Graham, Can you (or anyone for that matter) please tell me if the voting returns for each polling booth in an electorate can be known. If so then how do I access them? Is there a link? Thanks in anticipation.

George@Denistone,

This is the link to the AEC Virtual Tally Room 'Turnout by State' page:

http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseTurnoutByState-13745.htm It is a good entry point to the AEC progressive results reporting.

On the left hand side of the page are clickable links to other AEC pages. Click on whichever State your are interested in under the non-clickable heading 'Division Results'. On the (State) Divisional Results page click on the Division you want. The progressive counting results for the whole Division will come up. Above the table title bar headed 'First Preferences' is a list of clickable links. One is labelled 'Two Candidate Preferred By Polling Place'. Click on that one.

That should, IMHO, give you a complete summary of the ordinary vote as per polling place acquittal, BUT IT DOESN'T. Just a dumbed-down two-party preferred result with no informals, votes for minor candidates, etc. But then again, it is headed 'Two Candidate Preferred ...'. Why would we of the dumb mug public want to know the ordinary vote details, details FINALISED ON POLLING NIGHT, five days after the poll?

Disgraceful!

Let me know if you can find anything better.

You may be interested in this post (and others in the same thread that preceed it): http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1306#23371

Words fail me!

GRAHAM, old friend, I could argue with you all day but we would never change our convictions. But the world has changed and we have to too.You talk of "middle classes" and "left" and "right" politics, but as we are more educated and get ideas from RADIO NATIONAL which I have switched on from 5.30a.m. to midday as I go about my day, and T.V. which brings WAR and POVERTY into the lounge room and the internet where our grandchildren will be connected to in school soon.I have lived without electricity as a boy, but I'M "switched on"now!Get with it Mate!Lot's of us are unlabeled now, we have partners not wives,we have opinions on religion without dogma, we don't vote for party pollies unless we have to.But we realise all independents would be unwieldy and parliament is bad enough now.That's why Costello's given it away,we are no longer impressed by rhetoric and cleverness.At a young age he's an "old man" in politics.

George and Forrest, have a look at the ABC elections site here http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/results/electorateindex.htm

Or alternately the AEC's detailed figures by electorate here http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionMenu-13745-NAT.htm

It seems to me that the victory of the Labor Party was really due to DUMB LUCK. Back in 2004, by a piece of gross ineptitude, the Labor Party gave Howard a majority in the Senate, by giving preferences in Victoria to Family First, who were then elected. With that majority Howard was able to over-reach himself with workchoices, something he had been trying to pass for the previous ten years, but had been unable to get through the Senate. So the piece of gross ineptitude turned into a stroke of genius, but of course I am sure this was not forseen.

From all my experience, if you have to choose between a conspiracy and a stuff-up, always go for the stuff-up.

It is also of interest to note that the misery index (the sum of the unemployment and inflation rates) got down to 6.8% earlier this year. When will we see this figure again?

Or, putting it another way, how long will it be before the Howard years are referred to as a "Golden Age"?

As usual Graham gives as an accurate appraisal. The libs lost, basically for the reasons he stated. However times have changed and those blue collar swinging voters now work for themselves and are the employers of others...who now do the work they once did. They are not conservative ... they don't give a damn about idealogies or labels. All they expect is a fair go for everyone. Workchoices didn't allow that. They will vote for the party which gives them economic conditions favourable to their businesses and employees and which doesn't try to allow anyone to take advantage of them and/or their employees.

At state level we have seen the alienated 'middle class' get square by sacking any Liberal who promotes the right wing Liberal ideas which often tend to mirror 'Anglo-Celtic working-class themes based on a particular concept of national identity, expressed in policies on immigration, foreign affairs and culture' and have emphasis on economic matters to the detriment of social policy. In Queensland Liberal voters rejected both Caltabiano and Santoro...the doyans of the liberal right in state parliament. I don't think that was coincidental.

Er, plerdsus, Fielding voted against WorkChoices, so I don't see how their preference deal would have made any difference.

As for your misery index, in what reasonable way does it measure misery? Plenty of unemployed people are not particularly miserable, and plenty of employed people are.

Oh, and the country with by far the lowest sum of unemployment and inflation is Norway (totalling somewhere around 4%), whose governmental policies are about as different from Howard's as imaginable.

[[[[A sympathetic coherent world view could have dealt with....WorkChoices.... It could have kept battlers less grumpy, and it could have soothed the middle classes.]]]]
No this is not correct. Workchoices could only be possibly accepted by those who understood right wing idealogy, to wit, that an employer has sovereign right over his own business to hire and fire, for whatever reasons he chooses. It is this idealogy that is not understood, or agreed with, by the blue-collar people.

The only way to implement right-wing platforms, is to first of all teach the people the idealogy that underpins such platforms. The people need to be taught the theory, and then put on notice that the platforms are about to be introduced in accord with such theory. The theory was never taught to the people.

More importantly, the people need to see that right wing idealogy is in fact correct, by virtue of the fact that left wing idealogy is simply institutionalised theft.

