In a spirit of providing a new post every day during the campaign over and above things like the Senate of the Day entries, today I offer the following scattered assortment of bits-and-pieces relating to contentious preference deals.
• The biggest headline-generator has been the Wikileaks Party, whose most contentious choices have involved a New South Wales ticket which places the Greens behind both the quasi-fascist Australia First and, more consequentially, Shooters & Fishers, and a Western Australian ticket which has the Greens behind the Nationals. Responding to an immediate backlash on social media, the decisions were put down to “administrative errors”, which appeared to involve paperwork being lodged by activists with different ideas about strategy from the party executive. Three of the most noteworthy critics of the arrangement have been Julian Assange’s Senate running mate in Victoria, academic and ethicist Leslie Cannold, who resigned complaining that the party’s democratic processes had been bypassed (albeit that this happened too late to affect her inclusion on the ballot paper); Julian Assange’s mother, Christine Assange, who said that if she lived in Western Australian she would vote for Scott Ludlam of the Greens, who has been the strongest parliamentary supporters of her son’s cause; and Julian Assange himself, who apologised for having “over-delegated” such matters to persons evidently less capable than himself. For all that, the preference arrangements have conferred tactical advantage on the party in some cases, such as in Western Australia where it will be fed preferences from Family First, the Katter and Palmer parties, and a lengthy list of smaller concerns.
• Four parties in Victoria remarkably failed to lodge preference tickets, which among other things offered a potent insight into the closeness of the relationship between them. This was further delved into by Andrew Crook at Crikey, who noted the same personages at work behind the Liberal Democratic Party, Stop the Greens, the Smokers Rights Party and the Republican Party. A source quoted by Christian Kerr of The Australian put the non-lodgement of the tickets down to matters having been “thrown into chaos as it became clear Labor would do a deal with the Greens”. This came as bad news to the Sex Party, which had dealt its way into a national arrangement with the parties concerned that also involved One Nation. To those angered to discover that the party had done Pauline Hanson a good turn in her bid for a New South Wales seat, the party weakly responded that “you have to put these lunatic parties somewhere”, while failing to acknowledge that in Hanson’s case “somewhere” was number 10 out of 110, ahead of Labor, the Coalition and the Greens.
• The complex of preference harvesters and opportunists willing to make deals with them has gifted Pauline Hanson with what occasional psephologist Polly Morgan describes as “an incredibly favourable preference flow”. However, Hanson faces the stumbling block that the Coalition have her placed last, so unlike other parties to the arrangement she does not stand to benefit from the surplus after the election of their third Senator, which in the context of the current election could be substantial. Indeed, Hanson’s candidacy may end up doing the left a good turn, as other right-wing candidates with the potential to be elected with help from Coalition preferences could instead get excluded at an earlier stage of the count by virtue of their failure to overtake Hanson. Should Hanson not poll quite so well as that, there are a range of potential scenarios for a seat to go to a micro-party. The most likely contender could be the Liberal Democrats, who have had a lucky break in being drawn as “Group A” on the enormous Senate ballot paper. Experience suggests this will substantially boost the number of votes they get from those confusing them with the Liberal Party, the Coalition ticket being a lot harder to locate (“Group Y” out of a listing the continues all the way out to “Group AR”).
• Labor has made the highly unusual decision to place the Liberals ahead of Andrew Wilkie in Denison. It presumably did so in the expectation that its preferences would not be distributed, the weakness of the Liberals in the electorate meaning the final count will most likely be between Wilkie and the Labor candidate, Jane Austin. However, the weekend’s ReachTEL poll of 563 respondents cast at least some doubt on this, showing the Liberal candidate leading Austin 23.1% to 18.0%. Wilkie’s position nonetheless appears strong enough to ensure his re-election regardless of how preferences are directed.
• Labor has entered a preference arrangement with Katter’s Australian Party in Queensland in which the latter will receive the former’s preferences for the Senate ahead of the Greens, in exchange for which the latter will direct preferences to Labor ahead of the Liberal National Party in Hinkler, Herbert, Flynn, Capricornia, Forde and Petrie. This could well entail the high price of having KAP Senate candidate James Blundell elected ahead of the Greens, a prospect that would be pleasing to an incoming Abbott government. As Steven Scott of the Courier-Mail reports, it has also caused some not unpredictable dissent in the KAP.
