Itchy trigger fingers

Seems Morgan are having one of their occasional weeks off. Plenty of federal preselection action to report, as the parties prepare contingencies for a potential early election:

• The Australian’s Michael Owen reports South Australian Labor is finalising its federal preselections, which “senior factional figures” link to a potential early election. Mia Handshin is keen to run again, either in a second tilt at Sturt or where Nicole Cornes failed in Boothby. Cornes herself has found an interesting new line of work as an industrial officer for the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, but is “unlikely to win preselection”. A “senior ALP figure” nonetheless claims she is a genuine future prospect. Owen also reckons Labor Senator Dana Wortley faces electoral oblivion through “moves to relegate her to an unwinnable third spot”, although it was from that unwinnable position that she actually won her seat in 2004.

• Institute of Public Affairs director John Roskam has withdrawn from the contest to succeed Petrio Georgiou as Liberal candidate for Kooyong. He has thrown his support behind industrial relations lawyer John Pesutto, who looms as a threat to merchant banker Josh Frydenberg’s long-held designs on the seat. Rick Wallace of The Australian reports Pesutto also has the support of Ted Baillieu, who angered the Frydenberg camp by attending a function they “claim was to support Mr Pesutto”. Wallace also notes the June preselection will be “one of the first carried out under the Liberal Party’s new constitution, which empowers all eligible members within a seat to vote instead of only specially chosen delegates”. Andrew Landeryou at VexNews is told that “many of them … will be swinging votes with a history of supporting Baillieu/Petro or at least having a significant amount of affection for them or an in-built objection to the recruiting enthusiasms of Joshua”.

• Another interesting preselection for the Victorian Liberals looms in the eastern suburbs seat of Deakin, where two former members are hoping to make a comeback. One is Phil Barresi, who lost the seat to Labor’s Mike Symon in 2007. The other is Ken Aldred, whose eccentric reign extended from 1990 until his preselection defeat by Barresi in 1996. Aldred won a preselection ballot in Holt ahead of the 2007 election, but it was overturned by wiser heads in the party. Rounding out the field of known contenders is Deanna Ryall, a “local businesswoman”. Labor holds the seat with a margin of 1.4 per cent.

• New Queensland Opposition Leader John-Paul Langbroek foreshadows a more “flexible” approach than his predecessor in negotiating fixed four-year terms, improving the prospects for a referendum on the matter during the current term. Langbroek says it is not a priority, but Anna Bligh has apparently put the matter “on the agenda”. A referendum in 1991 for unfixed four-year terms was defeated with a 51.2 per cent no vote.

• Antony Green on the slow death of the election night tally room:

The next South Australian election will be the first conducted without a tallyroom. Both Victoria and NSW have also decided not to hold tallyroms at state elections due in November 2010 and March 2011. These state decisions may yet play a part in deciding whether free to air broadcasters attend the next Federal tallyroom. There were serious noise problems in the tallyroom in 2007, Sky News already bases its coverage from studio, and hosting from a studio would save the ABC and other free-to-air broadcasters considerable amounts of money and allow greater use of studio technology.

• I am maintaining elsewhere progressively updated posts on two looming electoral events: the May 16 Fremantle by-election and May 2 Tasmanian upper house elections.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

759 comments on “Itchy trigger fingers”

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  4. bob

    [Any part of the allowance not used on electorate expenses within the financial year can be kept by the MP, and is taxed as personal income.]

    Yes, they kept that very quiet. I didn’t know it either. The only thing Labor and Liberal can agree on is giving themselves a pay rise.

    Possum

    Very beautiful. It’s almost an optical illusion. It looks very blue but if you look closely it turns all red. And the 10% of booths that are most remote are almost all blue. That makes it easy to work out who gets the NBN and who doesn’t! 😉

  6. It’s just a matter of time before we get our first case in Australia. So far, I don’t think anyone could fault Health’s response. But I just wonder what the Liberal’s plans are for attacking the Government on this one. You just know they have one….

    [ Ten Queenslanders are being tested for deadly swine flu and one passenger has been detained after returning from Los Angeles displaying symptoms.]

    http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25391366-5006301,00.html

  9. Can someone please tell me the rationale for giving MPs an electorate allowance. Does it serve any purpose other than to give the incumbent an unfair advantage over their opponents at election time?

  13. The author of the Daily Denialists article;

    [Greg Melleuish is an associate professor in the school of history and politics at the University of Wollongong in NSW.]

    Wow! They really pull out the experts on climate change don’t they!

  15. My understanding re electoral allowances is that –
    *they cover staff costs above and beyond normal staff (and I think perhaps overtime) – the gripe amongst electorate officers (I was one briefly) being that the Feds use their allowance for these purposes and the State MPs think it’s their own money and don’t…so Fed MPs tend to be prepared to pay extra if staff go to out of hours meetings and State ones don’t.
    *they’re for the many incidentals that are part of the job – buying raffle tickets (nearly every community function an MP attends has one and an MP will attend a couple a week at least; locals expect their local MP to spend big), raffle prizes, etc.
    *office expense overruns (at least in Victoria) come out of the MP’s pocket.

