Newcastle, the results were in-between — Labor had a small swing against it, but not enough to unseat anyone. In Victoria, the Liberals went backwards, but the main beneficiaries were the Greens (as also happened in Tasmania). Labor had a small primary vote swing against it, which translated into a small 2PP swing to it, but the Greens scooped up a 4% swing across the state. But again there was a swing to incumbents in regional Victoria — Ballarat swung hard to Catherine King, and Steve Gibbons hammered the Liberals’ dud candidate Craig Hunter in Bendigo, almost turning it into a safe seat for Labor. And the Nationals Darren Chester and John Forrest both got swings, as did Sharman Stone. One wonders if Fran Bailey had stayed on for another go at McEwen whether she might have benefited from a swing as well. In WA, the Greens also picked up most of the sizeable anti-Labor swing. In fact, the WA Liberals performed relatively poorly — Alannah McTiernan managed a swing against Don Randall, and as of this morning Sharyn Jackson had further narrowed Ken Wyatt’s slim lead in Hasluck. It’s hard to construct a theme that explains all of these results even at a state level, particularly when regional incumbents are picking up swings regardless of party. And while Labor might have the problem of being pulled from both the Left and the Right — trying to satisfy the voters of Lindsay and of Melbourne at the same time, the Liberals have whole states to worry about. Tasmania may yield only five MPs but it has the full quota of 12 senators, and on Saturday the Liberals lost one to Labor — in fact lost him by a big margin, with Guy Barnett not even close to getting a quota ahead of Lisa Singh. In Victoria, too, the Liberals have lost a spot, with Julian McGauran, who has offered public life nothing but a source of generous donations to whichever party he has graced with his presence, being replaced with, most likely, a senator from the living dead DLP. And in the end it will be regional independents, not the good citizens of outer-suburban Sydney or regional Queensland, who will decide who forms government. And at the moment there’s very little in common philosophically or politically between regional Australia and our outer suburbs. |
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97 Comments
Why NBN is a white elephant
I am a network architect for one of Australia’s largest Telco’s - so I speak with some authority on this issue.
Here are the technical reasons this will fail :
1) fibre optic cable has a maximum theoretical lifespan of 25 years when installed in conduit. Over time, the glass actually degrades (long story), and eventually it can’t do its bouncing of light thing any more. But when you install fibre outside on overhead wiring (as will be done for much of Australia’s houses, except newer suburbs with underground wiring), then the fibre degrades much quicker due to wind, temperature variation and solar/cosmic radiation. The glass in this case will last no more than 15 years. So after 15 years, you will have to replace it. Whereas the copper network will last for many decades to come. Fibre is not the best technology for the last mile. That`s why no other country has done this.
2) You can not give every house 100Mbps. If you give several million households 100Mbps bandwidth, then you have exceeded the entire bandwidth of the whole internet. In reality, there is a thing called contention. Today, every ADSL service with 20Mbps has a contention ratio of around 20:1 (or more for some carriers). That means, you share that 20Mbps with 20 other people. It`s a long story why, but there will NEVER be the case of people getting 100Mbps of actual bandwidth. Not for several decades at current carrier equipment rates of evolution. The “Core” can not and will not be able to handle that sort of bandwidth. The 100Mbps or 1Gbps is only the speed from your house to the exchange. From there to the Internet, you will get the same speeds you get now. The “Core” of Australia’s network is already fibre (many times over). And even so, we still have high contention ratios. Providing fibre to the home just means those contention ratios go up. You will not get better download speeds.
3) new DSL technologies will emerge. 15 years ago we had 56k dial-up. Then 12 years ago we got 256k ADSL, then 8 years ago 1.5Mbps ADSL2, then 5 years ago 20Mbps ADSL2+. There are already new DSL technologies being experimented on that will deliver over 50Mbps on the same copper we have now. $zero cost to the tax payer
4) 4G wireless is being standardised now. The current 3G wireless was developed for voice and not for data, and even so it can deliver up to 21Mbps in Australia. There are problems with it, but remember that it was developed for voice. The 4G standard is specifically being developed for data, and will deliver 100Mbps bandwidth with much higher reliability (yes, the same contention issues apply mentioned earlier). $zero cost to the tax payer
5) The “NBN” will be one of the largest single networks ever built on earth. There are only a few companies who could do it - Japan’s Nippon NTT, BT, AT&T;, Deutsche Telekom etc. Even Telstra would struggle to built something on this scale. Yet we are led to believe that the same people who can’t build school halls or install insulation without being ripped off are going to to do it ??? Here at Telstra, we are laughing our heads off !! Because when it all comes crumbling down, after they have spent $60+billion and the network is no more than 1/2 complete, it will be up to Telstra to pick up the pieces ! (shhhh don’t tell anyone, it`s our secret)
I notice Mark Arbib failed to show on Qand A last night, and then issued a statement which charged that the caretaker PM had forbidden him from appearing.
All to preserve a semblance of unity and keep the lid on any appearance of internal party rancour, as Julia tries to convince the independents that she has a mandate and a functioning party.
This will be grist for the mill for Abbott, for it simply highlights that the executioner of K. Rudd is being kept from public scrutiny.
