Something for the weekend

Parliament resumes on Monday, bringing with it an end to the silly season. We have had no Morgan this week, but there should be a Newspoll on Tuesday. Monday’s Essential Research poll had Labor’s two-party lead steady on 56-44; rated the relative importance of various issues; found a high level of support for Tony Abbott’s green jobs policy; and showed most respondents agreeing with the opposition after the emissions trading scheme issue was explained to them in a particular way. Other than that:

• Antony Green and Possum offer common sense reflections on the state of the opinion polls at the moment. Possum in particular identifies the peculiarity of the 2007 federal result, which alone out of seven observations failed to deliver on a landslide which the polls had shown at long range. The question now facing us is whether the extraordinary factors of 2007 equally apply in 2010 – whatever they might have been.

• A day after Bob McMullan announced he would retire from his seat of Fraser at the next election, Annette Ellis announced she too would be vacating the other safe Labor ACT seat, Canberra. Ousted ACT party secretary Bill Redpath claims national secretary Karl Bitar’s refusal to allow an earlier preselection indicates they were pushed as much as jumped. Christian Kerr of The Australian reports Ellis in particular agreed to go after Left and Right failed to finesse a deal in which the former would take Fraser at the election, and the latter would take Canberra when it became available. Michael Cooney, former adviser to Mark Latham and Kim Beazley and current chief-of staff to ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr, was reportedly all but certain to take Canberra, while Fraser was likely to go to the party’s assistant national secretary Nick Martin. However, a new candidate for Canberra has emerged in Gai Brodtmann, runner of communications firm Brodtmann & Uhlmann Communications and wife of ABC report Chris Uhlmann.

• Peter Lindsay has announced he will vacate his knife-edge marginal Townsville-based seat of Herbert, and readily admits the timing of the announcement was chosen for “strategic reasons”. The Townsville Bulletin reports candidates for Liberal preselection are “thin on the ground”, no doubt reflecting a lack of confidence in Coalition ranks. Townsville deputy mayor David Crisafulli and V8 Supercars event manager Kim Faithful were rated as obvious successors, but both have declined to enter the ring. The one candidate known to have confirmed interest is Colin Dwyer, an economist and unsuccessful candidate for Mundingburra at last year’s state election. The Bulletin also reviews the achievements of Lindsay’s final term: a fact-finding mission encompassing 13 different countries, resulting in a report that plagiarised Wikipedia and featured a Photoshopped image purporting to show Lindsay at a Beirut war cemetery. Labor’s preselection process has turned up 2007 candidate George Colbran, former mayor and long-established local identity Tony Mooney, and Townsville councillor Jenny Hill.

• Soraiya Gharahkhani of the Campbelltown Macarthur Advertiser reports Paul Nunnari, wheelchair athlete and adviser to state Campbelltown MP Graham West will contest preselection for Macarthur, going up against presumed favourite Nick Bleasdale, the narrowly unsuccessful candidate from 2007.

• Michelle Carnovale of the Oakleigh Monash Leader reports Monash councillor Joy Banerji is Labor’s unlikely prospect in Kevin Andrews’ seat of Menzies.

• Those of you who have about 30 seconds to spare are encouraged to fill out Crikey’s website reader survey.

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.

1,289 comments on “Something for the weekend”

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  2. Psephos

    We had a discussion a few weeks back about Ron’s posts. Several posters said that they had dyslexia and recognised it in Ron’s writings. He didn’t comment but I think that was construed as tacit acknowledgment of the veracity of the suggestion.

    Personally I think nothing more needed to be said.

  4. William:

    [The Townsville Bulletin reports candidates for Liberal preselection are “thin on the ground”, no doubt reflecting a lack of confidence in Coalition ranks. Townsville deputy mayor David Crisafulli and V8 Supercars event manager Kim Faithful were rated as obvious successors, but both have declined to enter the ring.]

    HTT, this is your big chance!

    Forget the tinny and the asylum seekers, this is important.

    Put your money where your mouth is, Townsville needs you!

    😆

  5. ru
    On basic instinct.

    Reproduction rates within segments of societies are quite variable. Reproduction rates of societies alter quite markedly over time.

    In general, having babies is not accidental. The decisions around having babies are susceptible to all sorts of external and internal pressures, challenges and opportunities.

  6. Ru

    Come to think about it, you are virtually echoing Rudd’s position on population (whether by reproduction or by migration) which seemed to be (on the 7.30 report yesterday),

    ‘Population happens. I can’t do anything about the numbers. My job is to plan for when they arrive.’

