What I don’t know about the Liberal Party could fill a warehouse, but most of the prescriptions outlined by Michael Kroger on Sky News on Tuesday accord with my prejudices:
The organisational wings around the country need to be reformed immediately, particularly in relation to the branch structure and preselections. There’s a lot of things that can be done, very quickly. The party is in a terrible electoral position, but it can very quickly put itself into a fantastic position. This is not a five or ten year repair job. You could actually fix all the organisational and structural problems in the Liberal Party within 12 months if you had the will to do it, and make whoever the incoming leader is in a fantastic position to fight the next federal election in three years’ time. But what tends to happens is people retreat to their corners, they want to protect their own power bases and nothing happens. It requires some strong decision-making from the senior people to fix this thing, they can fix it in 12 months … The branch structure is 60 years old and even though the branch members still do a fantastic job, it’s the structure, not the branch members, it’s the structure which is drowning us. We’ve got probably 500 people in the Victorian Liberal Party whose job is as honorary auditor … There need to be branch amalgamations, we need to base the party around state or federal electorates, you need to broaden the base of people voting in preselections, you need to have perhaps a senior committee of senior party people who have the final say over preselections to rubber stamp the selections, you’ve got to stop the petty branch stacking, we should amalgamate with the National Party, we should give the federal party some more power a little like the ALP does, we should make it a federalist party and not just individual states, we need to totally revamp the fundraising within the organisation and we need to give the federal executive some power … you just can’t have situations where five or 10 or 20 people can stack a few branches and take over a safe Liberal Party seat and preselect a C-grade candidate and be happy with that. I pay credit to the Labor Party for some of the candidates they preselected, I don’t like their politics, but the fact is in various places they strong-armed some tired old members out, put some new people in who may or may not succeed but on the face of it some of them have got very good credentials for parliament. That’s the way you have to operate in politics. To leave these things to the branch-stackers is a recipe for disaster.
Malcolm Turnbull – wealthy, assertive, independently powerful – struck me as being just the man for the job outlined by Kroger. Perhaps the party room knows better. Or perhaps, to use Kroger’s formulation, they have signalled an intention to retreat to their corners and protect their own power bases, and nothing will happen.
Recommended reading: Alister Drysdale of the Business Spectator reports that both parties’ internal polling showed a late Coalition recovery that was stopped dead in its tracks by the Lindsay pamphlet disgrace. It’s also argued that the fake Jeff Kennett letter regarding proposed funding cuts to the states had the same impact during the last week of the 1996 campaign. I personally do not imagine that either incident was single-handedly decisive, but this is not the first report to emerge of a sharp shift in party tracking polling following Jackie Kelly’s infamous “Chaser-style prank” interview of last Wednesday. There’s also a very intriguing article on the Liberal Party’s late-term leadership ructions from Pamela Williams in today’s Financial Review (subscriber only unfortunately).
Triffid
Apply for membership and leave the union bit blank – bet you get accepted. 😛
Labor rules vary from state to state. NSW requires union membership and it seems SA does too. I doubt the rule is enforced. In Victoria there is certainly no such rule. An employer can join the ALP provided they undertake to abide by all industrial laws and awards. I know several very large employers who are ALP members. I was returning officer in an ALP internal election a few years ago and three successive voters were a union secretary, an Orthodox Rabbi and a millionaire businessman.
Just had a read of the SA ALP membership form and unlike the WA form the SA one has the following under the union section.
“A person applying for membership must be a member of a union, if eligible.”
Triffid I would suggest you contact the state office and get a definite answer.
Why would you want to join the ALP when you have no influence on party policy or branch activities.
Note of course that the rule refers to persons, not triffids. I’m not sure that many unions admit large poisonous plants as members, although I have my suspicions about the CFMEU.
Why would you want to join the Greens and spent a year campaigning for 4,547 votes?
StanS, the point I was trying to make earlier is that some of us who are Labor supporters, have significant $ to pay out for professional membership, registration, professional indemnity, and so forth. It sounds like there are other people such as Triffid who are in the same boat. It’s not that any like myself want to disconnect from the Union connection with the origin and ongoing relationshipt between the Unions and Labor, but more whether there is some other way to address the $ we have to shell out. It might be more straight forward for some groups of people. but for example, my psychiatrist colleague would like to be more a part of an organisation that he believes is more representative of his political views, and contribute to the development of policy. So would I.
