The latest weekly BludgerTrack update accommodates results from Newspoll, Essential Research and Morgan’s multi-mode poll, with the latter looking like it will be a regularly weekly occurrence in contrast to the unpredictable schedule of the face-to-face series it has replaced. This is a somewhat better batch of polling for Labor than the previous week or two, gaining them 0.5% on two-party preferred and two extra on the seat projection. My latest bias adjustments for the Morgan multi-mode polling, based on comparison of its results with the overall poll trend, are +1.7% for Labor, +0.4% for the Coalition and -1.5% for the Greens, compared with +1.4%, +0.9% and -1.5% as I calculated them a week ago.
In other news, I have a raft of preselection action and a review of some minor electoral law changes:
• A bitterly contested preselection to replace Nicola Roxon in the rock solid Labor seat of Gellibrand in western Melbourne has been won by Telstra executive Tim Watts, running with the backing of Stephen Conroy, for whom he once worked as a staffer. His opponents were Katie Hall, a former adviser to Roxon who ran with her backing; Kimberley Kitching, former Melbourne councillor and current acting general manager of the Health Services Union No. 1 branch; Julia Mason and Daniel McKinnon. The 50% of the preselection vote determined by a local party ballot conducted on Monday saw 126 votes go to Watts, 105 to Kitching, 87 to Hall, 42 to McKinnon and four to Mason. Despite a preference deal between Kitching and Hall, that gave Watts a decisive lead going into Tuesday’s vote of the party’s Public Office Selection Committee, where the “stability pact” between the Shorten-Conroy Right forces and the Socialist Left reportedly assured him of about 70% of the vote. Andrew Crook of Crikey reports that Kitching, who had hoped to prevail with support from Turkish community leaders, was thwarted when the “Suleyman clan” (referring to an influential family in western suburbs politics) defected to Watts in exchange for support for Natalie Suleyman to take the number three position on the upper house ticket for Western Metropolitan at the next state election. A dirt sheet targeting Hall over her sexual history and involvement in the HSU was disseminated in the week before the vote, which has led to Kitching complaining to an ALP tribunal that Roxon had falsely accused her of being involved.
• Steve McMahon, chief executive of the NSW Trainers Association (as in thoroughbred horses) and former mayor of Hurstville, has won Labor preselection for the southern Sydney seat of Barton, to be vacated at the election by Robert McClelland. Much more on that in the next episode of Seat of the Week.
• Barnaby Joyce faces opposition at the April 13 Nationals preselection for New England in the shape of David Gregory, owner of an agricultural software business in Tamworth. Another mooted nominee, National Farmers Federation president Jock Laurie, is instead seeking preselection for the by-election to replace Richard Torbay in his Armidale-based state seat of Northern Tablelands.
• Tony Crook, who won the southern regional WA seat of O’Connor for the Nationals from Liberal veteran Wilson Tuckey in 2010, has announced he will not seek another term. The seat was already looming as a spirited three-cornered contest to match the several which had unfolded at the state election (including in the corresponding local seats of Kalgoorlie and Eyre), with the Liberals running hard and early behind their candidate, Katanning farmer Rick Wilson.
• Jason Tin of the Courier-Mail reports Chris Trevor will again be Labor’s candidate for the central Queensland seat of Flynn, having won the seat when it was created in 2007 before joining the Queensland Labor casualty list in 2010. Nicole Hodgson, a teacher, and Leanne Donaldson, a former public servant in child protection, were reportedly set to take on the thankless tasks of Hinkler and Fadden.
A package of electoral law changes made it through parliament last month in the shape of the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Improving Electoral Administration) Act 2013, despite opposition to some measures from the Coalition and Senate cross-benchers Nick Xenophon and John Madigan:
• If a ballot box is unlawfully opened before the authorised time, as occurred at two pre-poll booths in Boothby and Flynn at the 2010 election, the act now requires that the votes be admitted to the count if it is established that “official error” was responsible. The AEC requested the law be clarified after it acted on contestable legal advice in excluding the relevant votes in Boothby and Flynn from the count, which were too few to affect the result. In its original form the bill directed that the affected votes should be excluded, but Bronwyn Bishop successfully advocated for the savings provision when it was referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.
• The Australian Taxation Office has been added to the list of agencies which can provide the Australian Electoral Commission with data relevant to enrolment. As usual with matters that touch on automatic enrolment, this was opposed by the Coalition, Xenophon and Madigan, but supported by all lower house independents and the Greens.