Morris Iemma denounced Bitar and Arbib as “part of the problem”, Anna Bligh insists she doesn’t want to “catch the NSW disease”.
I actually think there will be some benefits in letting Julia govern.
Abbott will tear them apart.
Especialy when the Greens start trying to see their quasi Marxist programme implemented. Business is already sounding the alarm bells.
I had a Telstra bloke come and do some work on my phone lines 2 months ago, he said that on the central coast the NBN cable was planned to be hung from poles and not underground, so that means 15 years life and another ugly cable hanging from the poles
@ Astro
You appear to have have quoted pre-election disinfo verbatim.
Isn’t it time to let some facts percolate back into our national debate?
See the discussion below this article:
http://www.cairnsblog.net/2010/08/why-labors-national-broadband-plan-will.html
It sure didn’t work. Even in SA there was no swing against the ALP, partly because the BER has been wonderful here, in Tassie, mostly in Victoria and I note there were no complaints from WA really and only 2 from the NT.
The Australian lost the election as well because there is no way Abbott can get up and with a large greens block in the senate not much they could do that would be really harsh and not much either party can do now that is really harsh because they will be flogged if they try.
Seems to me that if both parties offer policies that only differ in bits around the edges, then a hung parliament is the logical result. I’m not sure why the commentariat interpret a hung parliament as a reflection of deep cynicism within the electorate, as a vote of wholesale disapproval of both parties - wouldn’t we all have voted Green or informal if that were the case? What we got was an equal number of voters who chose either Labor or Liberal. If politics is so sensitive to polls, then timid policies that don’t differ too much (lest you risk failure, or disapproval in the polls) is what we’ll be offered. Converging and moderating political ideologies that seem beholden to the glaring light of a 24hr news cycle, seems to be prevailing. Not surprised at all that UK2010 and AUS2010 have thrown up the same result - a hung parliament.
@John james
re: Q&A:
Q. What’s the difference between Mark Arbib and an empty chair?
A. The chair will still be standing at the end of next week.
I was concerned that we were getting a set of policies from both sides which attempted to appease the 20 percent of voters in 20 seats in outer Sydney and regional Queensland - that is 400,000 people whom the parties assume know nothing about the issues under debate and who couldn’t care less anyway.
The more I think about it, the Coalition are the real losers here. Queensland aside - we’ve been saying that for a couple of generations - Abbott did not re-capture the Howard battlers. Maybe there’s more to the folk of Lindsay, Greenway, Robertson and Dobell than four confected slogans.
Also Astro, a Telstra bloke coming to work on your phone line? Please! What ever you think of S Conroy - and I don’t think much of him, you’d have to think the engineers working on the NBN would have at least some of this stuff sussed. Relax a bit.
“It’s hard to construct a theme that explains all of these results even at a state level,……”
Come on Bernard, I know you can do it. Take a deep breath now, ready?
The assassination of Kevin Rudd.
Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
@ Damien
They dont give a flying fook where they roll out the NBN, dont tell me they care if its unsightly.
Recall it was Labor Sen Lee in mid 90’s that gave us the ugly Optus pole cables
Personally, on the subject of NBN, I wouldn’t trust anything a Testra worker or anyone with authority from that company said! Self interest prevails! With so much negativity and spin, how can we believe anything? All I know is that I want a faster and more effecient broadband.
I do wonder why Whyatt Roy was allowed to stand at this election and gained a seat when he is 20 years old. Our Consistution stipulates to be a sitting Parliamentary Member you have to be 21 years old! What’s happening here?
Media bias won over Qld and WA, whereas the rest of us saw through the 24 hour recycled talking head crap! Shame on the media, you know not what you do! Time to take refresher courses, upgrade your skills and realize we expect much better from those who influence voters.
To answer some of Astro’s point in regard to NBN
1) Fiber optics doesn’t last forever, but it cost less per meter and is less prone to corrosion compared to copper. Copper cables requires more maintenance than fiber.
2) That’s why the backhaul is being built along with the fiber to the home. The argument that ‘because we can’t get 100Mbps now, we should stick with copper forever’ does not make sense : Japan, South Korea already have Gigabit fiber broadband!!
3) The technological limit of DSL technology is noise from “crosstalk”, which is linked to distance. You can get very good speed up to 1km, but it drops off after that. ‘Fiber to the node’ + VDSL is a cheaper viable alternative. No idea why no one considered that. The FTTH should only be built for new buildings and for people willing to pay for it.
4) 4G have ‘issues’ in relation to coverage, interference, and the difficulty in getting council approval to build towers. The towers have to be connected to the internet ‘somehow’, like using fiber, so you need to build one anyway.
5) In an ideal world, Telstra would be split into a ‘wholesale company’ and a ‘retail company’, with the wholesale company building the fiber network without the regulatory hassles. However, there is no point in crying over spill milk. Having a vertically integrated wholesaler and retailer had not worked well for the consumers. The other problem is the rural areas where the investment can never be justified based on rate of return. NBN is the only way to provide broadband access to almost all Australians at an affordable price.
@Astro:
Looking at Telstra’s dismal share price curve, so am I.
Astro with relevant issues once again. Did you cut and paste those comments from somewhere wher it would have made sense? And again with the lie (what is it with you moonbat right wingers) that the school building program was a waste and a failure. You say it in the face of independent evidence that it was nothing of the sort.
