Hendo off the hook

No Morgan poll on voting intention this week, although they do have a survey of 687 respondents on carbon emissions trading schemes. Apart from that:

• Paul Henderson’s Labor government has survived today’s no-confidence debate in the Northern Territory parliament, disappointing those hoping for a precedent-setting no-confidence motion and possibly an election to tide them over until the double whammy in South Australia and Tasmania next March. Nelson independent Gerry Wood announced he had reached an agreement to back Labor on confidence supply in the interests of “stable government”. Wood’s decision rendered irrelevant the defection of Macdonnell MP Alison Anderson, who deprived Labor of its one-seat majority and appeared ready to back the Country Liberal Party to bring down the government.

• Margaret May, the long-serving, low-profile Liberal member for the safe Gold Coast seat of McPherson, has announced she will not contest the next election. The Gold Coast News reports she is “battling serious health concerns”. Newspaper reports have been taking for granted that the opening will be of interest to Peter Dutton, who went down to the wire in his outer northern Brisbane seat of Dickson in 2007 and has been further damaged by the redistribution proposal.

• Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald reports NSW Liberal leader Barry O’Farrell is being “pressured” to purge parliamentary ranks of dead wood/members standing in the way of his sources’ promotion prospects. Those named are deputy leader and North Shore MP Jillian Skinner, Wakehurst MP Brad Hazzard, Baulkham Hills MP Wayne Merton, Castle Hill MP Michael Richardson and Cronulla MP Malcolm Kerr. Skinner, Hazzard and Merton are named by Clennell as supporters of O’Farrell, who is said to harbour ongoing concerns about the leadership ambitions of Manly MP Michael Baird. Baird and Willoughby MP Gladys Berejiklian are said to be possible successors to Skinner in the deputy’s position.

• The hearing into Liberal National Party candidate Andrea Caltabiano’s challenge against her defeat by Labor’s Steve Kilburn in Chatsworth at the Queensland state election in March has begun, with lawyers to sum up their cases on Monday. The LNP claims to have found enough routine-sounding anomalies to justify overturning Kilburn’s 74-vote win or having a new election declared, although the Electoral Commission of Queensland argues otherwise. Mark Oberhardt of the Courier-Mail reports a judgement is expected next month.

• Shawn O’Brien offers a beginners guide to fixed term reform for federal parliament at Online Opinion.

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.

1,007 comments on “Hendo off the hook”

Comments Page 20 of 21
1 … 19 20 21

  1. Scorpio

    “And if Labor decides to shelve the idea of attempting to have a CPRS passed during the term of this Parliament and doesn’t go for a DD, then the Greens will have only done nothing more than cut off their nose to spite their face.”

    The Govt would be extremely foolilsh to do this, they’d be breaking an election promise and come out looking like dills. Especially after using it to wedge the Libs. It wouldn’t be the Greens who’d suffer.

  3. Dio 928

    Its good to see the Libs are starting to negotiate but they will have to make sense when they do. Amendments like Hunt’s are never going to work:
    “Let’s agree this week that agricultural offsets should be in and that burping cows should be out.”

    That is just a sop to farmers – allowing them to pollute without counting their emissions. Farming (esp. grazing) in Australia is a bigger source of GHG emissions than transport. It is not credible to give them a financial benefit (gaining tradeable credits) without counting their impacts.

    Other countries won’t agree to that either. For an ETS to work it has to match international models sufficiently to allow credits to be traded. Modelling of both the government ETS and Turnbull’s alternative assume in part we would access cheaper carbon credit from other nations. So there is no point sugesting modifications that nobody in Copenhagen will support. Why would any manufacturing nation agree to an international ETS standard that penalised their manufacturing GHG emissions and ignored our farming ones?

    Tell em he’s dreaming.

  5. [The Govt would be extremely foolilsh to do this, they’d be breaking an election promise and come out looking like dills. Especially after using it to wedge the Libs. It wouldn’t be the Greens who’d suffer.]

    Not if the Govt Hammers home that the Greens were as equally to blame for it’s failure.

  6. Speaking of badly designed resource trading schemes, Cubbie Station is up for grabs:
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/17/2657448.htm

    They want $450 million for it!! And they have valued it as though a yet to be issued water license is issued. ROTFL 😀

    Why not wait for them to go broke and acquire the assets at fire sale prices? For once Bill Heffernan and Dr X are talking sense. If the govt buys this, it will just increase the value of licensne in the upper Darling. Time to restructure the system; as Cubbie proves, even those overprovided with licenses in the past are going broke now anyway.