Adam at least i enjoyed it.
Adam,
Surely the relevant qualification is “if eligible”. If Triifid is an accountant, depending on his employer, it isn’t obvious that there is an affilliated union for him to join. Of course that doesn’t preclude anyone joining a generalist union, which is what Parliamentarians from non-trade union backgrounds have usually done.
I understood that the Victorian Branch had a similar obligation, with an equivalent “get-out” clause.
BTW, If your numbers of remaining absentee, pre-poll and postal votes for McEwen turn out to be close to the mark, and the percentages so far are replicated in the outstanding ones, Mitchell would win comfortably.
Bailey’s margin on postals is 13% * 2,000 votes increases her advantage by 260;
her margin on pre-polls 11.2% * 5,000 increases her margin by a further 560;
Mitchell’s margin on absentees 22.6% * 7,000 gives him an increase of 1,582.
I recognise I’ve relied on two heroic assumptions, but the net effect of these numbers would easily over-take the current margin of less than 200.
HSO @ 907, Yes like you and your firends I am a member of several professional orgasisations, in fact perversly I was a senior manager in an organisition where I was the only union member. Perhaps your Dr friends should try and get there “professional organisation” eg the AMA (Drs union) to affiliate with the ALP – this is a joke btw.
I just feel that the working conditions we enjoy today are solely the result of strong collective union action, something to be proud of. I doubt that bosses would willingly provide any conditions without the action of the union movement. Witness Hardies and Bernie Banton, without the support of unions they would give nothing.
To hold our vote withstanding the Ruddslide, the slimy fake ACTU and unions in general and a FF high profile candidate is more than i expected. Seems that your prediction that i would get less than last time didnt come true. We will be even stronger in the next State and federal elections. We grew even with your messiah winning. And i now have a profile in the area with numerous people knowing who i am and our local membership up 40% seems a win to us
I’m sure you did Bill. And I enjoy being in the ALP, where it is perfectly possible to have an influence on party policy or branch activities if you’re prepared to apply yourself.
Peter Fuller, I doubt the current Labor % of absentees will be maintained. There’s no obvious reason why absentees should vote much different to booth voters.
Oh Dear, the Nationals have learned nothing from losing Page and Dawson with the possibility of Flynn too. Now they are going to reelect a tired old leadership to see if they can throw away another couple of seats at the next Federal election.
Incidentally, Seeney would have to be in trouble with the Queensland Nationals state leader wildly claiming his opposition to council amalgamations would win votes in Flynn, Longman and Petrie. Apparently not one voter in all of Queensland believed Seeney’s rhetoric. Under Seeney’s watch the Nats have lost heaps and gained nothing.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national/fresh-start-vital-for-nats-joyce/2007/12/01/1196394679534.html
OK Bill, if you will stop making ignorant and unfair remarks about the ALP, I will stop making ignorant and unfair remarks about the Greens. We’re allies now, remember? If Sarah Hanson-Young gets up it will be on our preferences.
Just a correction/qualification to my #909.
In McEwen the AEC has counted 92,230 votes, and total enrolment is 104,509. So, Adam some of your outstanding votes (your source was talking about 14,000) have clearly already been counted.The proportions of absentee as compared to postal & pre-polls among those which remain to be counted will determine how optimistic my calculations prove, along with my assumptions that the 2PP votes continue in the same proportions.
oh yeh i forgot comrade Adam we can show ourselves now as allies. Wink
If the Nats had half a brain they’d tell Bruce Scott to resign and put Joyce into Maranoa at the by-election, then make him leader, and Kay Hull as deputy. Then they’d tell Truss, McGauran and Forrest to retire.
Yeah but not until July next year, before then we can block the lot lol and even so you’ll need the Greens FF or Mr X to pass legislation lol now your policies will have a tinge of extremism that even Mr Conservative Rudd will cringe at!
Anybody who seriously thinks the Greens will become a Major Party in the future as that recent news article explained are as deluded as Adolf Hitler in der Bunker proclaiming that Wenck will come.
Lord Nelson is on Insiders tomorrow on the ABC at 9am.