Yes David Hand, a single event like that would have translated across all seats n’est pas? as it didn’t it would seem logical that there was more than one factor.
I wonder if anyone on the conservative side of politics has reflected on possible effect on weak minds the ongoing characterisation of Rudd’s deposition as some sort of bloody crime might have.
@ ronin8317
Cooper did not need replacing every 15 - 25 years like fibre will. What is the cost of that nationally, we are leaving our kids the bill for?
@ SBH
I was sent them, so posted them. Got they from a Greeny as a matter of fact, who is against the unsighlty thick cable hanging from poles.
This is one of the best analyses of the wildly inconsistent results across different parts of Australia that I have seen. I would add one thing: I have a sense (anecdotal) that one of the reasons the Coalition suffered a swing against it in so many seats was that quite a few Victorians couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Tony Abbott. This is ironic, because (but for Abbott) it’s quite likely that the ETS would be law now, there would have been no need to rush tax reform to prove that the Government was doing something, and Rudd would still be PM.
Who let in the ASTRO-turfer?
Contention for the NBN, Astro, will actually be a maximum of 32 premises on a 2.5Gbps link, meaning a theoretical minumum speed of 78Mbps, assuming everybody is downloading at the same time. In many places there will be fewer than 32 premises in contention. Plus, if you’re willing to pay for it, you’ll be able to get 1Gbps and faster in the future.
Back to the polls, it’s the only way and remember your vote DOES count this time, send the red horror and her band of dysfunctional incompetent misfits packing properly this time.
BTW - Telstra are losing 10,000 landlines per month, hence the T Box, there’s no laughing in there I can assure you.
@ASTROBOY
“new DSL technologies will emerge. …. 12 years ago we got 256k ADSL, then 8 years ago 1.5Mbps ADSL2, then 5 years ago 20Mbps ADSL2+.
Yeah right. More like: 12 years ago we got 8Mb ADSL1, but Telstra in their effort to constrain the market, limited it to 256k, then limited it to 1.5Mb, only increasing the limits as other ISP started installing competing DSLAMS in Telstra’s exchanges.
Te$tra.
Pthew…
Well, SBH, Bernard does a great tour of possible influences on the election result, from unpopular State Labor governments in QLD and NSW, appalling candidates, popular incumbants, a Green resurgence in VIC, but seems to have forgotten the issue that dominated every debate, talkfest and interview in the campaign and the State where Labour suffered 9 of the 16 seats it lost.
I thought I’d suggest that the assassination of Kevin Rudd was a factor as he seemed to have chosen not to mention it. For you to think that “weak minded” people are concerned about it is patronising. On that night when it happened, didn’t the fact that members of the parliamentary Labor party, the people who Paul Howes has belatedly given credit for Kevin’s sacking, did not even know the spill was on, give you pause to wonder what is going on inside the ALP? Well it spooked a lot of people, “weak minded” or not.
Bernard is disengenuous to do an analysis of election factors and choose not to mention it. It seems like a desperate effort on his part to spin the election result which, let’s face it, is an unmitigated disaster for Labor.
David Hand,
To the extent that the election result is a disaster for Labor, it is certainly not unmitigated.
In the first instance it may be very effectively mitigated by Labor holding on to government.
Failing that it will mitigated by the amusement to be gained by wathing Abbott try and run a coalition with the three independents and Crook from WA. It will be a bit like herding cats I should think. The amusement will only increase when the new senate takes over.
I’m not amused that the Bogan from Altona got 500,000 votes less than the coalition and still gets to stand up there as if she’s running the show.
is it at all possible that queensland swung so hard was the “new”party: The Queensland Liberal National party .It seems to me they are heavily identifying themselves with state issues and not federal issues just by the use of the name.And Kevin Rudd was a Queenslander so somehow labor had to be punished.
In inner Sydney green vote overtook the liberal vote and with liberal vote preferences made big inroads into tradtional labor heartland graynder .
Glenn,
For some years now Australia has used preferential voting. Before making an ass of yourself perhaps you should familiarise yourself with how it works.
David, Kevin Rudd wasn’t assassinated, butchered, knifed or any of the other inflamatory synonyms used by the opposition. That aside you reckon Keane merely prates ‘possible influences’ but have no evidence (other than the parrot-like repetition of opposition speakers) for your hypothesis. Side by side Keane’s comment stands up a whole lot better than yours.
You’ve entirely missed the point about the use of violent language to describe a non-violent act. It’s inflamatory and dishonest. The sort of thing the coalition has made an art form. If someone takes it into their dopey head to commit a violent act, how much of that can we attribute to the dishonest inflamatory rhetoric of the right?
Sh*t a brick Astro, I loved you in Tracks but all those scoobies have done for your synapses
I’m not amused at morons who call our PM a ‘bogan’ whilst their glorious leader panders to the ugly racist instincts of the real bogans.
Get an idea Glenn
Glenn No doubt you were ropeable in 1998 when Howard got 101,511 fewer first preferences and 216,978 fewer two party preferred votes but was returned as PM?