  7. Frank

    You think anyone would buy that? Labor, in Govt says “oh it’s the Greens fault” – they look like even bigger dills.

  8. Socrates

    I agree, I don’t think the Govt should buy Cubbie Stn.

    Hey, what’s going on in the Lachlan River. I saw something on the news, but I’m in WA and we don;t get much news about Rural areas in the Eastern States. Have they run out of water or something?

  10. [Not if the Govt Hammers home that the Greens were as equally to blame for it’s failure.]

    32 Labor Senators + 5 Green Senators does not a majority make. I know it shoots your argument to pieces so it’s very easy to conveniently forget, but them’s the breaks.

    That, and Rudd never gives the crossbench oxygen by talking about them. So poor you on both accounts 🙂

  11. [The Govt would be extremely foolilsh to do this, they’d be breaking an election promise and come out looking like dills.]

    Why?

    All Labor has to do is ensure the electorate is aware that they did everything possible to put together a reasonable ETS and have it passed by both houses of Parliament and that it was frustrated in this endeavour by the obstruction by the Opposition, the Greens and Independents.

    If Labor doesn’t go for a DD election, then I know who will be toast. Labor will have no trouble retaining power at a “normal” election at the end of 2010, will definitely increase their Senate numbers, Fielding will be gone and the Greens will maybe increase their number by one, if they are lucky.

    Rudd said he had no intention to have a DD election. If that is a “core” intention, then what?

    Labor has “NO” obligation to give the Greens, Fielding or Mr X a leg-up by holding a DD and why should they?

    There has been “NO” co-operation by those parties in the implementation of Labor’s Legislative agenda so far (which they took to the election in 2007) why would Labor wish to reward that?

  14. Bob1234

    I don’t think any of the Labor-supporters we are discussing this with care about ‘facts’. It’s just some entertainment for them.

  15. Socrates

    There has to be some happy medium between having agriculture excluded totally and having an all carrot-no stick approach. I don’t know what it is but a compromise would be a great result.

  16. Scorpio

    I don’t know why you think what you do, but I don’t intend to discuss this anymore. It’s boring and it was discussed at length last week.

  17. [Bob1234

    I don’t think any of the Labor-supporters we are discussing this with care about ‘facts’. It’s just some entertainment for them.]

    [Scorpio

    I don’t know why you think what you do, but I don’t intend to discuss this anymore. It’s boring and it was discussed at length last week.]

    I notice that we’ve struck yet another raw nerve with our esteemed Green supporting Bludgers, as it seems when us Laborites present them with the political reality of their position they decide they want to take their bat and ball home.

    Oh well, it’s their loss.

  18. 32 Labor Senators + 5 Green Senators does not a majority make. I know it shoots your argument to pieces so it’s very easy to conveniently forget, but them’s the breaks. 🙂

  20. BK – I thought it was the ‘lollypop’ jacket for school crossings. Poor Bronwyn – she tries so hard to get her points of order accepted but keeps standing up at the wrong time.

    Garrett and Ellis just showed that renewal is the right way to go. Surely Bronwyn has enough in her super to last a lifetime so she should pass the flag to someone younger.

  21. [There has to be some happy medium between having agriculture excluded totally and having an all carrot-no stick approach.]
    We shouldn’t rush to include agriculture until the methodologies for accounting the emissions are more scientifically rigorous. What if it is included and it is found out later that the abatement was completely over estimated? That would then mean that the entire ETS has been rorted.

  22. the greens/alp sniping is repetitive and tiresome. at least the greens have a consistent position compared to the rabble opposition, and bob’s right, the bill was going down with or without their suppport. speaking of the rabble, the media does seem to be talking up Abbott as the next leader. PLEASE let this happen!!1

  23. 37 Coalition + 5 Greens + 1 FF + 1 Ind = a majority and surprise, surprise, exactly the same number that voted “against” the CPRS Bill in the Senate!!!

    Shoot that argument to pieces!

    I haven’t conveniently forgotten that, but, them’s the breaks as you say!!!

  24. [The Govt would be extremely foolilsh to do this, they’d be breaking an election promise and come out looking like dills. Especially after using it to wedge the Libs. It wouldn’t be the Greens who’d suffer.
    ]

    There would be no backlash against the Govt at all as the Govt’s attempts to do something have been in the news often. All the public will be aware of is the Govt tried their hardest and that the Liberals blocked them and there was some talk about calling an early election over it the Govt was so frustrated by the Libs. And at an election the Govt would make that point continuously. Argument over the details of it all will go over people’s heads. I don’t think anybody will notice the Greens part in anything as really they have been in the background to the Govt/Lib fight.

