I held off doing a post on yesterday’s unconvincing Morgan phone poll result in the hope they would give us a face-to-face poll this week, but either they’ve gone on Christmas break or are returning to their old pattern of combining results fortnightly. Yesterday’s effort was a phone poll from a sample of just 493 respondents, conducted on the back of a survey about climate change. The results were not unlike those of last week’s similarly dubious poll: Labor up a point to 42 per cent, the Coalition down 1.5 per cent to 41.5 per cent and the Greens down one to 9.5 per cent, with Labor’s two-party lead steady on 53-47.
Elsewhere:
• Phoebe Stewart of the ABC reports Palmerston deputy mayor Natasha Griggs has been preselected as the Country Liberal Party candidate for Darwin-based Solomon, defeating three other candidates including Darwin City Council alderman Garry Lambert and Tourism Top End head Tony Clementson. Bob Gosford of The Northern Myth further writes that Bess Price, described by the Northern Territory News as an “indigenous domestic violence campaigner”, has nominated for CLP preselection in the territory’s other electorate, Lingiari. Price has the backing of Alison Anderson, Labor-turned-independent member for Macdonnell, and says she has “always voted Labor” in the past.
• VexNews hears the NSW Liberals could dump Chris Spence as candidate for The Entrance early in the New Year. At issue is Spence’s comprehensive resume as a former One Nation activist: research officer to the party’s state upper house MP David Oldfield, federal candidate for Fraser in 1998, state candidate for Barwon in 2003, New South Wales state party secretary, national and state president of the youth wing “Youth Nation”, and ACT branch president and regional council chair.
• Samantha Maiden of The Australian reports possible scenarios for federal intervention into the NSW Labor Party include replacing secretary Matthew Thistlethwaite with an administrator answerable to the federal executive, and stripping Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid of their preselection (respectively for Fairfield and the upper house).
• Nick Minchin told ABC Television on Wednesday that it would be “healthy for democracy” if restrictions were placed on television election advertising to reduce the costs of campaigning.
• The Labor national executive has endorsed Rob Mitchell for a second try at McEwen, to be vacated at the next election by retiring Liberal Fran Bailey. The court ruling in Mitchell’s unsuccessful legal challenge against the 2007 result saw his margin of defeat increased from 12 to 27.
• Damien Madigan of the Blue Mountains Gazette reports the the state leadership change has inspired Labor’s national executive to delay its preselection decision for Macquarie, where Blue Mountains mayor Adam Searle is expected to be named successor to the retiring Bob Debus.
• Reader Sacha Blumen points me to a Wentworth Courier article from a month ago (see page 22) naming two potential Labor candidates for Wentworth – “Paddington veterinarian Barry Nielsen and Darlinghurst barrister Phillip Boulten” – in addition to Stephen Lewis, described in last week’s edition as a Slater & Gordon lawyer, anti-high rise activist and members of the Jewish Board of Deputies. Former Australian Medical Association president Kerryn Phelps has also been mentioned in the past. This week the Courier reports the Greens have endorsed Matthew Robertson, a Darlinghurst-based legal researcher for the Refugee Advice and Casework Service.
• Antony Green berates those of us who were “examining the entrails of the booth by booth results to try and divine some patterns” from Saturday’s by-elections, arguing such entrails are only interesting for what they tell us about “how Labor voters react to the Greens as a political party”. The conclusion is that “Labor voters in the ritzier parts of Bradfield seem more likely to view the Greens as a left-wing alternative to Labor than Labor voters in less affluent areas”. Antony has since conducted some entrail examination of his own to conclude that the resulting positive relationship between the two-party Liberal vote in 2007 and the Liberal swing at the by-election is unusual for urban electorates. My own post-mortem was published in Crikey on Monday.
• The NSW Nationals have announced the state seat of Tamworth will be the laboratory for its open primary experiment, in which the party’s candidate will be chosen by a vote open to every person enrolled in the electorate. The naturally conservative seat is held by independent Peter Draper, having been in independent hands for all but two years since Tony Windsor (now the federal member for New England) won it in 1991.