• Pre-polling will in all circumstances begin four days after the close of nominations, giving the AEC two more days to print and disseminate material to the voting centres. The Coalition took the opportunity to move for the pre-poll period to be cut from 19 days before polling day to 12, again with the support of Xenophon and Madigan. The change also eliminates a discrepancy where the date came forward a day if there was no election for the Senate, in which case the election timetable did not have to provide an extra day for lodgement of Senate preference tickets.
• Those casting pre-poll votes will no longer have to sign declaration certificates. A change in the status of pre-poll votes from declaration to ordinary votes was implemented at the 2010 election, allowing them to be counted on election night, but voters still had to sign a certificate. The AEC advised this was unnecessary, but the measure was nonetheless opposed by the Coalition, Xenophon and Madigan.
• The cut-off for receiving postal vote applications has been moved back a day from Thursday to Wednesday, acknowledging the near certainty that voting material posted to those who apply on the Thursday will not be received in time.
• The timetable for conducting electoral redistributions has been amended to allow more time for considering objections raised in public submissions.
[whether Howard, Beazley or anyone from either major party was PM (even Latham)- was always going to want to be part of the Coalition of the Willing on international relations grounds.]
I’ve never had any doubt that if Labor had been in office in 2003, we would have supported and joined in the invasion of Iraq, just as we joined in the Kuwait war in 1991. A number of Labor MPs I know felt at the time we should have done so, but opposition has a dynamic of its own.
748
Complete nonsense. Mainland Europe (apart from Poland) and Canada kept out of the invasion. We have alliances that are not likely to be broken over not participating in a very controversial and very suspect war. While the ALP has been considerably more pro-USA since the Hawke era, it still opposed the war in opposition and probably still would have in government. The same is true of the Vietnam War.
Psephos@751
“opposition has a dynamic of its own”
Yes it does, and I greatly enjoyed (as I am sure you did) Latham’s resonant attack on our participation in that war using his inimitable style of argument: “congaline of suckholes” is a phrase for the ages!!
But even Latham as PM would have joined the Coalition of the Willing. Mainstream parties have to make those sorts of decisions while the likes of the Greens are always able to stay on the sidelines and carp.
Just regarding these 60,000 ugly cabinets Fraudband will use. Conroy seemed to acknowledge this morning that the NBN will also need cabinets of some kind and was reluctant to criticise Fraudband on this basis. Can someone please enlighten me about this.
751
If it had the Green vote would have skyrocketed at then next election.
[By the way, I’m not saying that the decision to invade Iraq wasn’t anything other than a piece of strategically stupid war mongering which is a moral abomination in terms of the mnay needless deaths of innocent civilians. But blaming Howard for this – when any other Australian leader would have done exactly the same as him – is not entirely fair.]
All wars cause civilian deaths, no matter what the justice of the cause. Most people agree that World War II was a “just war”. But Allied bombing killed 300,000 German and 600,000 Japanese civilians. Were these “needless deaths”? This is a difficult moral calculus, which A C Grayling discusses at length in his book Among the Dead Cities.
There is also the point that the civilian deaths arising from the invasion of Iraq must be set against the civilian casualties caused by not invading Iraq. If Saddam had still been in power, how many people would he have killed by now? He killed about a million through wars and repression during his 20-odd years in power. Quite possibly Iraq would now be in the same condition as Syria.
“Yesterday, West Australian Premier Colin Barnett denied he has been told by Woodside that the company has walked away from the project.”
I have made a new sign COLIAR DITCH THE DICTATOR!
753
The Liberals in Canada, the French RIGHT, the SPD in Germany, all stayed out of Iraq. Are they all not grown up? Are the no longer Allies of the USA?
It was a bad idea and could be seen as such before hand. Just because it was the decision that was made does not mean it was correct.
Tom@752: Mainland European countries like France are those to whom I was referring as having the luxury to thumb their noses at the US (or, at least, thought that they could) to which I was referring.
Our participation in Afghanistan and Iraq has been the basis for the stupendously good relationship with the US that Australia now enjoys. There are quite a few European countries that are now quite envious of Australia’s ability to be simultaneously very close to both the US and China.
In international relations, as in personal life, standing by a friend when they are doing something that you don’t necessarily think they should be doing can be a very good thing to do.
By the way, I am saying this as someone who marched against the Iraq war in 2003. I think the war was wrong. But I think our involvement in it was understandable, and it is hardly fair to blame John Howard for it.
Zoomster
I know it was several pages back but really!!!
Firstly I was NOT whinging – I was responding to Dovif’s rubbish.
