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.
bemused
right. So winning the election is more urgent.
In which case, the slower and more consultative measures can be taken.
Again, I note you don’t dispute my main points – that the actions being taken are pointless,as they don’t achieve any real reform NOW (so they could equally have been announced after the election).
zoom, I think the point is to appear to be doing something in order to establish credentials with the public :P.
Socrates
Odd way of demonstrating economic credentials – run a former bankrupt as a candidate, albeit Ms Kitching was only bankrupt on the petition of Solomon Lew.
*before the election
@Tricot 58
Spot on. Pink bats is old news. Will be lucky to get much of a run beyond today. Will have very little impact on Rudd or the Government imho.
An all woman field for Indi so far —
http://wangarattachronicle.com.au/2013/07/05/women-taking-a-strong-stand/
– that said, there is at least one male independent in the wings, and I expect the Australian Democrats will run the same (male) candidate they did last time…
…and we have Katter and Clive still to go!
zoomster@101
The ALP needs to have runs on the board ASAP and certainly before the election to mitigate the effect of the ICAC report.
More can be done later.
Perhaps you can tell us everything Gillard did to clean up NSW? Won’t take any more than one word. NOTHING.
I couldn’t be bothered responding to all your spurious points. Life is too short.
Regarding Labor, developers and reform, I have a few suggestions. Labor does not have to reinvent the wheel. There are lots of places that developed effective countermeasures against conflicts of interest in the past. Some excellent work was done in Qld after the Fitzgerald inquiry defining what was a material conflict of interest, what was corruption, what people had to declare, and when they had to stand down. Adopt the same rules internally in NSW Labor. They are credible and have been tested in Court.
These rules have applied to publc servants, local Councillors and State MPs for years. A few MPs have been jailed under them. They may preclude a number of people from standing or being Ministers, not just developers. But if Labor is serious, this system has been shown to work.
http://www.dsdip.qld.gov.au/about-local-government-and-councils/material-personal-interest.html
lizzie
There is more than a tad of irony. Rhodes was a racist, a mass murderer and an invader of Indigenous lands.
There is a photograph that epitomizes his Rhodesian venture: a group of the chaps enjoying tiffin in front of tree festooned with the hanged corpses of Indigenous people who had sought to defend their land.
Oh dear
the world lining up to poke the peeps princess in the peepers…may struggle to make it into the ring against abbott with abbotts script writing itself
you have to say that stuttergate was a very average look for the fibs. Totally in sync with their bipartisan support of the NDIS
Shellbell
Exactly. At best she was a very poor administrator. A gift to the opposition.
DisplayName@102
Bingo!
To get on the front foot ahead of ICAC and take the first steps to repairing the damage caused by the crooks and morons in NSW.
I would prefer some heads on pikes but such things are frowned upon these days. 😉
As I’ve been saying, it’s quite possible to ‘do something’ before the election, and do things that are real – for example, appointing an independent panel to review the operations of the NSW branch.
‘Doing something’ which isn’t real (and most posters here, even those who are disagreeing with me, don’t seem able to defend the actions chosen) makes it clear that there’s games being played, which should be ringing alarm bells with those who genuinely want to see reform of the NSW Labor party.
Rudd’s support (demonstrably) was mainly from NSW. There’s no way that anyone owing their seat to factions in NSW would vote to have anything happen which might see their preselections threatened in the future. So anyone voting for Rudd would have lined up those ducks in advance.
This looks increasingly like a deal Rudd has done with the factions to make it look as if he’s serious about reforming the party when he actually isn’t.
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 48s
Rudd to apologise for Warren Entsch’s concrete company won a massive government contract in breach of the code.
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 1m
Rudd to apologise for Mr Howard misleading parliament over meetings he had held with ethanol producer Manildra’s boss #auspol
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 2m
Rudd to apologise for Mr Howard found to be in breach when he failed to resign as a director of the Menzies Research Centre.
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 3m
Rudd to apologise for Aboriginal affairs minister John Herron who kept up his practice as a surgeon, in breach of the code.