• Robert Taylor of The West Australian has written an action-packed column on Labor federal preselection matters in Western Australia. It commences thus:
On the surface, the WA Labor Party’s powerful state administrative committee looks to have a straightforward job next Monday when it meets to approve candidates in crucial seats for next year’s Federal election. In typical Labor fashion, three of the candidates for the most winnable Liberal seats of Swan, Cowan and Canning are unopposed, the backroom deals having already been done between the factional powerbrokers to obviate the need for a vote and all the inherent dangers that accompany them. In Durack, where there’s an outside chance of Labor rolling incumbent Barry Haase in the redrawn Kalgooorlie-based electorate, former State Geraldton Labor MP Shane Hill is also unopposed, but that’s because he was really the only one who wanted it badly enough. In Stirling, where Labor has a second to none chance of rolling incumbent Michael Keenan, something obviously went wrong because two people decided to nominate against the favourite Louise Durack, but an upset is highly unlikely.
So the administrative committee had very little to worry about until last Thursday when the Corruption and Crime Commission released its long-awaited report on goings-on at the City of Wanneroo, which handed a couple of misconduct findings to deputy mayor Sam Salpietro and fired a salvo across the bows of Wanneroo mayor Jon Kelly. The problem for Labor is that Mr Kelly is the party’s hope in the seat of Cowan, held by the Liberals Luke Simpkins with a thin 2.4 per cent margin. Labor sees a combination of the local mayor and Kevin Rudd as an irresistible combination in Cowan and had all but pencilled in the seat as a win before last week’s report. The CCC made it clear that in its opinion Mr Kelly was prepared to curry favour with former premier-turned-lobbyist Brian Burke in order to further his own political ambitions. Mr Kelly argued both at the commission and since the report came out that he did everything possible to distance himself from Mr Burke, but put bluntly the CCC just didn’t believe him – which must make the ALP’s administrative committee wonder whether the voters of Cowan will either.
• Dennis Shanahan of The Australian has been in touch to point out an error in last week’s Newspoll post, which stated both Newspoll and the Nielsen poll were both conducted on the Friday and Saturday. Newspoll’s surveying in fact continued throughout Sunday, with The Australian releasing the result at the end of the day.
I’m sure the Vatican will have been applying significant scientfic rigour in its verification of Mary McK’s second “miracle”.
It’s just sickening to see all the rubbish that is being put out in the media on this subject.
[Leukaemia can easily be misdiagnosed and can go into spontaneous remission but who’s fussing too much.]
I thought the miracle was she went through life without having sex?
zoomster – 580
I think you and I are talking at cross-purposes.
First, let me say what I think you are talking about – A situation where the rank and file select a candidate, but the local decision is overturned by a centralised body – this creates big news.
What I am talking about being big news – is where a decision was made that a centralised selection be made in the first instance, but subsequently a push is made for local selection.
However, on a more general level I am arguing against centralised selection in any event.
In NSW National Executive were to meet to impose candidates in 6 seats. They imposed 5 candidates but failed to impose one in Macquarie – where the calls for local decision making are being made.
I might just add that it is hard to accept that in the 5 seats where a candidate was imposed, the candidates were selected on merit. You would expect a merit selection to occur where all Executive members entered the decision making process with an open mind and acted independently based on their own view of the merits. Rather than merit, the candidate selection seems to have been based on factional horse-trading. For example it has been reported that Julia Gillard was very actively pursued securing a seat for Mr Ferguson, whose seat had been abolished in the re-distribution.
Peter, OK.
I must admit we have had similar happenings in Victoria (which is why I got some of those rule changes up!
I know that in one of those cases, it was because a ‘spoiler’ action was being run from within the party – that is, a particular factional group was putting up candidates purely as a muscle flexing exercise. It was pretty clear that the candidate preselected by head office would have been the candidate anyway (and there certainly was no outcry that I heard of) but it avoided a messy and probably unnecessary fight.
Preselections can be pretty nasty and damaging exercises, splitting party members just at the time you most want them to be united and creating often long lasting ill feeling which spills over to future preselections.
Another case I know of was the Victorian Upper House elections. HO argues these should be elected centrally, Senate style; there is an ongoing argument that it should involve the r and f. I understand the arguments on both sides, but am pushing the latter course (because I believe in democracy).
BTW there does need to be an understanding about the difference between explaining and supporting (not aimed at Peter necessarily; it’s a common problem). I can explain all sorts of things the party does whilst not supporting them. I can understand and defend why the party took a particular action without supporting it (necessarily).
Sometimes a poster here will ask why such and such an action was taken and I’ll explain why it did, only to find myself under attack!
604
The reason that Senate and Legislative Council preselections are harder to do with member input (in parties of the ALP`s size) is because of the party tickets. A way has to be found to give both balance to the representation of factions and to rank candidates for the ticket. If Robson Rotation was adopted then a simple PR preselection could take place.