Jolyon Wagg - before you make an ass of yourself perhaps you should try to understand what I said
Gillard got 500,000 votes less than the coalition FACT , preferential voting does not change that FACT go it ?
SBH - HA so you’ve sunk to the point where you have to revert to questioning the grammar or way of describing Rudds axing. You’re pathetic but full marks for not giving up.
Holden Back - don’t care how Howard got back in , damn good thing that he did.
By golly you seem to have all those numbers down to the last vote from 1998, you must still be furious, ROFL, why does that amuse me ? HA
Glenn,
OK its a fact, but not a very interesting or important one. Your side got less votes in two party preferred terms. Suck it up.
Glenn you can’t back up your assertions but you can sling insults. Good for you!
Just while we’re on facts, If we had a first past the post system the number of primary votes recieved by the parties would be of, er, primary importance. As we have a preferential system the important figure is the two party prefered figure. Again you have the appearnce of two giant pink moons bisected by a freckle.
BTW I criticised the oppositions language (and your ovine regurgitation) not the grammar. As Orwell pointed out in his famous essay, langauge is important but th right likes to pretend it isn’t.
Here on the Sunshine Coast, Qld, there were full-page ads. In dramatic black, they showed Anna Bligh and Julia Gillard. The caption was something like, “Don’t let her do to Australia what she has done to Queensland.”
I guess similar ads went into all (regional) Qld papers. I also guess those ads had a big effect on voters.
They should have run those ads in NSW and if they did we would not be in deadlock now
Hey Astro, you better contact Tasmanians and better still, NBNCO and tell them your message before it’s too late! Here’s their address: info@nbnco.com.au. Better tell the rest of the world who hang fibre as well….
As someone else pointed out, you just pasted from some dudes blog (or are you the dude?). To note from the blog, effects of “solar radiation”, obviously you have never heard of UV stable fibre? Common in use outdoors with plastics. A lot of last mile fibre will be underground, using existing copper conduit (Thanks Tesltra, not), or if you’re fancy, run it through the sewer pipes or even water or gas pipes, clever eh?
Funnily enough a Telstra friend of mine (IT Project Manager) recently warned me about the destruction when a telegraph pole crashes down and miles of inter-twined fibre cable is ruined. Needless to say he hadn’t heard of splice boxes and fibre ring diversity. Do they have anti NBN news releases at Telstra or something?
Just because you’re a “network architect” doesn’t necessarily mean we should believe your words. I worked on a radio and fibre install project for 6 years but don’t feel the need to blow my horn about it and regurgitate other peoples crap in the blog to back my argument, that’s what The Punch is for….
@ASTRO
There might’ve been a bigger swing to the Greens in NSW.
One hopes.
I spoke to scrutineers who told me 25% of the green votes in our seat in one booth were informal, as they only numbered one square in HoR.
No Glenn, Not particularly furious, just quick with a web browser and publicly available information. It amuses you because small things …
Your devotion to the processes of democracy is deeply touching.
So Astro, can yu answer the questions asked on the other blog. Who is this expert you qote and where did the material come form.
The processes of democracy were violated when the elected PM Rudd was axed, if you don’t like the terminology, tough, I’m sure he would agree.
Came from a Telstra employee
ok we’re now being moderated be nice to me.
And what do you call a general election?
Ok, SBH, so you’re uncomfortable with metaphors. Think of a word that describes an event in which unelected officers of a political party decide that the sitting prime minister must be replaced and then decide to move with such ruthless speed that the parliamentary party, the people who constitutionally must make the decision, don’t even know that it is happening. Coup? Maybe but that metaphor brings a whole lot more baggage. You certainly can’t call it a leadership election.
The sick look on Howes face on Saturday night, Shorten’s jumpiness on Insiders and Arbib’s non-attendance at Q&A indicates that the assassins themselves know there will probably be a reckoning even though Keane and other apologists perpetuate Labor spin. (It was all Anna Bligh’s fault! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!)
What cannot be denied is that Kevin’s demise (drat, that metaphor is problematic as well) had a major impact on the outcome of the election, something that Bernard cannot bring himself to admit.
“And what do you call a general election?”
Something you get when you read Playboy ?
Rudds demise wouldn’t have been such a problem if he had have been replaced by someone obviously better, he wasn’t hence the spotlight fell on the whole process and it looked very bad.
I’m starting to think this may not be such a bad thing, the campaigns, particularly Labors were full of lies distortions and mantras, the public aren’t completely stupid, they picked it up and the resulting confusion is the result we have now.
The first party to break free from this method of addressing the public will come out on top, I say the libs will be able to, Gillard tried but she just can’t be straight, it’s against her nature and everything from her vice to her hand gestures reeks of spin and BS.
thats VOICE
SBH - Thank you, somebody finally said it. “Assassination” is what happened to Salvador Allende, John F Kennedy, and Benazir Bhutto. Using the language of violence for dramatic effect may be well understood as metaphor within Australia, but it could cause some confusion among overseas readers picking up tidbits about Australia in the world news.
Kevin Rudd was deposed, thank you very much.
To depose a serving Prime Minister is an extremely serious matter for obvious political reasons. But all this emphasis on the personal injury against poor Kevin is a bit rich, given the cowardly role he had played in deposing Mark Latham on behalf of Kim Beazley. In contrast, at least Gillard had the honesty to look Rudd in the eye and tell him what she was going to do.