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 4m
Rudd to apologise for Industry minister Ian Macfarlane involved in a complex scam to rort GST rebates from Liberal Party fundraisers
Rudd to apologise for Employment services minister Mal Brough promoting training courses which were Liberal Party fundraisers. #auspol
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 5m
Rudd to apologise for Acting minister for communications Peter McGauran who forgot that he owned 70 poker machines.
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 7m
Rudd to apologise for LNP Geoff Prosser who was running three shopping centres while he was a minister. #auspol
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 8m
Rudd apologises for ex LNP Min Short for failing to divest himself of financial interests in his area of ministerial responsibility #a
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 14m
BREAKING: Rudd to apologise for never ever GST, Dubai Ops, Telecard, Kids Overboard, Iraq War, WMD, AWB, Bernie Banton, Wittenoom #auspol
Further to 108, those rules would not ban developers per se. A developer with past experience may be useful in government. What needs to be avoided are conflicts of interest over current decisions. The Qld rules would certainly do hat. For example, Obeid failing to declare family financial interests in matters he was voting on would have immediately put him in breach of the Qld rules.
You can never eliminate the possibility of corruption simply by banning one category of people. You need rules in place to ensure that corruption is illegal, will be detected and punished, and is deterred.
[…and then we have the rewriting of history by the Ruddistas on this site who somehow believe that Rudd’s removal was all about factions.]
sigh
Boerwar
Yes, the irony was covered in the article (which covered more than just Rhodes scholars. One candidate had some serious discussions with others in S Africa before she accepted the place. They had decided to take up the advantage because the outcome would be worthwhile for the future and, as the article says, they would have the opportunity to rewrite the past.
A bit like the Labor MPs who stayed on under Kev, really. 🙂
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 32s
Rudd to apologise for Costello appointing Lib Party megadonor Robert Gerard to RBA board despite 14year tax evasion dispute with ATO #auspol
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 1m
Rudd to apologise for Communication minister Richard Alston’s family trust holding Telstra shares. #auspol
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 2m
Rudd to apologise for Parliamentary secretary Bob Woods retiring from politics when under police investigation for travel rorts. #auspol
[Rhodes was a racist, a mass murderer and an invader of Indigenous lands.]
Who declared the British ‘race’ the first human race, or wtte.
Boerwar
Ah yes good old Cecil . A couple of quotes from chap on this his 160th birthday.
[“I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race…If there be a God, I think that what he would like me to do is paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible]
[We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.]
http://m.couriermail.com.au/news/national/liberal-party-8216stutter8217-advertisement-sparks-fury/story-fnihslxi-1226674469043
================================================================
so is this the only adds the libs can offer,
the add re the member happens to be my member
hockey had better look at her news letter that arrives in our box every few months, and her achievement
for the electorate of franklin
the LNP when will they stop having a go a woman, and other s,
so she stumbled over a few words, big deal mr hockey
this lady has done heaps for my electorate,.
shame on the libs shame on them
when will they stop with their nastiness, just think how they would treat us people they don’t know if , this is the way they treat aust, mps
disgusting
Socrates@116
One of the aspects of the proposals that no-one seems to have mentioned is that the reforms involve making party actions and decisions subject to legal appeal in some way.
This is potentially very far reaching IMHO but I am not a lawyer and would like our resident lawyers to comment.
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 1m
Rudd to apologise for David Jull fo resigning as a result of travel rorts involving false claims, mismanagement or cover-ups
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 1m
Rudd to apologise for John Sharp being forced to resign as result of travel rorts involving false claims, mismanagement or cover-ups
[This looks increasingly like a deal Rudd has done with the factions to make it look as if he’s serious about reforming the party when he actually isn’t.]
What’s telling for me is the silence of Faulkner.
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 49s
Rudd to apologise for Santo Santoro failing to declare his 72 investment-buying spree. #auspol
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 1m
Rudd to apologise for Arthur Sinodinos having $3.75 MILLION in shares held for him under a ‘gentleman’s agreement’. #auspol
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 2m
Rudd to apologise for Bill Heffernan resigning as Parlt Secretary over fabricated claims against a High Court judge. #auspol
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 3m
Rudd to apologise for Peter McGauran resigning as a result of travel rorts involving false claims, mismanagement or cover-ups
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 1m
AWH made a $30,000 donation to the NSW Liberals while Mr Sinodinos was the state party treasurer http://bit.ly/17WHcsl
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 21s
Rudd to apologise for bailing out National Textiles, Howard’s brother, Stan Howard’s to the tune of $4 Million
What an absurd situation.
