Federal preselection season is in full swing, at least in some parts of the country. Three big Victorian Liberal contests are coming to the boil following the departure of sitting members in safe seats, while one Labor-held seat has produced a substantial challenge against a sitting member. The action in New South Wales and Queensland is in stasis pending redistributions which will be finalised early next year, although some preliminary jockeying has been under way. Things seem fairly quiet in South Australia and Western Australia, the latter situation prompting a spray at the Liberals from Peter van Onselen in The Australian, who complains about the apparent security of tenure for the state party’s bloated retinue of ageing backbenchers (only the relatively youthful Dennis Jensen in Tangney faces a challenge). Beyond that, there’s one item of news to report from Tasmania.
• The Age reports Victorian Liberal deputy director Daniel Tehan has resigned his position to contest preselection for Wannon, to be vacated at the next election by David Hawker. Tehan is the son of the late Marie Tehan, who was among other things Health Minister in the Kennett government. His confirmed opponents will include Louise Staley, former state party vice-president and Institute of Public Affairs agriculture policy expert; Rod Nockles, Howard government adviser and runner-up in the recent preselection for the less desirable prospect of Corangamite; Elizabeth Matuschka, a University of Ballarat administrator who ran unsuccessfully in Ballarat at the 2004 federal election and for Ballarat City Council last November; Matt Makin, a Corangamite councillor; Katrina Rainsford, a Southern Grampians councillor; and Hugh Koch, whom the Warrnambool Standard tells us is a Southern Grampians tourism manager. David McKenzie of the Weekly Times reports that former Victorian Farmers Federation president Simon Ramsay, recently unsuccessful in bids for Corangamite and a position on the board of the National Farmers Federation, has decided against nominating and will instead seek a state upper house berth in Western Victoria. Andrew Landeryou at VexNews has also named as possibilities “complicated Costello loyalist” Georgie Crozier and former police sergeant and anti-corruption crusader Simon Illingworth. UPDATE: The Age says the closure of nominations has produced 10 candidates, which includes “company director Stephen Mitchell”.
• Nicholas McGowan, former adviser to state Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu, has put his hand up to succeed the outgoing Chris Pearce as the Liberal candidate for Aston. Also in the field are two Knox City councillors, Sue McMillan and Darren Pearce (respectively representing Dobson and Taylor wards). McMillan earlier stood for preselection in both Ferntree Gully and Monbulk ahead of the 2006 state election. The Knox Leader reports that former mayor Emanuele Cicciello “has been tipped to run but is remaining tight-lipped”. On July 1, the Herald Sun reported that names “yet to be confirmed” included “former Howard government adviser Alan Tudge and lawyer John Pesutto, who performed well in the recent Kooyong preselection battle”, but VexNews reports the latter assertion is “not correct”.
• Rick Wallace of The Australian reports that the preselection contest for Higgins is “being fought out between Kelly O’Dwyer, a former senior adviser to Mr Costello, and Institute of Public Affairs director Tim Wilson”, who respectively have the backing of the Kroger and Baillieu factions. Definitely out of the running are Institute of Public Affairs executive director John Roskam, Crosby Textor consultant Jason Aldworth and former state party director Julian Sheezel, which Andrew Landeryou at VexNews credits to gentle persuasion from Michael Kroger in support of O’Dwyer. No word lately on Tom Elliott, hedge fund manager and son of John.
• With Mal Brough frozen out of the running in Higgins and Aston, Andrew Landeryou at VexNews relates he is “apparently looking or waiting to be drafted”, which might yet occur when Fran Bailey vacates McEwen at the election after next (assuming she can hang on to her 27-vote margin).
