Two further additions to the already voluminous Labor retirements list since my last preselection review:
• Greg Combet is calling it a day after two eventful terms as member for the Hunter region seat of Charlton. Mentioned as possible successors are Pat Conroy, whose background as a staffer to Combet, George Campbell and Anthony Albanese, and as an official with the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and CFMEU, is detailed in The Australian; Daniel Wallace, a local organiser with the AMWU; and Sonia Hornery, who represents the local area in the state parliament as member for Wallsend.
• Simon Crean is calling it a day after 23 years as member for the south-eastern Melbourne seat of Hotham. Michelle Grattan in The Conversation reports the seat is effectively reserved for the Right, with Bracks government adviser Rosemary Barker spruiking backing from factional figurehead Stephen Conroy as well as a base of support from the Australian Workers Union. Also mentioned is Geoff Lake, a Minter Ellison lawyer and former Australian Local Government Association who shares Crean’s association with the National Union Workers.
Another two vacancies have been resolved:
• David Feeney has emerged victorious in the contest to succeed Martin Ferguson in Batman, after defeating Left candidate Mary-Anne Thomas by 383 votes to 247 in the local party ballot on Sunday. The matter was to be settled the following evening when the state party’s public office selection committee to determine its 50% share of the overall vote, but Thomas rendered this a formality by withdrawing.
• Alannah MacTiernan, senior Gallop/Carpenter state government minister and more recently the mayor of Vincent, is now confirmed as Labor’s candidate to succeed Stephen Smith in Perth after two other mooted contenders – Tim Hammond, a barrister who ran unsuccessfully in Swan at the 2010 election, and Matthew Keogh, a lawyer with Freehills – chose not to nominate.
And some developments in two further preselection races:
• Tony Bowen, mayor of Randwick and son of Hawke era deputy prime minister Lionel Bowen, has emerged as a second candidate for the preselection to succeed Peter Garrett in Kingsford Smith. Bowen says he has nominated despite being told “in no uncertain terms” not to run by the state party’s head office, which is evidently very keen on the candidacy of Senator Matt Thistlethwaite.
• The preselection for Craig Emerson’s southern Brisbane seat of Rankin looms as a contest between Brett Raguse, who won the outer Brisbane seat of Forde in 2007 before joining Labor’s Queensland casualty list in 2010 (and who claims the support of Kevin Rudd), and Jim Chalmers, a former chief of staff to Wayne Swan.
I wonder who will be the first to use this line re boats:
“This reckless sailing has to stop”
It’s old news, but.
[Declan Pye @THEDeclanPye 1h
Something to remember in #pinkbatts drama. Rate of fires dropped from 1.3/1000 to 0.16/1000 under government program. #auspol #insulation]
Sean Tisme
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 9:49 pm | Permalink
Since when was the last time Coalition Party was largely blamed for a deficit?
What a stupid question.
How can you get blamed for deficits if you don’t have any?
—————————————————
Just for starters Fraser Liberal Govt $40 billion deficit when Hawke took Govt
You really should read
[Sarah Roberts
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 10:43 pm | Permalink
…
FFS. Report the damn truth or piss off.]
Liberals truth. You have got to be kidding!
Sean Tisme
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 10:20 pm | Permalink
Hi Dave,
Hows that Paramatta to Epping railway Gillard promised with the other puppet Kristina Keneally coming along?
——————————————————-
How’s Abbot “there will be no new taxes under a Govt I lead” going?
Then within 4 weeks proposed the new tax to pay for PPL that will cost business more than the current Carbon Price.
And he arrogantly proposed the PPL without consulting his Caucus
TheFinnigans天地有道人无道 @Thefinnigans 4m
Indo’s positions on Turn the BOATs:
1. House MP – FO
2. FM Marty – FO
3. VP Boediono – FO
4. Ambassador – FO
5. Now SBY – FO
TP
[ And I can bet with a new GFC around the place the world is going to become a little more complicated… and Aust in need of a leader competent on the international scene. ]
World Mkts have done pretty well. US up what ? 127% or so.
Envious you didn’t have the balls to partake of the upside it sounds.
rudd is a failure at domestic policy – ie looking after local day to day issues and needs to lift his game.
A good start will be to start defending his own party and government and their policies.
He is in huge danger if he doesn’t win the election and still on probation if he wins – because Labor won’t need him then. All we need to do should he wins the election is stitch him up and vote him out, again.
Got it, TP ?
