Monday preselection snippets

Another post to keep the threads brief pending re-establishment of paged comments. Essential Research will as always reports its latest poll result today, but it’s an off week for Newspoll.

• Imre Salusinszky of The Australian reports on yet another figure of the Howard years being mooted for a comeback: Jim Lloyd, who lost Robertson to Belinda Neal in 2007. The report says the Liberals have used automated phone polling locally to test the name recognition of Lloyd, current Labor member Deb O’Neill and the Liberals’ unsuccessful 2010 candidate, Darren Jameson. It also quotes Peter Reith’s post-election review criticising the party’s failure to encourage Lloyd to run last time, which “caused disaffection in a number of the branches”. Lloyd is now 57 and “has worked as a tour bus driver and for a local marine research firm” since his exit from parliament.

• Imre Salusinszky of The Australian (again) reports the NSW Liberals’ decision to deal promptly with preselections for 16 seats it currently holds is likely to bolster Mitchell MP Alex Hawke in a preselection challenge from his foes in the David Clarke Right sub-faction. The report speaks of “vigorous recruitment in Mitchell by Mr Hawke’s enemies, but the opening of nominations means members who have joined in the past nine months will not be eligible to participate”. It also says Philip Ruddock is unlikely to be challenged if he seeks another term in Berowra, despite long-term jockeying in the seat by the David Clarke Right faction. The likely candidate to succeed Ruddock is said to be political staffer Noel McCoy, but he has ruled out nominating against Ruddock.

• Usman Azad of the Kalgoorlie Miner reports the WA Liberals have “set a $500,000 target for a war chest to topple O’Connor MP Tony Crook, with most of the funds destined to build name recognition for his challenger Rick Wilson”. The party reportedly believes television advertising funded by Clive Palmer was responsibile for the Nationals’ win in 2010 at the expense of Liberal veteran Wilson Tuckey, and is determined not to be outdone again.

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.

217 thoughts on “Monday preselection snippets”

Comments Page 2 of 5
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  1. And coming on SkyNews next with a balanced view on industrial relations?
    Yes, the one and only Jamie Briggs!
    He’s on with Richard Marles.

  3. Bushfire Bill

    Posted Monday, October 31, 2011 at 8:03 am | Permalink

    For those who thought Hartcher was reasonable… I hope the truth is now pretty clear

    one of the reasons I no longer subscribe to SMH, but as I said before when I tpold them why I was cancelling my subscription after so many years , they wern’t interested.
    BUT the Fairfax group not quite as rabid as the News lot, re the supposed phone call this morning to Julia, which was a straight out myth. Only good thing is the Polls run by the various papers seem to be almost universally running against Qantas arouns the 58 to 42 mark, so the Gotchas did”t work!!

  4. shellbell

    ]poroti

    Maybe my eyes deceived me although I assume that must move the odd jet around to deal with backlogs etc]

    I could have been a kiwi QANTAS Jetconnect plane.They look like a duck,quack like a duck and walk like a duck but are in fact kiwis.They say they pay them a third less but that is suspiciouly close to the exchange rate difference.

    [Qantas’s New Zealand subsidiary, Jetconnect, pays its pilots about a third less than their counterparts in Australia. The subsidiary operates most Qantas flights between Australia and New Zealand, employing about 600 staff, including 100 pilots

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/qantas-scores-win-over-pilots-20110906-1jw0o.html#ixzz1cIuDCb8Z%5D

  5. The more I read about the whole Qantas debacle the angrier I get. Tony Sheldon has been great in raising the key issues – including the trickiness and perhaps rubber-figureiness of the $200m loss-making of the international routes. I notice those questions are now emerging in a couple of articles. Sheldon has pointed out that Qantas management have not provided the actual figures that show these losses and there is great suspicion throughout the workforce that Jetstar is being propped up at the expense of the international routes which is the most expensive to staff. This action has been about union-busting, pure and simple.

