Newspoll’s surprise this week has caused a minor landslip in the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, which moves 0.8% to Labor on two-party preferred, while delivering only a modest gain of three on the seat projection (one each in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia). The leadership results from the poll have also caused Malcolm Turnbull’s net approval rating to continue its downward trajectory, and given a very slight impression of Bill Shorten pulling out of his slump. Also in the mix this week were results from Roy Morgan and Essential Research, neither of which recorded much movement, although the former found Labor hanging on to a big gain the previous fortnight.
In other news, the big story at the moment is obviously the introduction this week of Senate reform legislation to the Senate, for which there is a dedicated thread here for you to comment on, together with my paywalled contribution to Crikey on Tuesday. Then there’s preselection news:
• Nominations for the hotly contested Liberal preselection in Mackellar closed on Friday, with seven challengers coming forward to take on Bronwyn Bishop. Joe Kelly of The Australian reports the field includes the widely touted Walter Villatora and Jason Falinksi (see this earlier post for further detail), along with Bill Calcraft, a former Wallabies player described by the Sydney Morning Herald as having “returned to Australia after a long career in business in Europe”. For what it may be worth in well-heeled Mackellar, Calcraft has the support of talk radio broadcaster Alan Jones, who coached him when he played for Manly in the 1980s. The other candidates are Campbell Welsh, a stockbroker; Vicky McGahey, a school teacher; and Alan Clarke, founder of Street Mission.
• Sarah Martin of The Australian reports that while Craig Kelly no longer faces opposition from Sutherland Shire mayor Kent Johns in the Liberal preselection for Hughes, two other local party members have nominated against him: Jeffrey Clarke, a barrister, and Michael Medway, noted only as the candidate for Werriwa in 2004.
• The Liberal preselection to replace Andrew Robb in Goldstein, which was covered here in detail last week, looms as a contest between Georgina Downer and Tim Wilson, after another highly rated candidate, local software entrepreneur Marcus Bastiaan, ruled himself out. Christian Kerr of The Australian reports on a move by locals to throw their weight behind Denis Dragovic, a “former hostage negotiator, academic and global development worker”. Also expected to nominate by Kerr’s Liberal sources are Jeremy Samuel, chairman of the party’s Caulfield electorate committee, and John Osborn, director of economics and industry policy for the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
• The Liberal preselection to replace Bruce Billson in the outer south-eastern Melbourne seat of Dunkley has been won by Chris Crewther, a Frankston-based business consultant. Steve Lillebuen of Fairfax reports that Crewther won in the final round over Donna Bauer, who held the state seat of Carrum for the Liberals from 2010 to 2014. Crewther unsuccessfully attempted to win the rural seat of Mallee for the Liberals when Nationals member John Forrest retired in 2013, but was defeated by Nationals candidate Andrew Broad.
• The retirement of Warren Truss creates a preselection vacancy in the Nationals stronghold of Wide Bay in central Queensland. Among those to express interest are Jeff Seeney, who entered state politics in 1998 and served as Opposition Leader from March 2011 to March 2012, and as Deputy Premier through the period of Campbell Newman’s government from March 2012 to February 2015. Also said to be in the mix is Tim Langmead, a former adviser to Truss.
• Also vacant is Ian Macfarlane’s Toowoomba-based seat of Groom, where the state member for Toowoomba South, John McVeigh, has confirmed he will seek Liberal National Party preselection.
• Sally Cripps of the North Queensland Register reports four candidates have nominated for Liberal National Party preselection in Bob Katter’s seat of Kennedy: Michael Trout, who held the state seat of Barron River from 2012 to 2015; Shane Meteyard, grazier and owner of Milray Contracting; Jonathan Pavetto, economic advisor for the Alliance of Electricity Consumers; and Karina Samperi, a Cairns management consultant. The narrowly unsuccessful candidate from 2013, Noeline Ikin, has withdrawn after being diagnosed with cancer.
BW @ 2992
That sort of makes sense if you accept that pedophilia was such a shocking allegation that it would have stuck in the mind if it had been said – like murdering a parishioner.
But at the same time all the evidence shows that the biggest problem the church saw with pedophile priests was not the damage done to children but the fact that it caused problems and complaints in the parish.
So, Pell is saying that pedophile conduct would have been so terrible he certainly would have remembered it, but it was of such little concern that the bishop and some others were happy to sweep it under the carpet rather than refer to the police.