Socrates@586:
[so nuclear is it if people are serious about reducing CO2 in Australia.]
It is worth listening to this debate:
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2009/12/fro_20091209_1810.mp3
ABC Radio National Fora 9th Dec 2009
Scott ludlum the greens senator was the last to speak.
He made the following points:
*Rum Jungle Uranium mine has left a radioactive area along 40 – 50 km of the East Finniss River.
*We reached peak nuclear in 2002.
*There are now 435 power stations, 9 less than 2002 as of Aug 2009
*There have been no startups for nuclear power plants in the last two years
*they are being retired faster than we can build.
*The last reactor in US took 25 years to build.
*The economics of nuclear power is killing the industry. Without government subsidies it would not exist.
*Costs in 70s were $750 /kw current est $7000 per kw.
*wind cost is $2000 solar $3000 per kw.
*There is no nuclear power in a deregulated market. All need the taxpayer to make them viable.
*Peak nuclear in europe was 1989
*Being phased out in spain and germany
*Finland nuclear plant is now three years overdue, budget is $3 billion over
*A nuclear plant shut down in 2007 in japan is still shut down
*Zero nuclear plants in US under construction
Doesn’t sound hopeful, does it?
DrG@583:
[Anyone know why 1000 would change their usual voting booth for a different one last Saturday?]
Did they change, or did they just not show up? I thought that figures were down across the board. Were there some other booths that showed a corresponding increase? I didn’t think that was the case.
I heard that many thousands in Higgins simply did not turn up to vote.
[One thing Tim mentions is the big swing in Toorak West. However, that is just one booth and there is obviously a local factor because, as Tim also points out, only 35% of the 2007 election voters turned up there in 2009. Anyone know why 1000 would change their usual voting booth for a different one last Saturday?]
It was not in fact the same polling booth. The booth called “Toorak West” in 2007 was Glamorgan School, in residential Toorak. This time it was Melbourne High School, 1.5 kilometres away on Chapel Street.
William Bowe -608
I think we can confidently call your explanation “end game” for the question raised.
Thanks William.
You know everything.
MoooooOOoOoOoOooo..ooo..oo..OOO
So there!
Well, I know that, anyway. Antony Green heard on by-election night that the booth had proved “awkward for elderly people to get to”, hence the low turnout and slump in the Liberal vote.
[Thanks William. – You know everything.]
hmmm, i thought only God knows everything. So Bilbo is God then. Hallelujah, we are all on mission from God 😎
[don
Posted Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 2:55 pm | Permalink
Socrates@586:
so nuclear is it if people are serious about reducing CO2 in Australia.
It is worth listening to this debate:]
Stop bringing facts into the debate; and remember you have to chant; “faster breeder reactor”; that is going to save the industry.
Well, we are definitely going to get plus two. The only real question now is how much more than plus two.
Haven’t seen the figures for ocean acidification if manage to stablize around plus two levels of carbon ppm.
don
interesting list of nuclear things. No doubt Abbott will be stirring the nuclear pot as part of the disinformation campaign. It iwll be interesting to watch the usual crew of Liberals and Nationals who explain why a nuclear power station could not possibly built in their electorates.
Afternoon all, I’ve spent a nice Sunday arvo at Bunnings and bought some blinds and shadecloth.
Speaking of nuclear, it seems like weapons not power are on Kev’s mind at present.
[Kevin Rudd will continue his campaign to rid the world of atomic weapons with the launch of the report from his international commission on nuclear disarmament during his visit to Japan.]
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/pm-to-campaign-against-nuclear-weapons-20091213-kq8t.html
Well, it’s nice to see Chris Smith isn’t getting any sympathy from the bloggers at the Telegraph (abut time).
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sunday-telegraph/groping-2gb-host-chris-smith-loses-job-family/comments-e6frewt0-1225809729558
Someone so full of hatred and bile finally gets their just desserts. Hardly a sympathetic ear in any of the comments.
[Afternoon all, I’ve spent a nice Sunday arvo at Bunnings and bought some blinds and shadecloth.]
The blinds won’t fit and the shadecloth won’t last the summer.
Nothing I ever buy from Bunnings works. It’s almost a law of nature.
Bloody Hell BB you old Grinch you!
The Bunnings bloke said the shadecloth I got was the good stuff, he showed me the cheap brand that he said was rubbish. I got $10 off the price as well. 🙂
If it all falls apart I’m going to blame you BB 😛
Kev’s been to visit Mary Mac’s this morning
[Mr Rudd, a practising Anglican, took time out to attend mass at the North Sydney chapel, where Mother Mary is interred.]