    I have no further interest in flying Qantas or Jetstar. We booked tickets for our Qld holiday this morning on Virgin. It’s the workers that pay for it though, and they’re the poor buggers that are going to end up being the biggest losers. They’ll lose their jobs and Qantas can go about having a poorly paid workforce established in Thailand or the Philippines instead. I wonder how long the mythologised safety record will exist after that.

  6. Qantas will be positioning aircraft in preparation for resumption of srrvices – those aircraft will be empty.. Many of them will have been in the wrong place for the schedules being planned for today

  7. Marles just said that by blaming the FWA legislation for the Qantas mess Briggs has said that WorkChoices should be reinstated. Nice one.

  9. Lenore Taylor, highlighting the different positions various sides have sprouted and opposed to what they have then done –

    Let’s get this straight.

    The Coalition, which has for years banged on about the dangers of compulsory industrial arbitration, is attacking the Gillard government for not intervening in the Qantas dispute sooner and under a legislative provision that would have forced an arbitrated outcome more quickly.

    The government says using the Coalition’s preferred mechanism ….. could well have been challenged by the parties to the dispute.

    In other words, the outcome likely would have been exactly the same as the one we have got. Except the government would have set a precedent encouraging warring industrial parties to bypass the industrial umpire and go straight to the minister.

    Once we are past that point of difference, the positions of Labor and the Coalition appear to be exactly the same: that Fair Work Australia should rapidly conciliate, then probably arbitrate this dispute – which, for the longer-term industrial relations debate, is an interesting situation.

    Business groups have been arguing that the spate of industrial disputes is evidence that the Fair Work Act is not working, that it is giving unions more power to intervene in issues like outsourcing and offshoring and contracting that are properly the domain of company management, and that in the longer term it needs to be changed.

    But by taking this course Joyce would appear to think that arbitration under the Fair Work Act offers him the best prospects of restructuring his company.

    And the opposition’s industrial relations spokesman, Eric Abetz, said the dispute was a reflection on the Prime Minister, but not on the Fair Work Act.

    BTW there is a poll on future intention to fly Qantas here –

    http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/a-tale-of-three-villains-no-hero-20111030-1mqjg.html

    Overall its pretty even at present.
    http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/critical-test-for-gillard-on-industrial-relations-20111030-1mqhb.html#ixzz1cIuffdVM

  10. DAVE – Good point about open skies. Isn’t there something truly bizarre (and wrong) about a company which benefits from a “closed skies” policy to the detriment of other sectors of the economy being able to shut down its operations and use that as a stick to bludgeon the govt, unions, customers, everybody else. Qantas has clearly become too big to survive. Isn’t that the lesson that the Govt and all policy makers will take from this move.

  11. Of course the way the government Could act to help Qantas and the unions and the traveling public would be to set up an Aussie maintenance unit which checks and accredits all planes which fly in or into Australia. – Say every six months (or year – this is an issue for experts) ANY plane flying commercially in Australia may need to be checked by Aussie trained skilled air maintenance crew. This puts Qantas on an even playing field but keeps the skilled jobs in Australia (and keeps us safe).

    It could also make it a condition of flying that any crew member flying more than 50 trips OUT of Australia in any 12 month period (say one a week) be paid under Australian awards for the share of time or trips in Australia, with any thing more than 70% requiring full Aussie rates. This at least would give Aussie crews a fighting chance. Might need to set a minimum (and quite high) pay rate for pilots.

  12. Oz poll. Your post inspired me, do u remember a time when every fashionable home had a beautiful
    Bird pictures the type u describe, I love to embroider same, with hand made and dyed aust wool and silk, this product made here in aust is best I have found, you have inspired me to now finish
    Georges coming home blanket which is based on peter rabbit
    in our own very back yard, so a few of the local birds will finish it off,
    I do hope the collection I bought, have u seen royal darby china series red birds,
    Hope William doesn’t mind our little chat, life has to be more than politics
    Lat week when i needed it,most I was sent a virtual tour with music a renoir tour, when I go home I will put up link for u

  13. All the commentary in the press this morning was written prior to the decision by FWA. There’s extra egg for a few journos at breakfast this morning.