Such high level arguments Sean Tisme. Hard to argue with that.
Wow. He really did have his Weet-Bix this morning.
Wow… it’s a like a teenage conservative who never grew up.
I think Sean has a problem with his liver. It has s-s-s-something on it.
Castle the libs haven’t been a party of small business for thirty years. They say they are but until small business realize they really aren’t the coalition will take their votes and screw them over.
triton:
And arrogant Trioli thinking she could argue the toss with him about the Senate vote reflecting the will of the voters.
WWP
I think it has to do with aspirations. Most small businesses dream that one day they will be Big Ones and they vote accordingly.
Millions of Small Business Owners had to pay Gillard the Liars Carbon Tax.
They will be thankful that Labor and it’s clowns finally get their justice served in the following days.
Did anyone see our fearless leader on The Project keeping it real on Senate preference deals?
Abbott was all set to grab the small business vote this election – until it announced a promise to scrap a tax concession the sector really likes.
The small business tax hike disguised to the public as “savings” by Abbott will hit the Party hard, as it should.
For all his rantings about understanding and caring about small business the take hike shows the true story.
And the extra cost to small business goes beyond the tax hike, it extends to the non-NBN Abbott will put in place. Forcing small businesses to pay up the $5,000 to get connected to fibre.
Millions of Small Business Owners will have to pay hockeys and abbotts increased taxes amounting to $4.6 billion and rising.
Mike Carlton @MikeCarlton01 21h
To quote John Cleese, you’d trust Tony Abbott ” about as far as you could throw a wet mattress up a spiral staircase.”
Dio:
Sorry, I don’t watch the Project. What did he say?
Bridie Jabour @bkjabour 8m
Love this photo of Tony Abbott and his COS Peta Credlin in the Australian today. pic.twitter.com/MWm04jostq
Rosemour..
“I think Albanese is the only one who can be relied upon to fight tories from sun up to sun down…and probably all night long.”
Apart from a tepid debate with Turnbull on ABC …I’ve heard zero from Albanese on one of ALPs most popular policies …the National Broadband Network.
They ought to be running hard on this policy which has something like 70% approval among voters …suspect closer to 90% approval with younger voters.Coalition has a daggy dog’s breakfast of a broadband policy …which Albanese should be ripping apart all day and all night.
Instead we get more of Rudd’s grandiose brainfarts …to distract/confuse voters from the core ALP policies.
How is this strategy “fighting Tories”?
One of the Oppo’s major “waste” attacks. Wrong!!
Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/waste-claim-is-rubbished-20130828-2sr4x.html#ixzz2dJPkf9vc
lizzie:
Doesn’t Abbott look just like a naughty schoolboy getting a dressing down from his teacher!
Maybe it’s because I was a debater… but I never understood the decision to go first in a debate. Having the last word is more important than opening.
Millions of Small Business Owners will have to pay hockeys and abbotts $5,000 fee to connect to the NBN.
confessions
The first word that came to my mind was pussywhipped, but I don’t think it’s very p.c. 😉
Castle 98
Guess what to date no answer one way of getting rid of the trolls i guess
BUT plenty of retweets on original tweet plus the one I sent to him specially so he will be getting lots of reminders 😀
LIZZIE 108
Good pick up on baby sean no wonder he is unhinging
OK Off now taken the grandkids to school and a few hours to myself before swimming etc this afternoon
Millions of Small Business Owners will have to pay an extra 0.5% in interest rates as banks recover the abbott and hockey 1.5% tax on them.
More to send him mari above about the extra’s they will face under abbott and hockey.
DHS has told Fairfax that it spent $51,000 on workplace ergonomic assessments among its 36,000 workers and that nobody from the opposition checked with the department before going public with the accusation of waste.
$1.50 approx. for each employee. Wow. Let’s not waste money on getting the right equipment to prevent injury (and subsequent worker’s comp claims) and improve work performance.
No really unexpected attack on what is a Occ Health issue. The Liberals and their in bed business contributors campaigned long and hard against Occ health Safety legislation.
It was all about Me me me and profits/bonuses and their million dollar pay packets.
fess
He explained that the preference deals have so many permutations that its very difficult to predict the last Senate spot in each state.