• This weekend sees the local ALP preselection ballot take place for the safe Labor Melbourne seat of Calwell. Incumbent Maria Vamvakinou, a stalwart of Kim Carr’s sub-faction of the Left, faces a challenge from Andy Richards, Geelong councillor and official with the Left faction Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (metalworkers’ division). The ballot accounts for half the overall vote, the other half being determined by the party’s Public Office Selection Committee. According to Rick Wallace of The Australian, Richards could secure support from the Right faction National Union of Workers and Health Services Union – collectively known as the “Ambition Faction” – which forged alliances with the AMWU after being excluded from a “stability pact” between the Kim Carr Left and Bill Shorten and Stephen Conroy of the Right. Should this transpire, moves to heal the rift between the rival Right groupings could miscarry. Wallace reports that Richards also has support from “local Turks aligned with ALP identity and local councillor Burhan Yigit”. If support for Richards holds firm, Wallace says the decisive factors will be “local Kurds and a local Lebanese numbers man, Mohamad Abbouche”. As Andrew Landeryou of VexNews tells it, the former might be inclined to back Richards because they are angry that Kim Carr has failed to support Moreland councillor Enver Erdogan in the state preselection for Brunswick. Landeryou says the Ambition Faction is hopeful of securing as much as 60 per cent of the vote for Richards, but the Carr camp is “confident they’ll be able to snaffle at least 20 per cent of the vote back from pesky ethnic warlords who are pledged to support Richards”. UPDATE: See below.
• Nick Butterly of The West Australian says that while Dennis Jensen’s chances of surviving Saturday’s Liberal preselection ballot in Tangney have been boosted by the support of Malcolm Turnbull and “Perth business heavyweights”, Liberal insiders say he “still faces defeat in this Saturday’s ballot because of local concerns about his fundraising efforts and performance in Federal Parliament”. It is not stated which of his two opponents is considered the more formidable: Alcoa government relations manager Libby Lyons, or Toyota Finance executive Glenn Piggott. UPDATE: See below.
• The Launceston Examiner reports that the frontrunner for Liberal preselection in Bass, Brigadier Andrew Nikolic, has withdrawn citing family and work issues. The nomination is now likely to go to Steve Titmus, a former television newsreader.
• The Australian’s Strewth column is advised by a Liberal source that there is “absolutely no truth” to rumours Melanie Howard might contest preselection for Bennelong. Earlier reports suggested approaches to former state MPs Kerry Chikarovski and Andrew Tink had been rebuffed. Also mentioned a while back was former rugby union international Brett Papworth.
UPDATE (18/7/09): Via Frank Calabrese, we learn that ABC TV news in Perth reports that Glenn Piggott has defeated Dennis Jensen in the Tangney preselection vote. Remembering of course that Jensen also lost before the last election, only to have the result overturned on the intervention of John Howard. Meanwhile, Andrew Landeryou reports that Andy Richards has pulled out of the Calwell preselection, so there should be no problems now for Maria Vamvakinou – notwithstanding earlier reports that one Manfried Kriechbaum had also nominated as part of a campaign of mischief-making by state Keilor MP George Seitz.
761 and 762
I did suggest an Adelaide Metropolitan Council (AMC) covering the whole of Adelaide in 754 on the previous thread. Few people more than 200km from the centre of Adelaide would care enough about Adelaide to make a decision based on Adelaide. Having the rural areas have more power over the city would make mean a more conservative council (think about the SA Liberal Party). The AMC should have control over more planning and transport decisions in Adelaide instead of the state government. There should be a less powerful than now local council as well (two tier municipal governments sould be adopted in all mainland state capitals).
Property votes can and should be removed from the municipal electoral systems where they still exist and even if that is not done the voting rules could be changed (unless trade treaties get in the way) on overseas voters.
77
The one child policy has reduced the projections for the population from what they were before it was introduced although there is dispute as to how much. Chinas population is growing at a level similar to the much of the West. The Chinese population is going to start falling at some point this century. Several nations populations are currently falling. To put things in perspective
This is a different concept. The larger banks are too big to be allowed to fail but CIT is too troubled to save.
[The plight of CIT, which provides loans to about a million small and midsize companies, particularly in the sagging retail sector, poses a crucial test of the Obama administration’s attempts to stabilize the nation’s financial industry.