    Regardless of any spin, Gillard used the FWA to solve a major problem. It took 24 hours to resolve. She didn’t need to use any powers that were not available to the Premiers or the Company. There were no hysterics or gestures. Just the law, m’aam.

    Gillard shows leadership and proves the IR legislation works if applied in a sensible and methodical way.

  14. Bit of a tick to PM Gillard on her handling of matters and a No for the Abominal No Man.

    Dr No can’t last forever

    Alister Drysdale (a former senior advisor to Malcolm Fraser and Jeff Kennett.)

    However, ….. journalists are starting to question and analyse Abbott’s tactics, strategy and behaviour – and policy substance behind his avuncular veneer.

    A forensic piece of commentary from the admired and influential political writer Laura Tingle in last Friday’s Financial Review was pithily scathing of Abbott.

    It went to the heart of the vexed issue of policy scrutiny. It went directly to the issue of “substance”. It was one of the toughest critiques written about this Opposition Leader. It described him as a “negative, opportunistic and hollow man”. It was an unusually harsh call, but every word will have been read by Liberal backbenchers.

    It may turn out to be a defining journalistic moment. Tingle, of course, has not been backward in her scolding judgement of Julia Gillard’s government over the past twelve months. She has not been alone there.

    But Tingle has also not been alone amongst Press Gallery veterans to cast a firmer gaze and new analysis on the Abbott strategy of ruthlessly playing Dr No.

    It’s starting to emerge, worryingly for the Opposition, as a pattern.

    The pressure will mount on Tony Abbott next year. It will be about substance, not style. He will expect it, and may well handle it without a blink.

    ….The PM is stoically going about her paid job as the nation’s political leader.

    She’s stepped quickly into the unedifying Qantas dispute – there was no choice after the misjudged actions of the Qantas board and chief executive on Saturday. Her actions, words and demeanour were that of a Leader on top of her job.

    These events – along with current Canberra commentary – are reminders of that ageless lesson for any politician: voters may enjoy the tizz, white noise and the spectacle of the race, but what we demand when it really matters are results.

    It’s called substance beating style – and firm action beating hollow words. It also means playing the Dr No game can’t last forever.

    http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Abbott-Gillard-carbon-tax-CHOGM-Qantas-China-pokie-pd20111031-N5QPB?OpenDocument&src=sph

  16. Bit more on *where to now* and the implications, from Rob Burgess –

    So the termination’s a win for the company, right?

    Not exactly – more the avoidance of a fatal blow. The termination ruling opens a 21 day negotiation period that can be extended for a further 21 days, but only if progress is being made to break the stalemate between pilots, engineers and baggage staff and the airline.

    Without progress, the door to the negotiating room is slammed shut for both parties at the 21-day mark, and a binding arbitration by FWA will take place.

    Only at that point will the mettle of the Fair Work Act be fully tested. As Joyce told Alan Kohler on the ABC’s Inside Business over the weekend: “Nobody wants to go into binding arbitration, but either way it’s over once that happens, because we know there will be certainty to it.”

    That’s right. But it is likely to be the kind of certainty neither side is very happy with.

    Joyce knows he does not have unlimited time to turn the airline’s uncompetitive cost structures around and wants to push the unions to accept conditions, including allowing for more use of non-Qantas pilots, to accomplish the mammoth task.

    However, the FWA ruling, if it comes (that is, if negotiations fail), is unlikely to push the enterprise bargaining agreement terms and conditions as far as Joyce would like

    http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Qantas-Fair-Work-Australia-decision-strikes-indust-pd20111031-N5S7M?OpenDocument&src=sph

  17. Interesting to see that the resolution of the Qantas management lockout is the lead stor on the BBC website:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15513219

    We often have our own biases on stories here, so I find it interesting to see how others see them:

    Correspondents say the ruling is likely to be seen as a victory for Qantas, which has been seeking to end long-running disputes with three unions, and for the government, which wanted the stand-off resolved quickly.