    Not defending, explaining.

  20. Looks like the Repugs are politically exposed on Pandemic Preparedness. 😀

    [GOP Stripped Flu Pandemic Preparedness From Stimulus

    Famously, Maine Senator Collins, the supposedly moderate Republican who demanded cuts in health care spending in exchange for her support of a watered-down version of the stimulus, fumed about the pandemic funding: “Does it belong in this bill? Should we have $870 million in this bill No, we should not.”

    Even now, Collins continues to use her official website to highlight the fact that she led the fight to strip the pandemic preparedness money out of the Senate’s version of the stimulus measure.]

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/27/gop-stripped-flu-pandemic_n_191732.html

  21. MPs have to send out huge volumes of mail, and are also expected to produce electorate newsletters several times a year, to be sent to 80-90,000 households. That’s a lot of printing and postage.

  22. The Advertiser has moved onto another piece of civil engineering fantasy with a story about a $4 billion proposal to build the proposed 22km Norht – South corridor in one hit:
    http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25397206-5006301,00.html

    Obviously an engineer somewhere is advising them but its quite weird:
    – the government has already committed ot building this project
    – however it will take ten+ years at current funding, built in stages
    – the price quoted is WAY TOO LOW – the claimed $4 billion would barely cover the 6 km tunnel proposed, let alone the other 16km of the route. I’d say this would cost $7Bn+ in 2008 $.
    – for any policy people present, don’t believe those who claim its good to deliver these as one large project. I did some work in canberra on this a few years ago. There are economies of scale in road projects combining them up to about $300 million value. After that the number of potential bidders declines and unit costs go up.

    The thing I can’t work out is who has paid for all this proposal work to be done? Someone with money is behind this story; I doubt its RAA as quoted.

  26. Re: the electoral allowance rise- surely a reasonable option is to take out the loophole/rort that allows MPs to keep the money they dont spend as income

  28. Diogenes, here’s a good article on the swine flu issue which you would be interested in.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/swine-flu-outbreak—-nat_b_191408.html

    Seems as though the US was the original source of the 1918 pandemic and could be potentially a major source of spreading this one globally also given the interflow of people in and out of the country.

    [The Iowa team was also worried that CAFO production could lead to another 1918-style global pandemic. One theory behind that calamity is that waterfowl cross-infected U.S. pigs with a new type of avian-swine super-virus that was quickly transmitted to farm workers, possibly in Iowa, who went off to military training camps for WWI, and then spread the pathogen worldwide]

    The scariest thing about this flu is it is a genetic mixture of pig, human and avian flu.

    [This new strain making headlines and killing people contains genetic components of human flu virus, avian flu virus and – for the first time ever – two types of swine flu virus: American and Eurasian. “Such a combination of components (genes) was not found so far, neither among humans nor among pigs (as far as we know),” CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said in an email.]

    [Pigs are nature’s notorious “mixing bowls” for inter-species infections, and many swine flu viruses have long contained human influenza genetic components. Then, in the late 1990’s – when industrialized swine production really took off in North America – scientists were alarmed to find that avian influenza genetic material was also mixed into the continent’s viral soup (see below). Fortunately, it was not the dreaded and lethal H5N1 strain, which most people know of as “bird flu.”]

  31. [The scariest thing about this flu is it is a genetic mixture of pig, human and avian flu.]
    I wonder if any creationists will appreciate that events of this sort are more supporting evidence of evolution at work?

    No, I didn’t think so… 😀

  32. Scorpio

    I have just started reading a book about the 1918 flu – I thought it started in europe first then spread elsewhere, including the USA? The Wikipedia article puts it down to an origin in Austria.

  33. According to Vexnews.com, this http://www.andrewrixon.com.au/ website is of a Liberal pre-selection candidate for Kooyong. Sample:
    [When Andrew activated the program about six weeks ago, Andrew was unaware that the British had C.O.R.A terminals that the Australian Howard Government gave them. Futhermore Andrew was unaware that Elizibeth had started a program to use I.T programmers to reprogram C.O.R.A. So Andrew went ahead and started the weather program and immediately the British I.T programmers override the program and then used it against Australia which coursed major flooding in New South Wales and Queensland. But don’t worry Australia they, the I.T programmers won’t be brothering us again as Andrew invited them to a barbeque and they were the meat.
    Anyway then Andrew left it for awhile but then had another shot at it. Because Andrew didn’t understand how the program worked Andrew told C.O.R.A to evaporate seawater at the solomon islands and then send the evaporated water to Australia. However Andrew thought C.O.R.A would understand and send the evaporated seawater North/East around the planet, but because Andrew never told C.O.R.A to do this C.O.R.A then send the evaporated in the wrong direction which was the shortest route to mainlandinstead of going North/East the evaporated seawater went South/West and this coursed catastrophic failure which is what coursed the cyclones in Queensland.]

