The final update of BludgerTrack for the year comes off the back of strong results for the Coalition from both Essential Research and Roy Morgan, resulting in a slight movement of 0.3% on the two-party preferred aggregate, and a seat gain for the Coalition in New South Wales. Nothing new this week on leadership ratings.
Further:
• Labor’s Anna Burke has announced she will bow out at the next election, creating a vacancy in the eastern Melbourne seat of Chisholm, which she retained in 2013 with a margin of 1.6%. Rick Wallace of The Australian reports that the seat is reserved for Burke’s Right faction, but that this still leaves room for a turf war between the National Union of Workers and the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, both of whom are credited with about 35% of the seat’s branch membership. Monash councillor Stefanie Perri is likely to be the candidate of the NUW, while the SDA is intriguingly linked with a possible candidacy for Dimity Paul, who has been central to Victorian Labor’s recent internal crises as the complainant in the bullying action against her then employer, Adem Somyurek. This led to the latter’s dismissal as Victorian Small Business Minister and a split within the SDA sub-faction. The NUW’s prospects may stand to be boosted by a rapprochement with the Shorten-Conroy forces of the Right, which would bring them back under the umbrella of its “stability pact” with the Socialist Left.
• The Liberal National Party’s state executive voted 14-12 on Monday to block Ian Macfarlane’s move from the Liberal to the Nationals, raising questions about his future in the Toowoomba-based seat of Groom. Macfarlane threatened to quit politics if the move was rejected, and there is some concern in the Coalition that he may do so in the new year. Given that the state executive vote followed a 102-35 vote in favour of the move from the party’s Groom divisional council, which would dominate any preselection ballot, there appears to be the potential for a turf war in the seat between the party’s Liberal and Nationals components. I had a piece in Crikey on the subject that was run shortly before the state executive vote on Monday.
• Labor’s preselection for the seat of Robertson on the New South Wales Central Coast has been won by Anne Charlton, the chief-of-staff to Deb O’Neill, who held the seat from 2010 until her defeat in 2013, and is now a Senator. Charlton, who has gained media attention for her admission that she was addicted to heroin at the age of 16, won a local preselection vote by 98 to 72 ahead of Belinda Neal, who had a rocky ride as the seat’s member from 2007 to 2010, when she lost preselection to O’Neill. The seat was won for the Liberals at the 2013 election by Lucy Wicks, who holds it on a margin of 3.0%, which the proposed redistribution would nudge up to 3.2%.
• Also preselected by Labor in New South Wales over the weekend were Emma Husar, a disability services advocate who ran in Penrith at the state election in March, to run against Fiona Scott in Lindsay; and Fiona Philips, a tutor at the University of Wollongong and TAFE who ran in South Coast, to run against Ann Sudmalis in Gilmore.
• Crikey has a Christmas offer of a discounted annual subscription for its daily email and subscriber content, at $180 rather than the usual $219, plus a bonus $125 in books, DVDs and a 30-day Inkl premium subscription providing access to the Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, The Atlantic and more.
And now we have other countries picking up the slack because Australians are selfish bastards.
C@tmomma@2546
I don’t follow your logic.
I was merely pointing out that the US had also lost a sub and in fact it was the worst submarine disaster in history.
I remember it quite vividly from when it happened and was horrified at the fate of those on board as the sub slid steadily deeper until the pressure hull failed and it imploded. It took quite some time and the crew would have known they were doomed throughout.
No joy in a ours are better/worse than yours contest.
No navy sets out to risk expensive assets and their crews and it is hardly surprising the US tried to improve safety after that.
Off now on my delayed Santa run to take gifts to granddaughters. 😀
zoid
[Sorry that was an extra by accident ]
Sounds like a George Bush quote. 😀
bemused
Enjoy!
zoidlord,
Yes, ‘the West’ invaded Afghanistan. To free the people from the yoke of Fundamentalist Islam that the Taliban had them under. Which was a good thing. You would rather they hadn’t?