I wonder if he called in for a cuppa with Joe while he was in his neck of the woods?
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/pm-visits-mackillops-resting-place-20091213-kq6n.html
Ant sand apart (& nothing is currently working on the black ant plague), not even OH’s unrelenting total warfare, we’ve not had a problem with Bunnings.
Variation of the Midas touch, BB?
*pokes Vera for fun and profit*
[Well, I know that, anyway. Antony Green heard on by-election night that the booth had proved “awkward for elderly people to get to”, hence the low turnout and slump in the Liberal vote.]
I wonder if the AEC were refused to use Glamorgan School because it was a Private School, while Melbourne High is a State School ? Is there a policy about only using Govt Schools and other publiclty owned buildings as polling booths ?
625
It probably had more to do with use of appropriate venues by their owners. Im am not aware of such a policy.
cud chewer
Now look what you’ve done!
OzPolTragic
[Variation of the Midas touch]
I thought you might have been on Kevin’s visit to Mary Mac’s…she must be a shoo-in for sainthood now 😀
Just you wait till us cows invent teleportation.. you humans are off to Mars! 🙂
Frank Calabrese #625
No! But private school venues are often required for school activities, or hired by outsiders – especially at that time of the year.
OPT@623:
Are these ants out in the paddock, or at least the back yard?
If so, I can recommend common garden variety petrol poured down the nest. You do not light it, it just kills the buggers.
It’s cheap, too.
Doesn’t work for the house, of course, unless you are fully insured and would like to redecorate….
From the FAKE Wilson Tuckey 🙂
[FakeWilTuckey
Anyone notice that the hippies are the ones being arrested in Copenhagen? Not we sceptics. No. Just the filthy lying greenie scum. about 3 hours ago from Echofon ]
My hobby is killing ants. I don’t want to psychoanalyse it too much.
I’ve tried metho (and I do light it) but what works best is finding the nest holes and spraying contact spray down them. You need to keep checking over the next few days, there’s usually multiple entrances to the nest and some of them will be missed the first time.
I prefer a 50 cal machine gun.
Feed your black ants red wine. They don’t seem to do that well on it. Red wine and patients that is the key.
Fredn, will you be my doctor?
I try not to kill ants. Don’t like killing things at all. Even grabbed a funnel web spider one night last year and put him over in the bush. This was not by hand, but with a patented spider grabber.
We saw it at one of the ABC garden shows. The salesman had a booth, a headset and he was giving demonstrations. He had a pet Huntsman called “Boris”. After 973 demos, Boris had clearly developed a sophisticated evasion technique. As the spider grabber descended down upon him he would start shifting from side to side, like a goalie pumping up to repel a penalty kick.
Score 1 for the salesman if Boris got caught in the grabber’s prongs.
Score 1 for Boris if he could avoid the prongs, run up the shaft of the gizmo, scamper all the way along the salesman’s arm and make it to his shoulder. It was absolutely fascinating. Loud screams from the audience of course, but the salesman’s pitch was brilliant: “Ah yes… but not all spiders are as smart as Boris.”
He had a point.
The funnel web I found (just as it was about to crawl under our front door, incidentally) was clearly south of Boris in intelligence but north of Boris in pugnaciousness. Rather than run, he reared up, which was how I caught him. I guess no-one had ever used a spider grabber on him before.
There is a lesson in this for Tony Abbott, by the way: naked aggression doesn’t always win the day.
Z@633:
[I’ve tried metho (and I do light it) but what works best is finding the nest holes and spraying contact spray down them.]
Nah.
You are pussyfooting around. Go for the real thing.
Petrol works, avoid all other limp wristed (and expensive) alternatives.
Do it once and do it right. Peeeetrooool! (cue the Supremes and a studio orchestra)
Laocoon #628
Nyaah! I’m your atheist-style person from way back.
Mind you, if I had to admire a saint, she wouldn’t be a bad choice. Very typically Oz bush girl/ woman who stood up to a pope (& got excommunicated for it for a while; until he saw reason)
I doubt she would have taken to the current pope, Tony Abbott or Barnaby; but would probably have enjoyed Gough & Hawkie.
For the environmentaly friendy way to get rid of ants, try talcum powder on their tralis and around nest, works every time.
You would these black ants! Incredibly destructive in the garden & more cunning than outhouse rodents, they come in massive battalions, try to get into the roof, colonise clothes/ dish-washing machines, tea, coffee & espresso machines & anything edible; eat through everything, including electric wiring, and seem to be immune to everything (inc rat cakes).