That’s what I see as the contradiction.
So the Greens were speaking from expert knowledge of fake parties set up to game the system.
MayneReport: Druery and Rhiannon are each citing rival pop up parties they claim each other set up at the 1999 NSW election. Druery was far worse.
On a similar theme :
‘Only PM, God know when election will be’
Only the prime minister and God know when the 2016 election will be held, the federal director of the Liberal Party has told a parliamentary committee.
“The news is that only God and Malcolm Turnbull know when the election will be and neither of them have told me,” Mr Nutt replied before the question was ruled out of order.
http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/only-pm-god-know-when-election-will-be/news-story/0155ea156e2fcb25f4d5e78aa86373ec
Druery
[Green Senator Lee Rhiannon would like to know how many parties Druery has helped to set up. How many before the NSW election?]
Pressed, he thinks about forty parties.]
Peg @ 2962
[It’s a ‘moving feast’.]
The only thing that hasn’t changed is that the proposed changes would be of dramatic benefit to the Coalition.
MayneReport: Ricky Muir suggests he might need to declare an interest re Druery. Nat Barry O’Sullivan said he should if he paid Druery. Indeed.
Turnbull must be under extreme stress. He reminds me of someone who is trying to hold on to his marriage while keeping a lover satisfied at the same time.
Just heard Susan Ley saying on 3aw that she believes the pathology companies will pick up the slack when when the government stops providing the $25 subsidy for tests. When Neil Mitchell asked her if they will be required to do so she waffled.
Given that the pathology companies are already out there saying that the move will cost lives, it is obvious that they have no intention of absorbing the cost – and why should they? Isn’t maximising the bottom line the basic tenet of everything the Liberals believe in?
If they are clever, the Labor party should have a field day with this one.
[ABC political editor Chris Uhlmann reports that Mr Abbott has addressed the joint partyroom in Canberra, following debate about the Federal Government’s tax changes. Party sources say he told the meeting it’s ‘… time for the leadership to take on the savings challenge again.’]
Oh Chris, we know who your source(s) is.
MayneReport: Druery’s only defence of a gamed and rorted system is that “anything which reduces diversity in the parliament is a bad thing”. Very weak.
zoomster@2975
I think the main thing for the Greens is that they realise they suffer brand damage that costs them votes when they are caught dealing with parties their supporters see as right-wing. However there is no other way for them to get the most out of the system. They’d like to not have to make such decisions.
This alone is sufficient to explain why the Greens support this change when it is relatively neutral for them in terms of the conversion of actual votes to seats. They want a purer brand because it will help them increase their vote. This is something the Greens are far more sensitive to than other parties because their supporters are idealistic.
peg
so you have the triumvirate you want.
It’s not the consensus here, though – most witnesses to the Senate committee use much the same language, although ‘established party’ is probably the most accurate term.
danielaritorto: Bill Shorten reveals his Melbourne parish priest was jailed: “through the actions of my mum & others you know, I think I avoided a monster”
[ lizzie
Posted Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 11:46 am | Permalink
Turnbull must be under extreme stress. He reminds me of someone who is trying to hold on to his marriage while keeping a lover satisfied at the same time.
]
He only has to worry about his marriage because he is in love with himself and he is pretty happy with that …
( You all think of me as narcissistic when actually I’m just oblivious to other people.)
This mob spent 2 years going from hubristic complacency to panic before finally installing Turncoat. Then they did the same thing again – but in a compressed 6 months. History repeats itself. The first time is tragedy; the second time is farce.
Nicholas,
The world of politics is not as simplistic as what you try to paint it as with your Green hue. Has it ever occurred to you that Labor may oppose something that they agree with in principle because the outcomes of a grubby deal to bring it into effect they may not agree with?
And as more and more of this grubby and typically behind-closed-doors deal between The Greens and the Liberals comes into view then the greater become the reasons to oppose it in all it’s rushed grubbiness.
Time you realised that The Greens aren’t a party of principle, just another grubby political party doing grubby political deals. In fact, they always have been as far back as I can remember, which is a long time.
Also the red herring about a Greens-Labor Coalition will never happen and shouldn’t even be discussed in any sensible forum because The Greens don’t want it. Bob Brown said so! They want to replace Labor, and if it involves doing deals with the Liberals it seems, then so be it in their eyes.
At least Labor have principles that they aren’t willing to jettison overboard in a trice for the ability to just keep existing at all.
