Today’s Courier-Mail brings a Galaxy poll of federal voting intention in Queensland, encompassing 800 respondents and presumably conducted over the past few days. The primary vote numbers are 44% for the Coalition, 36% for Labor, 10% for the Greens and 2% for Palmer United, compared with respective results at the 2013 election of 45.7%, 29.8%, 6.2% and 11.0%. This converts into a Coalition two-party lead of 51-49, a swing to Labor of 6% from the 2013 result.
A fair bit happening lately on the federal preselection front:
• Joanna Lindgren will fill the Queensland Senate vacancy created by Brett Mason’s appointment as ambassador to the Netherlands, after prevailing in a preselection ballot over seven rival candidates. Her win was achieved despite Tony Abbott, John Howard and Julie Bishop having backed Bill Glasson, an opthamologist, former Australian Medical Association president and twice-unsuccessful candidate for Griffith, firstly against Kevin Rudd in 2013 and again at the by-election held to replace him the following February. Lindgren has been described as a “project officer”, and is apparently the great-niece of former Liberal Senator Neville Bonner, Australia’s first indigenous parliamentarian.
• The Queensland ALP wrapped up preselection in nearly every seat that matters on Wednesday. Cameron Atfield of the Sydney Morning Herald reports the candidate for Forde in Brisbane’s outer south is Des Hardman, who made way for Peter Beattie’s unsuccessful bid for the seat in 2013. Laura Fraser Hardy, a lawyer, will make her second successive run against Liberal incumbent Ross Vasta in the bayside marginal seat of Bonner. The preselection of five out of Labor’s six lower house incumbents was also confirmed, including that of Wayne Swan in Lilley. The exception is Bernie Ripoll in Oxley, who will make way for Brisbane City Council opposition leader Milton Dick.
• A Liberal National Party preselection held this morning for Clive Palmer’s seat of Fairfax was won by Ted O’Brien, managing director of government relations firm Barton Deakin and the unsuccessful candidate in 2013. Others in the field were Peter Duffy, a construction manager; Don Jamieson, a banking manager; Chloe Kopilovic, a solicitor; Adrian McCallum, an engineering lecturer at the University of Sunshine Coast; and Mark Somlyay, an accountant and son of former member Alex Somlyay. Labor has preselected Scott Anderson, an IT consultant.
• Heath Aston of the Sydney Morning Herald reports that NSW Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon’s bid for another term is meeting resistance from no fewer than 16 rival preselection nominees. Among them are several colleagues of Rhiannon’s in the “hard left” faction, including Jim Casey, the state secretary of the Fire Brigade Employees Union, together with “James Ryan, Amanda Findley, Jane Oakley and Ben Hammond”. Also in the field are Cate Faerhrmann, who filled Rhiannon’s state upper house vacancy when she moved to the Senate in 2010, before abandoning it for an unsuccessful Senate bid in 2013; and Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, who held a state upper house seat for the Australian Democrats from 1998 to 2007.
• Sean Ford of the Burnie Advocate reports that Labor’s preselection candidates for the north-western Tasmanian seat of Braddon include Justine Keay, a Devonport alderman and electorate officer to Tasmanian Opposition Leader Bryan Green, and Themba Bulle, a Burnie general practitioner. The current Liberal member, Brett Whiteley, won the seat from Labor’s Sid Sidebottom in 2013.
• Labor’s candidate to run against Adam Bandt in Melbourne is Sophie Ismail, a Victorian Education Department lawyer and member of the Socialist Left faction.
TPOF@1192
I’m surprised to see the results on whether people approve of the government’s modification of the PPL scheme.
This govt is a joke
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and Ruddock and now appointing them to lead national convo about citizenship.— Latika M Bourke (@latikambourke) May 26, 2015
lizzie@1197
I’m surprised they even considered it, if this article is to be believed.
@Victoria/1202
No it’s not a joke, its pretty much standard now.
Like I said, this gov and every tory gov is about appointing vested interests.
Steven grant Haney
This has all the hall marks of dutton’s alleged laziness.
He showed in health that he is great at ideas that simply will not stack up.
This probably seemed like a good idea to push some terror buttons but if Barnaby Joyce can spot the flaws in it …
Latika M Bourke
Latika M Bourke – Verified account @latikambourke
PM Abbott on divisions over stripping sole citizens of their status: this is a Cabinet that has very vigorous discussion as you’d expect.