40 Miles off Java and Indonesia gets us to do the rescue… now who’s taking the piss?
Indonesia is laughing at Rudd and Labor… and Labor will send them another big cheque to try and solve a problem Labor started.
guytaur@1046
I have the script. Boring
Frednk, Liberals and truth is an oxy-moron
How can SBY talk about joint responsibility when it’s left to Australia to rescue a boat only 80k from the Indonesian mainland? If people think Abbott is dead on boats when that relies on Indonesia dictating Australian policy then I think they are kidding themselves.
ST, they way you continue to obsess over Refugees you’re starting to come across as racsist.
Just saying..
Gotta love Labor rusted-ons: few weeks back Rudd was hated here and now he’s a saint; Gillard’s ministers were peaches and cream, Rudd’s supporters on the back-bench where they belong, those creeps. Now it’s reversed, minus all the resignations. But some things don’t change and Rudd is such a schmuck (or a schmendrick if you prefer Yesiree Bob) and certainly not a mensch, that he will go down as badly as Gillard would have in the end. Save this post Yesiree so you’ll look back and say, you know Mick was right as he have been in everything else (poll predictions, Gillard’s eventual demise before it was fashionable). Some of us have got it, some haven’t so here’s a short term prediction to keep me honest: end of July polls will be around 47/53 to Abbott.
davidwh, turning the boats back wont work. Nothing we have tried so far has worked, why shouldn’t we try a multilateral, regional summit ?
Sean Tisme
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 10:29 pm | Permalink
Rudd solution to the boats… Have another TALKFEST!
FFS… we are back to 2010 already folks. Stop with the talks and DO SOMETHING.
Anyone remember Howard having “expert panels”, “talkfests”, “summits”, etc etc when the Tampa rocked up? Nah he sent out the SAS and stopped the boats. It’s called taking action folks but this Labor government is too divided to do anything but talk, talk and more talk.
===========================================================
1 December 2008
Government welcomes a bipartisan report on immigration detention The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, today welcomed the first report of the inquiry into immigration detention by the Joint Standing Committee on Migration.
Senator Evans said he was pleased that the Committee, which includes senior Liberal MPs and the Shadow Immigration Minister Sharman Stone, has endorsed the Rudd Government’s abolition of John Howard’s inhumane approach to immigration detention.”
Sharman Stone on the ABC:
LEIGH SALES: Does that mean – sorry to interrupt, but I just want to pick up on that point. Does that mean then that we need to see the reinstatement of the TPVs, and the Pacific Solution?
SHARMAN STONE: We don’t need the Pacific Solution now, that’s Nauru Island and Manus Island, because we have the Christmas Island centre completed. A very well structured and appropriate facility for people who need to be, of course, detained very, very, so I say humanely, so they very quickly can have their identities, their security, their character and health status checked. So we don’t need alternatives to Nauru and Manus island, we have Christmas Island.
“So back in 2008 the Coalition fully supported Labor’s move to dismantle the Pacific Solution, Why ? Because PM John Howard had decided to spend $400 million upgrading the Christmas Island detention centre to a facility that would accommodate 800 asylum seekers. Why would he do that if the boats had stopped coming?
Obviously John Howard was thinking “down the track”, he knew that the Pacific Solution was unsustainable
Oh how people like Stubbed Toe like to try and re-write the past that shows what bullsh-tters they are
[davidwh
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 10:53 pm | Permalink
…
Australian policy then I think they are kidding themselves.]
I’m fed up with boats, but anyway; silly litte Abbott has got himslef in a corner, which is David, sink the boats, bring in the gunboats or backdown?
Sean Tisme@1008
Glad you asked.
BOF said no.
So BOF will do his own thing.
Won’t say where the money is coming from and it will take longer to build then to install the NBN around the entire continent. It will then be another 20 year behind time – like the tories.
All BOF has done so far is have a video made of what he is “gunna” do.
Gunna this and gunna that.
davidwh
[How can SBY talk about joint responsibility when it’s left to Australia to rescue a boat only 80k from the Indonesian mainland? If people think Abbott is dead on boats when that relies on Indonesia dictating Australian policy then I think they are kidding themselves.]
You express it like I wanted to – spot on!
Sean Tisme
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 10:34 pm | Permalink
The regional, multi-lateral Refugee summit
6 Years into the problem and Labors holding another summit…
How many years should we give Labor to talk about a problem without ever actually fixing it?
Please call an election now, this Labor government is a joke.
———————————————————
explain how if the Pacific Solution was so successful why 1700 asylum seekers were processed through Nauru
More importantly, How can Abbott now argue against the SBY proposed summit ?
That would be like rejecting SBY personally.
I don’t believe towing boats back will work either but I don’t think we should allow Indonesia dictate to us whether we should try. I’m not sure that SBY press conference will go over as well as what people here are suggesting.