[Interesting to note that the federal directors of both the Liberal and National parties are appearing before the committee but the national secretary of the Labor Party, George Wright, is not.]
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/the-pulse-live/politics-live-march-1-2016-20160229-gn6y7n.html
Druery wants to push OPV below the line and GTV above the line. Also admits he votes BTL every election! The irony!!
So my understanding is Lee Rhiannon was responsible for setting up minor parties in NSW but she is having a go at Druery because he set up more than her.
If that is correct it would be interesting to get her opinion on where the line between good and bad is when it comes to being involved in the setting up of minor parties to garner votes.
Is 5 parties ok but anything over that bad ? Or 10 ?
Either you are in or not. You cannot be partially pregnant.
It seems to me she is saying it is all ok when she does it but not when anyone else does.
Interesting concept.
Cheers
https://theconversation.com/hanson-young-in-preselection-battle-ahead-of-possible-double-dissolution-55518
[At a meeting last week Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and Greens leader Richard Di Natale discussed the prospect of the government calling a double dissolution. They canvassed the issues involved, including the government’s need to get supply if an election were held on July 2. It was the first formal meeting the two have had.]
A meeting held behind closed doors no doubt 😉
[The first time is tragedy; the second time is farce.]
A Liberal Government destroying itself can never be a tragedy.
Rhiannon has been seriously unimpressive in these committee hearings. She sometimes doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on at all.
@3019, Druery was rather cheekily referring to the absolute mess of green parties at the 1990 federal election, when there was basically anarchy around green registration and a central group was giving out the right to the name to various smaller groups. They actually ran a joint ticket, though.
This is such a straw-man argument, though. Who cares what the Greens or Druery or anyone else did in the past, under a system that requires backroom dealing to get anywhere at all? We’re talking about the new system, though.
I am so over this whinging about no one new being able to cut through. Yes they will – if they get, you know, actual votes. Palmer United, for example, would still have won seats in 2013 – because people voted for them. If you want to make the threshold lower, expand the parliament so that it can be more proportional.
Even if this is a grubby and behind-closed-doors deal then that is exactly the end that a system designed to exalt and reward exactly such deals deserves.
Another day on Pollbludger, another day full of Pegasus’ self-serving posts trying to paint Labor in a bad light.
*Yawn*
zoomster @3022, I actually agree. At least she kind of went for it with Druery, but almost any other Green senator would have absolutely shredded him. David Coleman is being a far more eloquent and effective advocate for the reform. Rhiannon has long been my least-favourite Green senator, and she’s living up to that here. Hopefully if she is re-elected she resigns fairly soon – I believe the plan is meant to be that she be replaced by Mehreen Faruqi, who from what I’ve seen of her seems far more impressive.
Peg @ 3020
They’re clearly up to no good!
[They canvassed the issues involved, including the government’s need to get supply if an election were held on July 2.]
That’s the bit I’m interested in. If Di Natale is really tricky he would be giving Malcolm his Senate Voting reforms AND his second trigger with the ABCC, AND THEN arranging with Shorten to have any supply bills held up until May 12.
As I’ve said before it would destroy any chance Turnbull had and the Libs would probably tear him down before an election anyway.
Nice to see more people picking up on the supply issue that was so blithely overlooked by our savvy media not so long ago in their thrall of Malcolm the Magnificent.
The Big Ship has a good summation over on the Super Tuesday thread.
I actually can’t think of many meetings which don’t happen behind closed doors…
Kevin Bonham @ 3024,
Really!?!
And the headlong rush to an election whose timetable has been specifically constructed to advantage the doers of the grubby deal? Happy with that too?
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2016/mar/01/labor-steps-up-its-campaign-against-senate-voting-reform-politics-live
[11:38 am – Lee Rhiannon
Q: Were you paid to set up parties to funnel votes in group voting tickets?
The JSCEM chair rules that question out of order.
12:02 pm – There’s been a brief barney in JSCEM over whether Druery should have to disclose whether or not he’s paid for his advice on preference deals. A question about income was ruled out of order earlier, but government MPs on the committee think they’d like an answer to the question.]
[Even if this is a grubby and behind-closed-doors deal then that is exactly the end that a system designed to exalt and reward exactly such deals deserves.]
Yep, design a system that structurally encourages gaming, you get gaming.