CTar1 + LU
Cricket ? There was a game somewhere ? Truly awful to watch.
Raaraa
[I’m pretty sure as a signatory to the 1954 and 1961 UN conventions against stateless persons, Australia cannot make people stateless.]
They can if they are happy to ignore their international law obligations and the Senate permits them to pass laws that do so.
@Raaraa
They do 4 every year in 3 month intervals. The last one was in February.
WWP,
[Well if those networks were looking like they were going to be part of the future and competitive then obviously you would stay with them, if your network connection charge and tariffs made that option more effective than onsite generation and emergency backup you’d use that. ]
I’m optimistic that there are some big moves coming. Tas, Victoria and Qld will see changes in network operations for the better very soon.
[If the connection charge and annual tariffs are going to compare more to a new set of batteries or even a second backup generator what are you going to chose?]
I take your point, but the price of batteries would still have to fall a long way to make it economic. There are also alternatives to fixed connection charges that are better for both network co and customer, such as demand charges, which would give an incentive to users to reduce peak demand, thereby lowering (future) network costs.
[Even where it is not purely economic ‘independence’ is a powerful driver that should not be overlooked, particularly when you are comparing independence with a tariff that is treated like a tax.]
I agree. The whole industry, including regulators, have cocked it up so bad that this perspective is rife, even though the decision to be ‘energy independent’ is a very costly one.
[…if you can use wave and wind at a local level to create and store enough electricity for local needs,]
You can’t. Even with great increases in PV efficiency, simply not enough energy can be captured from rooftops to power our needs. So there will need to be utility-scale generation (renewable, of course!).
[ plus a bit more, why would you then also underwrite the massive distribution network for 50kms from your neighborhood to the coal fired power plant.]
Make them an array of concentrated solar thermal plants with storage, say at Dubbo, Dalby, Peak Downs, Mildura, and Playford. Does that change your argument?
I’m not trying to provoke you, I’m just saying that the network aspects and the generation aspects of our power industry can be reasoned about largely separately, and that batteries are best a supporting network aspects. Rooftop PV should be compared to other generation options, and on that comparison, it doesn’t stack up.
[ Under old technology the case makes itself because you moved all the pollution from your lovely suburb to Collie, if you can generate it locally and clean why move it at all?]
Like I said above, because you can’t generate it all locally, and it’s cheaper to do it at large scale.
[I agree it is a disgrace and disaster, but it will be much worse if they try and recover it from electricity consumers. Much better to admit they monumentally f*cked up and deal with the problem. otherwise you are missing economically viable (possibly even advantageous) options because you analyse them all through what it will mean for your dinosaur network and the billions of dollars you still need to recover for it.]
Yep. But who is the ‘they’? The regulators – AER, AEMC, IPART et al.? The operator AEMO? The overseers of the regulators – COAG and the State Govts? But yes, I agree, someone needs to cut the Gordian knot holding us back here. There’s a review into energy market governance arrangements underway at the moment that I’m following with interest. I believe the Grattan Institute’s report this week is a shot across the bows of that process.
[If in a couple of years I get the battery man out to quote me for batteries and he says ‘look mate they are facing the wrong way, you’ve obviously skipped the annual maintenance, and we are going need twice as many’ then they are maintained, moved to face the right way, doubled in size and I get new batteries. If he says ‘look mate for $2k we can get you a little gas generator, runs of the metered gas, all the smarts it only kicks in when you need it, it is pretty much silent, I tell him to put it in next weekend.]
Now that’s a quite likely outcome.
But is it best if local gas-fired generation is offsetting utility-scale wind and solar? And is it cheaper to share the cost around with your neighbours, and if so, at what point do you scale up to? And while where at it, what’s the network fee for your gas connection?
[People have already made large personal investments in PV they aren’t going to just forget them.]
Yes, I do understand this PoV. Now, I’m not wanting to be belligerent, but my perspective is that this kind of thinking is a problem to be overcome when looking to reform the industry to reduce system-wide costs going forward.
[And you will rightly say we have made much bigger investments in networks, but those aren’t personal investments and they look like very bad investments. The kind you never talk about at the bar when you are talking how well you did out of the x float last week.]
Heh 🙂 IMHO, the only way those investments will come good is with a concerted push to electrify heating, cooking and transport, which is in the social interest if it offsets gas use…
Enter AGL and their bundled packages! which will almost surely include things like new electric stoves and heaters. My tip is they’ll be offering leases on electric cars soon too 😉
Why can’t Australian citizens strip the Prime Minister and their caucus of any power? It should not be the other way around.