  9. [A sustainable basis is where the rate of extraction of a resource from the environment is matched by its rate of replacement. It’s analogous to living off the interest generated by your capital, not eating into your capital. If your rate of extraction is too high, you will eventually run out of the resource. Look at the worldwide collapse of fisheries.]

    Another self evident comment, but humans are almost unique in that they alter their environment, nothing new. (with all due respect to beavers, ants et al)

    The logical conclusion to your comment is that we desist from altering our environment. Maybe we go back to crude shelter and become hunter gatherers. Ooops sorry that may result in the one eared, flightless, legless parrot losing its environment.

    Unless you are willing to state that we should radically reduce the human population of our planet, your comments are fatuous crud.

  11. Hang on a sec, you build a Deslal plant to make fresh water from salt water, you offset the energy used to do this by creating something that didn’t previously exist. (Solar farm, wind, whatever) and make sure that energy offset system is Carbon/Pollution neutral.

    What’s the problem?

    Recycled water, storm water etc are great idea’s too, but I don’t see the problem with Desal. Happy be yelled at though 😉

  12. psephos no answer as yet from Ron but i am sure it will be a well enunciated reply, and you will now cop abuse from his Mexican friends.

  13. Psephos,

    Who died and made you Pope of PB. Ron is not accountable to you or anyone else here apart from William.

    Your breathtaking bullying and arrrogance identifies you as the problem, not Ron. If you don’t like his posts don’t respond.

    No one’s forcing you to play.

  15. ru

    There are folk who believe that technology will enable humans to ignore the environment forever.

    The one-off experiment to test the proposition is well-advanced. Those of us who have an inkling about what is actually happening in national and global environmental trends are having difficulty accepting the validity of the proposition.

    The billion or so humans who go to bed hungry every night, probably ditto.

  16. [Recycled water, storm water etc are great idea’s too, but I don’t see the problem with Desal. Happy be yelled at though ]

    Keith it will make the sea salty. 😉

  17. Keith@11:

    [What’s the problem?]

    None at all, provided there is no double dipping.

    That is, provided it is carved in stone that the solar plant is for the desal plant, and can’t be used to justify something else, and something else, and something else..

    I’ll bet that solar plant wasn’t built with the express purpose of offsetting the desal plant. After it was built, for whatever reason, it was a convenient way of deflecting flak about the electricity costs of the desal plant.

    With a creative PR team, it can be used again and again for other projects.

  18. 11

    We have other uses for renewable energy (lighting, refrigeration, trains, etc) that are more important and there are more energy efficient than removing 3.5% salt from water. Recycling water to have more of a closed-cycle water system is far more efficient as it has less contaminant than sea water and treatment plants are generally closer to the water supplies than the desal suitable bits of the sea.

  19. [Unless you are willing to state that we should radically reduce the human population of our planet, your comments are fatuous crud.]
    The global human population needs to stabilise quickly and start to decrease, much like western Europe has done. And we need huge amounts of non-carbon energy to increase the standard of living of most of the human population and ameliorate the human impact on the ecosystem.

    Are you one of those waiting for the rapture to remove you from the biophysical consequences of your actions?

  20. Unfortunately I am not a card bearing member of the Liberal Party and as a result would be unable to run as a member.

    It would be good to take on the government though.

  21. GG@13:

    [Who died and made you Pope of PB. Ron is not accountable to you or anyone else here apart from William. ]

    Yeah, what GG said.

  23. KINMRN

    Our main difficulty is how to either reduce energy use or to switch to alternative sources of energy.

    We are so far from sorting these out on a significant scale that the idea of adding to energy requirements by building desal plants, or by adding significantly to population numbers, is like trying to run before we have learned to crawl.

  26. [Those of us who have an inkling about what is actually happening in national and global environmental trends are having difficulty accepting the validity of the proposition.]

    So what is your solution? Those of us who have worried about this problem for 3 decades have not been able to solve it – please enlighten us.

  28. If had a means of blocking Ron’s posts I would do so. Since I can’t, I try to ignore them. But wilful misuse of English makes me very annoyed, and I sometimes give vent to my annoyance. (As do you.)

  29. Oh, Oh, another round of Code Ron alert, Code Ron alert.

    Is he a fifth columnist, is he an agent provacateur, is he a franc tireur, is he simply a stirrer? Is he a double agent or is he a triple agent? Has he been turned?

    We seek him here, we seek him there, we seek him everywhere.