The company’s failure would draw a stark dividing line through the new financial landscape. On one side would be banks that the government deems too big to fail. On the other would be the smaller institutions regarded as too troubled to save. CIT’s collapse appeared to have stemmed in part from a disagreement among regulators over whether the government should provide aid.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/business/17cit.html?_r=1&ref=business
steve
That would be about $65 billion down the tubes.
It says a lot about exuberance that the Dow went up by about 3% on the same day that it was becoming fairly clear (yesterday) that the Feds were not going to pay to keep CIT afloat.
Scorpio @ 96
Barnaby-for-Canberra? Bring it on, I say. Though it’s been done before, let’s do it again! Those over 35 might remember its devastating effects … on the Liberal party!
I don’t know about Moscow. Wasn’t that the “playing fields of Eton” era? Brilliant strategy, that. Pity about the injuries, though it inspired a clean sweep thereafter. Did for the French team for a century. Stalingrad I’ll grant you, one of the greatest matches.
But Leningrad – now that was a record! Most magnificent stand in the modern game’s history. Done for everyone’s dinner, batting & bowling for the first 3 innings, 9fer – well, nothing, really – in the last, the weather came to their aid (always such an ally the team’s supporters named it their General back in the “playing fields etc” era) then a magnificent 900 no to save the match – the whole world stopped to watch (all over the papers here) then on to a total clean-sweep of the rest of the series.
Dropped out after that for a long time; no one really game take them on, except verbally.
Fielding picked his years rather poorly when trying to prove global warming didn’t exist. 1985 to 1995 would have been a better selection (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080923c.html).
I really wish he would keep engineering out of this, most engineers know that you need to fit your trend line to a representative date set if you want to get a sensible result and that a belief in a grand fairy should be based on a littler more than a fairy tail written and modified over the last couple of thousands years.
Obviously there are people with different backgrounds who a fooled by his nonsense.
[Don’t shoot me for posting this but there is a very interesting psephological article here from Andrew Catsaras at Bolters.]
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/turnbull_would_have_to_defy_gravity_and_history/
I won’t shoot you, but I am very disappointed in you dio. The blog was interesting, the comments were full of anti-Labor pro-Liberal dribble, and false dribble at that.
[UPPER House reforms planned by the State Government will make it easier for independents and minor parties to be elected.
In the proposal, which sees the number of MPs fall from 22 to 16, the quota a candidate has to win to gain a seat will drop dramatically.
At present, that is about 8.3 per cent. If the number of MPs elected is only 16, that falls to 5.8 per cent.
In the Upper House at present, there are eight Labor MPs, eight Liberals, one Australian Democrat, one Green, two Family First and two independents.
On 2006 results, the likely make-up of a new 16-member Council would be ALP six, Liberal four and six from Family First, the Greens and the Australian Democrats.
Despite the likely advantage to minor parties, they are attacking the reforms, which go to a referendum at the March, 2010, state election. ]
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25792644-2682,00.html
Idiots.
Finns at 56, I wonder whether we should just not talk about Piers at all any more. Its quite incredible that he lives in this cocoon of hatred. He doesnt seem the least bothered that this government which he sees as such a huge failure has record poll ratings. At least Bolt is more realistic about the oppositions prospects. If Piers had any credibiilty left (instead of bile) he would at least try to reconcile his view with the polls
Scorpio, you wonder how the opposition, with a straight face after the rural funding debacle, can criticise the government for their spending strategy. Do they honestly expect the public not to notice the hypocrisy?? I guess they are just panicked because the stimulus that they railed against is going to be on show all over the country…
Labor ‘gagged’ school heads in Victoria
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25793769-2702,00.html
Settle down, Bob, it’s the OO after all.
Buried in the middle of their rant is this bit
[“If Mr Pyne bothered to check his facts, he would find a clause in the funding agreement which states: ‘Nothing in this item should be read as limiting your right to enter into public debate or criticism of the Australian government, its agencies, employees, servants or agents’,” Senator Arbib said.]