This is pure evil dictatorship.
Raaraa @ 1201
[I’m surprised to see the results on whether people approve of the government’s modification of the PPL scheme.]
I suspect it’s Tony Abbott’s new Australia at work. Everyone for themselves and let the devil take those who do not have contacts in the Liberal Party.
Because a lot of people are not considering having children or are past it. Or just don’t see themselves as ever getting PPL under their conditions of employment and would rather do in those who can (especially public servants) than try for themselves.
That said, there was always a policy argument for it (though not one I agree with). It’s just that it was so viciously unnecessary to demean people who currently have the entitlement.
Out of Abbott presser,
Due to tampon dismissal by Abbot is the first question from Shorten going to be about tampon’s?
Too true. Sigh
[Space Kidette
3m3 minutes ago
Space Kidette @SpaceKidette
Abbott’s Ministry of Fear and Loathing is getting more and more real by the day.]
“@karowhinewilson: Mick Malthouse has been sacked by Carlton. Expect the decision to be made public later on today”
Guytaur
Whilst it is likely Malthouse will be sacked, that is a parody twitter account
poroti
[Truly awful to watch.]
A less than glorious last day …
victoria
Yes I know. The whine in the middle gives it away. What is going to be interesting is how close to reality the parody is which is why I posted it
Good Slogan:
Josh Taylor retweeted
Chris Neugebauer @chrisjrn 28m28 minutes ago Hobart, Tasmania
WE WILL DECIDE WHO LEAVES THIS COUNTRY
AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH THEY RETURN
Should be used by Labor to attack Coalition Party, but Labor are crap.
guytaur
All good
Ian McFarlane wins stupid comment of the day, over a star field.
[“[Australia] may not build the first few but let’s not rule out, you know there are a lot of submarines to be built, there’s a lot of work to be done and in terms of the way things are done in the world today, producing components or putting components together is very much the modern face of manufacturing.
“You don’t just build everything in the one spot.”]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-26/ian-macfarlane-flags-submarines-adelaide-long-term-hope/6497480?WT.ac=statenews_sa
Everyone (knowledgable) agrees that the reason our ship building industry has been expensive is the on-again off-again nature of contracts, with the result that all the skilled people leave when the job ius finished, and you have to start from scratch again each time. McFarlane’s claim that “the first few” subs might be built overseas means another gap of years before more work. So ASC will lose all its skills. Again. Dumb.
Then he says that we would do assembly of components. So all the high tech manufacturing and engineering design will be done overseas. We wind up doing some basic assembly here, learn no skills, retain no skills, and employ nobody new. Dumber.
The subs contract is esstimated to cost from $20 billion (minimum, Jap option) to $30 billion (ASC option) with options like the French or Germans taking over ASC to build here in between. That is $1.5 to $2 billion per year, every year for 15 years. If all we achieve is employing 1000 assembly workers in the ASC yard, and do nothing of the development or high end component manufacturing, we are paying $1.5 to $2 million per year per job to generate low tech work. Why not just give them all $1 million each and buy the subs from Japan? We woudl save $9 billion. It makes supporting the car industry look cheap.
Seriously this government is insane when it comes to economic policy. They couldn’t run a canoe.
Here we go QT
Tampons is first question 🙂 🙂 🙂
Natsem getting a lot of laughter.
Won’t do them much good as released publicly
Interesting policy announcement by Abbott re dual citzenship.
Seeing how it is impossible to qualify and thus quantify those Australian citizens who have dual nationality the policy is as useful as tits on a bull.
Favorites
Tweets
Captain Chaos Of No
10s10 seconds ago
Captain Chaos Of No @geeksrulz
@vanOnselenP Do you realy think fanatics give a toss about social security ot citizenship? They go over there to die.
DeeMadigan
46s46 seconds ago
DeeMadigan @deemadigan
Shorter Abbott : NATSEM is highly regarded modelling except when it’s critical of my budget.
“@latikambourke: Bill Shorten heckle at Joe Hockey which made the microphones “low-rent goose”. #qt”
The Speaker strikes again with the bias
The article on the revolting Cabinet names names, and quotes someone who was reportedly there.
Who is leaking is the question that comes to mind.
‘fess
Talc?