Yes, ‘the West’ invaded Iraq. For their Oil. However, Gulf War 1 was to stop Saddam Hussein’s expansionism and Gulf War 2 also to put an end to the mistreatment of the Shia
majority by the Sunii Ba’ath Party of Saddam Hussein. Also a good thing.
Yes it created collateral damage when Bush the Junior went too far. Australia, as a partner in the Coalition of the Willing, needs to take it’s fair share of refugees from this conflict.
However, this does not mean that we should take as many as want to come here out of those conflicts. Australia is not able to support millions of refugees. Nor should we take those who come via the People Smugglers. We should take our fair share by going to the refugee camps in the first country of refuge for the asylum seekers. Like Jordan and Lebanon. Or their equivalent in Africa.
Now, zoidlord, please do not reply with a glib one-liner. If you have a position that you believe should be that which the nation adopts, substantiate it.
Before people start saying we need to take from the camps, they should research how poorly funded the UN is for the processing of people through the camps. Less than 1% get processed. Ned to look at the number of camps there are and how many are UN controlled.
@C@tmomma/2556
Now, C@tmomma, don’t post endless paragraphs explaining in detail situation to substantiate your claims as to why we cannot support larger refugee intake.
We invade other countries without protecting the citizens that were in it.
Your posts are immoral, not humane, and self-gratifying of the west invasion to make it not only legal, but also ‘do anything they want’.
Don’t start a war unless you can deal with the after effects.
dtt
[ But to pose the argument that Malaysia is OK because Manus is worse is frankly stupid and should not be put forward by any decent person with a brain. ]
Now that’s a straw man! 🙂
This is of course not what I said at all, but it does seem to be fairly typical of what the Greens imagine Labor supporters believe.
Our own treatment of Australian is also failing:
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/complaints-soar-in-centrelinks-woeful-year-20151221-glsikg.html
zoidlord
[ Now, C@tmomma, don’t post endless paragraphs explaining in detail situation to substantiate your claims as to why we cannot support larger refugee intake. ]
Another straw man! We seem to have an invasion of them today! Perhaps we should have a “Stop the Strawmen!” campaign here on PB 🙂
This is of course not what C@tmomma said at all. In fact, she said we should take our fair share of refugees.
Seems to be yet another Green’s fevered imaginings of what Labor people believe.
@AA/2557
All detention camps are seriously underfunded, that is no surprise, that’s why there is always a cost blowout every single time:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/myefo-budget-update-1-billion-blow-out-on-immigration-detention-costs-20151215-glnydh.html
[Don’t start a war unless you can deal with the after effects.]
the manner refugees were deal with after WW2 was not what would be called best practice today, but they allies dealt with it better then than today
[All detention camps are seriously underfunded, that is no surprise, that’s why there is always a cost blowout every single time:]
I guess TBA missed this in his daily updates from LIBHQ
The cost of Australia’s immigration detention system has blown out by more than $1 billion as the Turnbull government forks out for charter flights, accommodating asylum seekers and funding the governments of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
@Player One/2561
Your pointless rants about Greens shows that your posts are nothing but vilifying others. If you were seriously thinking about what C@tmomma said, you would not attacking everyone who has a different opinion other than your own and then those that don’t have the same opinion as you to label them as Greens.
My point to C@tmomma still stands.
@AA/2564
TBA stupid post earlier saying the budget was saved by $2 billion was the distraction from the bigger issue.
zoidlord
The poor kid does his best with limited ability.
He may be on “piecework” rates….gets paid per stupid comment
zoidlord
[ Your pointless rants about Greens shows that your posts are nothing but vilifying others. ]
Highlighting how the Greens stance on asylum seekers has led directly to rape and murder, as well as countless instances of plain old misery, is not pointless.
If you think pointing out such truths is vilifying you or your party, then perhaps you really need to consider whether your party’s insistence on “playing politics” on this issue is really the humane stance you seem to believe it is.
@AA/2567
Now now, that’s going too far with the “limited ability” bit there.