  18. dave

    Thansk for the link. This bit of Kohler’s piece annoys me:

    Joyce knows he does not have unlimited time to turn the airline’s uncompetitive cost structures around and wants to push the unions to accept conditions, including allowing for more use of non-Qantas pilots, to accomplish the mammoth task.

    Kohler is just repeating management’s line here. If only he asked these questions:
    1. Why are Qantas’ cost uncompetitive when their profit was $260M last year?
    2. IFF Qantas’ international flights are losing money (unproven claim) is it due to staff costs or other factors? How much money have they spent setting up Jetstar, and is it profitable?
    3. Will the loss of customer loyalty Qantas will suffer be more or less than any cost savings? There is no point reducing costs if you also reduce revenue by more.

    This may prove to be the greatest Australian management error since Pacific Brands.

  20. If the end result of this is that Qantas is more free to launch an international competitor carrying an Australian brand name but not being an Australian airline, then I see no point for government or customes to remain loyal to it. They are even worse than a mining company, because there are no royalties, and the work is not done here.

    If this means that Qantas jobs are lost, then it may eb better for the workers to get it over with sooner rather than later, and make sure that they get paid out under their current wage agreements, rather than some watered down result of forced bargaining.

  22. mari

    http://www.salon.com/2011/10/29/the_mystery_of_left_handedness/?t=1319922638
    As a lefthander I liked this article

    As the old saying goes.There are only two types of people in the world.Those who are left handed and those that want to be. 🙂

  24. From the House of Reps twitter account

    AboutTheHouse About the House
    FYI the House will also sit tomorrow at 9am instead of the usual time of 2pm.
    3 minutes ago

  25. poroti

    Posted Monday, October 31, 2011 at 9:33 am | Permalink

    mari

    http://www.salon.com/2011/10/29/the_mystery_of_left_handedness/?t=1319922638
    As a lefthander I liked this article

    As the old saying goes.There are only two types of people in the world.Those who are left handed and those that want to be.

    Yep I am very happy being a lefthander, thankfully no one ever tried to change me to being a righthander, WAS(Iemphasise that) very handy in my sports playing days
    Guess you are also a lefthander Poroti?

  26. Socs,

    Various commentators are saying, apart from (some) overseas routes where they are losing money, Qantas is doing pretty well.

    This sounds very much like they are trying to buy growth that can never be profitable unless Australian workers *pay* for it.

    At the sametime Qantas executives want Australian workers to accept third work pay, they are enriching themselves with 1st world so called *compensation*. Recall Dixon was paid even more than Joyce.

    If some overseas routes are not profitable, drop those routes. Problem solved.

    As it now stands they have the customers offside. Ditto employees and no doubt the Government.

    Too many in business want to open Work Choices yet again. It will be called something different but have the same aim to cut pay and conditions a la the US where business take just increases.

    We know how other business interests and Lib State Governments are cheering this all on as usual.

  27. http://www.cyenne.com/discussion/james-packer-youre-breaking-my-heart/

    Tom Cummings response to James Packer

    james packer, you’re breaking my heart
    by cyenne on Oct.29, 2011

    Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock this week, you’d know that James Packer has entered the debate over the Gillard government’s poker machine reforms. And that rock would have had to be particularly large, sound-proof and located at the bottom of a disused well on an abandoned farm in Albania for you to have missed his comments about the pain he’s suffering at the hands of the “latte set”.

    But just in case you’ve only recently crawled out from under that rock, let’s recap. James Packer is the Executive Chairman of Crown Limited, and of course that includes Crown Casino in Melbourne. Gambling is not only a hobby for James, it’s his main source of income… apart from owning Crown and Perth’s Burswood Casino outright, Crown holds a 33.4% interest in Macau’s City of Dreams Casino, a 50% interest in Betfair Australasia, a 50% equity interest in UK-based casino operator Aspinalls… the list goes on.