Joyce can’t stay relevant on a dixer
[I agree. The whole industry, including regulators, have cocked it up so bad that this perspective is rife, even though the decision to be ‘energy independent’ is a very costly one.
…if you can use wave and wind at a local level to create and store enough electricity for local needs,
You can’t. Even with great increases in PV efficiency, simply not enough energy can be captured from rooftops to power our needs. So there will need to be utility-scale generation (renewable, of course!).]
I’m not sure we aren’t saying the same thing here, but you do answer a point about wind and wave with PV, I’m assuming at least wind is considered utility scale (where I understand the wave is still very experimental but like sun we have a little bit of coast and there is some massive rural potential with wave power doing desal and generation together).
I guess reviewing my thinking and the posts this morning it boils down to trust (and complete lack of trust) in the providers in the market (and I get to see the WA market led by Barnett so i presume we are massively behind, but that is the market i’ll make my choices in).
[Make them an array of concentrated solar thermal plants with storage, say at Dubbo, Dalby, Peak Downs, Mildura, and Playford. Does that change your argument?]
I think that was my argument except I was thinking on a smaller scale and localised. Do you get economies of scale out of massive solar + distribution compared to smaller solar within 10kms? Or wind? If so all we need is for it to actually be done.
[I’m not trying to provoke you, I’m just saying that the network aspects and the generation aspects of our power industry can be reasoned about largely separately, and that batteries are best a supporting network aspects. Rooftop PV should be compared to other generation options, and on that comparison, it doesn’t stack up.]
No no provoke away. I think if you could get a product into the market to go offgrid now you’d make a fortune well before the utilities clean up there act. And yes lots of this decision would be irrational.
[Yes, I do understand this PoV. Now, I’m not wanting to be belligerent, but my perspective is that this kind of thinking is a problem to be overcome when looking to reform the industry to reduce system-wide costs going forward.]
Well I could take a holiday with the battery money so it would be good if the industry upped its game pretty quickly.
There are lots of other great points you make, some I should agree with and some I should at least try and provoke back, but I think bottom line between us comes down to the ability of the current industry to adapt fast enough so that they stay more economic than emerging technologies that can be deployed at a local level to make that local level self sufficient. You clearly don’t think the emerging technologies can emerge, I think solar PV with all its faults (imagine if it didn’t have those faults!) shows that people who were saying it wouldn’t emerge 10 years ago were wrong.
CTar:
It could be anyone!
“@PhillipMHudson: Mick Malthouse sacked as Carlton coach just after Tony Abbott backs him and says he “should be given a chance”.”
victoria
The parody was spot on it seems.
How unsurprising mick Malthouse got sacked. Now can we sack Abbott?!!
‘fess
It was a joint party room meeting this morning, I think, so it could even be a Nat.
guytaur
It was obvious he was getting sacked. It was reported earlier that he had been summoned to front the board at Carlton. Everyone knew why
gt
[Mick Malthouse sacked as Carlton coach just after Tony Abbott backs him and says he “should be given a chance”]
I don’t think Carlton FC would be taking much notice of Tones.
[ “@PhillipMHudson: Mick Malthouse sacked as Carlton coach just after Tony Abbott backs him and says he “should be given a chance”.” ]
To retire?
CTar1
Although some of the prominent board members at Carlton are tories
“@osbornep: ‘I’m of the school of thought the PM was always right’ says MP for McMillan. #qt #auspol”
[Wayne Swan
Wayne Swan – Verified account @SwannyQLD
Hockey’s repeated attacks on myself & my staff say more about his insecurity & immaturity than anything else, he’s not fit for the job #qt]
New thread.
John Barker, assistant coach at Carlton FC to coach the team in the interim reports The Age
[1154
lizzie
For the third time I will state: I don’t use the cccp stuff and Preview is not working. So Crikey program?]
fwiw, I think the Crikey platform is malfunctioning. It has stopped remembering my log in. Maybe it’s been hacked by the IPA 🙂
Essential has a question on whether renewable energy or fossil fuel is better for the environment.
5% say fossil fuel, 9% no diff, and 17% Don’t know. I expect the 5% is willful belligerence, but otherwise Shorten might be onto something with science education.
It would be good if Essential had a question on evolution or if the world is flat, so we could make a better assessment of the sample.
Bill Shorten to table a bill for Marriage Equality next Monday.
Test
🙂
🙂
😀
😆