Double dissolution (maybe) minus 12 weeks

Weekend preselections have delivered a series of disappointments for religious conservatives in Western Australia and Queensland.

As best as I can tell, we have a lean weak ahead for opinion polling (at federal level, at least), as media outlets hold their fire ahead of the resumption of parliament next week. In lieu of that then, here’s a fresh new post-about-nothing – except perhaps for the following preselection news of the past 24 hours:

• The WA Liberals’ state council has overturned the result of last weekend’s local preselection vote in the new seat of Burt, at which Liz Storer, a Gosnells councillor linked to a rising religious conservative faction centred around state upper house MP Nick Goiran, defeated Matt O’Sullivan, who runs mining magnate Andrew Forrest’s GenerationOne indigenous employment scheme. Gareth Parker of The West Australian reports that state council will now determine the matter for itself, on the basis that the 25 branch delegates that determined the vote were insufficient in number. State council otherwise confirmed last week’s locally selected candidates, including Ben Morton who has deposed Dennis Jensen in Tangney. Also decided was a fiercely contested preselection for the state seat of Bateman, in which members of neighbouring seats sought the safer of two berths as set by the redistribution. This resulted in a victory for Dean Nalder, Transport Minister and member for abolished Alfred Cove, over the existing member for Bateman, Matt Taylor. Like the decision in Burt, this represented a defeat for the Goiran faction.

• The Toowoomba-based seat of Groom will be contested for the Liberal National Party by state MP John McVeigh, who won a preselection vote yesterday ahead of David van Gend, a local general practitioner noted for socially conservative views. This will necessitate a by-election in McVeigh’s state seat of Toowoomba South, which McVeigh held on a margin of 8.9%.

• Another important Liberal National Party preselection will be held today in Wide Bay, the seat of retiring former Nationals leader Warren Truss. The candidates are Damien Massingham, chief executive of Tourism Noosa; Tim Langmead, director of external relations at Fortescue Metals; and Llew O’Brien, a police officer. Steven Scott of the Courier-Mail reports Massingham is supported mostly by Liberals, and in particular by Attorney-General George Brandis; Langmead’s backers include Matthias Cormann, along with Fortescue Metals boss Andrew Forrest; and O’Brien is (ahem) supported by Truss.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,113 thoughts on “Double dissolution (maybe) minus 12 weeks”

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  1. Talk about “Wally Everywhere”!

    Waleed Aly now on Offsiders.

    He’ll be doing cooking shows next, or the tennis.

  5. For meoldema
    Sarah born this day in Barcaldine area of Queensland, the greatest horsewoman of her day and she would give them a run for her money today. Showjumping, barrel racing, pony races, driving a sulky or buggy, whatever you could do on a horse Sarah was a champion at it.

    And Labor to the bone. She still talks of the people alive when she was a kid, who witnessed the great shearers strike which lead to the formation of the ALP, and of the shearers who were murdered for strike.

    Happy Birthday to a good Labor woman. “At least Labor builds things’ Mum often says.

  6. Morrison reminds me of those guys in computer pop-up ads who promises that you too can make $1000 a day working from home.

  8. “A universal basic income”. I’d vote for that

    This is one of the of the principles and aims of the Green party.

    http://greens.org.au/policies/social-services

    A socially just, democratic and sustainable society rests on the provision of a guaranteed adequate income for all its citizens.

    Reform of the income support system to ensure a guaranteed adequate income for all, including simplification of pensions and allowances into a universal guaranteed adequate income (GAI) scheme.

  11. Peg

    I don’t think that the two are exactly the same, and the UBI depends on penalising the wealthy who hide their incomes from governments. Could be a while.

  13. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-10/greens-mp-jenny-leong-demands-action-after-online-posts/7313898

    Alleged racist and sexist comments from police about a NSW Greens MP have been branded “disgusting and completely unacceptable” by the politician targeted.

    New South Wales Greens MP Jenny Leong has demanded a police watchdog investigate allegations that officers posted the remarks about her on social media.

    Ms Leong, who is the member for Newtown, said the offensive posts were made after she introduced a bill to State Parliament last month which aimed to end the use of drug detection dogs in public places without a warrant.

    “The Greens believe the current broad use of drug detection dogs in public places is an infringement of basic civil liberties,” Ms Leong said, citing figures which suggested the tactic was also ineffective in finding illegal drugs.

    “We are also concerned that funding the Drug Dog Detection Program is a highly ineffective use of public money as the evidence continues to show that drug detection dogs do not work.”

  15. John Setka ‏@CFMEUJohnSetka · 1h1 hour ago

    .@TurnbullMalcolm; “CFMEU have 108 officials presently before the courts.” We haven’t got that many officials? #Liar! #insiders

  16. Pegasus@58

    “A universal basic income”. I’d vote for that


    This is one of the of the principles and aims of the Green party.

    http://greens.org.au/policies/social-services

    A socially just, democratic and sustainable society rests on the provision of a guaranteed adequate income for all its citizens.

    Reform of the income support system to ensure a guaranteed adequate income for all, including simplification of pensions and allowances into a universal guaranteed adequate income (GAI) scheme.

    Funded by taxes or Nicholas’s magic money?

  17. Universal basic income. Yes.

    The focus is always on jobs, jobs and more jobs. “Automation is taking away our jobs and something has to be done about that!” What for? So we can do a job for the sake of doing a job even when it’s less efficient to society?

    Jobs are great as long as they are beneficial to civilisation. Digging holes and filling them back up is pointless.

    Even at this early stage of technological development we have more than enough know-how to allow every single human being to live freely, happily and comfortably with plenty of time to spend doing what they like, rather than being a slave to the system.