As Bemused pointed out I cannot get “copper” service through anyone but Telstra – – ask Bemused for the technicalities.
I am EXTREMELY happy with my service having jumped form an Optus ADSL 1service delivering often as little as 2 (yes 2) kps) to Telstra ADSL 2 delivering up to 12.8 mps.
@Darn/754
The difference between the two is one is powered units, the other is not.
The NBN cabinets are alot smaller than FTTN cabinets.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/14/1068674351979.html
Telstra will axe copper network
By Cosima Marriner
November 14, 2003
Printer friendly version Print this article
Email to a friend Email to a friend
Telstra will replace its century-old copper wire phone network with new technology within the next 15 years, saying the ageing lines are now at “five minutes to midnight”.
Telstra executives revealed the problem at a Senate inquiry into broadband services on Wednesday – the same day the company was forced to apologise again for problems with its BigPond email service.
In an email sent to customers late on Wednesday night, Telstra said the most recent email problems had to do with balancing the load on the system, rather than its actual capacity.
“The BigPond team would like to apologise for some intermittent email problems you may have experienced
NOTE THE DATE ON THE ABOVE
REPORT
2003
756
The Second World War, being fought by the Allies, was justified, this does not justify all the actions of the war. Being run by nasty war mongers like Churchill and the nastier elements of the militaries caused many unnecessary civilian deaths, through counter-productive bombing of cities and a famine in part of India that was caused by Churchill vetoing food being sent, contrary to advice.
NOTE THE DATE
ON THE COPPER
STORY 2003
Darn@754
Search for “fibre distrubtion hubs”. They’re smaller and unpowered. Seems there will be around 55000 of them.
[MTBW
Posted Friday, April 12, 2013 at 11:17 am | Permalink
1934pc
If she votes against Labor it will be a major shift for her. We are a strong Labor family and my grandfather was a Federal Member so it will be a very big step for her.
I am proud that she is willing to stand up for things she sees as wrong.]
Don’t worry. She’ll be back after she has seen what an Abbott government is really like. And she won’t be Robinson Crusoe either. There’ll be plenty of others like her.
Mick
In general I agree with your comment but on Howard re the Iraq War I choose to use the term his colleague used.
Sometimes it just has to be said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-12/coalition-faces-tough-task-to-stop-the-boats3a-ruddock/4624512
IS Ruddock retiring,
759
I doubt that Australia would have a significantly less close relationship with the USA if it had not gone into Iraq.
The UK`s closeness to the USA is harmful to European integration and it thus bad.
Thanks Zoidlord and DN.
Psephos
[I’ve never had any doubt that if Labor had been in office in 2003, we would have supported and joined in the invasion of Iraq, just as we joined in the Kuwait war in 1991.]
Yes, but more likely because we pander to the US than any other reason.
Psephos@756: you’ve probably lost me a bit now. I think leaving Saddam in Iraq – and, for that matter, Ashad in Syria – would have been the right things to do.
(I am saying what I am about to say as a strong supporter of Israel.) It is pretty clear that the strong Zionist influence on US foreign and military policy is actually happy to see destabilisation and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in countries like Iraq, Syria and Libya (less so in Egypt, where I think the Zionists would have been pretty happy for Mubarak to remain in control forever).
This is a dangerous game for Israel and one that I wish wasn’t being played. Assad is, and Saddam was, secularist and tolerant of religious differences. These are the sorts of rulers that the West should always be supporting in Middle Eastern countries. Islamic fundamentalism is a dreadful thing and should be fought in every possible way, even if electoral democracy has to take a back seat for a while.
Sure, Saddam was a dictator, but so are dozens of equally bad guys in Africa, not to mention the Kim family in North Korea, and yet the US and its allies don’t launch invasions of, or back campaigns of political destabilisation in, their countries. So why all the focus on Iraq and Syria? (BTW, Afghanistan was another matter altogether: a totally justified target for the US after 9/11 if not before).
Zionism exercises such a distorting influence on US foreign policy. I cannot believe that an intolerant Taliban-style Sunni regime in Syria could possibly be a good thing for the world (not to mention the devastating effect it will have on that countrie’s wonderful tapestry of surviving ancient cultures and the treasurehouse of historical artifacts, some of which – like the Aleppo Market – have already been destroyed in the civil war).
But the right-wing Israeli politico-intelligence elite seems to love the idea of countries like Iraq and Syria politically imploding. I’m not sure whether they have correctly ascertained what is truly in their long-term best interests, but it’s what they seem to want.