Julia Gillard blamed for everything (wrong) in Oz.
Kevin Rudd apologies for everything (wrong) in Oz.
By the way zoomster – at this point of the electoral cycle, winning the election now, for Labor, is everything.
Nothing else really matters in these last few weeks.
Consult or crash – makes no difference which way Labor goes as long as they keep Abbott out.
Tony The Geek Yegles @geeksrulz 40s
My previous tweets were quotes from the best Howard Ministerial record speech by Senator Faulkner.
http://bit.ly/17WHLlO
I think I am narrowing the central issues in Australian policy development. Around half the population supports Abbott because he is not Rudd, and the other half of the population supports Rudd because he is not Abbott.
What a messiah mess!
Stop press. My daphne odoras started flowering today. Winter is over.
Socrates –
Thanks, this articulates what I’ve been feeling about the proposed reforms, and as you say this isn’t a problem peculiar to the NSW ALP – other bodies, other jurisdictions have tackled the same problems successfully, so adopting a model from somewhere that has been proven to work well would seem the obvious way to go.
Regarding ALP pre-selections, the following sort of stuff (from William above) is disturbing:
[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.]
So “ownership” of that seat is claimed by a faction and the contest will be between 2 sub-factions of that faction.
I am afraid I believe in a meritocracy where the “best” candidate might win pre-selection. Of course opinions may vary about who is “best”, but at least we should get better outcomes than often happens at present.
Bemused
An appeal mechanism may be good, but the criteria of what is or is not OK still need to be defined to now what you can appeal about. Otherwise it is just a lawyer’s picnic. You need to define conflict of interest, in order to stamp it out legally. As I said, it has been done before.
Tricot
and I’m busily organising a campaign which is so far proving to be wildly successful (at least one story in the media every day so far).
bemused has told us here for years that you can criticise the leader and campaign for the party for the same time – I’m just getting with the program.
Socrates
the same provisions apply in Victorian local government – and, for that matter, on the various boards I’ve been a member of it.
Absolutely a no brainer.
What needs to be outlawed is certain patterns of behaviour, not certain professions.
Abbott is still persisting with his green army! Media conference now.
zoomster@135
And I practice what I preach.
I have criticised Rudds actions yesterday and today.
But I do not descend into the type of vicious character assassination practiced by some on here.
Signature Program alert: Abbott talking about grandchildren!
I’m no friend of the political fortunes of the ALP, as many will know. Still less am I an advocate of R**d or Garrett, yet it seems to me that at least in relation to HIP, the Federal government neither in 2009/10 nor now has anything for which it ought to apologise. R**d was quite wrong apologising back then and he has compounded his error by apologising now.
First, a mea culpa. At the time the program was conceived and implemented, I thought it to be sub-optimal. I saw it principally as a CO2 abatement initiative, and regarded it as poor value for the abatement dollar. Had I been in charge of the program, I’d have gone about matters in a fundamentally different way. It would have been orderly and systematic, but it would have been far slower, and per installation far more expensive. Not all homes would have received insulation. Some might have received solar hot water or some other thermal efficiency modification. Much more of the work would have been undertaken by licenced tradespeople. There would have been a lot more ‘red tape’. In the long run, it would have produced more abatement per dollar, but as a stimulus program, it would have been a failure. Fewer semi-skilled people would have been supported when they needed it, and in the end, it still wouldn’t have been cost-effective abatement in relative terms. Deaths per 100,000 installations would have been lower and as did the HIP, we’d have identified and remedied fire and other safety hazards. The bottom line though is that what I’d have proposed, though tidier, would have been inferior to what the Federal government conceived and implemented given the decisive program goal — underpinning employment. IMO, the HIP was arguably, dollar for dollar, one of the best initiatives in context in the last 40 years. Those who participated will continue to receive benefits for years to come at a rate well above the debt service cost to the Commonwealth — and they will also get some abatement.