[Buried in the middle of their rant is this bit]
But read what the school reps are saying.
It’s not as bad as the Liberals are making it, it’s not as good as Labor is making it.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/state-tries-to-gag-principals-20090715-dlho.html
There’s The Age equivelent.
bob even if it is in every paper known to man, keep in mind this bit:
‘Nothing in this item should be read as limiting your right to enter into public debate or criticism of the Australian government, its agencies, employees, servants or agents’,” Senator Arbib said.
[Barnaby-for-Canberra? Bring it on, I say. Though it’s been done before, let’s do it again! Those over 35 might remember its devastating effects … on the Liberal party!]
I remember it well but probably not as well as John Howard. I think he is still haunted by that today.
I wish I had have got one of those t-shirts though. They would be collectors items now and probably worth a few bob!!
The Principals have been asked to sign an agreement that they won’t do anything to bring the program into disrepute, and to guarantee they will spend the money on computers as agreed. With the proviso clause I quoted above, this suggests they are still free to criticise the program, they just aren’t allowed to sabotage it. Seems fair enough to me.
The problem, from my reading of The Age version, is that the clause has provoked a knee jerk reaction from the Principals, based on their memories of being Jeffed.
So OO headline apart, who does it really reflect badly on?
Andrew,
[I guess they are just panicked because the stimulus that they railed against is going to be on show all over the country…]
I think what bugs them the most is that Labor Ministers are attending for the sod turning and opening ceremonies even at projects in Liberal electorates with Labor getting all the credit and kudos for the project.
They are absolutely filthy at having plaques crediting Labor for the projects being placed in Liberal electorates. Not the done thing, you know.
Still, many of those marginal Lib seats will most probably be marginal Labor seats after the next election so it won’t matter too much in the long run except that Labor may then consolidate those marginals at the election after and shut the Libs out for a very long time.
Easy to see why they are cracking up about it. Labor have taken the Libs own electoral ploy and taken it to a new level and all under the cloak of dealing with the GFC and supporting employment and infrastructure development in all electorates. Development that the Libs ignored for 12 years!!!
[But read what the school reps are saying.]
They wouldn’t happen to be strong Liberal supporters or Members by any chance would they?
It was the first thing I thought of when I read a previous article making a similar claim except it omitted Arbib’s disclaimer!
I don’t know if this has been posted earlier, but Kevin Rudd now has a blog:
http://www.pm.gov.au/PM_Connect/PMs_Blog/Climate_Change_Blog
It looks suspiciously like Bolter lurks on PB quite a bit. His blog was taken from an ozforums link by Aristotle, who I assume is the Andrew Catsaras who Bolt assigns to the quote.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/turnbull_would_have_to_defy_gravity_and_history/P20/
[Aristotle
Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 3:55 pm | Permalink
For the information of members and their guests:
“Better PM ratings? They couldn’t get much worse!”
http://www.ozforums.com.au/viewtopic.php?id=5854%5D
The junior reporters at the OO have been eating their Wheaties this morning.
TWO scandals in the one edition? I guess they’re trying to put it about that Labor is so compromised by greed, grubby politics and cronyism – one of the articles manages to cobble together: Chinalco, Grant, Utegate, Rudd, Rudd’s brother, the 51 Club, sponsored trips to Beijing and rorting of the pecuniary interests register.
You really do wonder why they bother with this. There’s only supposed to be one scandal per week, not two. This week we’ve already had SternHu-gate, so it’s gilding the lily a little isn’t it to bring up another couple for the weekend (and it’s not even a Newspoll weekend).
The idea that without policies, without leadership, without anything but whingeing, complaining negativism, that the Liberals are going to get back into power on “Spy sheikh got reference from AG” or “Ripoll travelled to China, knows Rudd, Grant, bought land in Qld.” is ludicrous. I’m sure the Lib die-hards will hate Rudd even more, will be even more convinced he is a dud, worst-PM-evah etc., but so what? They weren’t voting for him anyway. All these kinds of stories do is get Rudd-haters angrier than they were and then they make stupid mistakes.