Something tells me Lord Nelson won’t receive as much media sympathy as Kevin Rudd did in his first year as Opposition Leader, especially since the Media looked stupid for saying Turnbull was the favourite who then went on to lose. It’s no secret that the Media want Turnbull as our leader so they’ll be darn harsh on Brendan but hey.
917
Adam – I agree with you on the Nats. They need more youth in the leadership if they are to survive.
On McEwen, I think absentee voters could indeed be different to booth voters because there’s a big cross-over in Nth Melb, where it’s possible that people can vote in close neighbouring electorates, such as Scullin and Jagajaga. This is a strong Labor area. On the other hand, the rest of the seat is rural, and so there’s not much possibiility of people crossing over into conservative neighbouring electorates at the other ends.
Adam,
The curse of being a slow typist is that I didn’t see your #912, before I submitted my #915. You’re probably right, in that the absentees already counted may be that set that should have been lodged as normal votes in a joint booth. The only other figure I can throw in to confuse the issue, is that as the count has gone from 84.46% – 88.25%, the margin has narrowed by 246. Is it unrealistic to assume that such a progression (“the narrowing”) might continue as we push towards 95% or whatever the ultimate turn-out proves to be.
Bill Weller, next time you are in Brisbane get yourself down to Minnippi Parkland on the southside of Brisbane and check out the damage that developers have done to the ponds there that used to be tidal. If the Greens and Labor can’t combine to tip Gridlock Campbell and his Liberal councillors out of Brisbane City Council then Parklands like this will continue to be denigrated in a near criminal manner.
My contacts tell me Sarah is a wee bit dizzy,she was interviewed on ABC radio with Bob Brown and said about 2 words,Nicole Cornes would out perform Sarah.
Glen, I’m afraid that you’re wrong in saying that Labor will need Greens, FF or Nick X to pass legislation. On current trends in the Senate, Labor is going to need ALL three of them. It’s my one disappointment with this election, but Labor gets what they deserved when the preferenced Family First in Vic in 2004. However, Glen, don’t get too cocky; if Labor wins the next election, the Lib/Nats will be down to 36, and no FF automatically, as 2004 Senators will be up for re-election.
#
923
DOGS Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 8:58 pm
My contacts tell me Sarah is a wee bit dizzy,she was interviewed on ABC radio with Bob Brown and said about 2 words,Nicole Cornes would out perform Sarah.
I didn’t hear it but she ain’t no dizzy
The Greens wont get anywhere until they force through MMP or PR.
I’m not being cocky but rather stating a fact, vary rarely do governments win outright control of the Senate, though i believe Rudd is getting a bit precious saying we should pass everything he wants i mean did Big Kim do that after they got pumped in 1996 nope?
But yes FF will lose their Senate seat in 2010 that’s for sure Lord D, and Nettle did lose her Senate seat 🙂 and the Tories won 3 in Victoria, its more than likely to be the case that the ALP don’t have Senate control but rather should they win in 2010 they’ll only have to deal with the Greens rather than all 3 as will be the case next year.
Anyway after seeing what a Senate majority can do to a Government Lord D i doubt some Labor supporters will want such awesome power.
922
steve Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Bill Weller, next time you are in Brisbane
The first time i am in Brisbane lol. I have been to Europe but never any further than Melbourne in Australia. Maybe if i go for the senate in the next election and win i can travel. ( but that would be perks and i am against them)
919 [They need more youth in the leadership if they are to survive.]
Glen, the Nationals in Queensland are a spent force. At the Federal level they are losing seats hand over fist and in State parliament they get flogged mercilessly every time parliament sits and do nothing but whinge and whine when parliament isn’t sitting.
Lord D (924) My guess is we won’t need to wait until 2010 if the Senate proves too obstructive. A double dissolution would soon get rid of the bottle neck.
928 Worth a trip up before mid March. As a wise man once said to Gridlock Campbell, beware the ides of March. I am expecting a major Tory shakeout, it is always fun to see.
7 Days since the oinks were smashed ,how sweet it is,has Johnny and the Boss moved in with Pru yet?
The union membership requirement, such as it is/ was, surely only applied to those employed ALP members. Apart from the self employed, unemployed, those on ‘home duties’, and students, there are also retirees who would have left their union on retirement. The CPSU offers associate membership to retired members and presumably other unions and associations do as well, particularly in these difficult times.