    Worth a read

  29. If i was. QuantasE mployee,socretas would bemovi n g on, is not super trasnsferable anyway now.

    We have flown, singapore ,ehiad, air newzealand, and. Enjoyed, but any air line that would be willing
    To give more leg space to, I would book with them

  32. “SkyNews Banner.
    BREAKING NEWS: QANTAS WINS

    FFS!
    And now they are parroting Abbott’s line that the government should have acted sooner.”

    No surprises here. It has been written fairly widely that SkyNews is positioning itself as
    the local FoxNews. No one seems to be denying it. One thing they both have in common is that they are not nearly as well watched as they claim to be.

  39. I note the opposition are still running with the “Government could have solved this in less than three hours” line. Truss the latest to stick his head up. It’s not getting a lot of traction, though.

    ABC24 are running lots of vox pops from airports. But in the main they’re showing passengers saying they’re pleased with the way the Qantas staff are sorting things out. If your opinion is that it’s been a Qantas/Coalition operation, with some media compliance, to put pressure on the government, then the current reportage looks a lot like a phased withdrawal from that line.

    I suppose Joyce will still try to trash the Qantas brand to get the reforms he wants. But he’s not going to be able to do it and survive intact any more. It can be massaged a bit, but the lasting impression will be of a breach of faith with his customers. I don’t think it can be seen any other way. He tried out the “it’s the only option we had”, but it was debunked almost immediately. So he’s going with the “union action is bleeding the company” line. He’s being reported straight rather than sympathetically, which is bad for him. They can’t find an angle that works for him yet.

  40. dave

    I agree with your comments on Qantas management and strategy. The government would do well to keep them the focus of this, because they have many questions to answer.

    Qantas management seem obsessed with morphing into a low cost Asian carrier. Why?? On Qantas’ own figures their domestic operations make a profit, the Aussie economy is robust, and their market share is protected. Why risk that? Even if Joyce’s gamble succeeds, they wind up with an Asian based airline, and having lost the brand identity of one of the world’s oldest and best known airlines. International airlines are uber competitive, subject to the whims of international economics, and oftne go bust, as the last ten years shows. How is it in shareholder’s interests to risk a profitable assett, to create a new assett operating in a more risky market?

    Meanwhile, Qantas shares have tanked, and they have paid no dividend in two years, despite holding $2 billion cash. How do Clifford and Joyce keep their jobs? Why do institutional shareholders re-elect them? Do they know something we don’t?

  41. morning

    Thanks to Latika Bourke and Leigh Howard for keeping everyone posted on proceedings. I felt like a stalker!

    it should come as no surprise that the msm still trying to shoot down this govt

    Stephen Jones
    @stephenjonesALP
    #Alan Joyce tells @amworldtodaypm that the Telegraph story on the unanswered phone call is complete fiction. #Qantas
    43 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone

  42. The following article from Gottliebsen surprises me a bit. He is normally so gungho pro business and business management. Its an interesting read –

    The price for Qantas carry on

    Robert Gottliebsen

    The man all Qantas shareholders should be afraid of is James Hogan – the chief executive of Etihad. According to people who know him, Hogan has been predicting the demise of Qantas since Alan Joyce took on the Qantas pilots earlier this year.

    Hogan of course had no advance warning of the Qantas lockout but, within hours of Qantas’ shock move, Etihad was announcing plans to come to the rescue of Qantas passengers.

    …Hogan…. grew up in Pascoe Vale, Melbourne, underneath the aircraft approach to Essendon Airport, ….started his career in 1975 at Ansett Airlines as a check-in agent but as he climbed the ladder from the bottom, he made his name with British Midland.

    He then went to the Middle East to head Gulf Air and in 2006 switched to Etihad. He has increased the number of Etihad passengers carried each year from 2.7 million to well over 7 million. He also immediately focussed Etihad on Australia and took naming rights over Etihad Stadium in Melbourne’s Docklands precinct.