That’s quite a coincidence, Aristotle. Right on que!
Are you Andrew Catsaras and you sometimes post as “Andrew” also?
Bushfire Bill,
Don’t you just love the smell of OO desperation in the morning?
Hi Ozpol and Muskiemp
I saw that Oz story on Peter Andrews, quite good.
I saw a lot of the changes on the land that Peter talked about. We had 2 creeks either side of our hays flats and every 2 – 3 years following a big rain the creeks would overflow, flood the flats, leave debris on them and wreck fences. The highway would also be cut off at times.
This happened in a lot of other areas too, so the solution was to clear the creeks of debris so that in big rains the the flats would not flood and highways be cut off.
Was a smart solution, saved the farmer expense of repairing fences and clearing debris and highways not cutoff as much.
Of course what happened is all the wonderful river silt that used to be laid on the land following a flood was washed out to sea, the underground water tables that were replenished following a flood dried up and were not there as a natural backup in dry times, the natural eco system of the creeks was destroyed with the free flows as no more safe billabongs in dry times and the fast flows caused enormous erosion.
The farmers used to slash weeds and leave them on the ground and I remember the old farmers saying weeds only grow in poor soil and that in good soil the grasses would crowd the weeds out.
But I think a new line of thinking promoted by the herbicide companies took holfd that slashing weeds caused their seed to spread and it was best to poison them. Similar with the blackberry and other noxious weeds programs.
Peter is going against the big interests of the herbicide, pesticide and fertiliser companies with his ideas. If his ideas were taken up those companies and thers have a lot to lose.
[‘Nothing in this item should be read as limiting your right to enter into public debate or criticism of the Australian government, its agencies, employees, servants or agents’,” Senator Arbib said.]
Bob, why doesn’t this clause alleviate your concerns about this?
Scorpio @ 124, I routinely send my analyses to many in the media and they sometimes get published or mentioned on TV or radio. Andrew Bolt has published several of them recently.
I am he, you uncovered, but I was always post under Aristotle.
[Bob, why doesn’t this clause alleviate your concerns about this?]
It’s because the clause was put in there in the first place that raises suspicion about why it needs to be explicitly stated – as is said in the article.
So why is it that we are ignoring the concerns of the teachers and principals, and agreeing with whatever Labor says?
[It’s because the clause was put in there in the first place that raises suspicion about why it needs to be explicitly stated – as is said in the article.]
So when the responsible minister states explicitly that there is no limit on the right of principals to criticise the government, that is proof that the opposite is the case. Only in Greenland does this kind of logic operate.
As for The Age article, Paul Austin is a long-term enemy of the Victorian Labor government. Any balanced story would have quoted Arbib’s statement.
[EXPLOSIONS have been reported at two of the biggest hotels in Indonesia – the Marriott and Ritz Carlton in Jakarta.
The facade of the Ritz-Carlton hotel was blown off in one blast this morning and another explosion hit the Marriott hotel, police in Jakarta said. ]
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25795235-5006301,00.html
Reading Bolt’s bloggers on the Sheikh-gate story was a sickening experience.
pseophs, concidentally abc radio didnt mention the disclaimer in its reporting yesterday morning. its very clear that the prinicipals are NOT gagged, but cant undermine the system of grants. i guess we know the govt is doing well when we have so many fake crises being reported on instead of real ones…
The anti – CC mob are out in force on the PM’s new blog. If your a CC believer you might want to pop over and lend a hand.
The winged monkeys are in full flight.
[The anti – CC mob are out in force on the PM’s new blog. If your a CC believer you might want to pop over and lend a hand. ]
Meh. Let them have their rant. The angrier they get, the better. The vast majority of Australians believe in all likelihood CC is man-made and want something done about it. Crackpots like Fielding and a bunch of cherry picking morons aren’t going to change that.