It’s a rough game. But not quite as rough as some of the cliche-peddlers would have it.
Astro source of your post comes from a response to an Andrew Bolt blog :
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/why_labors_43_billion_broadband_will_fail/
Which was then posted without attribution on a forum about ISP issues :
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1515125
Again without attribution posted on the Cairnsblog :
http://www.cairnsblog.net/2010/08/why-labors-national-broadband-plan-will.html
Finally you copy and paste here without attribution.
This is what is called group think or carefully constructed talking points which the gullible repeat in order to confirm their preconceived positions.
Fact is the next IEEE standard for data transmission is slated to be 100Gbps. It will not happen without fibre. Google is running trials with 1Gbps fiber to the home currently in the US. 12Mbps is quite simply a great big fail on the part of the coalition.
http://goo.gl/UINO
Fibre is not going away and in today’s world is infrastructure investment as important as bridges and roads. A long term government program continuing to build this is one of the smartest things any government could do and may mean Australia improves its current internet speed ratings from 50th place in world rankings.
http://goo.gl/YjmO
Astro, you forgot to answer the points raised on the other blog.
Glenn didn’t one of the Libral’s leading lights on Saturday night say the TPP vote was the crucial thing?
Dear Bernard, some of the things that voters do defy logic.
Here in Griffith a lot of people going into the booths said they would not vote labor because of the way that Kevin was treated. Even when it was explained that the how to vote cards on offer were in fact for Kevin it made no difference. The Greens were the biggest beneficiary but some said they were voting LNP for the first time because of it.
So my observation is that almost any explanation of the result will be wrong to some extent and we’ll never really know what was going on.
We know what went wrong for labor,
Rudd
Gillard
Broken promises
School halls
Grocery watch
Fuel watch
Insulation
and so on, the only reason they weren’t obliterated was that people don’t particularly warm to Abbott, he was defamed. slanderd and lied about by Labor the whole time but still got the majority primary vote, just not enough to counter the swing to the greens.
“Coup” is not really the most accurate word to describe what happened to Rudd, the word implies illegitimacy, yet what happened to Rudd was entirely legitimate within the Australian political system. Personally, I think “removal” is the most neutral word to use, as Rudd was removed from his position as leader. It implies that it was done without his consent, but without the useless melodrama attached to “knifed, stabbed, executed, etc”.
@Glenn
Read the actual article for the real reasons the votes fell the way they did.
We don’t need a list of why you justify your own vote for the Iron Man of Warringah.
I prefer knifed, executed, stabbed, back stabbed, betrayed etc, a man doesnt cry in public after being merely removed.
Gos - yes he may have and it is the way the system works, it’s just been corrupted in my opinion as the person folllowing the ballot vcard doesn’t realise the implications of what they’re doing in a close result like this, if you asked them if you wanted labor most of them would tell you to get lost thats why they’re voting Green.
Wow, all of that stuff went wrong for Labor and there was STILL a swing towards the ALP and against the Liberals in my semi-rural SA electorate. Amazing, amazing.
Daniel - once your people learn to read and you get electricity so you can hear the radiogram thing will change.
Is it just me or do most of the conservative ditto-heads who post here seem to have the intellectual capacity of deep fried Spam?
Maybe New.com.au is redirecting it’s “comment” traffic to Crikey to undermine the quality of the discourse.
In the United States of Amnesia, they call this particular demographic “Southpark Conservatives” - not least because most of their political arguments sound better with a Cartman voice-over
Mindless ditto-headdtriumphalism aside, surely there are a minority of intelligent conservatives who realise that given how badly Labor screwed themselves during this campaign, Tony Robbots failure to secure a solid majority does not bode well for them at all
Almost coming first at the Special Olympics might feel good but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re still ret …
Apologies to Bill Shorten
MODERATOR, is there a problem with my post at 5:46pm agreeing with SBH on terminology?
Benazir Butto was assassinated. Kevin Rudd was deposed.
I would hope that international readers who glance at the odd Australian story in the world news are not misled into sending flowers for his grave, and ordering bullet-proof vests for their next election-time holiday Down Under.
The person who sent it to me said it came from Telstra employee
Glenn, you ability to focus on trivia is amazing.
Howard was re-elected after the GST he said we would never have, he sent soldiers to two illegal invasions, then we had AWB.
You on the other hand are still whining about a couple of fucking websites.
Astonishing.
“Deposed”, “Removed”. Nice, bland, safe, sterile, inoffensive, neutral words that give credit to the “moving forward” school of spin. The problem is that the rest of the electorate, especially Queensland saw the event in much more visceral tones. They told Julia all about it last Saturday. The problem for the ALP is that its apologists, including Julia with her cowardly withdrawal of Arbib from yesterdays Q&A, and Bernard in his piece today, are furiously trying to rewrite history and make the whole Rudd assassination debacle go away.
Their danger is that if they squib facing the mistakes of this campaign, the electorate might remember should there be an early poll.
And Acidic Muse, it is just you. And leave the special olympians alone. They work hard enough without gratuitous put-downs from the likes of you.
@acidic muse “..is it just me..”