    …When the current Virgin CEO John Borghetti was a Qantas executive in line to take over the top job from Geoff Dixon, Hogan did an in-principle joint venture deal with Borghetti and Qantas. When Alan Joyce beat Borghetti to the job of Qantas CEO, Borghetti left Qantas and become CEO of its Australian rival Virgin.

    Alan Joyce was not enthusiastic about Borghetti’s Etihad/Qantas joint venture, so Hogan went back to Borghetti and Virgin did almost the same deal as Qantas rejected.

    If Hogan had been CEO of Qantas he would have settled with the pilots and then dealt with the rest of the staff. He has a passion that pilot goodwill is essential to any successful upmarket airline.

    …If Qantas cannot achieve harmonious relations with its workforce then it may be either forced to spin-off the Qantas brand and airline operation or sell to private equity. Either way, a new owner and management team might adopt a fresh approach.

    In the meantime, in the aftermath of the shutdown, James Hogan and his friend John Borghetti are going to have a ball.

    http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Qantas-industrial-action-flights-airlines-Alan-Joy-pd20111031-N5RPR?OpenDocument&src=sph&src=rot

    Kohler also makes the obvious point –

    So at a guess I would say that Leigh Clifford suspected all along there would have to be a lockout to ensure that the government did not back the unions and that compulsory arbitration took place.

    Unlike Rio Tinto and the stevedore, Patricks, Qantas is a consumer brand so a shutdown and lockout is a vastly more damaging thing to do.

    http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Qantas-Leigh-Clifford-grounding-Fair-Work-Gillard–pd20111031-N5RQA?OpenDocument&src=sph&src=rot

  43. Unions welcome Fair Work Australia decision; now Joyce must get the planes back into the air

    Qantas must immediately resume flying its planes following Fair Work Australia’s decision early this morning to terminate the airline’s industrial action.

    ACTU Secretary Jeff Lawrence said Qantas CEO Alan Joyce now had no excuse not to restart all services after his extraordinary and pre-meditated decision to ground the entire Australian fleet on Saturday afternoon.

    Mr Lawrence said Qantas employees would turn up for work today ready to do whatever was necessary to get the planes back in the air. He welcomed the government intervention which had been the circuit breaker in the dispute, and said the next priority was to resume negotiations in a spirit of reconciliation.

    “This decision by Fair Work Australia removes any reason for Qantas to ground its planes,” he said. “The tribunal has sheeted home to Alan Joyce full responsibility for the actions which caused massive disruption to the travel plans of thousands of Australians and the economy.

    http://www.actu.org.au/Media/Mediareleases/UnionswelcomeFairWorkAustraliadecisionnowJoycemustgettheplanesbackintotheair.aspx

  45. David Speers
    @David_Speers
    ACTU says FWA has recognized Qantas is the one damaging the economy with lock out. Everyone claiming a win!

  46. @Aguirre,

    Not on the radio this morning (at least 97.3)

    They (passengers) were blaming Unions and were siding with Qantas, instead of the idiots who pulled the trigger so to speak.

  47. http://www.industrysearch.com.au/News/US-climate-sceptic-now-agrees-global-warming-is-real-55623

    US climate sceptic now agrees global warming is real
    31/10/2011 – A prominent US physicist and sceptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. – Seth Borenstein

    In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.

    The study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers.

    http://www.industrysearch.com.au/News/Carbon-tax-effective-to-tackle-climate-change-British-PM-55617

    Carbon tax effective to tackle climate change: British PM
    31/10/2011 – British Prime Minister David Cameron says there is international momentum towards addressing climate change through carbon pricing.

    More in each article.

  48. At the sametime Qantas executives want Australian workers to accept third work pay, they are enriching themselves with 1st world so called *compensation*.

    That nails it exactly Dave.

  49. Ducky

    Am I understanding Joyce correctly. He is saying that there were no other options available to Qantas to get this outcome other than the lockout?

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