Sean Tisme
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 10:35 pm | Permalink
@Sean/1022
Why do they need a plan right now?
Because they’ve had 6 years to have a plan. This isn’t Rocket Surgery.
——————————————————
No its not rocket surgery.
Its about people. Its about compassion and care for fellow humans something I would have thought Abbott would have learned while in the Seminary. Something I would have thought a devout Catholic/Christian that Abbott would know all about.
But among the Catholics there appear to be two types, – those who care and those who befriend Pell and his like. Abbott appears to have chosen the later
[Nothing we have tried so far has worked, why shouldn’t we try a multilateral, regional summit ?]
We’ve heard about this “regional summit” stuff since at least 2010. Labor has had 3 years to make it happen. It hasn’t happened.
And Labor haven’t tried everything, they spent 5 years kicking and screaming to do anything and still haven’t introduced TPV’s, still haven’t dumped onshore processing, still haven’t tried turning back a single boat despite Sri Lanka asking for such a move and still haven’t sent bulk amounts of boatpeople straight to Nauru and Manus.
It reminds me of the episode of the Simpsons when Ned Flanders peacenik parents were told to punish their badly behaving son: “We’ve Tried Nuthin’ Man and We’re all Out of Ideas!”
[Mick77
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 10:54 pm | Permalink
.
end of July polls will be around 47/53 to Abbott.]
It’s the election results that matter. Labor now has the Abbott haters that couldn’t vote for a PM that wasn’t born with balls.
davidwh
The only people saying SBY dictating Australia AS policy are the LNP.
Its like saying going to a G20 meeting is President Obama dictating our Financial policy.
Utter Bollocks
@Mick77
Heiner affair? Either you are having a laugh, or you are Piers Akerman. Piers has been banging on about that for six years, and still nothing to see. It’s over. Nothing to see here.
@Sean
Turn back the boats as a policy is dead, the last rights delivered by SBY this afternoon. You can’t turn a boat back to nowhere. That is the three word question that Abbott still cannot answer, How Will You? Julie Bishop got herself in to a complete bumbling mess trying to defend their dead policy late this afternoon.
AussieAchmed
Statistics on what was or wasn’t in Howard’s years are irrelevant to the public. EVERYONE knows that boats ceased to come and were not an issue in Howard’s last term. Howard warned that Rudd’s policy would re-open the doors and the welcome mat and he did it anyway when Nelson was heading the Libs which made it easy. Forget the subtleties. Public’s accurate perception: Libs protect our borders, Labor lets in the hordes.
The sad thing, all the Liberals have to offer is “stop the boats”, boring as bat-shit and totally irrelevant to the future of the nation.
“We’ve heard about this “regional summit” stuff since at least 2010. Labor has had 3 years to make it happen. It hasn’t happened”
how many times does it need to be pointed out to you that this is an Idonesian initiave?
Were you born Mentally Challenged, or did the Dr drop you on your head at child-birth ?
Sean Tisme
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 11:02 pm | Permalink
Nothing we have tried so far has worked, why shouldn’t we try a multilateral, regional summit ?
We’ve heard about this “regional summit” stuff since at least 2010. Labor has had 3 years to make it happen. It hasn’t happened.
And Labor haven’t tried everything, they spent 5 years kicking and screaming to do anything and still haven’t introduced TPV’s, still haven’t dumped onshore processing, still haven’t tried turning back a single boat despite Sri Lanka asking for such a move and still haven’t sent bulk amounts of boatpeople straight to Nauru and Manus.
It reminds me of the episode of the Simpsons when Ned Flanders peacenik parents were told to punish their badly behaving son: “We’ve Tried Nuthin’ Man and We’re all Out of Ideas!”
———————————————————-
TPV – let them live in Australia working and residing in the community.
Tell me Sean, how many who were given a TPV were later found not to be refugees and sent back?
” Labor lets in the hordes.”
Oi, my maternal grand parents were amognst some of those “hordes”, Pal.
frednk
[a PM that wasn’t born with balls.]
What’s yr obsession with genitals? Abbott has Rudd’s measure – period! No puns intended.
Yesiree Bob
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 11:06 pm | Permalink
“We’ve heard about this “regional summit” stuff since at least 2010. Labor has had 3 years to make it happen. It hasn’t happened”
how many times does it need to be pointed out to you that this is an Idonesian initiave?
Were you born Mentally Challenged, or did the Dr drop you on your head at child-birth ?
——————————————————-
He actually dived into the shallow end of the gene pool and banged his head
frednk@1078
That’s the good thing!
[Mick77
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 11:08 pm | Permalink
frednk
a PM that wasn’t born with balls.