In 80 years, no first term government has lost control of House of Reps, until this mob.
No first term PM ever done in ( sorry, removed! )
Australians usually will give any government a second go. Part of that “fair go” trait.
They even gave Gough a second chance.
Yes, mate, “its just you”.
Back to whatever it is you’re smoking!
@daniel ” in my semi rural electorate..”
I figured as much!
@David
You sound even more like Cartman when you argue Kevin Rudd was “assasinated” but Tony Abbott merely deposed Malcom Turnball .. lol
@Glen
I’m no intellectual giant dearheart, it’s just the mental midgets making me look taller
@ John James
Dead right. They are in denial.
From what I gather from hearing booth workers from the western suburbs of Sydney talk, many people/voters in the west were offended at being spoken down to by the major parties and their leaders. The voters felt they were being patronised. Not a good incentive to vote for a particular party!
DAVID HAND,
On a personal level, the way the ALP dealt with Rudd was a hell of a lot more honourable than the way it dealt with Mark Latham. (Leaving aside the all-important political difference between overthrowing a PM and replacing an opposition leader.)
I strongly object to the atrocious habit the Labor Party has picked up, of overthrowing state or federal heads of government whenever the going gets tough.
But I find all the indignation on behalf of Kevin Rudd the person a bit rich. In 2004 while federal ALP leader Mark Latham was on leave with stress-related pancreatitis, the Boxing Day Tsunami struck Asia and killed thousands. In a breathtaking act of cynicism, ALP sources used the tragedy to criticize Latham for not emerging from his rest break to organise a message of sympathy. Fancy leaking that to the papers, instead of just texting a draft message to their sick leader and asking if it’s OK to send.
By the time Latham emerged from sick leave, it was all over for him. Regardless of the merits or otherwise of his leadership — and it’s perfectly normal to replace an opposition leader after an election loss — the way they did it was a disgrace. The media barely noticed, everyone was just glad to see the back of Latham and didn’t give any thought to the way it was done.
Kevin Rudd was foreign affairs spokesman and one of the leadership hopefuls at the time. He’s also been described by Latham as a “serial leaker”.
I honestly don’t know if some of the people who post here believe what they write or are just fishing.I hope they are fishing.
Nice work Astro.
NBN, Contention Ratio and the Internet Barrier Reef
Why should I worry about contention ratio if I only want to visit sites on this invisible island we call Australia?
(Having .au outside the Domain Name System is a separate issue which is normally what is meant by the invisible island problem. In this context however I refer to lossy network performance.)
Web sites and game development have a fixed cost to develop. To work as a business product sales outside Australia are required. If a site is arbitrarily taken down then distribution of their product stops so web sites must be hosted outside Australia in jurisdictions where they are protected.
http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/legal-adult-websites-blacklisted-abbywinters-and-the-hun-banned/
Contention ratio is degree to which an ISP has over sold their own Internet capacity. The ISP buys an Internet connection on expensive undersea cable as high capacities and low latency are required for Internet. They then sell that capacity to subscribes many times over and hope that their subscribers do not try to use that capacity at the same time.
The naive assumption is that network traffic averages out, however network traffic is self similar and network nodes often burst up at the same time. It does _not_ average out.
What will the contention ratio be with the NBN?
What will be the effects of such a ratio?
Contention ratios are at 30:1 and currently result in frequent outages.
QoS (Quality of Service) is required to wind back bandwidth such that contention ratio is 1:1 during congestion. This is the real speed of the service which is better than none.
During congestion without QoS bulk traffic may be allowed to continue while other traffic is delayed too long which triggers a request for re-transmission on the Internet. Such re-transmission then causes even more congestion. This positive feedback loop then leads to an outage.
By continuing to trickle feed all nodes the real speed may be sufficient to avoid the destructive re-transmission.
Now if the NBN forces the contention ratio to 300:1 then are QoS solutions available to avoid such a failure?
Will such solutions be used on the NBN?
Are centralised filters for use by despotic regimes that can work under such conditions?
How well does the Internet work in China?
A contention ration of 1:1 would be good, but no one could afford it.
It would be like having your modem dialling the US as in the old days.
(The ratio of 1:1 is only required where nines of system uptime are required. In these cases equipment can also fail so multiple paths and a contention ration of 1:2 may be used.)
1:1 <- If reliability is required
3:1 <- Voice ccts in an office rather than rarely used hotel phones
10:1
30:1 <- Best effort Internet I.e. it only slows down to 1/30th
100:1
300:1 <- NBN 100 Mbit/s - how are they going to trickle feed us at
1/300th to avoid network failure?
Plain old telephone wire is easily capable of breaking a network with ADSL. Measures are are required to avoid network failure even with this "slow" medium.
The UK has limits on contention ratio and ISPs are required to provide this. This partly possible because they use a more robust and lower sync speed of 5 Mbit/s.
UK 5 Mbit/s RADSL or READSL2 (ITU G.992.3 Annex L) runs between 20:1 and 50:1. I.e. it can be as low as 100 kbit/s (ISDN speeds).