The only thing I can say in their favour is that what doesn’t kill them seems finally to have solved the (exotic) gecko problem.
We have had an echidna running about in the bush behind our place for the last few weeks. He’s been snuffling around old logs and stumps having a good feed of the ants.
Ozpol I’ll have a word to him if you like and send him up to your place 🙂
Marg, talking about “getting rid” of ants is extremely insensitive, and shows you to suffer from speciesism and mammalian chauvinism. The environmentally friendly thing to do is to co-exist with the ants. They were here first, after all, and have as much right to exist and to eat as you do. You should apologise to the ants, offer to share whatever you have with them, and try to learn from their culture. I can recommend some formidicae-hominid consciousness-raising classes for you if you like.
[Marg, talking about “getting rid” of ants is extremely insensitive, and shows you to suffer from speciesism and mammalian chauvinism. The environmentally friendly thing to do is to co-exist with the ants. They were here first, after all, and have as much right to exist and to eat as you do. You should apologise to the ants, offer to share whatever you have with them, and try to learn from their culture. I can recommend some formidicae-hominid consciousness-raising classes for you if you like.]
And she’s a “Green” as well – wonderful double standards for a so-called supporter whose Party would stop work on a major development to save said ants. 🙂
Now, Frank, I’m trying to be helpful here. Let’s be nice.
You’re a bad, bad lad, Psephos. Funny though. And what about the Laurence Durrell tour? What’s it entail?
[*Rum Jungle Uranium mine has left a radioactive area along 40 – 50 km of the East Finniss River.]
Reference?
[*We reached peak nuclear in 2002.]
Wrong. There’s at least 80 years of Uranium left, but within a couple of decades all new reactors will be able to run on mixed oxide fuel extracted from what is currently called nuclear waste.
Also, this ignores the potential of breeder reactors to make fuel from Uranium 233. In other words, this is an argument base don assuming that reactor technology will stay the same for the next several decades.
[*There are now 435 power stations, 9 less than 2002 as of Aug 2009]
And about 30 currently under construction, and another 120 under consideration.
[*There have been no startups for nuclear power plants in the last two years]
How is this an argument not to use nuclear power in the future?
[*they are being retired faster than we can build.]
So that means we should build them faster.
[*The last reactor in US took 25 years to build.]
The last reactor in Japan took 3 years to build.
[*The economics of nuclear power is killing the industry. Without government subsidies it would not exist.]
Without government subsidies, or a price on carbon (which is a government subsidy of another sort) renewable energy wouldn’t exist.
[*Costs in 70s were $750 /kw current est $7000 per kw.]
And there are estimates that show this is massively over stated.
[*wind cost is $2000 solar $3000 per kw.]
Wind power only works when it is windy, nuclear works all the time. In fact the best performing U.S. reactors have up time of 98%. One reactor ran without shut down for nearly 2 years!
[*There is no nuclear power in a deregulated market. All need the taxpayer to make them viable.]
There’s no renewable power in a deregulated market. All need the tax payer to make them viable.
[*Peak nuclear in europe was 1989]
This is silly! Nuclear power has declined in Europe because the E.U. has demanded that Russia and other former Soviet states shut down poorly designed, i.e. unsafe reactors.
[*Being phased out in spain and germany]
This is just wrong. The new centre-right German government has overturned the plan to shut down German reactors.
[*Finland nuclear plant is now three years overdue, budget is $3 billion over]
Reference?
[*A nuclear plant shut down in 2007 in japan is still shut down]
And if that plant was restarted too quickly people would be saying it shows that safety isn’t given consideration!
[*Zero nuclear plants in US under construction]
This means they need to build more soon.
It also suggests that many local governments are waiting on the nuclear title in the climate bill to determine if the federal government will pay money that they won’t need to pay.
Frank, would you have “Cows with guns” handy for the some of the bovine PBers? Dunno what to suggest for the great divide opening up about whether or not to nuke the ants.
I guess it entails walking around the old part of Alexandria looking at houses and other places associated with either Durrell’s time there or with characters in the novels (which I read about 30 years ago but don’t remember much about now). The character of the city has been destroyed by Nasser’s expulsions of the Greeks, Jews and Armenians, but apparently the physical structure of the 19th century city is mostly intact.
[Antony Green heard on by-election night that the booth had proved “awkward for elderly people to get to”]
This is the kind of data that he should’ve passed on!