[ Special emphasis on extremely fast ones to take on aircraft carrier fleets . The one they used in Syria hits at mach 3 . ]
They do like em fast do das ruski. Interestingly, anti-missile defenses have evolved to be able to take those on. The Australian company CEA has been prominent in that with their small active phased array radars that are able to track and target multiples of these kind of targets. And the kind of defensive gun and missile systems carried nowadays are pretty sophisticated. The real danger from the fast ones (like the Indian Brahmos or the Russian “3M-54 Klub” is if they come over the horizon unexpectedly after they go supersonic. If the ship is at all prepared is stands a pretty good chance vs 1 or two incoming, and there are “soft kill” decoys and countermeasures available as well. The Russian ones also tend to use active (an emitting radar) for guidance that is detectable at range.
I think part of the Russian strategy for using these was mass attacks (which can run the inventory down really fast) and that’s why a lot of Russian designed ships carry 16 or so anti ship missiles, rather than the 8 or so common on Western vessels. Western missile development is definitely heading in the direction of stealth and range so that the target doesn’t know its under attack until late. Its a different philosophy that i think will prove more durable that the scary Russian brute force approach particularly with the development of lasers and rail guns for ships that can put out lots of cheap shots.
On the Malaysia / Nauru thing. I still see the Malaysian deal Gillard tried to do as the best attempt so far to have an actual regional solution to people smuggling that involved a country at the head of a “pipeline”. Would have been worth seeing where that could have gone. Too many vested interests at the time that wanted the boats to keep coming for political reasons. 🙁
@Player One/2568
And highlighting how Labor was going to save them is equally disastrous by putting them in places like Malaysia, or Labor standing side with the Coalition Party (which they did – Australian Border Force Bill 2015).
Amongst other things.
The issue is not one party to blame, it’s all 3 major parties to blame for their gross unjustified, attacks on fleeing people from another country.
I don’t hold a candle to the Greens Party, so the attacks on me by yourself regarding this issue is insane.
[zoidlord
Posted Saturday, December 26, 2015 at 5:50 pm | Permalink
@AA/2567
Now now, that’s going too far with the “limited ability” bit there.]
perhaps he gets paid per response to his silly comments
zoidlord
[ I don’t hold a candle to the Greens Party, so the attacks on me by yourself regarding this issue is insane. ]
I apologize for calling you a Green. The rest stands.
Catmomma
You seem to be under the impression that our options are to inflict mental illnesses on asylum seekers through the use of on-shore and off-shore detention, in the hope that the pain and suffering we create will deter people from trying to reach our remote island, or to be swamped with millions of refugees. You think there is nothing between these two extremes.
I suggest that these are not the options we actually face.
We could accept forty or fifty thousand refugees per year, process people without detaining them, refrain from contributing to refugee flows by adding to the violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, and help the nations that are doing the heavy lifting in dealing with refugees. We don’t have to take the selfish view that it’s somebody else’s problem, particularly when we contribute to the problem by adding to the violence in the countries these people are fleeing.
Why do you mention Australia being forced to accept millions of refugees, as though that absurd scenario is seriously on the table?
DTT,
One thing that I don’t get when people argue that the Malaysia solution was bad because asylum seekers are not treated well in Malaysia. The Malaysia solution involved a significant reduction of the number of asylum seekers living in Malaysia. If I recall correctly 4000 asylum seekers would have come to Australia in return for the 800 that were to be returned there. The greens attitude seems to be stuff those stuck in Malaysia, we only care about the ones on our doorstep. Not sure that is really that ethical a position.
Jolyon
I am NOT aruing against the concept of the Malaysian solution, simply that because of the lukewarm (practically icy) enthusiasm of the malaysian government, it would not have worked long term.
Unless welcomed by Malaysia in a very short time there would have been press reports of mistreatment, hunger or exploitation of girls and we would have ended up accepting them all anyway. A genuine resettlement deal where they got citizenship etc and definitely rights to work might have been effective.
zoid
and those saying ‘just let them come’ – and citing 60 millions refugees at the same time – need to give some idea of how many we should ‘let come’.