ITU G.992.2 and ITU G.992.4 G.lite(.bis) are 1.5 Mbit/s. These were more doable than 12 Mbit/s ITU G.992.1 ADSL1 and ITU G.992.3 ADSL2 and
24 Mbit/s ITU G.992.5 ADSL2.
The slower sync speeds not only limit contention ratio for reliability, but also allow for longer loop lengths.
Its already broken with copper so why break it even more with fibre?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contention_ratio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_service
@Glenn
Hopefully one day you’ll learn that in our particular system of Government, the people don’t actually elect the leader of either of our major parties, let alone get to vote directly for Prime Minister. Maybe you watch a lot of American sitcoms and are confusing our system with theirs
Most of us who are actually old enough to vote and dont happen to live in Warringah or Lalor, would have noticed neither Tony nor Julia appeared on our ballot papers. Wierd hey. It’s because here in Australia … lol …no, you can learn all this when you grow up.
@John
So let me get this right. According to you and other wing nuts, it’s ok for a Government to remove it’s leader in their second or third term, just not in the first?
Silly me, I must have missed that part of our Constitution. Of course, given how few Australian’s ever actually bother to read our constitution, it stands to reason most have no idea how little of how our Government operates has ever actually been codified in law. The unwritten convention that dicates how Australias’ PM magically appears merely says the Prime Minister is the person who leads the party with a majority in the House of Representatives
Still, it’s not as good as Glens’ claim that the criteria for whether a leader is removed or assasinated boils down to whether he crys in public afterwards. Now that it’s happenned once maybe it can become a convention too
Meanwhile more sensible Australian’s will go on considering all the tears as merely further proof Kevin Rudd really was the self absorbed prissy prick everyone who knew him had been saying for several years
Hasn’t NewsCorp told you dittoheads the election is over? You can all stop crying crocodile tears for Kevin right now .. we all know you hated him more than the faceless men did anyway .. lol
Acidic Muse - Kevin was as you say, Gillard is worse.
How did these people come to positions of such power ?
because ordinary Australians have honest jobs and dont go into politics.
Perhaps we should.
@daniel ” in my semi rural electorate..”
I figured as much!
?
Dear Astro,
You are a Liberal party stooge that would fail your CCNA exam. You have not worked in IT, or if you did you probably worked in the Human Resources department of an IT company. DSL technologies existed in other countries long before they came to Australia? Bigpond cable was up and running in 1997 before they had even started to install DSLAMs into exchanges. The 1.5 Mbps “cap” was something that Telstra implemented - not a technical limitation. And most countries never had, or quickly dropped, 256Kbps “broadband” ADSL. Again, that was something largely implemented by Telstra.
Saying that there will be new DSL technologies is like someone in 1998 saying there will be a major, newer modem techonology than V.90 (V.92 is only a small upgrade and was never widely adopted). If you can show where we can squeeze more bandwidth out of the telephones lines we have now then I buy a pair of speedos and wear them around.
Our international links are being upgraded all the time. Pacific Fibre has been announced. Southern Cross is over 1 Tbps now. Theres always the Aus-Jap connection, Telstra Endeavour, Pipe Pacific etc. Your argument that Australia’s international data capacity is going to STAY the same FOREVER is a complete lie. By the time the NBN is finished Australia’s submarine cable links to foreign countries will be vastly greater than what it is now and like the NBN most of them are scalable.
So buzz off to News Ltd newspaper websites, or stacking online polls on Fairfax websites and leave Crikey for those of us that dont want Liberal hacks sprouting their propaganda.
Sausage Maker - what a load of crap.
Go sleep it off.
Glenn , just looked on the AEC site and Labor has 120,000+ voters more than News Ltd , whoops Liberals in the important 2PP and over 50.6 %. At least she didn’t loose her seat , like the rodent . Look on the bright side , Wilson Tuckey got smashed by a Nat. and its good night to Steve Fielding in 2011 , God must hate him for lying about Global Warming . The Greens have WON in this election, thanks Rupert , $$$$ flowing to the Greens with every vote and they spend their vote money better and smarter than Labor. In my area The Greens got 11.70 % of the vote ( 6,904 votes ) in a safe LNP seat and got a 6.73 % swing . Libs got a 1.47 % swing . Fun in the Senate in 2011 july , Larissa Waters is a QLD Senator and is a smart cookie .
Astro , caught out AGAIN lying again , Telstra Worker ?? Tea trolley pusher spreading lies every where you go. Thanks to SYD WALKER , he blew your mate Bolty lie out of the water. This is where we need Truth in the media and offenders ownership should be on the line and a multi-Million dollar fine.
Can we have a Sin Bin for serial liars , please .
Astro
Appreciated your informative reply.
Buit however what about Lord Mayor Newman’s idea of running the wires throught the sewerage system?
The Liberal urgers on here make me laugh!
Come July next year the Greens will run the show and if the liberals do get power and hang on to it that long they will get nothing through the senate.
The game is far from finished and even if phoney Tony/Pell gets to be PM it will only prove how unfit he is for the job.
This is great reading,
A whole heap of party faithful trying to punch it out where their parties failed and 1 apparently reaonable impartial voice (freecountry). Sorry if I missed others. This is great time to be an independent or informal voter.
On a side note, does anyone else think that the preferential voting system is a load of shit? It would really get rid of a lot of the back room dealing if we could just mark one box and leavie it at that.