All human activity entails a certain amount of risk — including lethal risk. Sensible folk think hard about what kinds and how much risk they are willing to take to obtain certain types of benefit, but even sensible folk occasionally miscalculate and even when they don’t, they can suffer from anomalies. I daresay that if, at the time HIP was conceived, someone had asked the R**d-led regime whether it was possible that someone might be killed installing insulation, they’d have been forced to admit it was possible, especially if some unscrupulous contractor flouted established safety procedures. That would not have been an argument against proceding with the program. Instead, it would have been an argument for making clear that participants ought to obtain and be currently qualified to carry out all work and be cognizant of and bound by workplace safety provisions in each state — which the Federal government made clear when it rolled out the program.
Governments at all levels persistently spend money on things where people who take advantage of the subsidy are at risk of death. Here in NSW the LNP continues to provide assistance in the form of relief from stamp duty for those buying new property who commence building a new dwelling within 12 months of purchase. This is expressly designed as a housing sector stimulus program. Many of those taking advantage will be owner-builders and not necessarily even licenced builders. Others will contract people of doubtful competence. That doesn’t make the state government liable for all injuries or deaths, IMO. Home insulation is something often installed by home owners. It’s not hard to do. What is hard is knowing when faulty wiring will contra-indicate proceeding.
Governments that promote tourism are not responsible for deaths amongst tourists. Governments that build sound roads to best practice and maintain them are not responsible from the trauma that results from their misuse or use by unroadworthy vehicles. The government has a role to play in setting the rules, and ensuring compliance but beyond that people need to take responsibility for their acts and accept that if they are careless, their risk of loss goes up. Even the best designed home insulation program imaginable cannot ensure that everyone does the right thing, and even if they did, occasionally, as Tony Abbott once remarked, “sh|t happens”. We humans have never seen risk as an absolute bar to action — nor should we. We trade in risk, and accept costs when they occur, learning what we can, and trying again.
Really, the logic of the LNP’s attack is that there should have been no HIP at all. That merely would have traded one low risk (and all of the benefits that have been accrued) for the reality of lower employment amongst low skilled people, especially in the regions. Being unemployed or under-employed carries its own risks of harm, and these are non-trivial.
In some cases, faulty wiring in homes was discovered and remedied under HIP whereas absent the program, this might have gone undetected, and cost lives in ways that could not have been sheeted home to the Federal government. In public policy, there really is no better a chance of a free lunch than in any other part of life.
I am disgusted that R**d seems to have offered an apology when none was warranted. As most have acknowledged here, its rationale was enitirely about playing to the galleries and neutralising a longstanding talking point on the right. That’s why most will see it as worthless — along the lines of those formulaic “sorry to anyone I may have offended” exercises. Few if any believe that the Feds’ HIP was responsible for these deaths. Instead, the apology is a kind of white noise that blurs the reality that the hallowed small business folk of this country harbour amongst their number, scoundrels and incompetents. That’s who, in their own ways and for different reasons, the MBCM, the LNP and R**d are shielding through their cant.
Greg Hunt at pains to attribute the green army policy to Abbott.
bemused
just as well I’m not doing character assassination then, but criticising actions.
First question on pink batts.
I’d say this is a fair article from Grattan.
http://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-rudd-is-a-nimble-difficult-opponent-for-the-liberals-15815
[Katharine Murphy @murpharoo 3m
#stoptheweeds]
Fran Barlow@140
You don’t do succinct do you Fran. 👿
Boerwar
Posted Friday, July 5, 2013 at 10:29 am | Permalink
I think I am narrowing the central issues in Australian policy development. Around half the population supports Abbott because he is not Rudd, and the other half of the population supports Rudd because he is not Abbott.
What a messiah mess!
———————————————————
That would put me in the bit that dislikes Abbott and the Liberals because of their policies and likes Rudd because he is the Leader of a Labor Party that has good decent policies.
zoomster@142
Yes, you are making criticisms of actions, and I have no problems with your criticisms as opposed to the vicious stuff from the unbalanced on here.
I use the term “policies” loosely when refering to the Lberals
One line rants don’t cut it with me.
Bernard Keane @BernardKeane 2m
so the moment any member of Abbott’s Green Army is injured while picking up rubbish or pulling up weeds, Abbott will resign, yes?