If it’s open slather, no questions ask, just rock up at a UNHCR centre or Australian embassy and ask to be sent to Australia, we’ll end up with a sizable number of those 60 million – and probably an extra hundred million or so from countries like Greece and Spain. Oh, and China.
After all, if we’re not going to ask hard questions to people seeking asylum, why shouldn’t people chance their arm? Australia is ranked as the second best country in the world, so there’s a couple of hundred other countries where people’s standard of living is lower (and according to some posters here, having a lower standard of living is all you need for us to open our doors to you). It’s worth trying, surely.
And why should we prioritise people from countries we ‘invaded’? (Surely what we should be doing is encouraging the allies who asked us to help to take up their share of the burden). Does that mean we ignore refugees who are in even more need? Do we not take any from Syria, for example, because it’s none of our business?
The refugee problem is only going to get worse, as we experience further unsettlement due to the effects of climate change. It is thus really important to make sure whatever policy we have in place is not just humane, but enforceable.
dtt
[simply that because of the lukewarm (practically icy) enthusiasm of the malaysian government, it would not have worked long term.]
I don’t know where you get the idea that the Malaysian government didn’t support the concept.
The UNHCR thought the Malaysian deal was worth at least a try, and noted that, even before it was finalised, conditions were improving for ALL refugees in Malaysia.
The government wouldn’t have bothered improving life for refugees who weren’t even covered by the deal unless they wanted to show they were serious – and they wouldn’t have wanted to show they were serious unless they liked the idea.
OK, so your objections are practical rather than ethical/moral. I also think your argument is a bit speculative and that it was worth giving the Malaysia solution a go. I guess we will just have to agree to disagree.
The Malaysia solution might have acted as a circuit breaker, much like Kevin Rudd’s “PNG Solution”, reinforced by Abbott’s orange lifeboats eventually did, but far more humanely. Plus, Australia would have taken several thousand out of camps in Malaysia. But a circuit breaker was the last thing the Abbott opposition wanted before the 2013 election.
Unless we want do do what Germany has done this year and accept (pro rata) about 250,000 refugees from Syria and other trouble spots, there are no simple, moral solutions. In any case, even 250,000 is a drop in thd Ocean.
The Greens’ collective heart is in the right place, but they have contributed to the current situation on Manus, Nauru and Xmas and share the blame (with Labor and the Coalition). As for the Coalition, their hypocrisy, bloody-mindedness and exploitation of racism makes me want to vomit.
Steve777
I couldn’t agree more!
C@tmomma@2556
Wow…. thats the kind of crap a crazed neo-con would spout.
The US went into Afghanistan after al-queda in the wake of 911. Had the handled it differently they may have had them handed over.
Still officially denied as far as I am aware.Does weapons of mass destruction ring a bell?
Saddam was silly enough to think the US had given him a wink and a nod to invade Kuwait following a dispute about oil wells. After all, they had supported him against Shia Iran.
Your evidence for a US touching concern for the Shias is?
We should have had no part of that.
Australia carries a large share of the guilt for creating the present situation.
Unfortunately, we cannot just wish it away and have to play our part.
The bad thing about the Malaysian Solution is that it would have made the Greens cry.
daretotread@2576
But those things are not a problem for any of the 4,000 we would have otherwise accepted here? I am incredulous. 😮
We only have Scott Morrison’s own words spoken to Leigh Sales in his last interview before the break up of parliament to know that EVERYTHING that the Coalition did, every position they took, every stunt they created for Question Time, every inane photo opportunity in a Butcher Shop or Fruit Shop or in front of a grocer’s freezer, was done by the Coalition, not because of any principle which they wanted to uphold and defend, but simply, and only, because of the politics of it.
That’s what Scott Morrison said about the whole ‘Debt & Deficit Disaster’ schtick, and, if it applied to that then it would have applied to everything else that they did and said. Why not? It was successful. They could cloak their real agenda in it and the rubes fell for it hook, line and sinker.