What’s yr obsession with genitals? Abbott has Rudd’s measure – period! No puns intended.]
Because that is what it was all about, nothing more and nothing less. It now two blocks in a mud wrestle. One can put more than three words together.
guytaur@1075
SBY is saying No to ‘Tow Back the Boats’ and to any overture from abbott to that effect.
But anyway the next month or so are critical to both sides, poll wise.
Lets see what happens.
Unless they turn around again – abbott is going to have to debate his lack of policy and his ‘lil blue book’ might as well be compacted into confetti because only dummies like truthy are going to accept such nonsense.
Guytur, here here
At some point Abbott is going to have to show is good for more than three words.
Mick77
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 11:04 pm | Permalink
AussieAchmed
Statistics on what was or wasn’t in Howard’s years are irrelevant to the public. EVERYONE knows that boats ceased to come and were not an issue in Howard’s last term. Howard warned that Rudd’s policy would re-open the doors and the welcome mat and he did it anyway when Nelson was heading the Libs which made it easy. Forget the subtleties. Public’s accurate perception: Libs protect our borders, Labor lets in the hordes.
======================================================
but he boats didn’t stop. Howard excised certain areas from the Aust Immigration zone. Boats that “landed” in those areas were not counted because they did arrive in Australia.
Howard fiddled the books. 1700 on Nauru after 2002. billions spent on Nauru, why? Because they had no-one on the island???…if so, then Howard was a bigger waster of our money than I thought
” Abbott has Rudd’s measure – period! No puns intended.”
Is that why Abbott is too GUTLESS to debate Rudd ?
If SBY is saying no to tow backs then Indonesia is dictating Australian policy, or trying to.
Just for Sean’s sake I will post this again. It takes awhile for things to sink in and he can only cope with little bits at a time…
1 December 2008
Government welcomes a bipartisan report on immigration detention The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, today welcomed the first report of the inquiry into immigration detention by the Joint Standing Committee on Migration.
Senator Evans said he was pleased that the Committee, which includes senior Liberal MPs and the Shadow Immigration Minister Sharman Stone, has endorsed the Rudd Government’s abolition of John Howard’s inhumane approach to immigration detention.”
Sharman Stone on the ABC:
LEIGH SALES: Does that mean – sorry to interrupt, but I just want to pick up on that point. Does that mean then that we need to see the reinstatement of the TPVs, and the Pacific Solution?
SHARMAN STONE: We don’t need the Pacific Solution now, that’s Nauru Island and Manus Island, because we have the Christmas Island centre completed. A very well structured and appropriate facility for people who need to be, of course, detained very, very, so I say humanely, so they very quickly can have their identities, their security, their character and health status checked. So we don’t need alternatives to Nauru and Manus island, we have Christmas Island.
“So back in 2008 the Coalition fully supported Labor’s move to dismantle the Pacific Solution, Why ? Because PM John Howard had decided to spend $400 million upgrading the Christmas Island detention centre to a facility that would accommodate 800 asylum seekers. Why would he do that if the boats had stopped coming?
Obviously John Howard was thinking “down the track”, he knew that the Pacific Solution was unsustainable
[davidwh
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 11:13 pm | Permalink
If SBY is saying no to tow backs then Indonesia is dictating Australian policy, or trying to.]
Gunboat or backdown, which is it going to be david?
At the end of the day people have to vote in a booth. They will need to choose between:
1. a set of implemented policies and a clear forward agenda or
2. a pamphlet of one paragraph motherhood statements and a culture of nastiness expressed in three word slogans.
[how many times does it need to be pointed out to you that this is an Idonesian initiave?]
The Indonesian Government are crapping themselves that Abbott will win the election and shut down their multi-million dollar business.
Plus this is another opportunity to get some more $$$ out of Rudd the Dudd. If Indonesia want to stop the boats they’d stop letting their corrupt officials let the boats sail out of port and their Navy ignore the boats sailing down to Australia.
As Mark Latham said Indonesia are in bed with the People Smugglers.
“If SBY is saying no to tow backs then Indonesia is dictating Australian policy, or trying to.’
so, Tony will let the boats just sink then ?
david, when it comes to shared space, it’s impossible to avoid the interaction of policies from different sides.
What the president has said effectively is that just acting unilaterally won’t work. You need countries working together. I can’t see where he is telling us what policy we should have. He is right btw.
You’re not that bright, are you Sean?
Tell ya what, you might want to watch lasts nights QandA.
It’s very racist for white-fellas like you to assume that all the Indonesians need do is “crack dowm” on corruption.
A reminder for everyone why Abbott will do all he can to avoid debating Rudd. We all know what happens when he is under pressure! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKp6hF-Zd0M