  20. Watching ABC24 with Turnbull on. They are letting him go on and on and on and on …….

    He is going to oppose the Financial RC. good move Mal. 🙂

    And seems passionate about abolishing the Road Safety mob…

    So what do you reckon people care more about? ALP can simply agree to delay the Trucking rates thing for further consideration and neutralise that issue.

    Its not a good look to be opposing the Finance Spiv RC.

  23. adrian@71

    Funded by taxes or Nicholas’s magic money?


    Sigh…it shouldn’t be too difficult for you to think this through.

    Yep. thought so. Nicholas’s magic money.

  25. bemused

    Taxing corporations will pay for Universal Basic Income.

    Reality. Already in Europe they are trialling self driving trucks. The Trailer style ones that have containers on them.

    Local taxis courier drivers will go as well. Thats only with adding self driving cars without the jobs already automated. This is happening now and we have to address it.

    This issue was raised by Alvin Toffler in his third wave industrial revolution predictions. Now the rubber is hitting the road. We either have Dickensian conditions for people again or have a Universal Basic Income.

    Thats the choices before us. No magic pudding economics. Just reality that PAYE taxpayers are going to be obsolete.

  28. guytaur@75

    bemused

    Taxing corporations will pay for Universal Basic Income.
    —

    Cool. So what then will pay for all the other requirements such as hospitals, schools etc?

  29. bemused

    Its taxing corporations or no taxes. No PAYE taxpayers as we know them today will be left. This is the real transition to a new economy

  30. confessions
    Posted Sunday, April 10, 2016 at 9:35 am | PERMALINK
    Henry:

    The govt has no real achievements to speak of. The very definition of a do-nothing, directionless govt that deserves to be booted out.

    Totally agree.

    All this “grow the pie” by giving tax cuts to the spivs and “live within our means” stuff is just a licence to go on doing what the Libs have always done. Look after their rich benefactors while blaming the less well off for whatever budgetary problems there are.

    In the meantime financial inequality continues to grow at an alarming rate as the rich squirrel away their ill gotten gains in tax havens like the Caymans Islands and more and more services are stripped away from those who really need them – all in the name of good economic management of course. What a sick joke.

  31. Darn

    The growing the pie stuff has an official name. Trickle down economics.

    I think you know the consensus on the failure of that theory

  34. guytaur@79

    bemused

    Its taxing corporations or no taxes. No PAYE taxpayers as we know them today will be left. This is the real transition to a new economy

    Very long way to go yet to get there.

  36. bemused

    You have not been paying attention. Already government revenue is in freefall as previous manual labor PAYE jobs have gone.

    Driverless cars are a reality now. The only question is when this decade they will come into widespread use.

  37. bemused

    No they are not. We are talking about what the LNP calls growing the pie not government intervention in Keynesian style.

  38. Universal basic income….
    It seems like a great idea. It really should be given a burl somewhere to see how it pans out.

    I see cause for concern tho’. It could spell the end of things like publicly funded health care and education. There could be an argument for those ‘small gov’ types that if everyone is getting enough money to afford the basics then why are we double subsidising them by covering their health and education.

    And the consequences of that – I will leave you to speculate.

  39. guytaur@86

    bemused

    You have not been paying attention. Already government revenue is in freefall as previous manual labor PAYE jobs have gone.

    Driverless cars are a reality now. The only question is when this decade they will come into widespread use.

    So policies for full employment are necessary.

    But in any event, biggest revenue falls have been as a result of the end of the mining boom and the GFC.

  40. SK

    Yes LNP types will try that. However UBI is the only way for the majority of income in the future. Do remember this is exactly what it says and does not stop adding to by making profits owning your own business or using a youtube channel to market yourself into additional income etc.

  41. SK

    Yes LNP types will try that. However UBI is the only way for the majority of income in the future. Do remember this is exactly what it says and does not stop adding to by making profits owning your own business or using a youtube channel to market yourself into additional income etc.

  43. guytaur@87

    bemused

    No they are not. We are talking about what the LNP calls growing the pie not government intervention in Keynesian style.

    You are conflating 2 ideas.
    Economic growth (growing the pie) and government intervention to affect distribution.

    Keynes was not anti-growth.

  44. bemused

    See my reply to SK its not either or.

    As for full employment thats a pipe dream it was when half the population was not allowed to work. Social prescription forced women to work at home when it what was known as full employment was in force.

    Since then we have doubled the working population and reduced the jobs available. It does not take a maths genius to work out the results.

    New job creation has not replaced all the jobs and as more jobs go this process will increase.

    Now is the time to think about this before the social security bill actually becomes what the LNP claims of it now. Out of control spending

  45. guytaur@87

    bemused

    No they are not. We are talking about what the LNP calls growing the pie not government intervention in Keynesian style.

    You are conflating 2 ideas.
    Economic growth (growing the pie) and government intervention to affect distribution.

    Keynes was not anti-growth.

  46. political_alert: Transport Workers’ Union will respond to the PM’s statement on road safety watchdog, 12.45pm, Sydney #auspol

  47. bemused

    In your eagerness to attack me you are ignoring what I said about the LNP and why thats not Keynesian. No conflating on my part at all.

  48. guytaur@97

    bemused

    In your eagerness to attack me you are ignoring what I said about the LNP and why thats not Keynesian. No conflating on my part at all.

    I know to argue with you is to invite an endless argument leading to insanity so I will leave it at that.

  50. bemused

    Good because your comprehension skills is what is wrong here not what I said.

    You can only say I am conflating Keynesian and grow in pie narrative if I say LNP policy is Keynesian. Its not.

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