And something about predicting Tony Abbott will prove to be the Abraham Lincoln of Australian politics and prove to be the greatest leader of the 21st Century.
I might have misheard the last bit.
The rant from Antony Green on preference flows really is worth a look, if only because he is normally so modest in his tone:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-29/preference-deals-could-benefit-micro-parties-at/4920822
As I said the other day though, (and Anthony doesn’t refer to it in his rant — FTR I’m using this term to describe his emotions rather than the integrity of his claims, with which I have no dispute) the large number of micro-parties (of some of which nobody has ever hitherto heard) and the inability for people to read the ballot unassisted with ease, will push many to use ATL and this must strengthen the value of preference deals. Since The micro-parties’ entire policy is summed up in their titles — they are essentially exercises in reactionary kite-flying — they are really just channels for catching those careless or RW voters who would unwittingly vote informal and directing them towards the strongest RW micro-party — which may well turn out to be the LDP or the PUP or Pauline Hanson. (I suspect the Sex Party will suffer because their constituency will be appalled at them preferencing the far right). In the end this probably will help the LNP if none of these reach the 2% or the third LNP candidate performs strongly enough to nearly get there.
The main losers would be the ungrouped.
The main curiosity is why the ALp didn’t set up a whole bunch of micro- anti-Abbott slogan parties. Off the top of my head, they could have set up parties with names like “the Down with People Smuggling Party” or the “Fair Immigration Policy Party” or the “Stop WorkChoices and Unfair Dismissals Party”, or “Bring on the NBN and NDIS Party” or “Stop Abbott’s Brutal Cuts Party” or even more deliciously, “The Turnbull not Abbott Party”. (That one might have been ruled invalid by the AEC)
That would have forced the kind of change that Antony would want but it would have disrupted the efforts of that RW maverick (whose name escapes me now) who engineered this nonsense on the far right.
It would be kind of fun to see Sinodinos go down in favour of Hanson and Kroger in favour of FF though.
Self funded retirees and retirees with investments to supplement their “income” will be making a significant contribution to Abbott’s PPL.
They will a reduction in their ‘earnings’. This will see many being eligible for the pension/part pension and other benefits will cost the budget millions.
That has not been factored into Eleventy’s sham figures
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/five-arrested-in-people-smuggling-raids-20130829-2sruc.html#ixzz2dJTisgvG
That would be bad for the country as Sinodinos is someone I’m hoping will restrain Abbotts more ridiculous urges.
Taxpayers will see an increase in the cost of living as companies pass on the 1.5% tax increase to pay for PPL.
Inflation will rise.
One major retailer has estimated they will need to “recoup” $40 million that they will pay under the Abbott PPL scheme
Remember – its in the DNA
Malcolm Fraser became Prime Minister in November 1975, the Government sector had net financial assets – that is, there was negative net government debt equal to 2.7% of GDP.
The Fraser Government, with John Howard as Treasurer for the bulk of that time, ended its time in office with net government debt equal to 7.5% of GDP in 1983-84.
Mr Abbott recently said “prudent fiscal management is in the Coalition’s DNA”. The facts suggest otherwise.
Remember – its in the DNA
They show that John Howard is the only treasurer in Australia’s history who’s been able to engineer – simultaneously – double-digit inflation (December 1981 to June 1983), double-digit levels of unemployment (April to October 1983) and double-digit interest rates (November 1980 to October 1983).
In the June quarter of 1983, inflation was 11.1%, the unemployment rate was 10.2% and the official cash rate averaged 12.08%.
52
WeWantPaul
In my experience, efficiency (to the extent that has any meaning in this context) is mostly related to the size of an organisation, not whether it is private or public.
Government may seem less ‘efficient’, but that is mainly because it is much bigger than any private organisations.
Tony “lock up your daughters” Abbott is at it again, with some more cringe-worthy comments to a group of teenage female netballers. The photo shows all Abbott’s charm:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-29/abbott-welcomes-body-contact-between-netballers/4920870
This guy’s attitudes to women are not old-fashioned, they are creepy. Presumably he does want people to lock up their daughters, to be safe from men that think like he does. I hope Bridget and Frances escape his clutches. Run girls, run.
So much for the conservatives being the guardians of social values. Who will guard us from the conservatives?