[So why is it that we are ignoring the concerns of the teachers and principals, and agreeing with whatever Labor says?]
Why is it bob you are ignoring the explanation of a senior minister who is prepared to go on record and say their concerns are unfounded? Why is it you continue to attack other people for having a different point of view to you? Hell, it’s getting to the point that if you agree with Labor there is something wrong with you. Get over it old son. Argue the case.
Corruption gets Nuttall seven years jail.
[Former Queensland cabinet minister Gordon Nuttall has been jailed for seven years for official corruption.
He will be eligible for parole in two and a half years – on January 2, 2012.
The one-time Sandgate MP, 56, was found guilty on Wednesday of corruptly receiving $360,000 in secret commissions from two wealthy Queensland businessmen between 2002 and 2005.
He had had faced a maximum of seven years’ jail on each of 36 separate charges.]
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/nuttall-gets-seven-years-20090717-dng7.html
If the conservatives put as much effort into formulating policy ideas as they do into marshalling their propaganda noise-machine onto the ‘comments’ section at blogs and new outlets, they might be somewhat more viable at the next election.
[pseophs, concidentally abc radio didnt mention the disclaimer in its reporting yesterday morning. its very clear that the prinicipals are NOT gagged, but cant undermine the system of grants.]
Neil Mitchell on talking Liberal 3AW also left out that disclaimer.
109
I would guess that one reason that it is so unpopular with the minor parties is that while it cuts the quota to 5.88% for one MLC it increases the quota for a second MLC to 11.76% rather than getting 8.33 or more % at two elections in a row. The figures seem to be based on the non-ALP non-Liberal parties getting the same number as they have in the current parliament and this includes the No Pokies two who`s voters I thought came mainly from the ALP and Libs.
Stumbled upon the third judgment in the appeal for the seat of Chatsworth. Orders have been given as to who can and can not see documents about a secret ballot in this case.
http://archive.sclqld.org.au/qjudgment/2009/QSC09-186.pdf
What is the position (or are the positions) of the SA liberals on SALC reform?
[Neil Mitchell on talking Liberal 3AW also left out that disclaimer]
But remember, only the government spins 😉
[I would guess that one reason that it is so unpopular with the minor parties is that while it cuts the quota to 5.88% for one MLC it increases the quota for a second MLC to 11.76% rather than getting 8.33 or more % at two elections in a row.]
Then that means the Greens and other minors are thinking more about electing 2 rather than 1 of their own party, than getting a higher % of seats in the house. Not impressed.
145
1 out of 16 is 6.25%
2 out of 21 is 9.52%
There number of miner party MLCs may go down which would reduce the ability to have an effective house of review. Separate SALC elections would increase the minor party vote and make a more effective house of review.
[While trying to deal with this dilemma and address his leadership weakness, Turnbull has followed the line of deputy Liberal leader and foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop, and her backbench namesake Brownyn Bishop, in urging Rudd to call his counterpart in China and demand action over the detention of Rio executive Stern Hu.
This action is short-sighted, not very smart politically and potentially dangerous. The more constructive and smarter political ploy for Turnbull would have been to immediately offer bipartisan support for anything to help Hu, a position adopted on previous difficult diplomatic cases. That would have made Turnbull appear statesmanlike and responsible and leave open the option of taking the government to task if it proved incompetent.]
Dennis, tell David Speers that.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25792429-17301,00.html
[There number of miner party MLCs may go down which would reduce the ability to have an effective house of review. Separate SALC elections would increase the minor party vote and make a more effective house of review.]
Hmm true. But I don’t agree with 8 year terms. We’re stuck with Bressington and Darley, two nobodies of no party who were only elected/appointed on the back of Xenophon, for 7 years after Xenophon quit.
Update on Bombings
http://tinyurl.com/n36vhp
There are 22 MLC’s if you include the speaker.