Given that most people become set in their ways as they grow older, the most efficient way to teach the people right wing idealogy is to teach them when they are primary school students. This will involve visits to schools by politicians well-versed in right-wing idealogy.

Without the teaching of what it means to be free (as distinct from being economically free), the Western world will continue to spiral into socialism, and will probably never return to that which made it great in the first place: the understanding of individual liberty.

It is better to be free and poor, than rich and under the authority of another. This is what right wing idealogy is.
And the result of such idealogy is that the poor free will very soon become richer than the rich not-free. For the greatest motivator of wealth that ever has been and ever will be, is freedom.

Funny you say that Liberty, I'm sure those who wish to impose communism upon us could say much the same thing: it is necessary to understand the ideology first, where it is better for everyone to be equally poor, than for some to be poor, many to be comfortably well off, and a few extremely rich.
Fortunately we have a democracy, so you can pick whatever ideology you like, but ultimately the people as a whole get to decide what sort of country and government they want for themselves.

And for it's worth, in general I am philosophically attracted to many libertarian ideals, however a) the social regressivism of Howard would never allow me to vote for him and b) the evidence that they actually produce a preferable result is, to say the least, thin on the ground. I don't like the *idea* of big government, high taxes and strong regulatory control over businesses, but the countries that do implement this in practice (in particular the Nordic nations) seem to produce enviable results, both in terms of overall wealth, and the extent to which poverty and suffering is kept to a minimum.

[[[[Fortunately we have a democracy, ...but ultimately the people as a whole get to decide what sort of country and government they want for themselves.]]]]
Yes we all know this, and implying it was not understood in my post shows you are either trying to misrepresent me, or you are in need of remedial reading and comprehension classes.

[[[[And for it's worth, in general I am philosophically attracted to many libertarian ideals, however a) the social regressivism of Howard would never allow me to vote for him]]]]
So you like libertarian ideas, except when they are libertarian.
Further, you seem to hold to the bizarre view that politicians can effectivily change the morality of others. Ever wonder why the "breach of promise" law disappeared? Ever wonder why homosexuality became legalised?

[[[[and b) the evidence that they actually produce a preferable result is, to say the least, thin on the ground. I don't like the *idea* of big government, high taxes and strong regulatory control over businesses, but the countries that do implement this in practice (in particular the Nordic nations) seem to produce enviable results, both in terms of overall wealth, and the extent to which poverty and suffering is kept to a minimum.]]]]
You also are therefore one who does not understand right wing idealogy. That is, you do not understand the infinite value of freedom.
It is irrelevant how "enviable" and warm-fuzzy the results of socialism are; it is irrelevant how well-fed and well-clothed people are under socialism. Even if they live like Sultans, they are infinitely worse off than them who are free.

Essentially, you are a socialist either trying to pretend you are not, or trying to convince yourself you are not.

(wizofaus, posting under 2nd username, couldn't wait another 20 hours to respond to that!)

How is Howard's social regressivism libertarian? I consider it vitally important that the government does not impose on my personal liberties, a belief that Howard's government did not appear to share.
And from my point of view, it was Howard who held the bizarre view that he could effectively change the morality of others. What exactly am I supposed to wonder about why homosexuality became legalised anyway?

The reason I consider the results of the policies of many Nordic governments "enviable" is because even their most disadvantaged experience a large number of freedoms: freedom from hunger, from exclusion, from homelessness, from employer exploition, freedom to enjoy a comfortable standard of living etc. As a libertarian, I consider these far more valuable freedoms than, say, the freedom to pay less taxes, or the freedom of corporations to treat their employees however they wish. Ultimately that's a value judgement that each individual has to make. Which is why democracy is the only reasonable way of determining which freedoms are worth protecting the most.

The Libs just scored and own goal while Labor gave us a campaign of glitz and glamour with little substance.

Making the Reserve Bank totally independant will curb the worst of Labor's ill discipline,since each interest rate will make the electorate punish Labor's indiscretions.

The Libs have gone all wet and weak to win back electorate support,but will they become leaders rather than just cowering in the face of poll driven ideology?

Is Brendan Nelson the sacrificial lamb who will be expected to fail at the next election and the batton be given to the annointed Malcolm Turnbull in six yrs time?

One thing is certain,Liberal disunity will be poison for both the Party and the electorate at large.I don't think Labor will last beyond two terms.

Tinman, I start my once a year lecture to QUT political communication students on "Politics of the Right" by pointing out the problems with classifying people into left and right, and I run them through a short dissertation about how we are less likely to vote for a particular political brand out of habit than we used to be. So you're not telling me anything that I don't know, and propagate. But try having a discussion about politics without using terms like left and right.

The same applies to class, even though Liberal politics has never been based on class. This is a fact which Judith Brett found novel enough to essentially base her "Menzies and the moral middle-class" around. It was only novel because the left dominates the university analyses of politics, and they think of everything in class terms, that "class traitors" like me find puzzling.

However, all these terms do have some application, but do break down on the boundaries. For example, calling One Nation a party of the right is really a misdescription, while it serves well enough to describe the Liberal Party as on the right. Calling Lindsay Tanner a left-winger is also stretching things a bit, although it works well-enough for Julia Gillard.