  26. [I don’t think anybody will notice the Greens part in anything as really they have been in the background to the Govt/Lib fight.]

    TP, you are dead right there. The Greens dealt themselves out of the debate right from the start and have never bothered to attempt to influence the result instead sitting back to let the Coalition and Labor fight it out.

    People will though remember that the Greens “did” vote with the Coalition and others to cause the failure of the Bill to pass!

  27. 973

    37 Coalition+1FF+1Ind= a majority

    37 Coalition+1FF= enough to block

    37 Coalition+1Ind= enough to block

    The Greens could not have made it pass. The numbers are likely to be different in November. The Greens are obstructing getting a CPRS is rubbish until atleast November.

  28. [What if it is included and it is found out later that the abatement was completely over estimated? That would then mean that the entire ETS has been rorted.]

    That’s why I think they should up the target to 10% and make 5% the most that can be gained through agriculture. That way it can’t stuff the rest of the ETS.

  29. [That’s why I think they should up the target to 10% and make 5% the most that can be gained through agriculture. ]
    But then you’ve created another market within the ETS since you have capped agriculture abatement. Wouldn’t that just add another layer of complexity?

    I think it makes much more sense just to leave agriculture out completely until 2015.

    Saying the target is 10% just because of you are including agriculture abatement is just an accounting trick anyway. Don’t we want actual real cuts to come from energy generation and dirty polluting industries, rather than letting coal power generators just buy offsets in farms?

  30. [37 Coalition + 5 Greens + 1 FF + 1 Ind = a majority and surprise, surprise, exactly the same number that voted “against” the CPRS Bill in the Senate!!!]

    Exactly! So with the climate change denialist known as Steve Fielding, support from the Greens is absolutely meaningless! Thanks for reinforcing this point, now go, spread the word!!!

    😀

  31. [People will though remember that the Greens “did” vote with the Coalition and others to cause the failure of the Bill to pass!]

    Exactly my point, which our Green supporters repeatedly fail to realise and this was the case with the Democrats and the GST.

  32. I always find it quite amusing that Joyce is against the ETS because he thinks it is a tax that will raise the price of roasts to $100 or more, yet he has shown an adamant desire to increase taxes on students via supporting Ellis’s shockingly bad CSU-by-the-back-door amenities fee.

  34. [People will though remember that the Greens “did” vote with the Coalition and others to cause the failure of the Bill to pass!]

    And this prove to your average voter that they weren’t really serious in supporting a CPRS in the first place.

  35. [yet he has shown an adamant desire to increase taxes ]
    And his party voted to put an 11 cent a litre tax on milk. The first time in Australia’s history that unflavoured milk had been subject to a tax.

    And his party voted to put a tax on books, the first time books had been subject to tax.

  36. Here we go round the Mulberry Bush,
    the Mulberry Bush,
    the Mulberry Bush,
    Here we go round the Mulberry Bush
    On a cold and frosty morning.

    And afternoon.

    And evening.

    And night.

  37. [So with the climate change denialist known as Steve Fielding, support from the Greens is absolutely meaningless!]

    So let me get this straight… the Greens shouldn’t vote for the CPRS because they don’t have the numbers, but Government should adopt the Greens CPRS policy. Makes a lot of sense… not

  38. Yawn. People know the Greens want a stronger ETS so voted it down, but had no power to pass it in the first place.

    The amount of propaganda dribbled around the place today by anti-Green Laborites is rather amusing I must say 🙂

  39. [The numbers are likely to be different in November. ]

    If they’re not, there will be egg on a lot of faces I think. Especially if Rudd does what he said he would and not call a DD election on the issue!!!

  41. Dio, what is needed here are people who can sift out the stirring from genuine debate and to respond only to the genuine debaters and ignore the stirrers. The stirrers would stop through lack of oxygen. However I think there are people on both sides here who would prefer a good fight than a feed and so we get this round and round the Mulberry Bush effect. Pity.

  45. [Diogenes,

    Are you allowed to prescribe yourself some valium?]

    I was going to suggest a biscuit,but a moggy will do just as good.
    😉

Comments are closed.

Comments Page 20 of 21
1 … 19 20 21