Darn @754 & DisplayName@755
With FTTP you’re looking at a smaller unpowered cabinet every 500-1000 homes. With FTTN you get a larger powered cabinet every 10-50 homes. From the following link: http://nbnmyths.wordpress.com/why-not-fttn/
Me @ 766
That should be “distribution”. Anyway, I can’t seem to find that 55000 quoted again, but the ratio is 1 FDH to every 32 homes, so I would expect the number of them to be on the same order as the FTTN cabinets.
Under Hawke, we just played a support role in the Kuwait War.
[The Second World War, being fought by the Allies, was justified, this does not justify all the actions of the war. Being run by nasty war mongers like Churchill and the nastier elements of the militaries caused many unnecessary civilian deaths, through counter-productive bombing of cities and a famine in part of India that was caused by Churchill vetoing food being sent, contrary to advice.]
Churchill was actually relatively “dovish” about bombing Germany, and was sharply critical of Bomber Harris by early 1945. As to whether the bombing was counter-productive: it’s true that it didn’t set back German war production much, thanks to Speer’s use of slave labour. But of course that wasn’t known to the Allies until after the war. They believed they were damaging German war industry, and that is the key point for making an ethical judgement. Further, the bombing did force Germany to divert manpower, money and resources to air defence, and to that extent it was productive. It also de-housed 7.5 million Germans, forcing the diversion of more resources to coping with them. There is also the point that between Dunkirk and D-Day, bombing was the only way the UK could hit back at Germany, and it played a vital role in sustaining Allied morale during that period of sustained defeat on land and of severe privation in Britain.
[By the way, I am saying this as someone who marched against the Iraq war in 2003. I think the war was wrong. But I think our involvement in it was understandable, and it is hardly fair to blame John Howard for it.]
I don’t blame Howard for the participation. In fact, he cleverly worked it that our troops were more or less out of harm’s way.
I do, however, take umbrage at the way he suckered up to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield & Co. Howard must have been aware of the conflict of interest with Cheney’s companies making a motza out of the war. Howard just loved lapping at the heels of those 3 baldfaced incompetents.
I can’t believe they invaded with not much forethought about securing Afghanistan first and then for the day to day running of the Iraq once they conquered it. They couldn’t wait to get in there and get the oil as Brendon Nelson confirmed. Howard would not have been ignorant of any detail.
daretotread
yes, I re read the original comment you made later (the conversation having progressed) and realised that I’d been overly harsh on you!
I plead the effects of painkillers on my brain…my attention span is certainly suffering. I’ll have to try and be more careful about reading comments in context (something I complain about others not doing!)
(But your comments re iinet are still wrong….)
dtt
and, of course, sorry.
Darn@767: I can’t think of any action that could possibly be more self-defeating than voting for an Abbott-led Liberal Government because you believe that the income support scheme should be more generous.
Abbott – as I have said on here before – is in some respects a socialist, and he is certainly no friend of big business.
But, and I know this from talking to the man himself, he has an intense hatred of Australia’s existing social security system and – left to his own devices (which he won’t be) – he would dismantle the whole thing in favour of a system of handouts by churches and private charities to the “deserving poor” (which certainly doesn’t include slatterns who end up with kids and no father) and the delivery of “tough love” (ie, “tough, love, you can’t have a pension now off you go to work in a sweatshop”) to the rest.
BH @ 778
“I can’t believe they invaded with not much forethought about securing Afghanistan first and then for the day to day running of the Iraq once they conquered it. They couldn’t wait to get in there and get the oil as Brendon Nelson confirmed. Howard would not have been ignorant of any detail”
I agree.It wasn’t called the “Coalition of the Drilling” for nothing.
trawler@774
DisplayName@775
Ah, I made a mistake and quoted the wrong ratio 🙂 (the 1:32 thing is something else).
Zoomster
No my comments about iinet were not wrong but perhaps not complete. Not all providers are able to deliver everywhere. iinet seems to be able to serve inner city areas, but for me it was only be wireless.
Dovif was implying that they could cheaply provide service everywhere
Dovif by the way was confusing ADSL with NBN.
This is something that I suggest Conroy should get out a fact sheet on. A lot of people who connected “broadband” years ago may possibly think they already have it.
Thanks trawler
Lest any Howard apologists try to justify the Iraq invasion by painting it as justifiable or as a success:
12,500 US soldiers killed and 100,000 wounded. The ripple effects in family and society generally of psychological injuries alone will be suffered in the US as serious social problems for decades.