So, I will never be able to believe that The Greens did anything other than conspire with Scott Morrison to kneecap the Labor Government’s attempt to find a lasting and humane solution to the asylum seeker. Why am I so certain about this? Not because I dislike The Greens because they are in a competition for votes with Labor, but because I saw Sarah Hanson-Young conspiring with Scott Morrison to do just that late one night when I got lost in the corridors near the Press Gallery behind the Senate.
I have never believed a word The Greens or their gullible supporters have had to say about asylum seeker policy ever since that day. Never will.
C@tmomma
[ So, I will never be able to believe that The Greens did anything other than conspire with Scott Morrison to kneecap the Labor Government’s attempt to find a lasting and humane solution to the asylum seeker. Why am I so certain about this? Not because I dislike The Greens because they are in a competition for votes with Labor, but because I saw Sarah Hanson-Young conspiring with Scott Morrison to do just that late one night when I got lost in the corridors near the Press Gallery behind the Senate. ]
This surprises me not at all.
bemused,
‘ Wow…. thats the kind of crap a crazed neo-con would spout.’
No. My memory is clear. The West in general were horrified that the Taliban government were taking their fundamentalist zeal so far that they began blowing up ancient statues and enforcing punitive social conditions for their populace. 9/11 was simply the catalyst that they used to garner the go-ahead for the invasion of the country.
If 9/11 was the sole reason for invading Afghanistan then they would have simply sent Special Forces in to get Bin Laden and his cronies and left the government in place, as they did in Pakistan.
I’m no Neo Con, bemused, so to suggest that I am is offensive. I expect better from someone who considers themselves capable of formulating an argument to support their point of view.
What I am is someone with Western Contemporary Values who finds the behaviour of religious zealots offensive when they apply their ultra orthodox beliefs on those who don’t share them. Such as ISIS do and as the Taliban did in Afghanistan when they were in government.
I mean, are you trying to suggest we shouldn’t have tried to put a stop to what they were doing when they were in government in Afghanistan?
I also thought you would have remembered Brendan Nelson, when he was Coalition Defence Minister under Howard, admitting that the Invasion of Iraq was to get at their Oil on behalf of Western Oil companies.
C@tmomma@2587
I did not say you were a neo-con, but you were parroting their lines.
The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas was a cultural atrocity, but that occurred in March 2001 and it was not until after 911 that the US attacked the Taliban. In fact I do not recall any mention of womens rights or the Bamiyan Buddhas at the time. As Wikipedia states:
“The War in Afghanistan (or the American war in Afghanistan)[29][30] is the period in which the United States invaded Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.[31] Supported initially by close allies, they were later joined by NATO beginning in 2003. It followed the Afghan Civil War’s 1996–2001 phase. Its public aims were to dismantle al-Qaeda and to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power.[32] Key allies, including the United Kingdom, supported the U.S. from the start to the end of the phase.”
Well I certainly agree with your sentiments, but that is not what the war was about except maybe as a post-facto justification.
Interestingly, RAWA does not support the war.
I was unaware of Brendan Nelson being appointed as official spokesman for the US and its allies in Afghanistan. The likes of Blair, Bush and Howard have never admitted to it AFAIAA.
C@tmomma
[ I also thought you would have remembered Brendan Nelson, when he was Coalition Defence Minister under Howard, admitting that the Invasion of Iraq was to get at their Oil on behalf of Western Oil companies. ]
The end of the oil age is the best hope the middle east has for peace. Give them 30 years, and there will be a flowering in the region as the oil interests find themselves with no reason for toppling home-grown governments or destroying home-grown reform movements.
It will be a fraught and terrible time, but the end result will be peace.
Hmmmm… the mostly likely alternative to Assad has just been killed in an airstrike.
The Assadians are wily.
But was it Vlad the Bomber who really did him in?