Thank you Sausage Maker,
You saved me the trouble of posting technical details from NASA and USDA.
As for you ASTRO, I believe there is a Coalition Cable which is copper sheathed in hemp and coated with bitumen which I’m sure is more in line with the limits of your technical understanding.
No Glenn, Gillard is not worse at all … that is just what the Right Wing Noise Machine has programmed you to think. Whereas Rudd is your classic public service technocrat and political machine apparatchik, Julia came to politics via student activism and working as an industrial lawyer. He’s a passive aggressive control freak with delusions of grandeur while she’s a down to earth community minded crusader and consensus builder. Given the opportunity, Julia Gillard will no doubt prove to be a great Prime Minister.
What we actually need here is for more ordinary Australian’s to learn to think for themselves instead of having their opinions spoon-fed to them by Rupert Murdoch’s hacks or loud mouthed shocks jock whose addiction to cash for comment informs their every pronouncement.
Oh…and a a few journalists more interested in analysing policy than running cynical commentary on a wacky reality TV circus very much of their own making
Any party that is in power for too long is not good. The Coalition in the last federal term and Labor in NSW and QLD are perfect examples. I like the old saying; Politicians are like undies, a bit uncomfortable at first, then great, but if you don’t change them regularly they start to stink up the place and cause problems. A minority government, if even for a short time will be good to keep em fresh. To quote a bad movie with a good message, “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people” Hopefully after this, there are a few pollies walking around looking over their shoulders.
Acidic Muse - Sorry but Gillard was an integral part of the 3 years of Rudd stuff ups and she wont be any different if she gets the top job.
Labor has all but disintegrated under her watch and I wouldn’t want her representing this country in any way.
You may not like Abbott but he has the an expert team at his disposal, Labor has no one I’d trust at all.
A fact on choosing Prime Ministers. There is nothing stopping Labor or the Coalition offering Adam Brandt. Tony Windor, Rob Oakshot, Bob Katter or Andrew Wilkie the Office of Prime Minister by the Constitution.
GLENN, I don’t like the current Labor team very much either. But you are fighting a battle that’s already over, and you’re diverting discussions which could be interesting, into something that sounds like a schoolyard shouting match between two gangs trying to talk themselves into a fight.
It’s boring. And the situation has reached a stage where nobody who’s reading this will have any influence. So unless you think you can make the lefties cry or magically convert them into Coalition supporters, let’s just take it easy, try to learn something interesting, and see what develops.
I say the moderateor is being a bit over-vigilant on this thread
SBH - I’m suprised he hasn’t shut it down.
Just watching the Independants, Bob Katter is going to be extremely difficult though was interesting to hear about how we are less sufficient on ourselves for food and it’s getting worse.
Sorry situation overall
Yes Glenn, especially after the tripe you’ve been posting
SBH - seems a lot of your stuff has been moderated out, you must be the one posting tripe.
Ah Glenn, your logic and repartee have no peer.
SBH - sorry if common sense confuses you.
sorry if the constitution and operation of political parties in this country confuse you comrade.
Last word to you, I’ve got work to do.
God, arent glen and David Hand a couple of odious little prats. Not the sharpest pencils in the pack, but full of bile and rancor in classic wing nut fashion. Back to Bolts blog the two of you.
sean - this seems to be your one and only contribution, and just as well, you’re a nasty little self righteous worm arent you.
GLENN:
It is interesting, because although food security has been a Nationals issue, we hear very little about it from the Nationals in any practical sense. Even the National Farmers Federation has been exasperated by the simplistic reactionism coming from the party, in its apparent lack of interest in anything except preserving its comfortable Coalition numbers as the mistress of the Libs. That’s why so many good country politicians have deserted the Nationals, leaving it dominated by the likes of Truss and Joyce.
Ironically it was the Liberal Turnbull who attempted to turn carbon reform (which is supported by the NFF, with some reservations) into a boon for farmers and a boost the productivity of Australian soil.
Meanwhile the Greens carry on their Peter Pan way of denouncing all farming — all methods of soil conditioning no matter how natural, and all advances in irrigation, no matter how efficient — as evil. Without an effective country voice, people are tending to believe the Greens.
freecountry - I was unaware of any of that and it was strange to be actually listening the Bob Katter to get a bit of truth.
Politics is a rotton egg and I think it’s up to the media to show them up for what they are, it wont happen though, nothing changes.
Bernard, for the record, Mark Banwell, the Lib candidate in Ballarat was also a complete dud.
He was the bloke who used the Holocaust word early in the campaign when talking about the insulation program. He was gagged by HQ, emerged from behind his rock after 10 days or so of badgering in the local press and thereafter, being a military lad, proceeded to issue media directives and refuse all interview situations. It was a wonder the swing wasn’t greater. King’s held in generally high regard here.
Mind you, being a dud candidate doesn’t seem to have been a problem for John Madigan, the senator-in-waiting for the aptly described ‘living dead DLP’. Hailing from Ballarat, he’s far from the sharpest pencil in the box, probably blunter even than Fielding, which is awfully impressive.
And, if you don’t mind, I think you forgot to credit JJJ McGauran for his outstanding Michael Hutchence hair do.