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
Estimates are of up to 1.5 million Iraqi civilian deaths since the invasion.
And from Human Rights Watch on the situation in Iraq:
“Iraq 10 Years Later, Creeping Authoritarianism”
“If correct, the report that the US intends to support the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service underscores the poor US record on addressing allegations of abuses by Iraqi security forces,” Whitson said. “The CTS, though accused of committing serious abuses against detainees, worked closely with US Special Forces before the US troop withdrawal in 2011.”
In 2011, Human Rights Watch reported former detainees’ allegations that the CTS had held them in secret jails and had tortured and committed other abuses against them. The alleged abuses included beatings, applying electric shocks to their genitals and other body parts, repeated partial asphyxiation with plastic bags until they passed out, and suspension by the ankles.”
“Iraq’s government today commits appalling human rights abuses with impunity and leaves victims with little hope of obtaining justice,” Whitson said. “The US set this pattern at the outset by allowing abuses without accountability and, not surprisingly, it has preferred to turn a blind eye to Iraqi abuses.”
The US has been largely silent not only about torture but also attacks on other human rights by the Iraqi authorities. US officials failed to speak out in defense of the right to free assembly when men wielding knives and clubs attacked protesters in 2010, 2011 and 2012; and security forces fired at, beat and arrested protestors in 2011 and early in 2013, when they killed demonstrators in Fallujah and Mosul.”
http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/03/19/iraq-10-years-later-creeping-authoritarianism
What a wonderful liberation.
The oil has been secured though. Just a coincidence.
Meher Baba, what you say is true to some extent. I have had some sharp arguments with my Israeli friends about this. To argue that people like Mubarak and Assad are good for Israeli security is a morally bankrupt position and I think untrue in the long run anyway. Those who argue for propping up such regimes become morally liable for the deaths those regime cause. As to “how can we justify overthrowing one dictator but not all the others?”, this is really childish. All dictators deserve to be overthrown. We overthrown them as and when the alignment of political and military forces makes it possible to do so. We can’t invade North Korea, morally worthy as that would be, because it would start a war with China. We could and did overthrow Saddam and Gaddafi, and we should now be overthrowing Assad.
An important debate, this. Back later for more.
Oh, link to nbn document. Page 14 shows 200 as the number of homes per FDH.
[It wasn’t called the “Coalition of the Drilling” for nothing.]
grassmower Thanks for that. It’s first time I’ve heard it but it’s spot on.
Orf to play wife and get His Majesty some lunch 🙂
Darn
[Don’t worry. She’ll be back after she has seen what an Abbott government is really like. And she won’t be Robinson Crusoe either. There’ll be plenty of others like her.]
My daughter manages a home and organises two kids while working and enjoying her life. All credit to her from me.
I don’t really think that her one vote will change the course of history whatever she votes. As I said feels strongly about this issue not for her but for others and for that I am very proud of her.
Psephos
[Churchill was actually relatively “dovish” about bombing Germany, and was sharply critical of Bomber Harris by early 1945.]
In one of his books on Churchill, Michael Dobbs wrote that he gave the go-ahead to bomb Dresden in early 1945 by merely arching an eyebrow to an aide after the person he was talking to suggested it at one of those war-time allied conferences (maybe Stalin, I forget). Maybe that detail was fiction, but you would think that he got Churchill’s attitude to bombing Germany right.
MTBW
That’s what *everyone* tells themselves :P.
DisplayName
Nobody likes a smart a*se! 😆
MTBW, someone has to do the unpleasant jobs!
How misguided, to vote for the coalition as a protest against the single parent payments issue. Does anyone think an Abbott government would be more sympathetic? Abbott and whatever drone will be his minsister for human services will already be planning their welfare payment cuts. They have to fill their huge budget black hole somehow and in typical Tory fashion will do it by attacking the most vulnerable.
Did you draw the short straw? 👿
In fact, that article by Margaret Swieringa, the secretary of the parliamentary intelligence committee from 2002-2007, pins Howard like an insect to a board, leaving him thrashing and flailing in the spotlight of truth.
Good on her for speaking out. There’ll be a few operatives out to get her.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/howard-ignored-official-advice-on-iraqs-weapons-and-chose-war-20130411-2hogn.html
I volunteered myself. Someone said “we need a smart ****” and my ego put my hand up before they got to the second word!
leone
[How misguided, to vote for the coalition as a protest against the single parent payments issue.]
Did anyone say she would vote for the coalition?
The PM stole our policy…wahwahwahwahwahWAH.