We (and asylum seekers in our ‘care’) are in the situation we are with regard to asylum seekers because John Howard faced a difficult election in 2001. One Nation had declared it would preference against sitting members (which, because most were Government members, would disadvantage the Coalition).
Over several months, Howard had clawed back some of the vote in a sort of ‘barnacle removal’ exercise (or was it ‘policies overboard’), e.g fuel excise indexation.
Then the Tampa hove over the horizon. Howard saw an opportunity to steal One Nation’s clothes. He came up with the idiotic and immoral ‘Pacific Solution’, bribing and bullying our tiny neighbour. But enough unengaged (and/or racist) punters loved it – enough to put the Coalition strongly ahead in the polls. Kim Beazely, to his undying shame, didn’t call bullshit and racism – this is not what decent people, indeed not what civilised nations, do.
Then came 9/11. Asylum seekers were conflated with terrorists. The rest is history.
It is interesting to note that in Europe’s current refugee crisis, their extreme right are holding up Australia as an exemplar. No one in he mainstream is suggesting, say, a ‘Greenland’ or ‘Azores’ or ‘ ‘Caribbean’ solution.
I am ashamed of my country.
bemused,
Nothing that you said actually disagrees markedly with what I said. It just seems to be the particular interpretation you have placed upon which issues generated the response. I think they all added up to what was initially a noble cause. In fact I still think going into Afghanistan was the right thing to do. Iraq, not so much.
What happened after that was what was the cause of international angst to this day.
Boerwar
Latest couple of reports I’ve heard say it was “likely” a bomb Bad Vlad. The Syrian aircraft are pretty clapped out and the bomb precision makes it a god bet to be so.
The “flood” of asylum seekers travelling to Australia by boat which prompted the current cruel policies was 25,000 people in 2012-2013.
Note: not millions.
Note: not even high tens of thousands.
Low tens of thousands.
It was a manageable number and we could comfortably accommodate two to three times more per year if we chose to. The “flood” of 2012-2013 did not justify the offshore detention centres in PNG, Nauru and Christmas Island. It doesn’t justify mandatory indefinite onshore detention.
This “flood” occurred after the Rudd Government commendably dismantled offshore detention and made greater use of non-custodial processing in Australia.
People who bandy about words like “flood” or “millions of refugees” in the context of Australia clearly do not understand how Australia’s geographical isolation results in us facing a very small burden in dealing with refugees. We don’t need to inflict mental illness, death, and rape on asylum seekers in order to keep numbers down.
Labor supporters have an affliction that I call “moderation porn”. They get off on appearing to be moderate. It doesn’t matter to them that the “moderate” policies they advocate don’t work and are as useful as wheels on a tomatoe. They just love the feeling of being slightly to the left of the conservatives. It makes them feel important and mature.
There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction found in IRAQ, that was just a big lie by Bush to invade IRAQ.
C@tmomma@2592
It was not initially a noble cause. That is where we differ.
The US had every right to pursue Al-Queda and seek their extradition from Afghanistan.
Had that failed, limited military action, such as the operation which killed Osama Bin-Laden, was entirely justified.
Wholesale invasion was not, and it was a folly of the highest order.
Don’t imagine for a moment it had anything to do with women’s rights.
tomato
[ Labor supporters have an affliction that I call “moderation porn”. They get off on appearing to be moderate. It doesn’t matter to them that the “moderate” policies they advocate don’t work and are as useful as wheels on a tomatoe. They just love the feeling of being slightly to the left of the conservatives. It makes them feel important and mature. ]
Green supporters have an affliction that I call “extremist porn”. They get off on appearing to be moderate. It doesn’t matter to them that the “moderate” policies they advocate don’t work and are as useful as wheels on a tomatoe. They just love the feeling of being slightly to the left of the conservatives. It makes them feel important and mature.
tomato
Nicholas
I don’t see any post here with anyone connecting ‘floods’ of refugees with anything to do with Nauru/Manus, let alone using it as a justification for them.
So I must conclude that you had a lot of straw lying around and nothing to do with it.