[I am so over this whinging about no one new being able to cut through]
I, for 1, am whinging that those disaffected by the system who vote small parties will be disadvantaged by the changes.
Lets make a deal – lets count the votes that dont get to a elected candidate (under droop we should include the last candidate that misses out in that) as informals and if the informals reach 33% then the election is voided.
Simon Katich @3034, they won’t be. They will have every opportunity to vote for whoever they want and preference whoever they want – and even prevent their vote ever helping one of the major parties, should they choose to. I have no time for the idea that micro-party voters form an amorphous mass that would all prefer each other to anyone else – if that is the case, let them vote that way and one of them will still emerge on top, but I very much doubt it’s so.
A good point Antony Green raised in the hearings is that in the ACT Legislative Assembly, where the ballot paper includes a direction that people number at least 7 (?) boxes, over 80% of people do so.
All lefties should see Trumbo, a very good film about the blacklisting of the Hollywood Ten and in particular screen writer Dalton Trumbo.
Trumbo won two Academy Awards – for Roman Holiday and The Wild One – under assumed names.
At one stage gaoled for 11 months for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Trumbo finally was able to ‘come out’ when Otto Preminger publicly named him as the screen writer of Exodus and Kirk Douglas did the same re Spartacus .
Of course, if Labor do a deal to ‘Delay’ Supply with The Greens then I take everything back! 😉
But they won’t because The Greens are feeling their oats right now and want to gallop off as quickly as possible into the Unicorn Sunset somewhere between Newtown and Marrickville. 😀
I agree with KB@3011; many Greens are idealistic ex Labor voters and there is a strong complimentarity between the two parties; but; the ALP cannot overcome their dislike of the Greens even for their long term benefit. Very sad.
MarkDiStef: This is interesting… Pell met with the Pope yesterday and may accept his resignation https://t.co/1hju7KwKoS https://t.co/VolHFcU9qk
Perspicacious comment from ‘The View From the Street’ article today:
I’m annoyed. 🙁
These grubby small minded hypocritical bigots in the Liberal Party want the “Safe Schools” program de-funded because its “social engineering”.
Yet they were fine to fund a School Chaplaincy Program, that put good, effective people who had the support of their school communities out of work, because they MANDATED that chaplains had to be religiously affiliated. Making sure that federally funded support staff have religious affiliation and obligation is somehow NOT social engineering??
This lot are slime. 🙁
Their arguments are crap and generally bullshit. 🙁
And remember: Its Liberal, It Lies.
Question now is – where do all the idealistic Greens go now that their leaders are into self conflicting deals too!?
I will say that it is fairly delicious to watch all the Labor tears about the evils of “Just Vote 1”, a system they designed and pioneered themselves.
[confessions
Posted Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 9:04 am | PERMALINK
Morning all.
Thanks BK for today’s dawn patrol.
Of course Abbott was going to speak out against the safer schools program, but I don’t remember his govt trying to abolish it either when he was PM.]
The best thing that got abolished when he was PM was him.
booleanbach @ 3038,
Ditto The Greens, mate. Just read some of the stuff they come out with day after day here that is way more vitriolic towards Labor than the Liberals.
Frickeg
my concern is that some people will think that if they number 6 candidates, one of those will get elected. My understanding is that if those 6 candidates are micro parties then this will not be the case. This vote exhausts too early in the count. IMO, exhausted votes should only occur at the end (if at all).
Ideally there should be a protest vote box for those truly dissatisfied with the system to have their dissatisfaction registered. Perhaps this box could resolve the problem anyway.
[ guytaur
Posted Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 12:23 pm | Permalink
MarkDiStef: This is interesting… Pell met with the Pope yesterday and may accept his resignation
]
When I first read this – I thought George ( see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil ) was going to accept the Pope’s resignation ….
Frickeg @ 3043,
Dr Frankenstein created a monster too, which he loved dearly until he saw the consequences of his actions.
C@tmomma @ 2899
[Btw, a humorous side note to the John Oliver spray is that we get to see Trump’s son and he is a dead ringer for a grown up Eddie Munster! ]
Apparently he has 2 sons, replete with versions of Dad’s gorgeous coiffure.Definitely a couple of mouth breathers. 😀
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/celebrities/critics-slam-trump-sons-over-safari-photos-1.3598056
@3048, a better metaphor would be if Dr Frankenstein had created a monster specifically designed to destroy as many people as he could, and only started having second thoughts when it turned its attention to him.