    But, as always, the fundamental question remains: ‘Who is really wRONg?’ or should that be, ‘Who really is wRONg?’ or then again, should it be, ‘Who is wRONg, really?’

  30. Why GG , Because you don’t agree with Psephos says about ron you come on all high and mighty and then rebuttall
    Your name says everything that needs to be said about you.
    A bit weak do you not think.

  32. How big is the solar plant which will offset the Sydney desal plant’s electricity use?

    Here’s the current Perth desal plant’s requirements. Seems to be pretty hefty amounts of electricity to me.

    http://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/content/userDocs/OzWaterpaperIMRP_000.pdf
    [
    PERTH DESALINATION CASE STUDY
    Perth is currently constructing a 130 ML/d desalination plant at Kwinana, which will be its
    largest single point source water supplier and will meet up to 17% of its water needs. The plant will cost approximately $350 million to construct and annual operating costs are
    projected to be in the order of $20million per year, adding about $45 to the average
    household water bill (Water Corporation, 2006a). The plant will require about 26 MW of
    power to run and will hence consume an expected 185 GWh of energy per year (Water
    Corporation, 2004). This is a 50% increase in the Water Corporation’s energy needs
    across WA and equates to approximately 4.1 kWh/kL of water supplied (Water
    Corporation, 2006b). The plant will be run continuously generating a constant baseload
    electricity demand (Water Corporation, 2002)]

  34. Heavens above!!

    I just got an email from ‘FamilyVoice Australia’ — did a quick google and found out it is ‘Festival of Light’ rebadged.

    Am now feeling paranoid (which doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me…)

  35. ru

    1. Stabilize the world’s population as soon as possible.
    2. Reduce standards of living in the hyper wealthy countries.
    3. Increase standards of living in the poor countries.
    4. Invest in the technology of hope rather than the technology of despair (the world spends such an awful amount on the military every year.

    Not easy.

  36. Boerwar and Its Time, just for my enlightenment how old are you? I am 55 and have been fighting the issues you espouse for decades. I get the impression you are younger that I.

    Care to illuminate me?

  37. Any Desal plant with an appropriate clean energy supply or equivalent offset system is energy neutral. Even combined they take up a insignificant amount of land, cause minimal enviro damage and the cost is the cost. We (well I certainly do) pay for water now and am happy to do so.

    Apart from some tiny area’s of the ocean being (saltier 😉 ) I don’t see the problem

    We need water much more then we need Argyle diamonds yet we happily expend money and resources to get these. At significant environmental damage too I might add, ever been to “The Big Hole”? I have, it’s really big 😉

  39. [1. Stabilize the world’s population as soon as possible.]

    How, stop people bonkin’
    [2. Reduce standards of living in the hyper wealthy countries.]
    Yeah , thats going to work;
    [3. Increase standards of living in the poor countries.]
    How when hyper wealthy just got nuked
    [4. Invest in the technology of hope rather than the technology of despair (the world spends such an awful amount on the military every year.]

    Thats because people want to reduce their standard of living.

  42. [Apart from some tiny area’s of the ocean being (saltier 😉 ) I don’t see the problem]
    Of course we have an unlimited supply of renewable energy. Or desalination is the most efficient use of limited renewable energy.

  44. ru

    I believe that humans have two broad choices:

    (1) Get orderly and organised and get real.
    (2) Have the environment get real on them instead.

    I plug away at (1). In my heart I believe that humans will choose (2).

  46. [Diogenes
    Posted Friday, January 29, 2010 at 8:39 pm | Permalink

    Psephos

    We had a discussion a few weeks back about Ron’s posts. Several posters said that they had dyslexia and recognised it in Ron’s writings. He didn’t comment but I think that was construed as tacit acknowledgment of the veracity of the suggestion.]

    I think most also said that we wish he would use a bloody dictionary, and that if you don’t put in the effort you will never deal with the problem.

    Personally I think nothing more needed to be said.

  48. Don

    Sydney desal plant has about double the capacity (max 250 Ml / day) as Kwinana (130 mL /day). And the renewable source is a wind farm.

  49. noidea@22:

    [GG who made you the nanny?
    No one forced you to reply!]

    [Yea , U 2 Don]

    Right back atcha, sweetheart.

    You seem to be saying that no one should disagree with anyone else, even when they spout nonsense. So you should not be disagreeing with our posts either.

    Kinda takes away the meaning for a blog such as this, which thrives on disagreement.

    That’s why I come here, to disagree, agree, concede points when I’ve been shown to be in error and maybe even learn something.

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