Sean Tisme
That’s seriously wrong. 100% wrong. Putting aside your incorrect terminology, the carbon price was being paid by 249 corporate bodies, including some councils, IIRC. This is obviously well short of “millions of small business owners”. No small business owners were directly paying the carbon price.
Even if we exclude the descriptor “small”. and include councils in business owners, 99.99975% (at least 1 million + 1 i.e “millions”) of business owners were not paying it.
That cost would be less than the cost of contesting a single injury claim.
“That would be bad for the country as Sinodinos is someone I’m hoping will restrain Abbotts more ridiculous urges.”
Would that be Obeid’s mate you’re talking about ….?
Strongly agree. I once worked for afirm working on a project for MIM, then a large mining company. They wasted a fortune.
I think the main determinants of efficency are organisation size (bigger = worse), experience of the management, and if the field is competitive.
confessions
Yes, she seemed to dismiss everything he’d said about Hanson, or wasn’t listening.
Diogenes
I’m not sure that is true in practice. It’s unlikely Sinodinos would have a greater influence than Murdoch — at least on our timeline — and it’s possible an Abbott-led regime will repeatedly shoot itself in the foot out of a combination of hubris and dogma-led stupidity anyway.
My reading is that people’s memories are short, and now that Gillard is gone, she is already beginning to fade in the consciousness. If THLV is routed, there will only be Abbott left, and he will have no place to hide.
Having the populist far-right on his shoulder would be deeply embarrassing and accentuate the fault-lines within the LNP and make it harder for Murdoch to run interference. I don’t know what Hanson’s position on the NBN is, but I rather suspect she’d be with those not keen on the cheap and nasty version that Turnbull has in mind.
I want to see what happens when Turnbull and Hanson have their first little exchange.
I haven’t seen Antony’s rant yet but our upper house ticket system is a complete joke which has to be binned ASAP.
Every election : one randomly generated senator with no popular support whatsoever gets up – and worse, on apparatchik preferences, not those of voters.
It encourages fake parties and rent seekers with no base whatsoever.
Obeid had hundreds of political mates. I’m not big on guilt by association.
Would that be the Liberal Sinodinos who is to front the ICAC along with Liberal Premier O’Farrell over dealings with Obied?
Before being elected to the Senate in 2011, Mr Sinodinos was a director of AWH, which ICAC has heard is an Obeid-related company.
In early 2012 the NSW Coalition government awarded AWH a 25-year water infrastructure deal without any tenders. Corporate records show that Mr Sinodinos was a director of AWH from November 2008 until November 2011. On Wednesday, apparently to distance himself from AWH, the senator announced he would forgo his 5 per cent shareholding to which he was entitled following his time as chairman, worth up to $3.75 million.
AWH made a $30,000 donation to the NSW Liberals while Mr Sinodinos was the state party treasurer but last night he said he did not recollect the donations being discussed at a board level.
Dio:
Not as erudite as Green, but correct in a way.
And agree on Sinodinos, except I doubt he has as much sway over Abbott as his string pullers. Even putative Treasurer Joe ‘end the era of entitlement’ Hockey has caved in to Abbott’s fiscal profligacy.
“Obeid had hundreds of political mates. I’m not big on guilt by association.”
How about guilt by investment?
So who will be making the decisions? Will it be Abbott with people like Minchin advising him.
Will Abbott be autocratic?
Not 1 single small business had to buy carbon credits.
Lots of people have fronted ICAC.
Fran, Dio
Thanks for the link to the Antony Green piece, which is logical, but depressing.
After recent election fiascoes where luminaries like Steve Fielding and the DLP’s Madigan sent to the Senate with very small votes, has there been discussion on introducing rules to limit this? For example, a rule that in Senate contests anyone who gets less than, say, 4% of the vote is eliminated first?
It is absurd to think that a number of votes that are not enough to get your deposit back may still result in election to the Senate. We now seem to be playing Senate Preference Bingo, which does not resemble anything I’d call democracy.
“Millions” of small businesses would be paying more tax under an Abbott Govt.
Abbott’s removal of the scheme – which allows businesses to offset operating losses and retain staff by claiming back taxes paid over the last three years – would have the effect of a tax increase.
A $3 billion hit on small business