But discussion always proceeds on the basis first of generalisations, which sometimes expands, and sometimes degenerates, depending whether one is making useful distinctions, into particularities.

The Federal Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 according to Wikipedia "allows the executive branch of government rather than the judiciary to imprison people and to imprison people indefinitely without charge or trial. The act makes it also an offence to even talk about somebosy being imprisoned. One of the most controversial aspects of the legislation is the requirement that a parent, if informed of their child's detention may not inform any further person including the other parent."

In Italy, Where I lived the length of Mussolini's dictatorship, inhumanities of such magnitude as the legislation above, did not exist in law or facts.

Should Liberalism be harsher than fascism? Howard was a son of a mechanic. Mechanics was in him and with it was moral bankruptcy.

From my observations, terms like Fascism or any other 'ism' have no significance. Man remains the fundamental measurable entity.

Graham ,there has to be a bit if left and right in all of us to ensure survival.We are empathetic beings and through co-operation and specialisation,we have built civilisations way beyond the capacities of our mediocre ape genetics.This is what makes our existence so precarious,yet so exciting.In reality we are achieving way above our capacity to assimilate these new changes,and therein lies the rub.

The left in us harks back to love and family security,but the right is all about survival.Finding the balance between enjoying our comfort zones and having enough efficiency/productivity to sustain it,will always be a dilemma.

The Socialist Left such as Julia Gillard have now redefined themselves as the "progressives".The right are now the conservatives.The conservatives are evolutionalists,who will retain tried and tested structures of the past,thus will only make radical changes only when a system becomes totally dysfuncytional.Slow tried and tested change is usually the order of the day.However the Coalition, with IR, broke the mold and went for chaotic change.They went for radical change with no evolutionary component.It was destined to fail since it was not true conservative philosophy.

Isn't it ironic that the "conservatives" in philosophy are closer to natural evolution than the "progressives",who often ignore tried and tested past philosophies that will ensure their survival?

I see the downfall of John Howard and peter Costello as a failure of management systems and ideas.
First They told us "If it ain't broke don't fix it", when they should have been focusing on continual improvement of the systems.
They also seemed ignorant of Maslow's 'Heirachy of Needs' where if your basic needs , like food, clothing , the roof over your head are under threat, your immediately focus your mind away from higher level needs like the esteem of others or ththe community and the economy.
It was on the nose because it focused on monetary motivation, it assumes money is the only motivation for people.

The “Liberals” forget the facts, when they pretend that the Industrial Arbitration Commission of this country is a mere instrument of economics. From the very beginning one hundred and three years ago, it has been an agency of something much more important and that is, industrial equity, a "fair go all round" or, as many would now describe it, human rights.

Work Choices ignores the fact that long term shift work, reduces worker life span by up to ten years. Most shift workers will return to day work if shift loadings are removed.

Work Choices ignores the fact that overtime is mandated by state industrial laws, in that it is the state laws that spell out the mandated maximum daily, weekly or monthly ordinary hours of work.

The facts are that workers and employers are prohibited from making a contract, verbal, written, explicit or implied to trade off state industrial laws. The outcome is, that because the parties cannot extend the ordinary hours of work, a separate arrangement must be made to pay for the overtime worked out side the state IR Law mandatory limitations.
This arrangement applies to all employees, whether they are staff on common (Judge made) law
contracts or awards made by Industrial tribunals.

I think Graham has hit the nail on the head with the statement “The government needed not just a better story, but a different one too. Australians needed to see how government performance was improving the world, not just making it richer.”

It was interesting Howard’s claim in the last week of the campaign that he and his government had made us proud to be Australian. I really feel he picked up what I did, that many people were not proud of the way Australia had behaved internationally over the last decade.

I personally know of 5 rusted on Liberal voters (3 were even staunch Hanson fans when she was in favour) who voted Labor this time. Talking to them there was a real sense of thinking of others both Australians and citizens of other countries.

I will admit to some early pride in John Winston Howard, his code of ministerial responsibility, his courageous gun control efforts and yes his striving for jobs for all Australians.

However I was not proud of Tampa nor the razor wired desert camps. I was not proud of AWB, Private Kovco’s missing corpse, nor the berating of Mick Kelty. I was not proud that Australia, the only country in world who managed to negotiate an increase in emissions at Kyoto, walked away from the agreement. I was particularly lacking in pride when Australia tried to rip off a struggling fledgling nation in the Timor Sea negotiations. I was not proud that Australia was condemned by the UN Human Rights body and the World Council of Churches, nor when my prime minister forbade our own Human Rights Commissioner from visiting our off-shore ‘facilities’. I was also not proud when a quarter of the Irish Parliament boycotted my prime minister because of his failings with climate change and humane treatment of refugees. And I had little pride when most international efforts being accompanied by the incessant slogan “Because it is in Australia’s best interest”.

Maybe the electorate has voted for a little more than just ‘their best interest’ and I can only bless them for that.