  36. I bet Obama is grateful to George Bush for leaving a few little problems on the plate for him to sort out and test himself with in his first term of office.

  37. [The yanks like to share things with the rest of the world. GFC virus, AIDS virus and Flu virus.]
    HIV most likely originated in Africa.

  38. ShowsOn @635: I love this –
    [… go out into the Stars and Concur.]
    Most agreeable galactic expansionist policy I have seen yet!

  39. [Most agreeable galactic expansionist policy I have seen yet!]
    Fortunately he provides a thorough explanation of how human reproduction works:
    http://www.andrewrixon.com.au/index.php?pr=How_Human_reproductive_system_works
    [When a male is having intercourse with a woman. The in and out movement of the penis waist it is inside the vagina creates an electrical charge inside both the penis and vagina. This has an effect on the walls of the vagina and electrically charges them which then pass the charge on to the ovarie. Think of the ovarie as a Delta Class planet, as the ovarie charges up it becames like a magnet…]

  40. [The scariest thing about this flu is it is a genetic mixture of pig, human and avian flu.]

    So pigs might fly?

    [After encountering the virus, Ms Neal said to it “Do you know who I am?”]

    Hey, think of your own jokes, pal. (625)

    [HIV most likely originated in Africa.]

    Well yes, but it was only when it got to the US that it became epidemic. The first few AIDS cases in Australia all had US connections.

  41. My submission to the NSW Redistribution Commissioners

    SUBMISSION RE 2009 REDISTRIBUTION IN NEW SOUTH WALES

    Dear Electoral Commissioners

    I would like to propose two changes to Division names in NSW. The first is to rename the Division of Berowra as the Division of McMahon. The second is to rename the Division of Prospect as the Division of Evatt.

    The Rt Hon Sir William McMahon was a federal MP for more than 30 years and was a minister continuously from 1951 to 1972, serving as Treasurer and Minister for External Affairs. He was Prime Minister in 1971-72. He is the only deceased Australian Prime Minister not to have a Division named after him. (I believe the Division of Cook is now officially named after Sir Joseph Cook as well as Captain James Cook.)

    The Rt Hon Dr Herbert Vere Evatt was a judge of the Hight Court of Australia 1931-40, a federal MP 1940-60, Minister for External Affairs and Attorney-General 1940-49, and Leader of the Opposition 1951-60. He was President of the UN General Assembly and a highly regarded representative of Australia. He did not become Prime Minister, but two other Divisions, Charlton and Calwell, are named for Opposition Leaders.

    Both these eminent Australians deserve to have a Division named after them. It is unlikely, however, that new Divisions will be created in NSW since the state is not growing as fast as other states and is losing a seat at this redistribution. It will therefore be necessary to rename existing Divisions.

    The Division of Berowra was created in 1969 and takes its name from the town of Berowra situated on Berowra Water north of Sydney. The Division of Prospect was also created in 1969 and takes its name from the Prospect Reservoir, which is near Mt Prospect in western Sydney. Neither name therefore commemorates any person or event of any significance, and neither name has existed very long.

    I suggest that both these names could be abolished without any loss of tradition or affront to any local sensibilities. I would suggest in fact that the people of both areas would welcome Division names that commemorate eminent Australians. Since Berowra is a safe Liberal seat and Prospect a safe Labor seat, naming them for former leaders of these parties respectively would be appropriate.

    I hope you will view this proposal favourably.

    Yours etc

  43. Frankly I’m dismayed by the measured response of many people on this blog to the swine flu outbreak. Surely there must be someone to blame, and some way in which it is the fault of one or other ideological approach? I saw Diogenes trying to stir the pot earlier, but no one appears to be going for it yet.

    I’m not at all surprised that the flu has spread from pigs to humans, after all humans have been eating pigs and feeding humans to pigs for… gee, well at least since Deadwood if HBO is to be relied upon, which of course it is. Surely there is some PB vegan somewhere who can blame omnivorous humans for this problem?

    Come on! It’s been, what, 48 hours already? Let the blaming and animosity begin!

  47. Perhaps Belinda Neal and her party should be placed in quarantine for a suitable time upon their return from Mexico? With the influenza virus having an incubation period of two weeks, she might be banned from any public meeting or speaking to anyone outside her house (including journalists) till say, after the next election?

  50. Poss

    In that case, given bipartisan support, adopting the precautionary principle, who knows how long the virus might remain dormant but dangerous? Perhaps a ban on Neal and Heffernan opening their mouth to speak while anyone is within earshot till, say the year 2100. I understand they have found samples of the 1918 virus in bdodies preserved under the permafrost some 90 years later. We must be careful.

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