BTW, Coalition strategists seem to have forgotten that there are a lot of retirees (particularly the more elderly of them) who were union members in their day and not necessarily Labor voters, let alone active Labor supporters. I was (pleasantly) surprised during the election campaign when an octogenarian monarchist of my acquaintance confided she had been quite offended by the relentless tarring of all unionists as ‘union thugs’ and feared that our ‘fair go’ society had been tarnished. (I’m not sure, however, that the sentiment extended to republicans, boat people and indigenous Australians.)
I had a YouTube of Sarah Hanson-Young speaking, but it isn’t online anymore. She seemed passably articulate to me. I’ve seen dumber Senators. I do hope she’s not a raving Trotskyite like Nettle.
Hi Adam and Bill,
I have just checked in online and am pleased to see that the Greens/Labor alliance is in good shape.
I think we have to accept that as Minor as we are, Labor needs us Adam.
But let me add that no sweeter moment has been had than seeing the Libs go down to Kevin.
Life will be complete if Labor lets go of their marriage to Gunns and stops that pulp mill.
I’d love to see Pete show some courage.
No Adam she not anywhere close to where i am politically so you should like her.
Although after the stab in the back i got from the ACTU i am now starting to think more in the center.
Bill
What happened with the ACTU and what do you think of Rudd.
does anyone have a number for how many seats were won by the ALP after relying on green preferences?
I can’t work it out by looking at the AEC website..
I have a soft spot for the greens since my dear Ol’ papa was the greens candidate in a south melbourne seat a few elections back
bill
what did the ACTU do to you??
(We got amazing support in Victoria)
Mr Squiggle-
have to say that you saying you have a soft spot for the Greens is a slight shock.
we have allies in the most unlikely places!
Bill you should be grateful you’re not going to get a nuclear power plant at Port Stanvac.
940
jen Says:
December 1st, 2007 at 9:33 pm
bill
what did the ACTU do to you??
(We got amazing support in Victoria
I was told that i would be given a split ticket with the ALP due to my militant union beliefs and contacts. A week before the election i find out i was put at 3 on the YR@W card. I contacted the ACTU to see why but i have been given the run around. I am not a union boss so i don’t deserve their support
Just thinking of the Peter Garrett and Penny Wong sitch… whilst i reckon theres no doubt Peter is passionate and knowledgable about the environment, he’s still an abrasive communicator and would no doubt piss a few people off un intentionally in his path. This is why Penny got the gig with CC and Water IMO. How much will the CC portfolio spill over into foreign affairs and what are peoples thoughts on Stephen Smith in this role? either way the garrett wong & smith shows seems a bit more legit than turnbull & downer who had different agendas and probably hated each other.
Squiglle
I’ve had a browse through the seats and it seems that the greens are a major factor, quite a few seats on the 2PP equal green + labor, with the libs getting FF and CDP.
FF actuaaly made a difference between a comfortable win and a landslide.
There maybe a Melbcity or a Poosum who will download the csv files to do the analysis you are asking.
Bill
Who was no 2
Sorry, can’t put much faith in Alister Drysdale’s analysis (liberal comeback stopped dead in tracks by Jackiegate) if he asserts Nelson, Turnbull & Abbott are all “members of the NSW Right Faction.
Turnbull a member of any faction? Other than the Turnbull Faction?
Turnbull, spruiking Kyoto & Sorry – member of NSW Right?
I don’t think so.
#
# Adamon 01 Dec 2007 at 9:40 pm
Bill you should be grateful you’re not going to get a nuclear power plant at Port Stanvac.
We are. now to stop the extension of the expressway the desal plant and housinfg expansion in the wrong areas. Just a few issues we will be tackling.
A democrat with no union membership
Seats Labor won on Green preferences: Bennelong, Dobell, Eden-Monaro, Lowe, Macquarie, Page, Parramatta, Richmond, Robertson, Sydney (NSW), Bendigo, Chisholm, Corangamite, Corio, Deakin, Isaacs, Jagajaga, Melbourne Ports (Vic), Blair, Bonner, Dawson, Flynn, Leichhardt, Longman, Moreton, Petrie (Qld), Brand, Fremantle, Hasluck, Perth (WA), Adelaide, Hindmarsh, Kingston, Wakefield (SA), Bass, Braddon, Denison, Franklin, Lyons (Tas), Solomon (NT), plus any others we win.